Though the British were appalled at Ribbentrop’s method of negotiation, A.J.P. Taylor claims that they were secretly delighted at the course [that] the discussions had taken. Both sides wanted an agreement and got it. On 18 June 1935 Sir Samuel Hoarse, the new Foreign Secretary, informed Ribbentrop that His Majesty’s Government accepted the 35% ratio, regarding the deal as permanent, believing [that] it would facilitate a general agreement on naval limitation world‐wide.

The Anglo‐German Naval Agreement was signed; it allowed the [Third Reich] to construct a fleet that would [be] 35% of the Royal Navy’s tonnage in surface ships and [be] 45% of Britain’s submarine tonnage with a provision for parity if Germany believed it necessary for her security requirements. German rearmament had been officially sanctioned and the Treaty of Versailles officially but unilaterally revised.

[…]

While the [Third Reich’s] delegation was in London during the course of negotiations, Simon had encouraged other naval powers to offer their observations on the agreement. The American and Japanese governments both responded favourably, but the French Premier Pierre Laval warned that the deal would provoke, rather prevent, a naval arms race:

The French government must observe, above all, that the repercussions of the envisaged accord would not be limited to the naval armaments of Great Britain and Germany. We are obliged, therefore, to raise serious reservations about the eventual conclusions of this accord.

(Emphasis added.)

It is interesting to note that, in the sporadic instances where anybody discusses this at all, nobody ever refers to this as the ‘Anglo‐Nazi Naval Pact’, and nobody would even joke about calling this the ‘Hoare–Ribbentrop Naval Pact’ either. Sometimes it’s called a ‘Naval Treaty’ or a ‘Naval Agreement’, but the first element is invariably ‘Anglo‐German’, almost certainly because that sounds friendlier than ‘Anglo‐Nazi’.

  • @AmarkuntheGatherer
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    511 months ago

    While this was going on the CC had Litvinov running around like a maniac to get some sort of coalition going. All that was managed was a basically non-binding treaty with France that the frogs trempled on anyway. They didn’t even get that from Britain, because it was just that full of nazi sympathisers.

    Of course none of this stops illiterate fucks from claiming the USSR and the nazis were allied or friendly or whatever horseshit their two brain cells can live with.