Stresa Front

45°53′47.1″N 8°31′33.6″E / 45.896417°N 8.526000°E / 45.896417; 8.526000

The Stresa Front was an agreement made in Stresa, a town on the banks of Lake Maggiore in Italy, between French prime minister Pierre-Étienne Flandin (with Pierre Laval), British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, and Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini on 14 April 1935. Practically, the Stresa Front was an alliance between France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, aimed against Nazi Germany.^[1]: 62 Pat Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War considered the Stresa Front the last chance to stop Hitler before the Second World War.^[2]

Formally called the Final Declaration of the Stresa Conference, its aim was to reaffirm the Locarno Treaties and to declare that the independence of Austria "would continue to inspire their common policy". The signatories also agreed to resist any future attempt by the Germans to change the Treaty of Versailles. A factor in the Abyssinia Crisis, it encouraged Italian imperial ambitions, motivated by the perception that France and Britain would not intervene if Italy attacked Ethiopia. The Stresa Front began to collapse after the UK signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in June 1935, in which Germany was given permission to increase the size of its navy. The Front broke down completely after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.^[3][1]: 62