Anglo – German Naval agreement 1935
Othman Jabbar Abed Najm, Nagham Salam Ibraheem
The British-German Maritime Agreement was concluded on 18 June 1935 in London in the form of an exchange of notes between the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Samuel Hoare, and the representative of the Third Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop. In this agreement, the British government accepted Germany's right to expand its naval forces to 35% of the combined naval forces of members of the Commonwealth of Nations. From a military standpoint, this meant that the German Navy's global payload could be quadrupled (from the level of 108,000 tons granted to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles to 420,500 tons). From a formal and legal point of view, the agreement meant the review of the Treaty of Versailles and the legitimization by Great Britain of Adolf Hitler's condemnation of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles in March 1935. In the political dimension, the Convention highlighted the tendency of British politics to seek agreement with Berlin by revising the Versailles system as part of the so-called policy of appeasement. It also meant breaking the joint British-French-Italian front towards Germany and abandoning the policy of assuming the consent of western powers.
Keywords: Maritime Convention, League of Nations, Great Powers, Appeasement Policy
