The Locarno Treaties were seven post-World War I agreements negotiated amongst Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Czechoslovakia in late 1925.

[4] He wanted to secure the peace, especially with France, recover the land lost to Poland, end reparations payments and the occupation of the Rhineland, and by so doing gradually make Germany a great power again.

[8] Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain hoped that if Franco-German relations improved, France would gradually abandon its cordon sanitaire.

Once France had ended its alliances in Eastern Europe as the price of better relations with Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia would have no great power ally to protect them and would be forced to adjust to German demands.

Chamberlain believed that the chances for a lasting peace in Europe would improve after they handed over the territories claimed by Germany such as the Sudetenland, the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig.

[9] The push for the Locarno Treaties came as an indirect result of the Allies' refusal to withdraw their troops from the Cologne region and areas of the occupied Rhineland to the north of it.

[10] An Allied inspection of Germany's military installations had found significant violations of Versailles' disarmament provisions, most notably its failure to adhere to the 100,000-man limit on its army.

Stresemann's diplomatic feelers faced strong opposition at home, especially regarding the renunciation of Germany's claim to Alsace–Lorraine, which was west of the Rhine.

[18] Following discussions in London in early September between representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Italy, the parties agreed to meet in Locarno, Switzerland in October to finalize the treaty.

[5] Poland especially was unhappy about the addendum to the Locarno Treaties titled "Collective Note to Germany Regarding Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations".

Since Germany did not commit to guarantees on its eastern borders, the Locarno Treaties were a defeat for Poland[20] and one of the contributing factors to the fall of the Grabski cabinet on 14 November 1925.

Józef Beck, at the time Poland's military attaché to France, ridiculed the treaties, saying that "Germany was officially asked to attack the east in return for peace in the west.

[32] As a result of the treaties, the delayed withdrawal of British troops from the Cologne region took place in January 1926, and Germany was accepted into the League of Nations with a permanent seat on the Council on 10 September 1926.

[33] The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the lead negotiators of the treaty: Austen Chamberlain in 1925[34] and Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann jointly in 1926.

… In Stresemann's verdict, Locarno represented no more than a first step on the road to the "gradual reacquisition of German sovereignty through a network of European treaties.