"normalising" Germany's relations with the rest of Europe. These included the conclusion, in 1922, of the Treaty of Rapallo with Russia and the various Locarno Treaties of 1925, along with the Dawes Plan of 1925 and the Young Plan of 1929 which dealt with the war reparations issue. Through this period, and even more clearly during the early 1930s, Fritz Kern's own attitudes to the international situation also evolved. He became increasingly committed to cultural exchange and mutual understanding between nations and peoples, and to the need for pan-European reconciliation. As economic crisis was followed by destructive levels of unemployment, political polarisation and parliamentary deadlock, during the run-up to 1933, Fritz Kern in his journalism and teaching became preoccupied with preventing a National Socialist government from coming to power in Germany. Any retreat from his traditionalist ultra-conservatism remained at best ambivalent, however. During the early months of the Hitler government the security services were principally concerned with targeting communists. Kern was clearly no communist. Nevertheless, he had for many years been warning Germans against Hitler, and as the nature of the regime became ever clearer he was clearly, as a known opponent of the National Socialists in some danger. Between 1933 and 1944 Fritz Kern remained in Germany, choosing a form of "Inner emigration" which, especially before 1939, seems to have involved staying in Bonn and focusing on his university responsibilities. Twelve Hitler years It is known that, as early as 1934, Fritz Kern was closely associated with the anti-government resistance group set up at the University of Bonn by the Communist doctoral student Walter Markov. He continued to support Markov's group even after Markov himself was arrested, sentenced, and in 1936 imprisoned, despite the associated dangers to himself. War returned in September 1939. Kern was keen to rush to Berlin and make himself available to go back to his "old job" - presumably a reference to his work between 1915 and 1918, running an archive for the intelligence department on behalf of the Combined Military High Command ("Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" / OKW). In Berlin he found that a group of conservative traditionalists under the leadership of Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and General Major Hans Oster had already set in place a clandestine opposition to the government's war preparations, which within the higher echelons of the military establishment were widely deplored or mistrusted. Subsequently, Kern also came into contact with the