The celebrated Treaty of Rapallo between Germany and Russia reflects this
attitude. The treaty came into being more on Russian, not German, initiative.
The Russians took advantage of German reaction against what was regarded
as French sabotage of the Genoa conference on reparations. The circumstances
of its signing were more dramatic than its contents. It provided for the
normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries and for
abandonment of any claims to reparations on either side. It constituted,
therefore, much more a liquidation of past unpleasantness than an indication
of a fundamental shift in German foreign policy for the future.
The treaty was taken much more seriously in the West by public opinion and
the press, than by the governments whose protests were mostly pro forma.
The press tended to regard it as a symbol and to suspect that it contained
more than met the eye. Rapallo did not damage Germany's relations with the
western powers in general or with respect to reparations specifically. The
occupation of the Ruhr a few months later, had nothing to do with it.
The ghost of Rapallo is still brought up when a German rapprochement with
Russia is discussed, but an assessment of the treaty in cold-war terms is
off the target. There did exist secret agreements between Germany and Russia,
but these for the most part preceded Rapallo, were unrelated to it, were
concerned specifically with military matters. They were negotiated by military
leaders of the two countries, though with the knowledge of the civilian
leaders in the governments. They provided for purely practical cooperation
between the two armies in matters of supply and training, without political
implications. General Hans von Seeckt, the commander-in-chief of the German
army, did harbor ideas of a future extension of the agreements into the
economic and political spheres, and for this reason welcomed Rapallo, but
that does not mean that Rapallo reflected Seeckt's anti-French views.
The best proof of the compatibility of Rapallo with a continuing fundamentally
western orientation of German foreign policy is the welcome Gustav Stresemann
gave to to Rapallo when he was in the middle of negotiations with the western
powers on reparations. Stresemann approved the military cooperation agreements
between Germany and Russia, though as a right-of-center politician he, no
more than Seeckt, had any use for Russian domestic politics. The left-of-center
politicians such as Rathenau and the Social Democrat Carl Severing, who
had consented to the military agreements, were aware of and at least tacitly
approved the undercover German rearmament to which the agreements contributed.
It should therefore come as no surprise that Stresemann did likewise. He
believed that a strong army would strengthen his hand in negotiations to
relieve Germany of the other disabilities imposed at Versailles.
He believed even more strongly in Germany's capacity for economic recovery
and expansion, provided a lessening of political tension, a better international
climate, could be brought about. Therefore Stresemann's first concern was
to win confidence abroad in the peaceful aims of German foreign policy,
even while he was secretly supporting rearmament in violation of Versailles.
What he needed above all, in the short run, was to gain time.
He once compared himself to the medieval man about whom the story went that,
having been sentenced to death, he asked for a year's grace during which
he promised to teach the king's horse bow to fly. When his friends pointed
out that it was useless to prolong the agony with no hope in the end, the
man is said to have explained: ''By the time a year has passed, the king
may die or I may die or the horse may die. Or perhaps, who knows, the horse
may really learn how to fly!''
Stresemann's long-range aims, if he could succeed in gaining time, were
to put an end to the Allied occupation of the Rhineland; obtain a tolerable
solution to the reparations question; recover Danzig and the Polish Corridor
and seek restoration of territory in Upper Silesia; ultimately, unite with
Austria; and gain German admission to the League of Nations as a means of
achieving these other goals. Stresemann had not abandoned nationalism, but
was determined to pursue it realistically, in the tradition of Bismarck,
not after the fashion in which he had once been a fanatical annexationist.
To the extent that realism meant appreciation of the necessity of re-establishing
and maintaining a European comity, Stresemann, like Bismarck, was a European,
not just a German, statesman.
But attempts to see Stresemann as a ''good European'' by the standards of
the European Economic Community, are as wide of the mark and as false as
the cold-war perspective on Rapallo. On the other hand, it is equally true
that Stresemann should not be judged by comparison with the policies and
activities of the DNVP, or of even more extreme forms of nationalism, which
ought not be allowed to set standards.
It is nevertheless relevant to point out that Stresemann achieved a far
greater degree of success, from a purely German point of view, than the
nationalist hotheads who made his life miserable could have done. The Dawes
Plan for relief of the reparations burden; the treaties of Locarno and Berlin;
German admission to the League of Nations; the evacuation of the Rhineland;
and the final settlement of reparations in the young Plan-all these were
Stresemann's achievements (though the last two took effect only after his
death). They were achievements for which, as foreign minister in successive
governments, he had to struggle continually against the domestic German
opposition on the right which accused him of being ''soft on the Allies.''
It is only a slight oversimplification to suggest that Stresemann bought
the consent of the DNVP for his foreign policy with domestic concessions.
As early as 1924 the DNVP was brought into government at the insistence
of Stresemann's own party, which felt exposed to the pressure of the DNVP,
which was twice its size. This move did indeed bring about some moderation
within the DNVP under changed leadership. At the same time, a policy of
compromise with the still anti-republican DNVP endangered the support that
Stresemann also needed from the SPD. No sooner was the DNVP in the government
than it began pressing for reintroduction of protective agricultural tariffs,
adopted against SPD opposition in the Reichstag. The tariffs were of such
nature that they helped the big estate owners more than the small peasants,
large numbers of whom continued to be evicted from the land for nonpayment
of mortgages.
Under such conditions discontent with the republican ''system'' grew among
those who remained on the land. When in 1927 the SPD finally abandoned its
admiration of large-scale agriculture and came out for land reform, it was
too late. The SPD had tried to establish cooperation between peasants and
urban workers in support of the republic and of democracy. It also wanted
to maintain a balance between producers and consumers. But it did not work.
The Junkers were strongly entrenched and the peasants alienated.#
On the other hand, the SPD also bore much of the responsibility, indirectly,
for the entry of the DNVP into government. This shifted of the whole political
spectrum further to the right. The SPD had left the Stresemann government
as early as October 1923, because of the inequity in Stresemann's treatment
of right wing radicalism in Bavaria and left-wing radicalism in Saxony.
The first ''Great Coalition'' had lasted less than two months. But the SPD
found itself no better off, for Stresemann's rump government was in a minority
in the Reichstag and could survive only if it were tolerated by either the
DNVP or SPD. Since the DNVP would have nothing to do with the chancellor
who had called off the Ruhr resistance, the responsibility was still the
SPD's.
It was the misfortune of the SPD, the most wholehearted of all the parties
in its commitment to the Weimar Republic, to be repeatedly confronted with
insoluble problems of operation of a multi-party system in an unsettled
society with disloyal oppositions on both left and right. In this particular
situation, the party's leaders were fairly certain that if they brought
Stresemann down the next government would be no better from their point
of view; on the other hand, they were convinced that they would lose many
voters to the Communists if they did not maintain their strong stand against
federal intervention in Saxony.
This latter consideration prevailed; President Ebert, himself a Socialist,
declared to the SPD leaders in the Reichstag after they had voted Stresemann
out in November 1923: ''The reasons for your overthrow of the government
will be forgotten in a few weeks; but you will continue to feel the consequences
of your folly for ten years.'' The futility of the SPD's gesture was emphasized
by the fact that the party saw itself obliged not only to tolerate the succeeding
government of the Center leader Wilhelm Marx, which did indeed stand to
the right of Stresemann's, but even to grant it temporary emergency powers.
By the following March, however, the SPD could no longer hold to this line.
The Communists were again putting pressure on SPD voters over the government's
use of its emergency powers, and the SPD forced a dissolution. But this
policy proved no better than the other, for in the elections the Communists
made big gains. Most former USPD voters did not follow their leaders in
their fusion with the SPD, but voted KPD instead. Marx still found himself
with a minority government, and in due course called a second election;
but the middle parties still remained a minority needing support from either
right or left. It was then that the new chancellor, the Independent (but
generally conservative) Hans Luther, on the DVP's urging, drew the DNVP
into the cabinet.
The two parliamentary elections of 1924 were followed by the presidential
election of 1925 after Ebert's death. Here also there was a marked drift
to the right, precipitated by short-sighted and inconsistent behavior on
Stresemann's part. He torpedoed the candidacy of Otto Gessler, a member
of the Democratic Party but a Catholic and as minister of war a strong supporter
of the army, on whom all the non-Socialist parties were about to agree,
on the ground that he would make a bad impression in France. But when, after
an inconclusive round in which each party offered its own candidate, the
DVP and DNVP drafted Field Marshal von Hindenburg to stand against Marx,
the candidate of the Weimar Coalition parties, Stresemann raised no objection.
Hindenburg won, partly because of his great personal prestige and his attraction
for all who indulged in monarchical nostalgia or Great-Power longings, partly
because the KPD persisted in its own candidacy which drew off sufficient
votes from Marx to throw the election to Hindenburg. The president of the
Republic had been elected by an anti-republican plurality, as well as being
anti-republican himself. Perhaps the closest parallel to such an event is
the election of Louis Napoleon in 1848.
The rightward trend in German politics continued until 1928, when it was
halted by the return of a political issue from another world. The DVP, regarding
itself as the successor to the National Liberals and in memory of the Kulturkampf,
brought down Marx's fourth coalition government over a confessional-school
bill. This development was not unwelcome to Stresemann, who had been pressing
for some time for a government oriented more toward the parties which approved
his foreign policy. When the elections registered a modest swing to the
left, he successfully urged the formation of a Great Coalition similar to
his own of 1923, but under the leadership of the SPD as the largest party.
The SPD leader, Hermann Müller, thereupon became chancellor.
But the decision to seek support on the left came too late. Stresemann was
losing control of his own party. Nobody will say that he had not enough
to do directing German foreign policy and in a general way watching over
domestic developments with a view to securing freedom to execute that policy.
Nevertheless, it remains that he was also a party leader, and his failure
to align the party firmly behind him proved extremely damaging both to him
and to the idea of political reconciliation and collaboration with the SPD.
In fact, the DVP was drifting rapidly to the right and became increasingly
restless as the SPD's coalition partner. It was in the cards that any serious
tension would cause the coalition to break apart again, as had Stresemann's
own coalition.
Send comments and questions to Professor
Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.