| rdfs:comment
| - The Hess Agreement, known informally as "the big switch", was a diplomatic agreement among the governments of Germany, United Kingdom, and France entered into in the summer of 1940. The Agreement ended the first phase of the Second World War and realigned the balance of power in Europe heavily in Germany's favor. The agreement was named for Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer of Germany, who initially brought the proposal to the British government with Adolf Hitler's blessing.
|
| abstract
| - The Hess Agreement, known informally as "the big switch", was a diplomatic agreement among the governments of Germany, United Kingdom, and France entered into in the summer of 1940. The Agreement ended the first phase of the Second World War and realigned the balance of power in Europe heavily in Germany's favor. The agreement was named for Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer of Germany, who initially brought the proposal to the British government with Adolf Hitler's blessing. Germany had been engaged in a two-front war since the winter of 1938-9, when Hitler accepted an invitation from the government of the heretofore neutral Poland to assist in defending that country against Soviet invasion, while his forces were already committed to a general invasion of France. The Hess Agreement represented Germany's effort to extricate itself from a two-front war by resolving its differences with its major enemies along its western flank. The governments of Britain and France welcomed the opportunity to redirect Germany's belligerence towards the east. The war had stalemated very early on in a depressing parallel to the First World War. Britain and France's respective populations were increasingly dissatisfied with the ongoing attacks Germany was able to inflict even as there were no breakthroughs on the battlefield. Additionally, the agreement brought Britain, France and Germany into an alliance to help defend Poland and to invade the USSR itself; the governments of both Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Premier Edouard Daladier found Soviet Communism more frightening than German Nazism. In addition to gaining Britain and France as allies, the Agreement was very beneficial to Germany in other ways. Germany was required to withdraw all its troops from French territory; however, it continued to occupy erstwhile Anglo-French allies Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway. Germany also continued to occupy Czechoslovakia, the invasion of which had been the Westerners' initial casus belli. The British and French also stopped supporting the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War, though they maintained diplomatic relations with the Republic and did not support the Nationalist side.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)