1925

The year in brief

In 1925 Hitler’s movement was growing alongside the Weimar Republic. In April an eight-man guard for Hitler was formed in Munich, which in the autumn took the name SS, and in July the first volume of Mein Kampf appeared, in which he announced a war for living space and a struggle against the Jews. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg became president of Germany and swore loyalty to the constitution of a republic he did not value. On 1 December the Locarno Treaties were signed in London. Germany voluntarily recognised its western border and the demilitarisation of the Rhineland, but did not recognise its borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia, and nobody guaranteed them. In Warsaw the agreements were received as a defeat.