In seeking to tack what amounted to a territorial revision of Versailles upon what was supposed to have been a purely financial negotiation, Schacht had gone out on a limb, and without the permission, or even the knowledge, of his own government. The détente between Germany and the Allies, so painstakingly achieved since the withdrawal from the Ruhr five years before, had rested on the principle that Germany would not seek to overturn the political or territorial clauses of the 1919 settlement. Here was Schacht in one stroke trying to undermine the whole fragile basis of European peace.
