RE-MILITARIZATION OF THE RHINELAND ON 7 MARCH 1936: A QUESTION OF FRONTIERS AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY (ALSO) IN CENTRAL EUROPE

The entry of 30,000 German soldiers into the demilitarized Rhineland was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Locarno agreements signed under the aegis of the League of Nations in 1925. The latter were understood as giving some degree of correction to Versailles. They included the Rhine Pact, which internationally guaranteed the inviolability of the French – German and French – Belgian frontiers, and of the demilitarized Rhineland. Locarno could not be unilaterally renounced. Therefore Hitler resorted to force, while the Western powers gave priority to diplomacy and an effort to prove that the Locarno agreements had not lost their legal force. The Slovak historiography has not devoted much attention to the Rhineland crisis, although it had an unfortunate impact on the fate of Czechoslovakia and the whole of Central Europe. The study is directed mainly towards French policy. On the basis of research in the diplomatic and military archives, it considers the problem of the struggle between force and law. Law suffered a defeat in Europe in 1936.