Pictured: Georges Bonnet and Joachim von Ribbentrop signing the Franco‐German Declaration.

Declaration of M. Georges Bonnet, Minister for Foreign Affairs

I WISH first of all to greet H. E. the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the German Reich, whom we are happy to welcome and whose presence here emphasizes the importance of the documents we have just signed.

The efforts of the present French Government, continuing those of all its predecessors, have been directed with unswerving sincerity towards the maintenance and the organization of peace.

The furtherance of good neighbourly relations between France and Germany, as well as the expression of their mutual desire to develop peaceable relations, constitute an essential element in this enterprise.

For this reason I feel gratified at the signing of this Franco-German declaration, which, by solemnly recognizing the existing frontiers, puts an end to a long historical contest and opens the way to a collaboration which is made easier by the conviction that no difference which might endanger the peaceful basis of their relations now exists between the two countries.

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This conviction is further reinforced by the mutual appreciation of the value of the intellectual exchanges which have always existed between the two nations, and by the esteem rightly felt for each other by two peoples which, after fighting heroically during the Great War, now desire to work in an atmosphere of understanding and peace.

Furthermore, I have no doubt that this joint declaration will bring to the cause of general appeasement a contribution the value of which will be confirmed in the future; it marks a particularly important stage in the task of reconciliation and cooperation in which France ardently desires to see all nations participate.

(Emphasis original. Source.)

Another example of Paris’s friendly relations with the Fascist empires can be seen in the 1937 Paris Exposition:

Despite the [NSDAP’s] disregard for the Paris Exhibition and simultaneous concern regarding the stability of their created identity, the general response to the pavilion itself among French and American sources was positive. The strongest praise came from the French, stemming from their own “sense of insecurity and political volatility” and “a growing French defeatism [which] seemed to predispose the public to tacitly accept [Fascist] assertions of national unity.”^35^

French journalists praised the seriousness of the stone pavilion as opposed to the modern all-glass pavilions of other nations, and commended the perceived lack of propaganda, or at least reduction thereof.

It is little surprise, then, that both London and Paris rejected a Soviet offer to form an antifascist alliance.