Academic literature on the topic 'Germany – Foreign relations – 1918-1933'

Research on international relations today is no longer limited to diplomatic contacts but also includes economic and cultural ties. Another factor that should not be neglected is the people themselves; the personalities who shaped politics. This text focuses on those concerned with German-Soviet relations in the 1930s, both at the “centre” in Moscow and at the Soviet plenipotentiary representation in Berlin. This article deals with this range of problems against the background of Soviet-German relations in the 1930s both in the Kremlin and in the Soviet mission in Berlin. The article is based on archival ma- terials discovered and published in the framework of the edition project “Germany and the USSR 1933–1941” pursued under the aegis of the Joint Commission on the Study of Contemporary History in Russian-German Relations. The methodological guidelines are borrowed from the works of Western historiography. The documents under scrutiny shed the light on the functioning of one of the primary foreign-political instruments — the diplomatic corpus of the Soviet Union and Germany. In the documents published in Volume 2, three main areas of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Relations’ (Narko- mindel) functioning are covered: the personnel responsible for the Soviet-German relations, the inner life of the Soviet mission in Berlin, and the work of the central apparatus in Moscow. On the basis of the interdepartmental correspondence of the Narkomindel staff, their memoranda, and the impressions of the German diplomats, one can get an impression of the level of professionalism of at least some Soviet diplomats. In sum- mary, owing to the publication of such a large amount of documents from the Russian and German archives, historians from different countries can now pursue research on a wide range of problems related to the international relations of the 1930s and early 1940s, which is extraordinarily important for understanding the causes and mechanisms which led to World War Two.

The central question of the article - how the long-term consequences of the First World War influenced the French foreign policy in relation to Germany in the 1920s. Basing on the archival and published French diplomatic sources the author analyses the French political course after 1918 and after 1945 in the comparative way with the attention to the elements of continuity and change in the Paris' conception relating to the over-Rhine neighbor.

Mail and postage stamps are a single entity, maintaining such a connection even in times of serious socio-political upheavals. After the events of 1917, the new leadership of the postal and telegraph department was almost immediately concerned to stop the process of further destruction of postal and telegraph communications in Russia, which had begun in the previous period. Attempts were made to maintain the functioning of international postal communications by this time, although in the conditions of the actual state of war of Soviet Russia, primarily with Germany, this was seriously hampered. Only after the signing of the Brest Peace and its ratification on March 15, 1918, the international postal service began to revive. Nevertheless, in the difficult conditions of the initial period of the civil war, foreign nationals who were on the territory of Soviet Russia had to find alternative ways to send correspondence abroad to the state postal service. One of these methods was the creation of private mail. In the conditions of complex international relations in the spring - summer of 1918, the functions of private mail could be assumed by special structures that were created at foreign missions in Soviet Russia. One of these structures was the “German-Baltic Committee” in Petrograd, created at the German Consulate, opened after the signing of the Brest Treaty. Сommittee initiated the issue of a special stamp, which was first described in his memoirs by the Russian emigrant G. Shenets, and one of the most prominent representatives of Russian philately, K. Schmidt, conducted a study of its functioning. The circle of people who used this private mail was very limited. Letters and small packages were accepted, for the dispatch of which a fee of one ruble was charged, a stamp of the corresponding denomination was pasted by the committee's employees on all mailings and stamped with special stamps in German. These stamps were not sold to the public. From the Baltic provinces, special couriers brought back correspondence, which was again issued in the committee itself with the same stamps at the same tariff. Probably, the activity of this “private mail” turned out to be short-lived. The need for it, in fact, disappeared after the signing on August 8, 1918 of the agreement between Russia and Germany on postal, telegraph and railway communication, according to which all postal and telegraph relations between the two countries were regulated by the Convention on the Universal Postal Union and bilateral treaties and agreements concluded in this area between the Russian Empire and Germany, the effect of which were resumed according to the peace concluded in Brest-Litovsk. In general, the short-term activity of the German-Baltic Committee in the field of postal services, apparently, was more of a forced, extraordinary measure, although it fits well enough into the international situation associated with the period of the Brest Peace in relations between the RSFSR and Germany. On the other hand, this episode of international postal activity indicates that the leadership of Soviet Russia systematically followed the path of strengthening control over those areas of activity that ensured the monopoly right of the state to receive income from international activities.

The subject of the study is the activity of the enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen, an organization created after the outbreak of the Ruhr crisis in 1923 by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce to conduct export propaganda abroad. The article analyzes documents from the funds of the Russian State Military Archive and the German Federal Archives related to the functioning of this structure in 1923-1932. The purpose of the study is to determine how the Hamburg organization managed to deploy large—scale propaganda activity that spread to almost all countries of the world and acquired national significance in Weimar Germany. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of various areas of work, interaction with official departments and the impact of the world economic crisis of 1929-1933 on the activities of the enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen. Based on the study, it was revealed that the organization formed in Hamburg published various printed products, an information service was created abroad, and the key direction was covert penetration into the foreign press. The article shows that the reason for such activity lay in the interest of the economic circles of the region in improving the image of the country abroad in order to normalize foreign trade relations, and the possibility of its implementation — in the presence of the necessary connections for propaganda in foreign countries. One of the results of the study is the conclusion that the activities of the enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen affected not only export, but also cultural and political propaganda and was supported by the government interested in carrying out propaganda activities in a hidden form and through private structures. Over the years, the Hamburg-based organization has increasingly come under the influence of the state, whose assistance has become especially urgent after the global economic crisis of 1929-1933.