Stresa Front

Summit meeting 11–14 April 1935 between the prime ministers of Britain, France, and Italy (Ramsay MacDonald, Pierre Flandin, and Benito Mussolini) with the aim of forming a common front against Germany. This followed Adolf Hitler's announcement that Germany would not be bound by the limitations imposed upon its armaments by the Versailles Treaty of June 1919. The ‘front’ soon broke up: in October 1935 Italy was severely criticized for launching an Abyssinian War 1935–36 to establish an east African Italian empire, and on 2 November 1936 Benito Mussolini proclaimed the Rome–Berlin Axis, which brought Germany and Italy into close collaboration between 1936 and 1945.