The Treaty of Berlin (1926)

On 24 April 1926 in Berlin the German Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann, and the Soviet ambassador, Nikolay Krestinsky, signed a treaty of friendship and neutrality. The Treaty of Berlin confirmed that the Treaty of Rapallo of 1922 remained the basis of relations between the two states, and obliged each party to remain neutral should the other, despite its peaceful conduct, be attacked by a third state. This short document, concluded for five years, answered a question that had been troubling Moscow for several months: whether Germany, which in the autumn of 1925 had reconciled itself with the West at Locarno and was preparing to join the League of Nations, would become part of an anti-Soviet front. Stresemann gave assurances that it would not. Poland, which bordered on both states, was deeply alarmed by the treaty, because coming so soon after Locarno it confirmed that its two largest neighbours remained on close terms.

Between Locarno and Moscow

Since Rapallo, Germany and Soviet Russia – from the end of 1922 the Soviet Union – had maintained close relations. Trade developed, and under the cover of diplomacy the Reichswehr and the Red Army conducted secret military cooperation. In 1925 a German flying school was opened at Lipetsk. The ambassador in Moscow, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, was a friend of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Georgy Chicherin, and both diplomats were anxious that relations should not deteriorate.

Stresemann, Foreign Minister since 1923, had nevertheless changed the course of German policy. After the occupation of the Ruhr and hyperinflation he concluded that a revision of Versailles was possible only in agreement with the West, and above all with American capital. In 1924 Germany accepted the Dawes Plan, and on 1 December 1925 the Locarno Treaties were signed in London. In them Germany recognised its western border with France and Belgium and was to join the League of Nations. It did not guarantee its eastern border. With Poland and Czechoslovakia it concluded only arbitration agreements, and Stresemann said openly that a peaceful revision of the Polish border remained Germany’s goal.

In Moscow Germany’s rapprochement with the West was viewed with alarm. The Soviet Union regarded the League of Nations as a club of the victorious powers and feared that as a member Germany would have to take part in sanctions against it or allow French troops to cross its territory on their way to help Poland. This was precisely the subject of Article 16 of the League Covenant, which obliged members to take joint action against an aggressor. At Locarno Germany had secured a reservation that it would take part in such action to the extent compatible with its military and geographical position. Chicherin, who had come to Berlin in the autumn of 1925 while the Locarno talks were under way, nevertheless demanded firmer guarantees. Talks on a new agreement had been going on since 1925.

What the treaty provided

The Treaty of Berlin had only four articles. The first stated that relations between the two states would continue to be based on the Treaty of Rapallo and that the two governments would consult each other on all political and economic questions of common concern. The second was the most important: if one of the parties, despite its peaceful conduct, were attacked by one or more third states, the other would remain neutral for the whole duration of the conflict. The third obliged both parties not to join any coalition aimed at imposing an economic or financial boycott on the other. The fourth provided that the treaty would come into force on the exchange of the instruments of ratification and remain valid for five years.

An exchange of notes was attached to the treaty. In it Stresemann gave assurances that Germany, as a member of the League of Nations, would oppose any League action directed against the Soviet Union and would itself decide whether the Soviet Union was the aggressor in a given conflict. Without such a German decision no League sanctions could oblige Germany to act against its eastern neighbour. In practice this meant that in the event of a Polish–Soviet war Germany would neither help Poland nor allow French troops to cross its territory.

Ratifications were exchanged in Berlin on 29 June 1926, and the treaty came into force that day. The Reichstag’s Foreign Affairs Committee backed it unanimously, a rare occurrence in the Weimar Republic. In Germany it was compared to the Reinsurance Treaty that Bismarck had concluded with Russia in 1887. In the same year German banks, with government guarantees, granted the Soviet Union a credit of 300 million marks for the purchase of German goods.

Reactions

Stresemann argued to the British and French that the treaty did not contradict Locarno or the League of Nations, since Germany had promised neutrality only in the event that the Soviet Union was attacked. The British Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, accepted these explanations, and in France Aristide Briand had no wish to spoil the newly concluded Locarno settlement. On 8 September 1926, after a six-month dispute over seats on the League Council, Germany became a member of the League.

In Poland the treaty was received with the deepest alarm. Two great states, neither of which had recognised Poland’s borders as final, had undertaken not to hinder each other in the event of a conflict that Warsaw could interpret in only one way. Since June 1925 Germany had been waging a tariff war against Poland, and Stresemann believed that economic crisis would force Poland into border concessions. A few weeks after the treaty was signed, in May 1926, Józef Piłsudski seized power in the May Coup. For years afterwards his policy consisted in keeping a balance between the two neighbours and avoiding any situation in which they might reach an understanding against Poland. In 1932 Poland signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, and in 1934 a declaration of non-aggression with Germany.

Significance

The Treaty of Berlin was the high point of the Rapallo policy. It showed that Stresemann’s Germany wanted friendly relations with both the West and Moscow, and to use each to strengthen its position towards the other. Under its cover secret military cooperation continued until 1933, although in December 1926 Philipp Scheidemann exposed part of it in the Reichstag. On 24 June 1931 the government of Heinrich Brüning signed a protocol extending the treaty. It was ratified only on 5 May 1933, by the government of Adolf Hitler, which at that point did not yet wish to break with Moscow, even as it was crushing the Communists at home. Afterwards relations quickly deteriorated, and in the 1930s the Soviet Union drew closer to France and joined the League of Nations.

The principle of mutual neutrality nevertheless returned in 1939. The pact signed on 23 August by Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov explicitly invoked in its preamble the “basic provisions” of the neutrality agreement of April 1926. This time, however, it was not a matter of neutrality in case one of the parties was attacked, but of a free hand for Germany to attack Poland, and a secret protocol divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Less than a month later, on 17 September 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland from the east.