Professor Conan Fischer from the School of History at the University of St Andrews is giving a talk entitled 'The failed European Union. France, Germany and the search for European security during the interwar period'
New speaker’s event:
Professor Conan Fischer
School of History
University of St Andrews
The failed European Union. France, Germany and the search for European security during the interwar period
Friday, 11 November, 2 pm
MR613, King’s College, University of Aberdeen
Open to the public.
The 1919-20 Paris Peace Settlement failed to deliver and within two decades Europe was again at war. The Versailles Treaty, between the Allies and Germany, serves as shorthand for this failure and has been been subjected to intense analysis by successive generations of historians. However, the formulation and execution of the Versailles Treaty was never the only game in town. From the outset French diplomacy also explored the possibility of a durable peace based upon a Franco-German partnership and found in Weimar Germany's Gustav Stresemann a willing negotiating partner. This paper will explore what happened next. The death of Stresemann in October 1929 is generally taken effectively to mark the end of inter-war rapprochement, but extensive, little-known documentary evidence demonstrates that efforts continued unabated after Stresemann's death, culminating in September 1931 in a Franco-German agreement effectively to begin building a European Union based upon a Franco-German customs union and wide-ranging integration of the two economies. This agreement was supported at the highest level in both countries, yet had effectively failed within a year of its inception. What had happened to undermine this visionary scheme for Franco-German rapprochement and European integration, even before Hitler came to power?
For further information, please contact global-security@abdn.ac.uk