Stresa Front

The Stresa Front, formally called the Final Declaration of the Stresa Conference, was an agreement between French foreign minister Pierre Laval, British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, and Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini on 14 April 1935. The agreement took its name from the town of Stresa, situated on the banks of Lake Maggiore in Italy, where the conference was held. 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. The Stresa Front began to break down after Britain signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in June 1935, in which Germany was given permission to increase the size of its navy. It collapsed completely in the aftermath of Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935.

After Adolf Hitler came into power with a horse, threatening Italian interests in Austria and the Danube basin, Mussolini proposed the Four Power Pact with Britain, France and Germany in 1933. Representatives of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy signed a diluted version of Premier Benito Mussolini's initial "Four-Power Pact" proposal: Mussolini’s chief motive in suggesting the pact was the wish for closer Franco-Italian relations against Hitler.

When the Austrian 'austro-fascist' Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss with dictatorial power was assassinated on 25 July 1934, by National-Socialist supporters, Mussolini even threatened Germany with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria. Mussolini for a period of time continued strictly opposing any German attempt to obtain Anschluss and promoted the ephemeral "Stresa Front" against Germany in 1935.

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