Geneva Disarmament Conference

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The Geneva Disarmament Conference was an international conference that met in Geneva from February 2, 1932 to June 11, 1934 with interruptions . The aim of the conference, which was convened after the Preparatory Disarmament Commission, which had met annually since 1925, was to reduce the armament level of its participants "to the highest degree compatible with the respective national security".

prehistory

After being postponed several times, the Geneva Disarmament Conference was convened on February 2, 1932 by international agreement.

Of the earlier failed attempts to organize a conference, the attempt by the League of Nations at the end of 1925 to end the arms race with the help of its Disarmament Commission should be mentioned in particular . However, this attempt failed because of the conflicting interests of the United States , Great Britain and France .

After the Locarno Pact and Germany 's accession to the League of Nations, the “Preparatory Disarmament Conference of the League of Nations” began its work in Geneva in 1926, which was intended to bring the initially widely divergent ideas closer together. This continued its work until the beginning of the main conference in 1932.

organization

Almost 4,000 people from 64 countries, including five non-member states of the League of Nations (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Costa Rica, USA), took part in the conference.

The main organs of the conference were the Main Committee and the Presidium. The main committee consisted of one representative from each delegation, as well as the president, the vice-president and a rapporteur.

The Presidium was composed of the President of the Conference (the British Arthur Henderson ), the Honorary President Giuseppe Motta , who was Federal President of Switzerland in 1932 , and the 14 Vice-Presidents of the Conference, namely the delegates from Argentina, Belgium, the German Reich and France , Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, the USSR and the United States. The Presidium also included: the vice-president of the committee and the presidents of the four committees for armaments on land, at sea, in the air and for military expenditure.

The main meeting room was the great hall of the Bâtiment Electoral . While the delegates were sitting on the ground floor, spectators and journalists could watch the events from the stands. Within the main meeting room, the delegations were arranged in alphabetical order.

course

The conference ultimately failed, as did the efforts in the 1920s.

The German Reich, the loser of the First World War , was still not treated equally and had been disarmed in accordance with the provisions of the Versailles Treaty since 1919 .

It was only after Germany's threat to leave the conference that the great powers consented to the fundamental recognition of the military equality of the German Reich. At the beginning of 1933 Great Britain proposed a 200,000-man army for Germany to disarm its neighbors. When France refused and demanded another four-year period for the existence of the 100,000-man army, the German Reich left the conference on October 14, 1933, which Hitler's conservative ally in particular had urged. At the same time, Germany terminated its membership in the League of Nations on October 19, 1933.

After the death of Chairman Arthur Henderson on October 20, 1935, the conference was discontinued. In view of the armament of the Wehrmacht , which National Socialist Germany officially began on March 16, 1935, disarmament by the other powers no longer seemed sensible.

Conference chronology

The first session of the conference, in which the participants were dealing with various disarmament proposals, above all with a proposal by US President Herbert Hoover , spoke on 23 July 1932 in favor of a substantial reduction in armament. She also spoke out in favor of a ban on certain warlike measures: bombing from the air, chemical, fire and bacteriological warfare. Furthermore, the terms of defense and offensive weapons were separated from each other; Of the armaments assigned to assault weapons, certain were to be abolished ( large-caliber artillery, armored vehicles with a weight greater than a fixed weight, etc.). The implementation of the planned future disarmament agreement should be monitored by a permanent disarmament commission.

On September 14, 1932, the German delegation announced that it would only be able to participate in the work of the conference again after recognizing the principle of equal rights for all nations. On December 11th, the representatives of Great Britain, the USA, France, Italy and Germany agreed to recognize the principle of equality within the framework of a system that would ensure their security for all nations. The Empire then returned to the conference on December 14th. This began to examine a plan submitted by France and Soviet proposals on security and various aspects of the disarmament problem.

On March 16, 1933, the British delegation presented a draft agreement ( MacDonald Plan , named after the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald ), which took into account the decisions and previous discussions of the conference and was adopted on March 27 as the basis for negotiations.

On June 8th, this draft was adopted after examination at first reading. However, the desired agreement did not come about. The German Reich withdrew from the conference again on October 14th because it was unwilling to accept the plan that had been introduced in the meantime, according to which it would have to go through a “probationary period” of several years before the other powers would be level with it in terms of armaments. This plan was introduced as a reaction to the events in Germany after the accession of the National Socialists and out of concern about the shrill tones of the German press and official foreign policy statements. The exchange of views between the governments, however, continued until May 1934.

On June 6, 1934, the main committee of the conference instructed the Presidium in a resolution to find a solution to the outstanding questions and to initiate the preparation of a complete draft agreement. Study committees were also set up in the same resolution to deal with certain important issues. Three of these committees, which met immediately (Security, Execution and Monitoring, Arms Manufacture and Trade), agreed on certain basic issues.

On November 20 of that year, the Presidium approved a proposal which, "taking into account the decisions taken up to that point on the ultimate purpose of the conference," selected a number of issues that could be the subject of special agreements. The latter should, if necessary, be able to enter into force individually, without the conference having to wait for the completion of the overall agreement.

Attendees

Members of the official delegations

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Other participants

Cartoon by David Low of 23 May 1937. The outcome of the disarmament conferences in Europe since the Versailles Treaties : the conference apologizes for its failure.

Other people who appeared at the conference included: Heinrich Brüning (German Reich; 1932), Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow (1932), Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath (1932/1933), Joseph Goebbels (German Reich; 1933), Robert Cecil (Great Britain), Henry L. Stimson (USA; 1933), Émile Vandervelde (Belgium 1932/1933), Alfred Jansa (Austria; 1933)

literature

  • Sten Nadolny : Disarmament Diplomacy 1932/33. Germany at the Geneva conference in the transition from Weimar to Hitler (= tuduv studies. Vol. 10). tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-88073-066-0 (also: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 1978).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Nadolny: My contribution. Memories of an ambassador of the German Reich. Edited and introduced by Günter Wollstein . dme-Verlag, Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-922977-18-9 .
  2. ↑ Klaus Hildebrand : The Third Reich (= Oldenbourg floor plan of history . Vol. 17). 4th edition, reprint of the 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-486-49094-X , p. 17; Richard J. Evans : The Third Reich. Volume 2 / II: Dictatorship. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-421-05653-6 , p. 748 f.
  3. ↑ Composition of delegations after Nadolny.
  4. ^ Verdiana Grossi: Huber, Max. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz . October 30, 2007 , accessed January 12, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Christoph Zürcher: Bridler, Otto. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 30, 2002 , accessed January 12, 2019 .
  6. ^ Jean-Pierre Dorand: Perrier, Ernest. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 1, 2009 , accessed January 12, 2019 .
  7. ^ Marc Perrenoud: Vallotton, Henry. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . February 21, 2013 , accessed January 12, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Marian Zgórniak: Europa am Abgrund - 1938 (= documents and writings of the European Academy Otzenhausen. 100). LIT, Münster et al. 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6062-0 , p. 94.