Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 25, 1928, representatives from Germany, France, and the United States are meeting in Paris to discuss a new pack that they would sign two days later.

It was called the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an

instrument of national policy. Let me repeat the name of that treaty again. The

general treaty for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy.

This was an international peace treaty in which the countries promised to not use war to, quote,

resolve disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin.

Now, listeners, let me state that date again,

1928, so obviously the aftermath of World War I and the country is involved involved France, the United States, Germany.

So yes, I think we all know our history that peace treaty did not really hold up.

I think it is safe to say with the arrival of World War II. Not that many years later. And the way at

which it didn't hold up tells us a lot about the idea of peace and the goal of peace and

international relations obviously in that moment. But I've been thinking a lot about peace as an idea lately as as we are in another moment that is wrapped up in a lot of conflict and war around the globe. So here to discuss the nice try peace treaty we can call it here as always

Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hey there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. So yeah I want to get to these bigger ideas of peace and whether we talk about peace or not, but I suppose we should go through the Tik-Tock of how they try to outlaw war. And actually actually even as I say that there's a really interesting sort of

framing of like are you anti-war or pro-peace and that's sort of wrapped up in this and it comes

down to some of the language in here as well.

But how did this pact come to be as best as you can tell?

So it's both a long-term process and a fairly short term.

I mean, the longer-term one is over the course of some 300 years,

there had been a real effort to put some constraints on war, to create kind of rules of war things that were off limits like

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