The Four‐Power Pact, also known as the Quadripartite Agreement, was an international treaty between Britain, France, Fascist Italy, and the Third Reich that was initialled on 7 June 1933 and signed on 15 July 1933 in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome. This was a form of coordination between four dictatorships of the bourgeoisie against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
There is a short version, a long version, and the longest version to describe the context behind this pact. The short version, quoting Gaetano Salvemini’s Prelude to World War II, pages 138–9:
It had almost certainly been worked out in London, but the English Ministers allowed [Benito] Mussolini to put it forward. The core of that Pact is to be found in Survey of International Affairs, 1933, p. 209:
“The essence of the plan seems to have been that the four Powers, acting à quatre, could and should do certain things agreeable to Germany and not disagreeable to Italy which France, at any rate, could not be expected to do gladly, and which she probably would never do, or allow to be done at all, if, instead of being placed in a minority of one in an executive committee of four, she continued to play her previous rôle under the existing international régime, in which French policy could count upon holding its own on the Council and Assembly of the League by enlisting the support of a phalanx of smaller Powers.”
[The Soviet Union] was left out in the cold. An agreement among certain Great or self‐styled Great Powers, from which another Great Power is excluded, always arouses the suspicion that it may be directed against the Power which is left out.
In short, the Four‐Power Pact was a Three‐Power Pact between England, Germany, and Italy, who were inviting the fourth partner, France, to break with all her old friends in the east, and to walk into a trap where her three associates would throttle her. The turn of [the Soviet Union] and the smaller European Powers would come later.
Paul‐Boncour, then Prime Minister of France, writes that the Four‐Power Pact was brought to him in Paris “one fine March morning” by [Ramsay] MacDonald and [John] Simon, just back from Rome. Had the French ambassadors in London, Rome, or Berlin, then, never heard of it? Paul‐Boncour adds that [Ramsay] MacDonald seemed “very impressed by Fascism and much taken with Mussolini”.
Page 508:
From the summer of 1936 on, it was clear that [the Soviet Union], if attacked by [the Third Reich], could not count on any help from England, and that Mussolini had gone over to Hitler’s camp. The Four‐Power Pact which the French Government had scotched in 1933 had become a reality. The English Conservatives, who had disannexed the Far East and East Africa from the League of Nations, had now cut off Eastern Europe as well.
(Emphasis added in all cases. Click here for more photographs.)
Click here for the long version.
Page 131:
The Duce was not content with saving the League [of Nations]: he offered Europe a panacea for most of her ills:
“I think that if, tomorrow, on the basis of justice, and with recognition of our sacrosanct rights, it were possible to define the premises necessary and sufficient for the co‐operation of the four great Powers, Europe would be tranquil from the political standpoint.”
This was the first reference to the “Four‐Power Pact” (Italy, France, England, and Germany: no [Soviet Union]), which was to be the subject of so much talk during the early months of the following year. That pact was to operate in central Europe.
Pages 137–8:
Instead of bringing about more cordial co‐operation with France, MacDonald, Baldwin, and Sir John Simon were nursing the “Four‐Power Pact” which Mussolini had fathered in his speech of October 23, 1932. The idea had appealed to Hitler also. In fact in November 1932, before an international Congress in Rome, Alfred Rosenberg had outlined the [Third Reich’s] principles of a Four‐Power Pact.
From Rome and Berlin the idea had travelled to London. On January 15, 1933, a journalist known under the pseudonym of “Augur” (a White Russian, Vladimir Poliakov by name), who had entrée at that time to the British Foreign Office, cabled the New York Times about a “Quadrilateral Theory” in which Sir John Simon had become “interested” and about which “a great deal would be heard in the near future”.
The major European Powers—Britain, France, Germany, and Italy—were to form a group which must bring the disarmament conference to “a satisfactory end” and then “lead to an entente between Britain and France on the one hand and Germany and Italy on the other”.
The British and French “possessed all they needed”, but the Germans and Italians were have‐nots “who aspired to a better position”. The French yearned for “security” and the Italians for “justice”. It was imperative “to annul the distance that separated the haves and the have‐nots”.
It was easy to guess that “the satisfactory end”, the “concessions”, and the “settlement” were to be made at the expense neither of the British Government, nor of Mussolini, nor of the German Government, but of the French.
Once Hitler had become Reich Chancellor, a new factor increased Sir John Simon’s “interest” in the “Quadrilateral Theory”. Hitler seemed possessed of a fervent hatred against Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia was creating difficulties for Great Britain in Persia, Afghanistan, India, China, and everywhere else. The English lion was powerless against the Russian bear.
Hitler might become the instrument needed by the British Conservatives to strike at [the Soviet Union] in Europe and thus weaken her in Asia. If, into the bargain, [the Soviet Union] and Germany destroyed each other in the process, so much the better for those who watched them do so. It was important, therefore, to keep on good terms with France, but not to the point of alienating Hitler.
The most outstanding British historian of contemporary international affairs has observed that British procrastination in the face of the problems arising out of Hitler’s victory in Germany is not explained solely by English “traditional dislike of boarding the train before it was actually moving out of the station”, but was due “rather to a prudent delay in deciding which train it was desirable to catch”. “If this interpretation of the British attitude proved to be correct, then it would have to be taken as a symptom of sang froid and not of inertia.”
For such a policy, a pro‐Russian orientation in French foreign policy was not desirable. But the remedy was at hand: Mussolini was there to force France to align herself with British policy. Moreover, there were in France blindly conservative “anti‐Bolshevist” forces on which the British Foreign Office and Mussolini could count to block the pro‐Russian policy that Herriot had outlined.
This situation explains why, on March 18, 1933, MacDonald and Sir John Simon called on Mussolini in Rome. The plane which bore the two pilgrims was piloted by Italo Balbo, who in March 1930 had proclaimed that Italy would never permit French hegemony, and would be ready to throw into the scales “six million fully armed men on land, on sea, and in the air”.
Mussolini offered them the “Four‐Power Pact”.
That leads into the ‘short version’ that I shared above. For the longest version, read Prelude to World War II, chapters chapters XV–XXI.
You know, for all the talk about how the USSR is fascist for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, no one ever brings this up. Weird how a last-minute nonaggression pact is enough for white people to brand the Soviets as Nazis, but this somehow has no bearing on the UK or France.
There is a lot to be said about the liberal régimes’ (or the so‐called “democracies’”) deals with the Fascists, since generic antisocialists rarely discuss the topic, presumably deeming it unimportant or uninteresting (of which it is neither), and prefer to continue overrating the importance of phenomena like the German–Soviet Pact of 1939 or the 1932 referendum against the Prussian government.
There is a great‐looking book that I found titled Doing Business with the Nazis: Britain’s Economic and Financial Relations with Germany, 1931–1939, of which I’d love to have a full copy, and it contains this trivia:
The great merit of Doing Business with the Nazis is the recognition that British policy towards Germany in the 1930s had a practical economic core to it, and was not the product of pro‐fascist sympathies, any more than the current vast trade with Communist China suggests that western liberal governments endorse one‐party dictatorships and the suppression of human rights.
Richard Overy raises a fair point: not all of the British businessmen dealing with the Fascists were necessarily Fascist sympathizers. But putting aside for a moment the fact that western liberal governments have repeatedly endorsed one‐party dictatorships and the suppression of human rights, it should be striking that this is not a courtesy that generic antisocialists extend to the Soviet Union for its own trade with the German Reich during ’39–41.
Yeah and it’s maddening how this rhetoric is still being used to justify sanctions. The USA brands Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism while propping up frickin Israel. Course, if the US didn’t have double standards then it wouldn’t have standards at all.
First year without lizzy since this pact 😔
Who’s Lizzy what a minute nevermind you’re talking about the queen lmao
The one whos in a box [in a box]
Very good job digging the document OP
