Soviet-French assistance treaty
The Soviet-French assistance treaty of May 2, 1935 was an assistance pact concluded in Paris between the Republic of France and the Soviet Union . He was born in France on February 27 ( House of Commons ) / 12. Ratified March ( Senate ) 1936. The exchange of the ratifications took place in Moscow on March 27, 1936; the treaty was deposited with the Secretariat of the League of Nations on April 18, 1936. The ratification by the French National Assembly triggered the occupation of the Rhineland as a reaction by the Nazi state .
The content of the contract was, in particular, a mutual duty of assistance in the event that one of the contracting parties would become the victim of an attack by a third European country. It was the climax of the Soviet-French rapprochement after 1932. It was originally intended to form the basis of a system of collective security against which National Socialist Germany, with the participation of France, the Soviet Union and the Eastern European allies, was only limited by the Czechoslovak-Soviet treaty of May 16, 1935. The treaty and the idea of collective security in Eastern Europe stemmed from a policy advocated by the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou , after his death in the assassination attempt on the Yugoslav King Alexander I in 1934, his successor Pierre Laval still concluded the assistance treaty of May 2, 1935, he no longer pursued a vigorous implementation of the idea of a system of collective security.
literature
- Contract text in German translation: Keesings Archive of the Present , 1935, pp. 2023 f
