2008, Volume 14, N°2 - Centre d'études et de recherches ...

Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 173
potential that Briand’s proposal of a political union for Europe had created for
definitely securing a balance of power between France and a Germany that had
fully recovered its great power status. Instead, shortly before his death Stresemann
responded to Briand’s European initiative by welcoming an economic union for
Europe, provided it was not directed against the United States (p.484), but
remaining reserved with regard to Briand’s concept of a political union. Basically
convinced of Stresemann’s intellectual sincerity and full of praise for his superior
diplomatic skills Wright still cannot suppress some lingering doubts as to whether
the effects of Stresemann’s foreign policy really would have led to a definite
stabilization of Europe.
Wright views this ambivalence as intimately linked to Stresemann’s domestic
position in post-war Germany. It is the author’s major contribution to our
understanding Stresemann to have unravelled this interrelationship in all its
complexity. Once again, the question regarding the sincerity of Stresemann comes
up – this time the sincerity of his republicanism. Differently from the residual
reservations Wright has about Stresemann’s foreign policy the record of his
domestic policies leaves him fully convinced of the genuineness of Stresemann’s
commitment to Republican Germany. In part this has to do with Stresemann’s
political roots which the author traces back to the pre-war period. Had this highly
gifted social upstart not always belonged to the left wing of the national-liberal
party and tried to accommodate moderate forces in the SPD, by endorsing
Friedrich Naumann’s concept of a (left-wing) “national socialism”? Had he not
always rejected the anti-Semitism typical of the extreme conservative right? Above
all, Wright proves that Stresemann was consistent in demanding the introduction of
parliamentary government in Germany thus sharply differing from the conservative
right, whereas he agreed with it in demanding far-reaching annexations. It was not
the first and not the last time that Stresemann sought a “diagonal” (a term borrowed
from chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg, whom he otherwise despised,
p.276) – a diagonal that bridged the polarization that had become typical of
Germany’s domestic scene during the war.
Soon after the war he distanced himself from his monarchical leanings and
strove for a great coalition extending from his DVP to the Social Democrats, but
excluding the extremes of the left and the right (the conservative DNVP, later
Hitler’s NSDAP). Condemning the assassinations of outstanding German
republicans like Walter Rathenau as right wing fanaticism inciting civil war, he
became more and more emotionally attached to the new German Republic.
Domestic conciliation also appeared indispensable to him to create a broad base for
his foreign policy even if that implied unpopular choices. After enlisting some
DNVP support for the Dawes Plan and hoping to salvage his foreign policy he
co-opted conservatives for some of the governments, in which he served as foreign
minister. Wright explains Stresemann’s nationalist outbursts as well as his
forthcoming attitude towards Soviet Russia largely as concessions to his
conservative supporters (the Soviet-German treaty of Berlin was passed by the
Reichstag nearly unanimously!).