France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (9 page)

The Tardieu Plan was practically forgotten by the time Herriot came to power. Immediately, the new German chancellor, von Papen, began a sort campaign to charm Herriot. In mid-June, in Lausanne, the chancellor offered to work out all outstanding questions in a wide-ranging Franco-German negotiation.
³⁰
He was proposing—as we have mentioned—that reparations be canceled and that, in exchange, France and Germany enter a customs union and cooperate regarding trade with Eastern Europe, where Germany was making alarming inroads. Concerning armaments, he was asking—like all the German participants in the Geneva conference—for the famous equal rights. But, in order to “satisfy the French need for security,” he also proposed a military entente and contacts between military staffs. The secretary of state for foreign affairs, von Bülow, met several times in Lausanne with André de Laboulaye, the deputy director for political affairs.

These meetings took place between June 16 and July 7.
³¹
When, on June 18, Bülow invited Laboulaye to lunch in a restaurant in Vevey, he suggested that the four great European powers (excluding the USSR) act in concert “whenever an incident occurred that could endanger peace in Europe.” This was a prefiguration of the Four Power Pact of 1933, which we shall examine in the following chapter. Laboulaye voiced an immediate objection: what would happen to the medium and small countries allied with France, and particularly Poland? Bülow felt that the “international contingent” of the Tardieu plan was unrealistic. According to him, commercial and military relations between Germany and Russia were good, but he pretended to fear bolshevism. He added that he had met with some of Hitler’s emissaries and that they were beginning to favor a rapprochement with France.
³²

Although he favored Franco-German reconciliation, Herriot was suspicious. The anti-Soviet declarations that von Papen and von Bülow were making clashed with his own plan for a rapprochement with the USSR. The British, on July 5, declared they were opposed to these Franco-German special relations and offered in exchange the “Trust Agreement” mentioned above. On July 7, Herriot, together with Paul-Boncour and Laboulaye, met with von Papen and von Bülow. He firmly rejected the German proposal.
³³
He refused to mix financial and military issues, “Lausanne and Geneva.”

It therefore became necessary to return to a solution for disarmament that would satisfy French demands for security. When France clearly turned down the proposal for bilateral Franco-German negotiations, on September 11,
³⁴
Germany reacted swiftly. On the 14th she declared she would not return to the disarmament conference table until the principle of “equal rights” had been established in her favor. At the same time, Herriot, who hadn’t much liked the American plan for disarmament (the Hoover Plan of June 22 proposing the elimination of one-third or one-quarter of existing armaments), asked Paul-Boncour, the minister of war and the highest ranking French representative in Geneva, to prepare a draft.
³⁵

This plan, dated October 14,
³⁶
was adopted by the French government on October 28 and submitted to the Geneva conference on November 14. It was called the “French constructive plan.” This highly technical project stressed the fact that “in matters of disarmament and security, progress must be parallel.” The
political
stipulations were aimed at ensuring quasi-automatic assistance in the case of aggression, a kind of “common action.” The
military
provisions aimed at bringing the land forces of European states back to “a
general standard type—that of a national short term service army with limited forces
—unable to carry out a sudden offensive.”

These national armies would not be allowed heavy weapons. But the partner nations would maintain
specialized units
equipped with powerful arms, which would be at the disposal of the League of Nations. All other heavy weaponry would be stored under international control. Apart from military sanctions, they could be used in cases of “legitimate self-defense.” Weapons manufacturing would be “controlled and organized internationally.” Furthermore, at least once a year, an
international inspection
would make sure that all parties to the agreement were correctly fulfilling their obligations.

The October 14 plan was submitted to the top French military authorities. The army and the navy provided highly critical comments. The main discussion took place on October 22, 1932,
³⁷
attended by Herriot and six government ministers. Also present were Marshal Pétain, who at the time was inspector for the air defense of the territory; General Weygand, Vice-President of the
Conseil supérieur de la guerre
[Supreme War Council], and his second in command, General Gamelin, army chief of staff, together with their colleagues of the navy, Admiral Durand-Viel, the air force, and General Hergault, for the colonies. They were assisted by a diplomat, René Massigli, head of the French delegation to the League of Nations and other high-ranking officials, together with some officers acting as secretaries, among them Major de Gaulle.
³⁸
There were to be other meetings on October 24, in the morning and in the afternoon.
³⁹
In a final, even more formal meeting, on October 28, the Supreme Military Committee, chaired by Albert Lebrun himself, signed on to the “French constructive plan,” over General Weygand’s formal disapproval.
⁴⁰

These debates are quite touching and one would like to quote from them at length. On one side stood Herriot and Paul-Boncour, left-wing patriots seduced by the idea of collective security and disarmament, who saw in this plan a grand gesture from France that would force its partners’ admiration and allow France and Germany to find reconciliation. On the other, the military—and particularly Weygand and Pétain—were clinging to the only tangible reality: the margin of superiority between the French forces and the Germans. Herriot and Weygand, wrote Bariéty,
⁴¹
“were both aware of what the Reichswehr was preparing; they were both equally obsessed by the threat of a war of revenge, but differed completely on the ways to prevent it.” Pétain, like Weygand, based his views on “Germany’s well-known bad faith.” France, he argued, had already made deep cuts in its forces by reducing military service to one year. “The new guarantees we are being offered are nothing but pacts and promises. To assume that…these promises will be fulfilled…to agree to reduce France’s military strength without any real compensation, means seriously jeopardizing French security and opening the possibility that the country will be thrust into war under the worst military and diplomatic conditions.” Herriot stated, “The defense of a country wasn’t only the matter of its soldiers and its cannons, but also the excellence of its legal position.” To which Weygand replied, “A demonstration of one’s legal case does not necessarily mean weakness… I would like the Council to understand how I feel. I am responsible for defending the
border with troops and not with words.” Paul-Boncour commented, “Lack of imagination.”
⁴²

France was a democratic country where civilians had control over the military. The plan was therefore adopted on October 28 and published on November 14.

Disappointment and failure immediately followed. The plan, which Herriot and Boncour wanted to be striking and grandiose, was to play a very minor role in the debates during the conference. It was discussed in February 1933, long after Herriot had been forced out of power. What the British were interested in was Germany’s return to the conference table, which the Germans had made conditional to the “equal rights” that Herriot rightly felt were so dangerous. Whatever the risks, the British fully supported the German position.

The period between November 15 and December 10 is the story of the crumbling of the French position. First, the German reaction to the “French constructive plan” was “clearly unfavorable.”
⁴³
Then, British delegate Sir John Simon and Arthur Henderson, the British chairman of the Geneva conference, insisted in their speeches on “equal rights” and implied that the French proposal accepted it in principle.
⁴⁴
The American delegate Norman Davis, who was known to be a Francophile, said he was “shocked by how complicated the plan was.”
⁴⁵
Massigli, the French delegate, remarked that “The British government seems to want to persist ever more…in assuming the role of arbiter between Germany and France.”
⁴⁶
Strange arbiter indeed, since the British were entirely favorable to the German position!

And so Herriot floundered. On November 23 he agreed to a five-partner discussion in which Germany would participate, since Great Britain and the United States had begged him to accept.
⁴⁷

Circumvented by the clever Macdonald, who assured him that France would not be isolated, he arrived in Geneva on December 3, 1932. In the debates he intended to link his constructive plan to the principle of equal rights.
⁴⁸
On the 3rd, together with Paul-Boncour, he met Macdonald and Sir John Simon in the Hotel des Bergues, headquarters of the French delegation to the League of Nations.
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That meeting would turn out to be his “last stand.” On December 6, the first five-power meeting took place in the Hotel Beau Rivage, the residence of the British delegation, known for its “painted ceilings depicting birds against a blue sky, in the style of the 1880s, when the Empress of Austria whiled away her solitude in travel.”
⁵⁰
Herriot summed up the French position as follows: “France
agrees that the purpose of the conference is to grant Germany and the other countries that have been disarmed, according to the treaties, equal rights within a framework that would guarantee security for all nations as well as for itself.”
⁵¹
Since the German response, on December 8, seemed fairly acceptable—at least to those who believed in abstractions—the agreement was signed on December 10 at 2:30 p.m. Germany obtained the
Gleichberechtigung
in exchange for two trifles; it was prepared to accept (later) conditions that included “security”; it would (immediately) return to the disarmament conference.

The Germans had won straight down the line. The British thought they had won. France had lost and Herriot didn’t realize it. “Equal rights” was the lever that enabled the German army, in the space of five years, to outclass the French; it was to plunge France into the abyss and visit suffering and decline upon England.

3.

H
ERRIOT’S
P
OSITIVE
C
ONTRIBUTION: THE
F
RANCO
-S
OVIET
A
GREEMENT

After examining how Herriot “let go” on the issue of reparations and “equal rights,” and how he obtained nothing but words in exchange, we still shouldn’t be unfair to him. His initiative did yield positive results in the rapprochement with the USSR. As for the rest, the strength of the wave of public sentiment he represented must be taken into account. Herriot was in a sense the victim of both his followers and his opponents.

Among his adversaries, the communists, who were at the time using the tactic called “class against class,” opposed the League of Nations as a creation of the treaties of 1919, themselves the result of the “imperialist war.” The disarmament conference was therefore only a farce, while at the same time “war was raging in China.”
⁵²
Once again the purpose was, to encircle the USSR. And yet the USSR was present in Geneva. Maxim Litvinov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, went so far as to propose universal and total disarmament (though without any provisions for control). According to the daily
L’Humanité
, the Tardieu Plan, in creating an “international force,” was attempting to launch “an international White Army.”
⁵³
The “French constructive plan” elicited similar criticism.
⁵⁴
The Communists, it must be said, were going through a weak period. They had obtained only 796,000 votes in the elections of 1932 out of a total of 9,579,000 votes cast (8.3 percent). They were violently fighting the Socialists of the SFIO, just like their comrades of the KPD did battle with the German Social Democrats. They were isolated and did not belong to the Cartel.

The socialist movement was much stronger and garnered 1,964,000 votes in the elections (20.5 percent). Although the SFIO was part of the Cartel des Gauches in the elections and supported the government in principle, in fact they did not agree with Herriot on the issue of France’s security. Although they were divided into many factions, they can all be described as pacifists. For them—as for the British—disarmament should not “follow” security, but was conditional to it. They agreed to the “international force” of Tardieu’s plan but wanted to abolish national armies. Some wanted an immediate abolition to set an example, which was “unilateral disarmament.” Party leader Léon Blum did not go as far, but he did demand rapid progressive disarmament and exerted relentless daily pressure on Herriot’s cabinet. The old “right wing” of the SFIO, which supported national defense above all, had left the party. The most striking example was that of Joseph Paul-Boncour. At the congress of Tours in 1931, the party, in spite of his efforts, had maintained and strengthened its traditional position, which was a blanket rejection of military funding. Was that the reason why Paul-Boncour resigned? Perhaps as was the case for Aristide Briand in 1905–1906, his ambition to be a cabinet minister or even become prime minister could have played a part. In any case, Herriot offered him the ministry of war, and Paul-Boncour was to succeed him—for just five weeks—at the head of government from December 1932 to January 1933. None of this would have been possible had Paul-Boncour been a member of the SFIO.