3. The Disarmament
The disarmament conference; also known as the Geneva
conference, was an international conference of states held in
Switzerland between February 1932 and November 1934. It was
attended by 31 states including most of the league of nations
members, the USSR, and US. It was created to reduce the
armies and weaponry after WW1 and to prevent another war in
general. But Hitler didn’t really like the idea of a smaller
German Armed Forces than others and said that if Germany
wasn’t allowed to militarize, everyone else’s army should be
reduced to their size. They refused to agree to either, so Hitler
left.
(Cartoon lampooning the failure of the conference (David Low,
1937))
4. Withdrawal from the
League of Nations
After being rejected the opportunity to militarise by the
league, Hitler decided to leave. A referendum was held in
Germany on 12 November 1933 on withdrawing from the
League of Nations, during the Reichstag elections, also
conveniently close as possible to the fifteenth anniversary of
the Armistice of Compiègne. It got 95 percent of votes to leave.
Now with the league out of his way, there was now nothing
stopping Germany from rebuilding its army.
The referendum question was on a separate ballot from the
one used for the elections. The question was: "Do you approve,
German man, and you, German woman, this policy of your
national government, and are you willing to declare as the
expression of your own opinion and your own will and
solemnly profess it?"
Germany joined in 1926 and remained a member until Adolf
Hitler withdrew the country from the League in 1933.
5. Non-Aggression Pact
On 26 January 1934 in Berlin, a treaty was
signed between Germany and Poland. The
treaty meant that couldn’t invade each
other or violate their borders. This made
the allies believe they wanted peace and
that they could become allies with the USSR
without worrying Poland. This meant that
Hitler’s true plan could begin.
The agreement effectively normalised
relations between Poland and Germany,
which had been strained by border disputes
arising from the territorial settlement in the
Treaty of Versailles. Germany effectively
recognised Poland's borders and moved to
end an economically-damaging customs
war between the two countries that had
taken place over the previous decade.
