Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia

The Treaty of Berlin—the German-Soviet Neutrality and Nonaggression Pact of April 1926—was the second treaty in the Soviet post-Locarno, counter-League security system to be signed, following the treaty with Turkey and preceding those with Afghanistan and Lithuania.^[23] A European

policy based on close ties to Germany and favorable relations with Turkey in the Middle East (along with détente with Japan in East Asia) were in Chicherin's eyes the crucial and indispensable elements of Soviet diplomacy, and had been so since 1921-22. In the context of the four-year-long Rapallo relationship, the Berlin Treaty had special meaning both in Moscow and in Berlin. Neither Soviet Russia nor Weimar Germany could have afforded not to conclude a formal agreement after Locarno. Failure to do so would have seemed an indication of serious discord between the two countries, the equivalent of a break in relations, something both Berlin and Moscow had a common interest in avoiding. However, different sets of considerations motivated Moscow and Berlin.

On the Wilhelmstrasse, Carl von Schubert feared that if Germany did not conclude an agreement with the USSR, the danger of a Franco-Soviet rapprochement would be heightened, the German economy would be disadvantaged by a decline in trade with Russia, and the domestic opponents of the Locarno rapprochement between Germany and the Western powers would be strengthened. Obversely, a treaty with Russia would enhance Berlin's position in international politics in that it would be associated with a USSR that was evolving toward increasing stability and prosperity under the conditions of NEP. And a neutrality agreement with the Soviet Union, when added to Germany's exemption from participation in League sanctions against the USSR, would strengthen German security. Germany would not become the battlefield of a war between Russia and the powers of Western Europe. Most of all, a German-Russian treaty would make clear to Warsaw that Germany would give Poland no assistance, either direct or indirect, in the event of a Polish conflict with the Soviet Union. In particular, no French military assistance would cross German territory. The time at which the Berlin Treaty was concluded was the period of greatest optimism for Weimar Germany's revisionist ambitions toward Poland. By keeping Poland militarily vulnerable, the Wilhelmstrasse calculated, Warsaw would be required to spend excessively on armaments. Polish public finances would be destabilized. A bailout by foreign capital would then become necessary. For its part in that rescue operation, Berlin would demand the return of the Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia.^[24] The effect of the Berlin Treaty was to keep the issue of Poland's frontiers unsettled pending an international renegotiation of the borders of Eastern Europe.

In the explanation of Germany's Russian policy that Stresemann offered to the foreign ministries of Europe, he argued that Communism was not going to collapse in Russia and that the Berlin Treaty constituted the

least costly way of reintegrating Russia into world politics. To that end the treaty was not incompatible with Locarno, he maintained; it actually effected "the completion of Locarno" by easing Russian fears about it and by promoting European-wide international reconciliation. The British bought Stresemann's line. Chamberlain described the treaty to the Cabinet as "innocuous" and "in conformity with the Locarno model." Lord D'Aber-non, the British ambassador in Berlin (1920-26), called Stresemann's policy a bridge from Russia to Europe, and Chamberlain agreed. Germany could serve, he stated, as "the natural link between Russia and Europe," a connection that could "gradually give to Russian policy a western orientation, which would be the basis of cooperation between Russia and the other European powers." The best response to the Berlin Treaty, he thought, would be to demonstrate further to the Germans the advantages of cooperation with the West. To oppose the treaty would only "drive Germany further into the arms of Moscow."^[25] In Warsaw and Prague, the foreign ministers of France's Eastern allies were alarmed by the treaty, and they were prepared to demand an explanation from Berlin. The worst thing to do, stated Edvard Benes, the Czech foreign minister, would be to act as "if nothing happened." However, the British Foreign Office restrained them. In Paris, Briand seemed to regard the treaty as primarily a British concern and fell in readily behind London's policy.^[26] The relatively calm response of London and Paris, when compared with their reaction to the Rapallo Treaty four years earlier, demonstrated the extent to which Stresemann succeeded in integrating Germany's relations with Russia and its rapprochement with France, Britain, and the United States into a coherent policy that was understood and accepted in Europe and America.

Was the German-Soviet neutrality treaty consistent with the Treaties of Locarno? That depended on what "Locarno" meant, Litvinov cleverly pointed out when he reported the agreement to the Central Committee. If the Locarno agreements were pacific and integrative in intent, the Berlin Treaty was consistent with them, and the supporters of Locarno should welcome it. If, on the other hand, the Locarno powers aimed at forming an anti-Soviet coalition, then "we must admit that the [Berlin Treaty] does contradict the spirit of Locarno, and we can only rejoice that we have succeeded to some extent in depriving Locarno of its anti-Soviet sting." Regarding the significance of the treaties of Berlin, Locarno, and Rapallo for Soviet-German relations, Litvinov maintained that the Treaty of Berlin meant not only a resumption of the Rapallo relationship after the interruption of Locarno, but also "an amplification of the Rapallo Treaty." Radek stated most directly what the Berlin Treaty meant to Moscow. It guaran-

teed that Germany would not be recruited into an anti-Soviet bloc—a pledge "taken openly before the whole world," he wrote, not to become "a weapon in the war against the Soviet Union."^[27]

The Treaty of Berlin was neither a "high water mark" in Weimar-Soviet relations nor a major step in a long decline in German-Russian friendship since 1922.^[28] Analyzed in terms of realpolitik, the Treaty of Berlin controlled the damage that might otherwise have been done to the security interests of the USSR by the German rapprochement with the victors of the World War. How did it do so? In effect, Germany obtained at Locarno unrestricted freedom from participation in sanctions against the Soviet Union, both direct and indirect, military and economic. This did not, however, satisfy the requirements of Soviet security as the NKID defined them. The problem with the agreements concluded at Locarno was that they justified Germany's exemption from imposing sanctions in terms of Germany's disarmed status under the Treaty of Versailles, and that they were agreements to which the USSR was not a party. From the perspective of the NKID, the British were fully capable of allowing the Germans to rearm, thereby enabling Germany to participate in sanctions. Chicherin and Litvinov insisted that Soviet security could not be left simply to declarations exchanged between the Western powers and Germany. Nor were they content with the vague statements embodied in the long, loosely worded preambles and protocols the Wilhelmstrasse had been proposing to the USSR ever since negotiations had begun in earnest in June 1925. They insisted that Berlin undertake binding commitments to the Soviet Union, and that these commitments be expressed in the form of a short, precise, unequivocal, formal, and published treaty. The Treaty of Berlin did all this.^[29]

It also defined Germany's place in Soviet foreign relations more definitely than had been done at Rapallo. Despite the anti-Versailles statements that appeared in the theses adopted by congresses of the Comintern, Soviet diplomacy had shown little interest during the years since 1922 in collaborating with Weimar Germany for the purpose of overthrowing the World War peace settlement. "Forcing Poland back to its ethnographical borders" was a phrase employed by the NKID to manipulate Berlin tactically; it was not an element of a grand design for rearranging the frontiers of East-Central Europe. Moreover, Soviet Russia's German policy was aimed not at isolating Germany in an exclusive relationship with Moscow but at improving relations with the other capitalist powers. In this context, the purpose of the Berlin Treaty was to preserve, repair, and buttress "the German bridge" to Europe. As Krestinskii reported back to Moscow, continued close Soviet-German relations would be useful in negotiations with

third parties. This was particularly important in April 1926, when Narkomindel was making its most serious effort to resume treaty negotiations in London.^[30] The Treaty of Berlin, like the treaty with Turkey, was regarded as a model for similar agreements with other European states, including England and even Poland.

In 1926 a treaty with Poland was both an objective of Soviet security policy and a lever to be used on Germany in the negotiations that led to the Berlin Treaty. On the one hand, Litvinov told Brockdorff-Rantzau that the less forthcoming Berlin was in its promises of neutrality to the USSR, the more Moscow would need to consider bringing third powers into its security system.^[31] On the other hand, Poland's strategic location made it vital to Soviet security. Without Polish participation, no significant military offensive could be conducted against the USSR. If Germany was the corridor for an attack on the Soviet Union, Poland was the door To obviate such participation, the NKID had in mind a three- to five-year Soviet-Polish nonaggression pact, and to obtain such an agreement, Chicherin informed Brockdorff-Rantzau, the Soviet government was prepared to reconfirm the results of the Russo-Polish War of 1920 as set down in the Treaty of Riga, to guarantee Poland's eastern frontier, and to write off large tracts of Byelorussian and Ruthenian territory—but not to guarantee Poland's border with Germany. It was imperative, he stated, to "create settled conditions along the western border [of the USSR] and above all prevent England from using Poland as a battering-ram against the Soviet Union."^[32]

The Wilhelmstrasse objected to any arrangement that would satisfy or partially satisfy Poland's security requirements—whether by way of a guarantee treaty, a nonaggression pact, or even a treaty of arbitration and conciliation. Stresemann and Schubert informed the NKID during the Berlin Treaty negotiations that any such agreement would damage German-Russian trade relations and would be incompatible with the Soviet-German treaty under discussion.^[33] In response, Litvinov and Krestinskii assured the Wilhelmstrasse verbally that the USSR would not join in an Eastern Locarno with Poland and the Baltic states and that it would not guarantee Poland's border with Germany. However, Moscow's distinction between Poland's eastern and western frontiers did not bridge the fundamental divergence between Russian and German policies in Eastern Europe, a divergence that rendered relations between Moscow and Berlin inherently unstable, despite the Berlin Treaty and Litvinov's periodic ceremonial reaffirmations of the Rapallo relationship thereafter.^[34]

Soviet efforts to negotiate a treaty with Poland extended this instability. Following the signing of the Berlin Treaty, Litvinov informed the Central Committee that the USSR attached "the greatest importance" to a "lasting

agreement" with Poland.^[35] And in August 1926 the NKID publicly offered to Poland a treaty of nonaggression and neutrality.^[36] Warsaw rejected the idea of a bilateral pact and insisted instead on a multilateral guarantee extending to the Baltic states as well—in other words, an Eastern Locarno.^[37] Moscow interpreted this as an indication of Poland's ambition to lead a coalition of Baltic states against the USSR. The NKID frustrated the Baltic bloc project by concluding a nonaggression and neutrality pact with Lithuania in September,^[38] but discussions with Warsaw were inconclusive, and Polish-Soviet relations remained unsettled, leaving an extensive gap in the Soviet security system.