However, after the declaration of German rearmament in March 1935, the French government forced the reluctant foreign minister to complete the arrangements with Moscow that Barthou had begun.
The Franco-Soviet Pact was no longer what Barthou had originally planned, but it remained to serve the purpose of acting as a hollow diplomatic threat of a two-front war if Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy.
In the UK parliament the former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George who was sympathetic to Germany stated that "if Herr Hitler had allowed that to go without protecting his country he would have been a traitor to the Fatherland".
Their effectiveness was undermined even further by the French government's insistent refusal to accept a military convention stipulating how both armies would co-ordinate their actions in the event of a war against Germany.
[4] The German Anschluss of Austria in 1938 and Munich Agreement, which led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, demonstrated the impossibility of establishing a collective security system in Europe,[5] a policy advocated by Litvinov.