Gustav Stresemann
Gustav Stresemann was Germany's foreign minister for six years and did more than anyone to reintegrate it into Europe after Versailles. Born in Berlin in 1878, the son of a beer distributor, he took a doctorate in economics on the Berlin bottled-beer trade and worked as an industrial lobbyist before entering the Reichstag in 1907 as a National Liberal. He was an annexationist during the First World War, supporting unrestricted submarine warfare and extensive territorial gains, and was known as Ludendorff's young man. He was a monarchist who accepted the republic reluctantly, on the reasoning that it was what existed. He became chancellor in August 1923 at the worst moment of the crisis: the Ruhr occupied, passive resistance bankrupting the state, hyperinflation at its peak, and separatist and communist risings. In a hundred days he called off passive resistance, introduced the Rentenmark that ended the inflation, and used the army against the Hitler putsch in Munich and against the left in Saxony and Thuringia. He was brought down in November and remained foreign minister in every subsequent cabinet until his death. His policy was fulfilment — meeting the treaty's obligations to demonstrate that they were impossible, and gaining concessions by cooperation rather than defiance. The Dawes Plan of 1924 and Young Plan of 1929 restructured reparations and brought American loans; the Locarno treaties of 1925 guaranteed the western borders voluntarily while leaving the eastern ones open; Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Aristide Briand in 1926. He died of a stroke in October 1929, weeks before the Wall Street crash.
- Lived: 1878 CE – 1929 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: statesman
