Adolf Hitler marched into the Rhineland with the German Army on March 7, 1936. He had been threatening to remilitarize the Rhineland for some time and suddenly, just two hours after he proposed a pact of twenty-five-year non-aggression with Great Britain, France and Belgium, surprised everyone and simply went into gear. The Rhineland had been demilitarized by the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1918 and confirmed by the Locarno Agreement of 1925. For the French it served as a military buffer zone between France and Germany. The Rhineland had no real territorial value; its meaning was purely symbolic. Up until this point, Britain had been the mediator between Germany and France after World War I, but once Germany entered the Rhineland, the French asked for immediate support from the British. Although the British condemned Hitler's action, they wanted to avoid war at all costs. The Versailles Peace Treaty of 1918 was the final result of the brutal First World War. Europe was devastated and the Allied forces were faced with the task of dealing with their former German enemy. It is known that the French were determined to punish Germany; they sought revenge and made little attempt to hide their goal. At the Versailles Peace Conference the struggle between the French and Germans began a new path. The French demanded large reparation payments and many other drastic measures that would prevent Germany from being able to attack them again. The agreement reached included several harsh measures against Germany. Aside from the enormous reparations they would be forced to pay, the Allied nations forced the Germans to completely demilitarize their armed forces. Germany was also forced to pursue what it believed to be the “best case scenario”. Hitler probably could have been stopped if the British had resisted him in the Rhineland crisis. Because he was so early in his quest for continental dominance, he did not yet have the general support that he would have had at the actual start of the war. If he had failed Germany early, perhaps he would have been overthrown. However, all the deals and dilemmas described were too overwhelming for the British government to handle alone, and the optimistic results the British hoped for would never materialize. After Hitler managed to manipulate the British into signing the Anglo-German Naval Pact, he knew that each nation and league could be treated separately to achieve his goals. It was during the Rhineland Crisis that the precedence for World War II was established.