FULFILLMENT POLICY

FULFILLMENT POLICY (Erfu¨llungspolitik); a German response to the Allied demand, conceived at the Spa Conference* of July 1920, that Germany ‘‘fulfill'' the terms of the Versailles Treaty.* In reality, the policy awaited the London Ultimatum of 5 May 1921. Finding Germany ‘‘in default in the fulfillment of the [treaty] obligations'' with respect to disarmament, the reparations* payment due on 1 May, and ‘‘the trial of war criminals,'' the Allies focused on reparations and introduced the London Payments Plan, whereby compliance was ordered under threat of Ruhr occupation.* The government of Joseph Wirth,* formed on 10 May 1921, made fulfillment its raison d'eˆtre. Having served as Finance Minister under Konstantin Fehrenbach,* Wirth had no illusions about the difficulties inherent in meeting the London Payments Plan: three billion marks annually for an as yet unspecified period. But he surmised that endless protests were damaging Germany's reputation, whereas a pledge of fulfillment, underscoring German goodwill, would be of greater value than actual payments. This opinion was bolstered by the Finance Ministry's State Secretary, Carl Bergmann,* and by Walther Rathenau.* Thus was born the concept that via fulfillment the need for revision might be demonstrated. Wirth's logic was not imparted to the political Right. Nationalistic demagogues soon attacked the policy as the fruit of a seditious mind; Karl Helfferich,* blaming fulfillment for the devaluation of the mark, labeled it ‘‘suicidal mania.'' In the case of Foreign Minister Rathenau, it probably advanced his June 1922 assassination.* But Wirth and Rathenau were only the first to face obstruction over fulfillment. Although the policy was discarded under Wilhelm Cuno,* it was renewed and expanded during Gustav Stresemann's* six years (1923–1929) at the Foreign Office. Bolstering the merits of Stresemann's work were the Dawes Plan* of 1924, the Locarno Treaties* of 1925, German admission to the League of Nations in 1926, and the Young Plan* of 1929. Whereas each of these milestones corroborated Wirth's original judgment, they further enraged the DNVP. Debate persists over the inherent nature of fulfillment: was it an expedient to be employed until Germany had the power to press for treaty revision, or was it simply an acceptance of Allied demands and thus a recognition of German defeat? Not only was Wirth clear from the start that revision was his goal, but Stresemann's foreign policy achieved that goal. The greater problem for historians, it seems, is disengaging the revisionism of the 1920s from Hitler's* revolutionary foreign policy of the 1930s.