After the Locarno Conference of 1925, the idea of deploying the Locarno’s experience for concluding multilateral guarantee pacts in other regions of Europe, other than Western, gained particular popularity. Rafael Erich, the Finnish representative in the League of Nations, was a person who voiced this idea as a “Northern Locarno” project. It has not become an object of research in historical literature, as the project was rejected by the involved parties even before its official discussion. However, the study of its perception is necessary for better understanding the political climate in Europe in the mid-1920s and the politics of the minor Baltic countries and the Great Powers advancing their own interests in the Baltic region. The objective of this article is to examine the German reaction to R. Erich’s project as a demonstration of inconsistency in the German Baltic policy. The very idea of developing a multilateral guarantee pact in the Baltic grasped the minds of German diplomats. On the one hand, such a security system would be a bar against German revisionist aspirations in the east. On the other hand, due to the significant economic and political influence of Germany in the Baltic republics, Finland and Sweden, the “Northern Locarno” could be instrumental for maintaining German dominance in the Baltic region. Not daring to speak openly, either for or against the project, the Foreign Ministry of the Weimar Republic limited itself to collecting information from the Scandinavian and Baltic press, which wrote very negatively about the “Northern Locarno”. In addition, the USSR strongly opposed Erich’s project, while one of the primary goals of the German diplomacy was maintaining good relations with it. Finally, Germany refused to support the Finnish project since its alleged negative consequences outweighed positive ones. In subsequent years, the tactics regarding the “Northern Locarno” (i.e. avoiding open discussions and maintaining active interaction with the Soviet Union) were employed by Germany against the Polish plan of an “Eastern Locarno”

In interwar Germany, the recovery of the colonial possessions lost under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 remained an important political objective for colonial revisionists. Heinrich Schnee, the last governor of German East Africa, emerged as one of the movement's leading figures. This article examines the range of activities through which Schnee sought to restore Germany's standing as a colonial power and secure the return of its former overseas territories. Its scholarly contribution lies in considering Schnee's role across both the Weimar and Nazi periods, a subject that has received limited attention in Russian historiography. During the 1920s, Schnee developed and vigorously promoted the claim that Germany must combat the so-called "colonial lie" — accusations of incompetence and brutality in German colonial rule that, in his view, had been used by the victorious powers to justify depriving Germany of its overseas possessions. He pursued this campaign through a wide range of channels, including political journalism and books published in several foreign languages, speeches in the Reichstag, leadership of influential colonial organizations such as the German Colonial Society, and the cultivation of ties with prominent political figures, among them Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann. The findings suggest that Schnee's extensive public and organizational activities helped keep the colonial question on the political agenda of the Weimar Republic. His rhetoric also contributed, to some extent, to undermining the legitimacy of the democratic order and to the broader radicalization of public opinion. After the Nazi seizure of power, however, his political influence declined sharply. Despite joining the NSDAP and openly demonstrating his loyalty to the new regime, Schnee found himself increasingly sidelined. The Nazi leadership shifted its foreign-policy priorities toward the acquisition of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, while control over the colonial movement passed increasingly into the hands of party organizations. Schnee's career thus reflects the broader evolution of German colonial revisionism in the interwar period. Having contributed to the delegitimization of Weimar democracy, the movement was ultimately pushed to the margins under the Third Reich, as its aims increasingly diverged from the regime's wider geopolitical priorities.