ABSTRACT
The enormous domestic pressure within Germany to revise its Versailles borders with Poland in this respect dovetailed with German interests in curtailing Poland’s influence in the Baltic states and reinforced the determination to prevent such a barrier at all costs. The difficulties faced by outside economic interests in negotiating a firm foothold in the border states were increased by the efforts of the Baltic countries to underpin their nascent regional alliances with wider economic and customs agreements. In the first place the 1925 German-Polish trade war was in effect anticipated by the German response to the so-called ‘Baltic clause’. Some properly organised legal back-up could be provided for the private German business interests which had so successfully penetrated the Baltic market by 1922, by means of a concerted approach to the detailed restrictions imposed by Baltic domestic legislation.
