Pact of four

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The four-part pact , also known as the four-power pact , was an agreement signed on the initiative of Benito Mussolini between fascist Italy , France , Great Britain and the National Socialist German Reich , which was signed on July 15, 1933, but never ratified.

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The four-party pact confirmed the statutes of the League of Nations , the Locarno Treaties , the finality of the German western border and the Briand-Kellogg Pact . The contracting parties committed themselves to jointly deliberate on all international law issues and to keep the peace.

Effect and development

In Germany the pact of four was praised as Mussolini's "Great Peace Plan". With the conclusion of the treaty, the German Reich itself also gained enormous prestige in foreign policy: The new rulers could announce to the world that they were only interested in peace in Europe. However, the hope of his contracting parties to prevent Adolf Hitler from pursuing an aggressive foreign policy with the treaty was not fulfilled: the Nazi regime demonstrated in the same year by leaving the League of Nations (resigned after a referendum on November 12, 1933) and the Withdrawal from the Geneva Disarmament Conference that it was unwilling to join a collective security system for Europe. The pact of four was initialed , but not ratified afterwards .

The four-party pact acted as a threat to Poland , which led to the conclusion of the German-Polish non-aggression pact on January 26, 1934.

literature

  • The four power pact. Senate speech by the Italian Prime Minister, Excellency Benito Mussolini, on June 7th Anno XI. Ed. Societa Anonima Poligrafica Italiana, Roma 1933 (in German) (the Fasch. Calendar began in 1922 with year 1); also: Radeke, Berlin 1933 (edition of the Italian message. Orig .: "Patto di collaborazione e d'intesa fra le quattro Potenze") Speech in the Italian Senate at the session of June 7, 1933
  • Piotr S. Wandycz : The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926-1936: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from Locarno to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland . Princeton: PUP, 1988

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