Locarno, the League and Kellogg-Briand

What the specification asks for

“Successes abroad – League of Nations, Locarno Treaties and Kellogg-Briand Pact” — examined through change and significance. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Locarno, 1925

At Locarno in October 1925 Germany, France and Belgium guaranteed their mutual frontiers, with Britain and Italy as guarantors, and Germany accepted the permanent demilitarisation of the Rhineland. This was the first time since 1919 that Germany had agreed to anything rather than been handed it, and it was met with genuine enthusiasm: the Locarno spirit, and a Nobel Peace Prize shared by Stresemann and Briand in 1926.

Read the terms carefully and the strategy appears. Germany guaranteed its WESTERN border and pointedly declined to guarantee its eastern one. It signed arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia — agreements to talk, not to accept — and Britain refused to guarantee those. Stresemann had secured the West against France and left the Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia formally open.

The League, 1926

Germany joined the League of Nations in September 1926 with a permanent seat on the Council, which meant a veto. Six years after being excluded as a pariah, Germany sat among the great powers. Stresemann used the position immediately, raising the treatment of German minorities in Poland at Geneva.

The German right regarded joining as an acceptance of Versailles and campaigned against it. The nationalist objection helps date the shift: the parties that would destroy the Republic opposed exactly the policies that were restoring its standing.

Kellogg-Briand and what the whole programme was worth

In August 1928 Germany joined sixty-four states in the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. It contained no enforcement provision of any kind and is often treated as an empty gesture; its significance for Germany is that a state disarmed by treaty had signed the same undertaking as its disarmers, which was a claim to equality.

The measurable gains: the Ruhr evacuated in 1925, the Allied military control commission withdrawn in 1927, the Rhineland occupation ended in 1930, five years early, and the Young Plan's reduction. That is a substantial revision of Versailles achieved without a shot, and it was achieved by a man who had been an annexationist during the war and never stopped wanting the eastern border changed. Reconciliation was his method; revision was his aim; and the two are not contradictory unless you assume a diplomat's manner is his purpose.

There is one more measurable gain that answers the charge that Stresemann achieved nothing concrete. Under Locarno's arbitration provisions and the League machinery, Germany was able to raise the treatment of the German minority in Poland at Geneva repeatedly between 1926 and 1929, which no defeated and disarmed state had previously been able to do. That is not a border changed; it is a seat at the table used, and it is what a revisionist without an army has instead of leverage.

Stresemann's death on 3 October 1929, three weeks before the Wall Street Crash, is worth treating as evidence rather than as coincidence. He was the only figure who commanded confidence in Paris, London and Washington simultaneously, he was the DVP's authority over its own right wing, and after him no German foreign minister could deliver either. Whether one man's survival would have changed 1930 is unanswerable; what is certain is that the policy of revision by negotiation had no other advocate of comparable standing.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

October 1925

The Locarno Treaties: the western frontier guaranteed, the eastern frontier not. Why this date: The single most examinable fact in the strand. What Germany did NOT guarantee is what shows the policy was revisionist.

September 1926

Germany joins the League with a permanent Council seat. Why this date: Great-power status restored seven years after Versailles.

1927 and 1930

The Allied control commission withdraws; the Rhineland occupation ends five years early. Why this date: The concrete results, and the reason 'Locarno achieved nothing' is not a serious position.

August 1928

Germany signs the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Why this date: Equality of status with the victors, on paper, with no enforcement behind it.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 1926 — Nobel Peace Prize shared by Stresemann and Briand.
• Sixty-five — Signatory states to Kellogg-Briand by 1929. (Counts vary slightly by date of accession; the point is that near-universality came with no enforcement clause.)
• Five years — By how much the Rhineland evacuation of 1930 preceded the treaty date of 1935.

The people to place

• Gustav Stresemann — Foreign Minister continuously from 1923 to 1929 across six governments.
• Aristide Briand — French foreign minister and Stresemann's counterpart; co-author of the 1928 pact.
• Austen Chamberlain — British foreign secretary; guaranteed the western frontier and refused to guarantee the eastern.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'good European' reading: Stresemann genuinely sought reconciliation and a peaceful European order, and his early death removed the one German statesman who might have anchored the Republic. Contested by Readings based on his private papers and his letter to the former Crown Prince in 1925, which show a consistent revisionist aim in the east pursued by conciliatory means. Both readings use the same documents..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Locarno settled Germany's borders.

This: It settled the western border. The eastern border was deliberately left unguaranteed, with arbitration treaties instead, and Britain declined to underwrite it. Every later crisis over Poland and Czechoslovakia sits in that gap.

Not this: Stresemann accepted the Treaty of Versailles.

This: He accepted the parts he could not change and worked continuously to revise the rest. Fulfilment was a tactic for demonstrating that Germany's obligations were impossible, not a conversion.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Guaranteeing a border and signing an arbitration treaty about it.

The distinction: A guarantee commits you, and your guarantors, to defend the line. An arbitration treaty commits you to discuss disputes. Germany did the first in the west and the second in the east, and the difference is the whole of Stresemann's strategy.

Blurred: The League of Nations and the Locarno guarantors.

The distinction: League membership gave Germany a Council seat and a veto in a universal body. Locarno was a separate five-power arrangement with Britain and Italy as guarantors. They are different instruments signed a year apart.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer refuses the choice between a good European and a cunning nationalist. Stresemann pursued a revisionist aim by conciliatory means because conciliation was the only instrument a disarmed state possessed — and that is why his successes were real, and why they were entirely compatible with wanting the eastern settlement overturned.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The western-not-eastern point, stated plainly. It converts a list of treaties into an argument about intent, and it is the kind of specific that examiner reports call precise supporting knowledge.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain two effects of the Locarno Treaties on Germany's international position. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
2. Explain two reasons why Stresemann's foreign policy was criticised inside Germany. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Describe two features of the Locarno Treaties. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'Stresemann's foreign policy was a success.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'The years 1924–29 were the Weimar Republic's golden years.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The Dawes and Young Plans and American loans
• Next lesson, in key topic 3: The German Workers' Party and the changes of 1920–22
• Also in this key topic: The Rentenmark and the end of hyperinflation
• Key topic 2 · The recovery of Germany, 1924–29 · Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of Germany: The establishment of the Weimar Republic and its early problems · The rise of Hitler and the Nazis to January 1933 · Nazi Germany 1933–39 · Germany and the occupied territories during the Second World War