sillygoose
Well-known member
I didn't claim they actually were interested in rapprochement as a nation, rather Briand pushed that plan and couldn't find enough people to support him to make it work. What I'm saying is that that is something France should have done if they wanted to avoid having a potentially hostile Germany recover and then come after them. Though as it were Hitler wasn't really interested in fighting France, he just expected it to be a possibility because of his expansionistic plans that aimed at the destruction of their alliance system.....and if counting on rapprochement with Germany, not eastern alliances, then the French financial intervention to thwart the Austro-German customs union of 1929 made no sense.
The Prussians were no less interested in the destruction of the ToV political order too, so once Stresseman is gone France was not going to have any friendly politicians in Germany even without the depression turning into the Great Depression due to your postulate about the Austrian banking system. Weimar was already planning on rearming once the Hoover Moratorium went into effect, which of course ensured that the ToV was partially already repealed; from that point on it was only going to collapse further. So yeah, the 1920s were the time for France to create a friendship with Germany not try to punish them as long as they could get away with it, since they weren't strong enough or well led enough to really make it sustainable.