Gustav Stresemann

"Let us celebrate Bismarck's memory by making the great idea of his life, devotion to the Fatherland, the guiding star of our own lives. Each of us in the place where he can do his best work. Each of us is responsible for helping the country rise again to that greatness for which Bismarck, who also knew an Olmuetz, prepared the way."

"If the allies had obliged me just one single time, I would have brought the German people behind me, yes; even today, I could still get them to support me. However, they (the allies) gave me nothing and the minor concessions they made, always came too late. Thus, nothing else remains for us but brutal force. The future lies in the hands of the new generation. Moreover, they, the German youth, who we could have won for peace and reconstruction, we have lost. Herein lies my tragedy and there, the allies' crime."

"Do you think (leaning towards the German Nationals) that any member of the Reich Government regards the Young Plan as something ideal? Do you think that anyone in the whole world expects a guarantee from us in relation to it? It was even said among the experts that it was only possible to look ahead for the next decade. (Interruption from the right: "Yet you signed for fifty-one years".)"

"He presented the world with a living, a struggling but also a friendly Germany; and when he enthusiastically quoted Goethe everyone felt that he was thinking of Bismarck, and felt the courage and ambition to become the Bismarck of a defeated nation.... He was Germany at the moment at which she cast aside the confusion of defeat and invested herself with the pride of a great nation."

"The Pact of Locarno was concerned only with peace in the West, and it was hoped that what was called “An Eastern Locarno” might be its successor. We should have been very glad if the danger of some future war between Germany and Russia could have been controlled in the same spirit and by similar measures as the possibility of war between Germany and France. Even the Germany of Stresemann was, however, disinclined to close the door on German claims in the East, or to accept the territorial treaty position about Poland, Danzig, the Corridor, and Upper Silesia. Soviet Russia brooded in her isolation behind the cordon sanitaire of anti-Bolshevik states. Although our efforts were continued, no progress was made in the East. I did not at any time close my mind to an attempt to give Germany greater satisfaction on her eastern frontier. But no opportunity arose during these brief years of hope."

"It is not necessary in this account to follow year by year this complex and formidable development with all its passions and villainies, and all its ups and downs. The pale sunlight of Locarno shone for a while upon the scene. The spending of the profuse American loans induced a sense of returning prosperity. Marshal Hindenburg presided over the German State; and Stresemann was his Foreign Minister. The stable, decent majority of the German people, responding to their ingrained love of massive and majestic authority, clung to him till his dying gasp. But other powerful factors were also active in the distracted nation to which the Weimar Republic could offer no sense of security and no satisfactions of national glory or revenge."

"The German Government succeeded by a dead-lift effort in procuring the assent of the Reichstag to the “Young Plan” by no more than 224 votes to 206. Stresemann, the Foreign Minister, who was now a dying man, gained his last success in the agreement for the complete evacuation of the Rhineland by the Allied armies, long before the Treaty required. But the German masses were largely indifferent to the remarkable concessions of the victors. Earlier, or in happier circumstances, these would have been acclaimed as long steps upon the path of reconciliation and a return to true peace. But now the ever-present overshadowing fear of the German masses was unemployment. The middle classes had already been ruined and driven into violent courses by the flight from the mark. Stresemann’s internal political position was undermined by the international economic stresses, and the vehement assaults of Hitler’s Nazis and Hugenberg’s capitalist magnates led to his overthrow. On March 28, 1930, Bruening, the leader of the Catholic Centre Party, became Chancellor."

"Many people believed that the Treaty of Locarno was of importance, and Austen Chamberlain received the Order of the Garter in recognition of his services in concluding it. People believed that it had brought Germany back into the comity of nations and that it would serve as the basis of her future relations with France and England. But the Germans saw it merely as a step towards recovering the strength they needed to wage a war of revenge, and they broke its terms as soon as it suited them to do so. Their true intentions were made perfectly plain to the ex-Crown Prince of Germany at the time by Stresemann, who had signed the treaty on behalf of Germany. Later, when I came to know Grandi while he was Italian Ambassador in London and before we had driven Italy into the arms of Germany, he told me that during the Hague Conference he had seen a great deal of Stresemann and would often go back with him to his hotel after the day's work was over. Stresemann would always drink a bottle of champagne before going to bed, and in the course of one of their late conversations he said to Grandi with unusual solemnity: "I am an old man, and I am dying, but you are young and you will live to see the second Punic War." This was told to me long before the formation of the Axis or the advent of Hitler to power, and should be remembered by those who are inclined to attribute all the crimes of Germany to the Nazis."

"During this session [in 1927], Stresemann also came to luncheon, when I sat next to him. I recall chiefly his quick, clear brain, forceful character and formidable appetite. Throughout the meal he laughed often and spoke his part in a harsh voice. His bonhomie gave no inkling of the fixed purpose to restore Germany's power. Had he lived, his ambitions might have been dangerous, but he would have disclosed them carefully."

"There were, of course, alternatives to Hitler. It was just that none of them was viable. Gustav Stresemann of the People's Party had offered compromise with the Western powers - symbolized by the 1925 Treaty of Locarno - and the hope of revanche in the East. But he had died of a heart attack on October 3, 1929, at the age of just fifty-one."

"He was well aware both of the Reichswehr's secret arrangements with Russia and its rearmament efforts at home. And it was largely due to his patient labors that the military fetters of Versailles, which Seeckt one day hoped to burst by force, were gradually loosened and finally slipped off altogether. Stresemann conveniently supplied the diplomatic front, behind which "Seeckt perfected his military foundation for the Greater Germany of the future." More specifically, Stresemann freed the Reichswehr from the annoying supervision of the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission, which had been set up to check on Germany's fulfillment of the military provisions of Versailles."

"From the evidence that has been presented it should be abundantly clear that Stesemann supported, at times actively and always in his heart, any move on the army's part that tended to remedy Germany's military impotence. He did so partly because of all the army had meant to Germany in the past—in other words, Stresemann was a nationalist and there is ample evidence that he remained one to the end of his life; although his nationalism became more moderate and tolerant as he grew in stature. But more decisive than such personal admiration for things military in shaping Stesemann's attitude were reasons of state. Among all the various elements which determine a country's international rank, from size and geographic location to natural resources and industrial potential, the possession of a powerful army has always proved the most immediately effective. As Stresemann once put it: "The main asset [of a strong foreign policy] is material power—army and navy.""

"The picture of Stresemann that emerges from all we have said, then, is that of a great German statesman, the greater perhaps for the two-faced policy which devotion to his country and the belief in its future made him pursue, and which at the same time was so at variance with his upright character as an individual. Yet he was not the "good European," the "honest dreamer of peace and apostle of reconciliation," as he appeared to many of his contemporaries and most of his biographers. We might call him a "good European" if we thought of Europe as ending on the Vistula. Or we might say he was as good a European as Bismarck had been, the one among his predecessors to whom he has often been compared, whose concept of Realpolitik he admired, and with whom he shared the realization that politics is the art of the possible. But when all is said and done, truly good Europeans are extremely rare, and one should least expect to find them among politicians of a defeated country in an age where nationalism is still a potent force."

"[T]he disarmament clauses of the Treaty had never been effectively enforced... The full story of General von Seeckt's secret plans, by which, in spite of the Allied Control Commission, all the preparations were made for the moment when a new German Army, and a new German General Staff, could arise, like a new phoenix from the ashes of the old, with new arms ready to be poured out from the factories, is truly astonishing... How far all the democratic Ministers of the Weimar Republic were party to these deceptions is perhaps uncertain. It is clear, however, from his papers, that Stresemann actively abetted this process of rearmament and was guilty of making Briand his dupe. During the Locarno negotiations he knew and approved the wholesale breach of their treaty obligations by the German military authorities."

"At this time [January 1925] Stresemann and his colleagues were governing Germany with an iron hand, exercising dictatorial powers which, as Vorwärts observed, involved the "total suspension of freedom of opinion" (Meinungsfreiheit). At the same time Stresemann was declaring in the Reichstag and to audiences of foreign journalists that the disarmament of Germany was "complete", protesting to the Allied Governments against any further exercise of control, repeatedly demanding the withdrawal of the Control Commission, and even declaring that there had never been any obstruction to the work of the Control Commission... The whole of his statements on the subject of Disarmament were untrue."

"His political enemies maintained, and still maintain, that his achievements were not worth the efforts involved, but it is clear that this view is inspired by violent Party dissension, and is not an impartial and measured judgment. The name of Stresemann will be indissolubly connected with the most intensive and fruitful period in German reconstruction."

"Dr. Stresemann was generally regarded as a representative of the 'good' Germany, and Sir Austen Chamberlain and M. Briand certainly did their best to give him every chance. After Dr. Stresemann's death, however, his memoirs showed that his apparent moderation was a mere cloak under which to prepare an eventual policy of force."

"The most famous and significant conference of the 1920s took place at Locarno, on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, in October 1925. The principals were the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany—Austen Chamberlain, Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann. Their great achievements were to guarantee the Rhineland borders of France and Germany and to bring Germany into the League of Nations. The so-called spirit of Locarno became a benchmark for diplomacy. In retrospect, however, Locarno looks more ambiguous. Stresemann had succeeded in bringing Germany in from the cold without abandoning any of its demands for lost territory in the east. These demands, particularly over Poland, were to prove the fuel for the next war."

"For him the only thing that mattered was the interest of the Reich."

"Mr Asquith is recorded to have warned Sir Austen Chamberlain against him as a "typical Junker"."

"Stresemann was as determined as the most extreme nationalist to get rid of the whole treaty lock, stock, and barrel: reparations, German disarmament, the occupation of the Rhineland, and the frontier with Poland. But he intended to do this by the persistent pressure of events, not by threats, still less by war.... There was a great outcry in allied countries against Stresemann after his death when the publication of his papers revealed clearly his intention to destroy the existing treaty-settlement. The outcry was grotesquely unjustified. Given a great Germany—and the Allies had themselves given it by their actions at the end of the war—it was inconceivable that any German could accept the treaty of Versailles as a permanent settlement. The only question was whether the settlement would be revised, and Germany become again the greatest Power in Europe, peacefully or by war. Stresemann wanted to do it peacefully. He thought this the safer, the more certain, and the more lasting way to German predominance. He had been a bellicose nationalist during the war; and even now was no more inclined to peace from moral principle than Bismarck had been. But, like Bismarck, he believed that peace was in Germany's interest; and this belief entitles him to rank with Bismarck as a great German, even as a great European, statesman. Maybe even as a greater."

"Stresemann, an ex-jingo annexationist, the best available German. He knew and denied German rearmament, would have Germany in the League chiefly for propaganda, wished East and West closer, but stiffened the Bolsheviks by assurance of protection from sanctions. Russia reciprocated by proposing the fourth partition of Poland. Yet, weighed between swings and roundabouts, Stresemann was an asset. He lasted a few months as Chancellor, endured as Foreign Minister and, despite subsequent revelations, deserved his Nobel Prize."

"Alle Fragen des besetzten Gebiets werden abhängig sein von einer Verständigung über die größere Frage, die Frage der Reparationslösung überhaupt. Wenn ich an die Verhandlungen denke, die von den Sachverständigenkomitees geführt worden sind und die in Berlin fortgesetzt wurden, wenn man mich da fragt, ob aus diesen Verhandlungen etwas zu erwarten sei, möchte ich mich dem anschließen, was ein deutscher Wirtschaftler, der seit Jahren diese Sisyphusarbeit mitgemacht hat und der die Ergebnislosigkeit dieser Bemühungen sah, geäußert hat: er sehe zum erstenmal einen Silberstreifen an dem sonst düsteren Horizont."

"Man höhnt und spottet über das Frankfurter Parlament in der Paulskirche, man höhnt und spottet über die damalige Revolution. Auch für uns gilt das Wort: Wohl dem, der seiner Ahnen gern gedenkt! Es waren die Ahnen des deutschen Liberalismus, die damals in der Frankfurter Paulskirche wirkten, und jedes Parlament könnte stolz sein, wenn es auf der geistigen Höhe stände, auf der einst das Frankfurter Parlament gestanden hat."