Stresa, 1935: The Seedbed of Appeasement

Stresa, Italy — “The United States had washed their hands of all concern in Europe, apart from wishing well to everybody, and were sure they would never have to be bothered with it again.” Such was the rough verdict of Winston Churchill as he reflected on the American mood in 1935, when European leaders were faced with Nazi Germany’s first open violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Leaders from Great Britain, France, and Italy met in this elegant resort town on Lake Maggiore to devise a strategy for confronting Adolf Hitler’s military ambitions. No American officials were present at Stresa. Franklin Roosevelt, having promised to keep America unentangled from European affairs — “the United States should have no part” in Europe’s “national difficulties” — had little interest in the negotiations. In the end, the Stresa conference launched a cynical and disastrous policy of appeasement, culminating in the Second World War.

The crisis began in March 1935, when Hitler publicly announced the reconstitution of the German air force and the reinstitution of military conscription for the German army. Both acts were naked violations of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Hitler had come to power in 1933 pledging to tear up the treaty and had quickly begun drawing up plans to rebuild the German military. But until his public declaration in 1935, Churchill wrote, “it was easy for the responsible victorious Powers, obsessed by pacifism and preoccupied with domestic politics, to avoid the responsibility of declaring that the Peace Treaty was being broken or repudiated.”

Not anymore. Even Benito Mussolini — not yet an ally of Germany — worried about Nazi aggression in Austria and offered to host the Stresa conference. The three powers agreed on a resolution “opposing, by all practicable means, any unilateral repudiation of treaties which may endanger the peace of Europe.” In reality, neither Britain nor France were prepared for military action against Germany. British representatives at the conference had even ruled out the possibility of sanctions against Germany for violating its treaty obligations. As Churchill dryly summarized it: “This naturally confined the Conference to the region of words.”

Yet the problem went even deeper. During the negotiations, Mussolini had emphasized the preservation of “the peace of Europe” — while making it clear that Italy had ambitions in Africa. In fact, Mussolini already was drawing up plans to invade Ethiopia. Desperate for Italy’s support in thwarting Hitler, the democratic allies remained mute on the question. Il Duce got the message.

In April, the Council of the League of Nations took up the issue of German violations of the Versailles Treaty. Nineteen countries formally protested. “But how vain was all their voting,” Churchill wrote, “without the readiness of any single Power or any group of Powers to contemplate the use of force, even in the last resort!”

The duplicity didn’t end there. While the British government was appealing to the League of Nations to check Hitler’s breach of the military clauses of Versailles, the British Admiralty struck a private deal allowing Germany to increase the size of its navy — without informing the French or the League.

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, signed in June 1935, allowed Germany to increase its navy up to 35 percent of the total tonnage of the British Royal Navy. The agreement was defended by Sir Samuel Hoare in his first speech as foreign secretary. “When the world looks more dispassionately at these results,” he predicted, “the overwhelming majority of those who stand for peace and a restriction of armaments will say that the British Government took not only a wise course but the only course that in the circumstances was open to them.” Hoare’s career was ultimately destroyed by his association with the doctrine of appeasement, i.e., making concessions to aggressor states to avoid war.

Two months after the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the U.S. Congress passed the 1935 Neutrality Act, making it illegal for the United States to send weapons to any foreign nations engaged in war, regardless of the circumstances. Franklin Roosevelt, a human weathervane when it came to American public opinion, happily signed the act.

Thus, the leaders of Europe’s fascist totalitarian states — Hitler and Mussolini — were simultaneously emboldened. The message was unambiguous: The European powers would not work in concert to check military aggression on the continent; the United States, not even a member of the League of Nations, was locked into a posture of isolationism; and the Treaty of Versailles was a dead-letter document.

In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, a breach of the Covenant of the League of Nations. In March 1936, Hitler sent his military into the de-militarized Rhineland, another repudiation of the Versailles Treaty. In both instances, the League of Nations did virtually nothing: It had become as irrelevant as Versailles. As for the United States, the Neutrality Act, though banning military aid, nevertheless allowed U.S. companies to sell oil to Mussolini — which they did. With regards to Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland, Roosevelt kept quiet.

The participants at the Stresa Conference met in the grand Palazzo Borromeo on the tiny island of Isola Bella, a quick ferry ride from Stresa. The agreement was signed in the ornate Music Room. It should have been accompanied by a dirge — a funeral dirge for the utopian vision of a harmonious, democratic world order. Poet W. H. Auden referred to the 1930s as “a low, dishonest decade.” In his memoir of the Second World War, The Gathering Storm, Churchill summarized the theme of the volume thus: “How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm.”

Similar criticisms might be brought against the democratic West in our own decade. Consider communist China’s destruction of Hong Kong’s democracy and its militaristic machinations in Asia; the nuclear ambitions of communist North Korea and its appalling human-rights atrocities against its own people; the violent, apocalyptic vision of Iran and its terrorist activities throughout the Middle East; and Russia’s unprovoked and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine: Armed and resolute wickedness is on the march.

Much of the West, including the United States, has tried to take a holiday from history. The holiday is over.