ABSTRACT
Economic talks collapsed, and Franco-Soviet hostility at Geneva remained a byword, as Maxim Litvinov campaigned against any efforts to establish a security arrangement as a precondition to disarmament. Moscow vigorously rejected collective security in Europe and Asia, and talk of “total and general disarmament” remained the main Soviet slogan. Litvinov, forced mainly by circumstances, was to guide Soviet policy further away from Berlin and toward rapprochement with France. Litvinov never was a man to seek bad relations with another country, having a preference always for normal and peaceful relations with all states that were willing to reciprocate. The situation in Germany worried Litvinov, but about all he could do was wait for things in Berlin to sort themselves out. On 30 January 1933, Europe saw an ominous sign of the path Germany would take when Adolf Hitler became the new chancellor.
