Volta
Politics5–16 October 1925 (signed 1 December)

Locarno Treaties

Also called: Locarno Pact, Spirit of Locarno

Germany, France and Belgium agreed to respect each other’s borders, with Britain and Italy as guarantors. Germany joined the League of Nations the next year as a spirit of international cooperation took hold.

Foreign ministers Stresemann of Germany, Austen Chamberlain of Britain and Briand of France (from left) at Locarno, October 1925
Foreign ministers Stresemann of Germany, Austen Chamberlain of Britain and Briand of France (from left) at Locarno, October 1925

Unknown author · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Source

After the Ruhr crisis German foreign minister Stresemann chose to comply with Versailles while regaining Germany’s standing through negotiation. In October 1925 delegates of Germany, France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Poland and Czechoslovakia met at Locarno in Switzerland and agreed on seven treaties, signed in London on 1 December.

In the central Rhineland Pact Germany freely accepted its western borders with France and Belgium and the demilitarization of the Rhineland, guaranteed by Britain and Italy. Its eastern borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia, however, were covered only by arbitration treaties and remained a source of trouble. Germany became a permanent member of the League Council in 1926, and Stresemann and France’s Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize. The “spirit of Locarno” led on to the Kellogg–Briand Pact, but was broken by Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936.

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States at the time
Germany · signatory
France · signatory
Belgium · signatory
Great Britain · signatory
Italy · signatory
Poland · signatory
Czechoslovakia · signatory
Switzerland · host
Places
Locarno

People

  • Gustav Stresemann1878 – 1929

    diplomat · Weimar chancellor (1923) and foreign minister (1923–1929) who ended the hyperinflation and brought Germany back into the international community through Locarno

  • Aristide Briand1862 – 1932

    diplomat · French statesman, many times prime minister, who as foreign minister championed the Locarno Treaties and the Kellogg–Briand Pact

  • Benito Mussolini1883 – 1945

    diplomat · Founder of Italian Fascism who became prime minister (1922–1943) after the March on Rome; dictator who invaded Ethiopia and allied with Hitler

Before and after

Earlier
1923 Occupation of the Ruhr and German Hyperinflation
Later
1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact

Themes that include this event

  • The Great Depression and Totalitarianism1919 – 1939

    From the Washington Conference to the invasion of Poland — two decades in which the age of international cooperation collapsed in the Depression, fascism, Nazism and Stalinism rose, and the world slid into war again