Politics & Power Quote by Gustav Stresemann

Stresemann is swatting away a comforting political myth: that you either hug the nation or shake hands with the world. Calling the contrast “foolish” isn’t just impatience; it’s a strategic reframing aimed at disarming the most potent postwar weapon in German politics - the claim that international engagement equals national humiliation. In one sentence he tries to make cooperation look not like surrender, but like competence.

The intent is pragmatic, not utopian. Stresemann governed in a Germany scarred by defeat, inflation, and the corrosive prestige politics of Versailles. National solidarity was the currency of every party; international cooperation was the suspicious import. His line welds them together: a country that can’t hold itself together won’t be taken seriously abroad, and a country that refuses cooperation will be punished economically and diplomatically. He’s arguing that sovereignty in the 1920s is negotiated, not declared.

The subtext is aimed at two audiences. To nationalists, he offers a face-saving off-ramp: you can pursue German interests through treaties, reparations deals, and security arrangements without betraying the nation. To foreign powers, he signals reliability: Germany’s “solidarity” can be channeled into stable commitments rather than revanchist drama. The brilliance is how it treats “international cooperation” as a tool of national renewal, not a moral obligation.

In the Weimar context - with Locarno on the horizon and the League of Nations as a battleground for legitimacy - the sentence doubles as a political survival tactic: make the international path feel like the patriotic one.