Lausanne Conference (1932)

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At the Lausanne conference between Germany, Great Britain and France in 1932 , the German government under Franz von Papen wanted to end the reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty after the First World War . The conference took place from June 16 to July 9, 1932 in Lausanne , Switzerland .

prehistory

After the collapse of the German banking system in 1931 and the entry into force of the one-year Hoover moratorium on July 6, 1931, various expert commissions came to the conclusion that, even after the moratorium expired, Germany would not be able to make its reparations payments under the Young Plan again record. This was also confirmed in the final report of the Special Advisory Committee of the Bank for International Settlements of December 1931, which met on a German request and which recommended that a new reparations conference be convened. The conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, was originally scheduled to begin on January 18, 1932, but was then postponed to June. Shortly before its opening, the unpopular Brüning II cabinet had to resign at the end of May 1932, so that the new Chancellor Franz von Papen went to Lausanne.

negotiations

During the negotiations, the French government insisted on its position that the Young Plan could only be replaced by paying a balance. German proposals to make the complete termination of reparations acceptable to France through a simultaneous closer political connection to France were rejected.

In continuity with Brüning's previous policy, the German delegation sought to cancel any further reparation payments without replacement. The attending economics minister Warmbold and finance minister Schwerin-Krosigk represented the position, also represented in the British financial world in particular, that the reparations made so far, payments of the inter-allied war debts and the related loans would be the cause of the global financial and economic collapse and any further increase in such unproductive not investing money would only worsen the crisis.

In return, they offered an economic and financial participation in a European development program. Such payments seemed justifiable, since Germany would also benefit from the hoped-for general improvement in the European economy. In the negotiations, determined by the negative French attitude, the German delegation under the rather Francophile Franz von Papen even offered a Franco-German customs union with certain preferences for France (e.g. wine customs).

As a further political consideration, the draft of a consultative pact of the major European powers France, Great Britain, Italy and Germany was submitted, which was supposed to bind the German Reich more closely to the Western Allies in foreign and security policy ( Geneva Disarmament Conference ) and largely to the four-party pact operated by Mussolini in 1933 corresponded. In the Franco-German talks, a Franco-German military entente with, among other things, regular joint general staff meetings was even offered.

For domestic political reasons, the German delegation was particularly interested in the formal cancellation of reparations and the Young Plan. For equally political reasons, the French delegation under Prime Minister Édouard Herriot insisted on such a formal connection.

It was only when the conference threatened to fail after two weeks under this conflict that the conference president, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald , raised the question of the political conditions under which Germany would agree to a final reparation payment. Only now did the deletion of the war guilty article and the replacement of the military provisions of the Versailles Treaty (Part V of the treaty) by the convention negotiated at the Geneva Disarmament Conference with German equality on the Lausanne agenda.

On July 5, after tough negotiations between the Western powers, a solution was found which, for a final payment of four billion Reichsmarks, included not only the termination of all reparations, including the Young Plan, but also the aforementioned consultative pact, the deletion of the war guilt article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, a declaration of the establishment of "moral equality" of the German Reich at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament and a common, Europe-wide monetary policy.

The conservative German government then went overboard with even more comprehensive and specific wording requests in the political field as well as the counter offer of only 2.6 billion Reichsmarks. On July 7th, Herriot was disappointed and decidedly rejected any inclusion of political questions in the Lausanne Conference and after grueling negotiations on the same day the well-known result announced on July 9th came about.

Result and consequences

Joseph Goebbels in July 1932 speaking against the outcome of the Lausanne Reparations Conference

In the contract, the Weimar Republic was obliged to make a final payment of three billion gold marks , payable in five percent bonds to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel . The bonds were redeemable after three years at the earliest; the interest income fell to the creditors. The repayment obligation for the German debts resulting from loans to service the reparation obligations under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan remained unaffected.

The German Reich handed over bonds to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel , which will be brought onto the market as bonds within 15 years or, if this does not succeed, will be destroyed.

The right-wing extremist opposition in Germany - German Nationalists and National Socialists - rejected the Treaty of Lausanne as inadequate, since it did not contain the expected deletion of the war debt article and the disarmament provisions from the Versailles Treaty.

The Lausanne Treaty was only to come into force once a corresponding agreement with the USA on the inter-allied war debts had been reached. Due to the lack of such a regulation, it was not ratified by any of the participating states and therefore never became legally effective. Nevertheless, it actually meant the end of the reparations question. The German bonds were ceremonially burned in Basel in 1948.

See also

literature

  • Ansbert Baumann: "You don't let your country down ...". 70 years ago, State Secretary Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow laid down the guidelines for German foreign policy. In: Historische Mitteilungen der Ranke-Gesellschaft 15 (2002), pp. 148–174.
  • Philipp Heyde: The end of reparations: Germany, France and the Young Plan 1929-1932. Schöningh, Paderborn 1998.
  • Ralph Smiley: The Lausanne Conference. The Diplomacy of the End of Reparations. New Brunswick 1972.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harold James: Germany in the world economic crisis 1924-1936 , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart 1988, p. 382.