René Massigli (; 22 March 1888 – 3 February 1988) was a French diplomat who played a leading role as a senior official at the Quai d'Orsay and was regarded as one of the leading French experts on Germany, which he greatly distrusted.
Early career The son of a Protestant law professor, Massigli was born in Montpellier in the southern French department of Hérault. After graduating from the elite École normale supérieure in Paris with an agrégation d'histoire, he attended the French Academy in Rome in 1911-1912, studying history under Louis Duchesne. In 1913-1914, he attended the University of Lille, where he was awarded a maître de conférence.
He joined the French foreign service during the First World War. He served in the Maison de la Presse section of the Quai d'Orsay in Bern, Switzerland, where he analysed German newspapers for the French government. In the spring of 1919, Massigli was sent on several unofficial missions to Berlin to contact German officials about the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In May 1919, Massigli had a series of secret meetings with various German officials in which he offered on behalf of his government to revise the peace terms of the upcoming treaty in Germany's favour in regards to territorial and economic clauses of the proposed treaty. Massigli suggested "practical, verbal discussions" between French and German officials in the hope of creating "collaboration franco-allemande" (Franco-German collaboration).
During his meetings, Massigli let the Germans know of the deep divisions between the "Big Three" at the Paris Peace Conference, namely Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau. Speaking on behalf of the French government, Massigli informed the Germans that the French considered the "Anglo-Saxon powers", the United States and the British Empire, to be the real postwar threat to France; argued that both France and Germany had a common interest in opposing "Anglo-Saxon domination" of the world and warned that the "deepening of opposition" between the French and the Germans "would lead to the ruin of both countries, to the advantage of the Anglo-Saxon powers". The French overtures to the Germans were rejected because the Germans regarded the French offers to be a trap to trick them into accepting the treaty "as is" and because the German foreign minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau thought that the United States was more likely to soften the peace terms than France.
Massigli was a leading member of the "Protestant clan" that dominated the Quai d'Orsay. Other members of the "Protestant clan" included Robert Coulondre, Victor de Lacroix, Albert Kamerer, Jacques Seydoux and his son François Seydoux de Clausonne, all of whom worked closely together. Because French Protestants were persecuted under the ancien régime during which the state religion was Roman Catholicism, they tended to be very supportive of the legacy of the French Revolution, with its call for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The "Protestant clan" in the Quai d'Orsay were all supporters of the republic and its values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité in domestic affairs and a rule-based international order and support for the League of Nations.
Conference of Ambassadors Massigli served as the secretary-general for the Conference of Ambassadors between 1920 and 1931 before he became the head of the Quai d'Orsay's section dealing with the League of Nations. Using a pseudonym, Massigli wrote an article in L'Ere Nouvelle newspaper in March 1920 in which condemned "the revival of militarism" in Germany, as represented by the Kapp Putsch and predicted that the Reichswehr would never accept democracy but claimed that there was a genuine desire for democracy among the German people. In another series of articles published in June 1920, Massigli articulated what he regarded as the central dilemma of France's German policy: to insist upon a too forceful enforcement of Versailles would undermine German moderates, but at the same time, enemies of democracy were strong in Germany, German democracy might fail even if the treaty were revised and so loosening Versailles would make the task of any potential antidemocratic government in Germany easier.
During his time at the Conference of Ambassadors, Massigli was closely involved in the disputes about Upper Silesia, the Memelland, the Vilnius/Wilno dispute, the borders of Austria and Hungary and the enforcement of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles (which dealt with disarmament). In the early 1920s, Massigli was known for his vigorous efforts to enforce Part V and attempted to thwart German efforts to violate it. In Massigli's view, the French should be moderate in the enforcement of Versailles, but in return, the Germans must obey all of the articles of Versailles, especially Part V. As Massigli wrote, "The touchstone for Germany is the execution of the Treaty, or at least, since I am prepared to believe that certain of its clauses cannot be applied, to give evidence of goodwill in its execution. The starting point must be the disarmament of the Reichswehr". In September 1923, during the Ruhr crisis, Massigli was sent to the Rhineland to report to Paris on the viability of the Rhenish separatist movement, and what support, if any, France should offer the separatists. Massigli was very cool in his assessment of the Rhenish separatists, whom he described as badly organised and lacking in popular support and advised against support for a Rhenish Republic.
Starting in the mid-1920s, Massigli came to relax his views and started to advocate reconciliation with Germany but not at the expense of French security. In 1925, Massigli played a major role in the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Locarno. Though welcoming Gustav Stresemann's initiative in renouncing claims upon Alsace-Lorraine as a very important step for peace, Massigli was privately troubled by the refusal of the Germans to give similar guarantees for their neighbours in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, or to abide by the terms of Part V. A close friend and associate of Aristide Briand, Massigli worked strongly in the late 1920s for Franco-German détente. However, Massigli never lost any of his concerns about the Reichswehr and felt that Franco-German rapprochement should best take place within the broader framework of European integration and collective security. As Massigli later told historian Georges-Henri Soutou, "Briandism had the great merit of drawing a good number of European states towards the French viewpoint". In accordance with his views, Massigli played a major role in working behind the scenes in talks, which led to Germany joining the League of Nations as a Council permanent member in 1926. Massigli was open to revising Versailles within Germany's favour but only within the context of multilateral organisations like the League of Nations.
Briand's policy of rapprochement with Germany caused much worry in Poland, which was openly concerned about the prospect of a better Franco-German relations would mean that France would abandon them, especially with Stresemann utterly refusing to sign any "Eastern Locarno" that would see Germany accept the current frontiers with Poland. In 1927, the Polish ambassador in Paris, Alfred Chłapowski, submitted a lengthy note complaining that the French were considering an early evacuation of the Rhineland without consulting Warsaw and asking Briand to make an "Eastern Locarno" a precondition of any French evacuation of the Rhineland. Through the Polish note caused much irritation in Paris, Massigli stated that on a legal basis, the Polish position was faulty, but on a political basis, it was not. Massigli wrote that the French occupation of the Rhineland, "to a certain extent," protected the Poles, as it made impossible for Germany to attack Poland, and he felt France should indeed demand Germany to sign an "Eastern Locarno" as the price for an early evacuation of the Rhineland. However, Stresemann's offer of a better Franco-German relations, especially in the economic sphere, together with the total German unwillingness to accept the frontiers with Poland, led Briand to decide to ignore the Polish concerns.
On 16 September 1928, after lengthy Franco-British-American-German talks it was agreed that a committee of economic experts would discuss a new reparations plan for the Germany that came to be known as the Young Plan, and France would withdraw its soldiers from the Rhineland in June 1930, which was five years earlier than scheduled. Massigli in a report wrote, "The Poles are visibly worried"; the agreement made no mention of an "Eastern Locarno". After talking to the Polish foreign minister, August Zaleski, Massigli concluded that Zaleski was well aware that Poland had a "weak hand" as France was its only great-power ally and that as unhappy as the Poles were, they would stick with the French alliance for the lack of any alternative. Massigli added that he had the impression that Zaleski's actions were motivated by the desire to show the Poles that their government was at least trying to end what they considered a double standard that Locarno did not apply to Eastern Europe. In 1929–1930, Massigli worked closely with Briand in his project for creating a European "federation", which many have seen as a prototype for the European Union. From 1929 to 1935, he headed the department of the Quai d'Orsay concerned with the League of Nations, as he believed that collective security provided a means in which France could rally the world against any future German aggression.
World Disarmament Conference From 1930, Massigli was intimately involved in the preparatory work for the World Disarmament Conference scheduled to open in 1932. The increasing divergence between German demands for Gleichberechtigung ("equality of armaments") (abolishing Part V) and the French demand for sécurité ("security") (maintaining Part V) together with the strains in Franco–German relations imposed by the attempt at an Austrian-German customs project of 1931 left Massigli increasingly disillusioned with the Weimar Republic. In 1931, Massigli advised the Premier Pierre Laval before his summit with the German chancellor, Heinrich Brüning, that France should offer a bailout for the collapsing German bank system only if the Germans were prepared to forgo the demand for Gleichberechtigung at the upcoming World Disarmament Conference. Brüning refused the French conditions at his summit with Laval.
Massigli was a prominent player at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva and helped to write famous "Barthou note" of 17 April 1934 issued by the foreign minister, Louis Barthou, which helped to terminate the conference. Massigli was especially opposed to the prime minister, Édouard Herriot, who accepted in December 1932 Gleichberechtigung "in principle", as Massigli correctly predicted that it would lead to opening the door for German rearmament.
Opponent of appeasement In 1932, when Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš introduced a plan for an economic union embracing Czechoslovakia, Austria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, Massigli wrote that Prague alone "had a plan" for dealing with the Great Depression in Eastern Europe. Though the French experts in general preferred to exclude Romania and Yugoslavia from the proposed economic union because of their economic backwardness, Massigli argued for the inclusion of Yugoslavia and Romania as the Little Entente alliance already existed and so had to be "treated with consideration". French Prime Minister André Tardieu embraced Beneš's plan as forming the basis of a fédération danubienne (Danubian federation), which would not only mitigate the effects of the Great Depression but also be a step for peace in Eastern Europe.