The Franco-Soviet Alliance and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement

Abstract

Stresa had a profound impact on French diplomacy. Before the meeting, Hitler’s behaviour had forced Laval to sign an alliance, for which he had no enthusiasm, with the Soviet Union. His political allies had made it necessary to adopt firmness towards Germany when he would have preferred to convey less hostility and fear to Hitler. Like his British colleagues, he opposed denying to Germany what other countries possessed. Also like the British, Laval thought enforcing the Treaty of Versailles to be a recipe for initiating war. He agreed with Mussolini ‘that the influence of the League diminished with distance’,¹ meaning geographical distance from Europe, and approved a League Covenant of restricted application. League members who advocated continued exchanges with Berlin confirmed Laval in his course; by rejecting measures against Germany at Stresa and Geneva, MacDonald and Mussolini strengthened Laval’s inclination to accommodate to Germany under the guise of building a coalition to defend the status quo. The restoration of the Entente Cordiale seemed like a chimera.