France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (10 page)

The Radical Socialist wing (with 1,836,000 votes, or 19.1 percent), together with various radical and independent socialists (with 1,093,000 votes or 11.4 percent), basically supported the government. However, Edouard Herriot had adversaries inside his party and Edouard Daladier, a deputy from the Vaucluse, was their leader.

Then there was the Right, totaling 3,880,000 votes, or 40 percent of the total (as opposed to 4,098,000 for the Cartel and 796,000 for the Communists). The Right had 259 seats in the new chamber of deputies (it had previously held 334). The Cartel had 348—of which 129 belonged to the SFIO. The Communists had 12 deputies.
⁵⁵
The Right was generally
opposed to disarmament, suspicious of Germany, had little faith in the League of Nations, and looked upon the “failed disarmament conference” with hostility and contempt: “In five and a half months of more or less fruitless discussions, everyone’s uppermost feeling is that we should end this as soon as possible.”
⁵⁶
Although it accepted the Tardieu Plan with reservations, since Tardieu was on the right, the majority of the centrist press shot down the “French constructive plan.”
⁵⁷
It was, wrote Léon Daudet in
L’Action Française
, a “memorandum of disorder and illusion.”
⁵⁸

In order to have a majority in Parliament and therefore survive, Herriot had to tread a narrow path between the Socialists demanding some gesture toward disarmament as a show of good will, and to set a good example, and the right, opposed to any form of disarmament, even a controlled disarmament. It is true that the right was not unanimous. The French ambassador to Berlin, François-Poncet, who had worked for the Comité des Forges and held posts in moderate governments, was not opposed to some form of concessions for “equal rights” and partial German rearmament.
⁵⁹
That position had the backing of a major right-wing daily,
Le Matin
.
⁶⁰

During an October 28, 1932 foreign policy debate in the Chamber, Herriot was very clever in presenting his “constructive plan.” The socialists, led by Léon Blum, supported the plan, as did a large segment of the right. The vote of confidence passed by a majority of 430 to 20 (among those voting against were the radical Franklin-Bouillon and the moderate Louis Marin).
⁶¹
Léon Blum’s phrase was remarkable for the niceties of its formulation: “We don’t accept that Germany’s justified claim for equal rights should serve to justify that country’s rearmament.”

This situation explains why Herriot felt he had to seek firmer ground on which to establish his foreign policy. He found it in his negotiations with the USSR. Although he strongly opposed the French Communists, Herriot was fascinated by the Soviet experience. He traveled to Russia in the fall of 1922 and negotiated and shepherded France’s recognition of the USSR in October 1924. He was now interested in actively pursuing the negotiations, which Briand had initiated but actually engaged in only half-heartedly.
⁶²

The initiative had come from the Soviets in September 1927. Ambassador Rakovski, who was about to leave his post, had offered Briand to negotiate a Franco-Soviet nonaggression pact. This was a normal gesture. At that time, the USSR, thinking that it was being encircled, was
seeking many such pacts, with Turkey, with Germany—the famous Treaty of Berlin of April 24, 1926—with the Baltic States and more. The new ambassador, Dovgalevsky, began negotiations but they dragged on because Briand wanted to make the pact conditional to an agreement on the reimbursement of tsarist debts.

An event related to the economy gave the negotiations a new start in October 1930. The French government issued a decree restricting Soviet imports, because the USSR was accused of dumping its products. Since the only consequence of this decree was to favor German exports, French exporters complained. They had the “Franco-Russian Parliamentary Group” that had just been set up by Bergery, a radical, and Anatole de Monzie, an independent socialist, lobby Pierre Laval, who was then prime minister. The French ambassador in Moscow was instructed to meet with Litvinov and found that the Soviets were prepared to negotiate not just on commercial matters but also on eventual nonaggression pacts with France and its ally Poland.

The timing was rather good. Fear of Germany was on the rise since the Reichstag elections of September 1930, while Soviet Russia’s image in France was improving. The success of the first Five Year Plan seemed impressive. Herbette, who had become rabidly anti-Soviet, left his post in Moscow in March 1931. A commercial agreement putting an end to the customs war was signed on May 1, 1931. Count François Dejean, appointed to Moscow in November, wanted to further a rapprochement. Finally, since the USSR was taking part in the preliminary work of the disarmament conference, Briand met with Litvinov in Geneva on May 21, 1931.

The negotiations resumed once again, mostly in Paris, between the secretary general of the Quai d’Orsay, Philippe Berthelot and Ambassador Dovgalevsky. A nonaggression treaty was initialed. But then the
New York Herald
of August 19, 1931, leaked information revealing the existence of the negotiations. The right-wing press reacted vehemently: “Poland,” a trusted ally, “was being abandoned” (even though Weygand, Briand, and Laval did not trust Poland that much). The Germans, who enjoyed good relations with the Soviets since the Rapallo accords of April 1922, also became alarmed.

Laval, an expert schemer, hesitated between a nonaggression pact with the USSR or with Germany. Once more, everything stopped and the Tardieu government took no action to reopen the talks. Tardieu
was tempted by the prospect of an economic alliance along the Danube, which aroused the USSR’s suspicion. At the disarmament conference, Tardieu quarreled with Litvinov. Finally, part of the French right took a pro-Japanese position on the Manchuria issue whereas the USSR supported China in vain.

Herriot’s return to power revived the negotiations once again. This time though, they would reach a conclusion. As Dejean wrote, “Since Soviet Russia is as big as a continent with a population of 170 million, it would, in my opinion, be much more of a threat if it remains isolated than if it enters international politics. Isolated it will keep to the principles underlying its constitution, meaning communism, in their purest form. If it enters into relationships with the bourgeois powers, it will eventually be forced to change and to subscribe to their methods in economic and political matters.”
⁶³
Dejean also insisted on the interest the Soviets demonstrated in the pact project.
⁶⁴

At the same time, of course, von Papen and von Bülow were offering France a Franco-German rapprochement. There was also a strange move made in Geneva on July 7 by Colonel Kobayashi, head of the Japanese military delegation, who approached René Massigli. The colonel, speaking for his superior, General Matsui, and in the name of “some military circles in Japan,” was very straightforward. He offered a “close rapprochement with France” which, he said, “would give France precious military guarantees against Russia” and “would keep Indochina safe from communism.” Massigli immediately responded that “whatever the ties of friendship between France and Japan may be, France could not offend other great powers,” and that, since it had underwritten the covenant of the League of Nations, “it could not enter into any contracts which might be in contradiction with the principles of that pact”
⁶⁵
—thereby alluding to the Japanese aggression in Manchuria. Léger, the head of political affairs at the Quai d’Orsay, reacted by saying, “Not acceptable; avoid any answer.” Such was also the fate of a proposal made by General Koïso, Vice-Minister for War, who asked French Ambassador Count D. de Martel for financial aid for the development…of Manchuria!
⁶⁶

The French government was therefore approached both by Germany and Japan but preferred a rapprochement with the USSR. Still, it was necessary to reassure Poland and Romania, Russia’s two neighbors and France’s allies—a long-standing problem that we shall follow up to 1939. In fact, on July 25, Poland, following France’s strong recommendation,
signed one of these “non-intervention pacts” with the USSR that the Soviets were accumulating. The difficulties with Romania were greater and finally Herriot decided to go ahead anyway.
⁶⁷

Herriot had been briefed at the end of July about the state of the Franco-Soviet talks.
⁶⁸
Although commercial negotiations were virtually stopped because of the credit requirements of the USSR, the nonaggression pact was almost ready. The problem was that the good relations between the Reichswehr and the Red Army since the beginning of the 1920s were fairly well known in France.
⁶⁹
Herriot decided to forge ahead regardless. He offered no explanation in his memoirs,
Jadis
.
⁷⁰
On the other hand, at the Radical Party Congress that took place in Toulouse from November 3 to 6, he mentioned that it would be signed very shortly. He presented the future pact as one of the elements of his policy for peace, of which the “constructive plan” was the crowning element at the time. For the ministry of foreign affairs, the real goal was to ensure the USSR’s neutrality between France and Germany. “That’s the most one can expect from it… The Franco-Soviet treaty can only help dispel the German illusion that a revision of the Treaty of Versailles might be possible with Moscow’s assistance.”
⁷¹
This represented a very accurate view of an extremely important phenomenon taking place at the time. Having been excluded from the treaties of 1919, the Soviet Union viewed them as abhorrent. As Germany had done, it requested their
revision
. This revisionist camp, which occasionally included Italy, weighed heavily on European diplomacy. Now, though, the USSR was distancing itself more and more from the revisionists, perhaps because of the rise of National Socialism. This had become Stalin’s new policy and Litvinov was its spokesman. It would be fully laid out in
Pravda
on May 10, 1933, in an article written by Karl Radek. From now on, wrote Radek, the USSR would no longer ask for a revision of the frontiers because it “might lead to a new world war.”

This was how the pact was viewed despite its somewhat insignificant main clauses when Herriot and Ambassador Valerian Dovgalevsky signed it on November 29.
⁷²
Article 1 was a commitment to mutual nonaggression, individual or collective. Article 2 was a promise not to help or abet an aggressor against any of the two contracting parties. Article 5 was a commitment “to refrain from interfering in any way” in the internal affairs of the other country (this was aimed at the PCF, the French Communist Party, but had no effect since the Soviet government pretended
that all relations within international communism were the responsibility of the Komintern). Any conflict between the two countries would be settled by peaceful means (Art. 6).

Germany’s “very strong reaction,” according to Ambassador François-Poncet, confirmed that this agreement could be a prelude to closer ties.
⁷³

4.

T
HE
D
EBTS, THE
U
NITED
S
TATES, AND THE
F
ALL OF
H
ERRIOT

Herriot was going to fall “in a big way” on December 12, 1932, by a margin of 402 votes to 196. On October 28, he had received 430 votes against 20. These numbers are a good illustration of the “life expectancy” of French governments.

The problem concerned the debts incurred by the French state from April 1917 to 1919 to the United States that had been “consolidated” after much effort by the Mellon-Bérenger agreement in April 1926, which the French Parliament had belatedly ratified in July 1929. France was to make annual payments until…1988! The French government never obtained from the United States what it called the “guarantee clause,” that is, a formal link between the payment of German reparations to France and the annual payments France was to make to the United States. At the most, the 1929 Young Plan had set the same very realistic, 1988 date for the end of reparations and for the repayment of war debts. The matter generated intense commentary and created an awful climate between the French and the Americans. “We paid with our blood—1,396,000 dead on the French side and less than 50,000 Americans during the First World War. You are Shylocks,” wrote the French. To which the Americans responded, “A commercial debt is a sacred debt and international morality demands that you pay it back.”

What French public opinion found most irritating was actually less the American demand for repayment than its constant support of the poor Germans to be freed from the intolerable burden of reparations. Furthermore, the United States in 1930 had instituted a tremendous customs tariff, called the “Hawley-Smoot Tariff,” of an average 59 percent duty on imports, which exporters found intolerable. How could one pay anything back if it wasn’t possible to export massively into the creditor
country since it was the only way to secure currency? And then the world economic crisis erupted.
⁷⁴

Naturally, the Germans blamed the French—who were just as protectionist—for doing exactly the same thing. “We cannot pay reparations.” But what made all the difference was the psychological argument. After all, the Germans were the enemy whereas the French, the British and the Americans were brothers in arms. And now the Americans were taking Germany’s side on the reparations issue, refusing to make even the smallest concession to the French on the war debt!

Forced to give up on reparations, apart from the illusory final payment at the Lausanne conference, Herriot had first made it conditional to canceling the war debts. He had fallen back on the “gentlemen’s agreement” discussed previously, but the United States considered the “gentlemen’s agreement” as null and void. Emmanuel Mönick, the financial attaché in Washington, became aware of this very quickly. On August 16, he met with Ogden Mills, President Hoover’s Treasury Secretary. The Secretary expressed his satisfaction that the reparations had ended. “In his opinion, international commerce can only benefit from this… As for the debt problem, he took up the subject himself and told me very openly that he did not see any possibility for discussion before the American elections of November 8.” The debts had become an election issue in a country mired in depression.