The Saar, Rearmament and the Stresa Front 1935
1935 — The Pivot Year
Of all the years between Versailles and the outbreak of war, 1935 is the pivot. In a single year Hitler won a legitimate plebiscite, openly threw off the military clauses of Versailles, watched Britain, France and Italy form a great-power coalition against him — and then watched that coalition collapse within weeks. The events of 1935 explain why later episodes (the Rhineland in 1936, Anschluss in 1938) became thinkable.
1935 had four key episodes: the Saar plebiscite (January), the announcement of conscription and the Luftwaffe (March), the formation of the Stresa Front (April), and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (June).
The Saar Plebiscite, January 1935
The Saarland was a small but coal-rich German territory that Versailles had placed under League of Nations administration for fifteen years. The treaty promised that at the end of that period the inhabitants would vote on their future. In January 1935 the plebiscite was held under League supervision and the result was crushing: roughly 90% chose to return to Germany. About 9% wanted to stay under League rule and only a tiny fraction wanted union with France. The result was a genuine, internationally observed mandate. Hitler had played no part in rigging it — he simply welcomed the outcome and used it as a propaganda triumph. The Saar showed that pan-German feeling was real, not invented by the Nazis, and gave Hitler political cover to push further.
Conscription and the Luftwaffe, March 1935
In March 1935 Hitler did what every German government since 1919 had been forbidden from doing: he announced open conscription, set the army at 36 divisions (around 550,000 men), and admitted the existence of the Luftwaffe, a German air force outright banned by Versailles. The military clauses of the treaty were openly torn up. The League and the Allies protested but did not act. France, which would have to do most of the fighting, did not mobilise. Britain saw the move as a fact rather than a threat — rearmament behind closed doors had been underway since 1933 anyway.
The Stresa Front, April 1935
The shock of open rearmament briefly produced a great-power response. In April 1935 the leaders of Britain (Ramsay MacDonald), France (Pierre-Étienne Flandin) and Italy (Mussolini) met at Stresa on the Italian lakes. The Stresa Front condemned German rearmament, reaffirmed the Locarno guarantees, and pledged to act together against any threat to Austrian independence. For a moment, Hitler appeared isolated. The three powers that mattered most in western Europe stood against him.
On paper the Stresa Front was a serious deterrent. Britain had the largest navy in the world. France had the largest army in western Europe. Italy was Germany’s southern neighbour and had the Brenner Pass — the same border at which Mussolini had checked Hitler over Dollfuss in 1934. Together the three powers encircled Germany diplomatically. If they had stayed united, the Rhineland reoccupation a year later would have looked very different.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, June 1935
Within weeks the Stresa Front was undermined by Britain itself. In June 1935 London signed a bilateral naval agreement with Berlin allowing Germany a navy 35% the size of the Royal Navy — including, controversially, a submarine fleet. The British calculation was practical: rearmament was happening anyway; better to cap it by treaty than let it run unrestricted. But the political cost was huge. Britain had agreed, on its own, to legalise a major Versailles violation. France and Italy were not consulted. The signal to Hitler was that British policy was not aligned with French security concerns. The Stresa Front was holed below the waterline.
It would not survive the year. In October 1935 Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. Britain and France imposed sanctions on Italy — weak ones, but enough to push Mussolini away from his Stresa partners and toward Hitler. By the end of 1935 the great-power coalition that had briefly existed in April was gone, and Hitler had been handed three useful lessons: the Allies could not coordinate, Britain would deal bilaterally, and Italy was now in play.
Bilateral diplomacy — deals between two countries — suited Hitler in the 1930s. The League required unanimity and ran on shared principles. A bilateral deal could be done quickly with whichever country was willing, and could be presented as a face-saving compromise rather than a concession. Britain’s 1935 naval deal showed how this worked in Germany’s favour: it cut across collective Allied policy and gave Hitler legitimacy on a major point. The same tactic returned at Munich in 1938.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 was a textbook example of allied disunity: Britain unilaterally legalised a major Versailles violation, did not consult France or Italy, and broke the Stresa Front it had just signed. Hitler now had clear evidence that the Allies could not maintain a united response.