Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

266 DER FUEHRERformed by the idea of peace that his closest friends did not recognizehim any more, while his old opponents began by doubting him, thenstared with amazement, finally cheered him. And here the third man inthe trio, Sir Austen Chamberlain, head of the British Foreign Office,worked as a successful mediator between Germany and France, feeling,as he later said, that there must be an end to 'the bickering and pinprickingwhich Germany had no doubt suffered ever since the war.'In the little city of Locarno, on Lago Maggiore in southern Switzerland,a treaty was concluded in the fall of 1925 which can be called a second,improved, though still incomplete, peace treaty. Germany againvoluntarily declared that, with regard to her western boundary on Franceand Belgium, she recognized the results of the war as irrevocable.Irrevocably Germany renounced Alsace-Lorraine whose population atheart really did not belong to her. Irrevocably she again renounced thesmall strips of territory which Belgium had acquired in the peace treaty.With regard to her western frontier, she irrevocably accepted the Peaceof Versailles. But France also irrevocably declared that she definitelyrecognized the German frontiers; that she would make no attempt toannex any more German territory — a somewhat ironic promise whenevery morning the French flag was hoisted over the German cities of theRhine; when the white and black troops of France still marched throughtheir streets and, depending on how you interpreted the Peace ofVersailles, would continue to do so until 1935 or perhaps much longer— in Clemenceau's view, forever. But perhaps the French would someday leave the Rhineland after all. And for this reason the Treaty ofLocarno again expressly stated the provision of the Peace of Versaillesthat Germany should never send troops into her own Rhineland andnever build fortifications there for the defense of her own border. At anytime a French army then could descend on this vulnerable Germanartery close by the border, and if Germany should ever make asuspicious move, with one blow cut off her life stream. Clausesjustifying this could always be dug up in the League Covenant; if theworst came to the worst, they could be found in the Peace of Versaillesitself. The cordon sanitaire of French bayonets on the Rhine continued