The Genoa Conference of 1922 brought the Soviet Union and Germany for the first time into negotiations with the major European powers. The conference broke down when France insisted that Germany pay more in reparations, and demanded in Moscow start paying off the czarist era debts that it had repudiated. The Soviet Union and Germany were both pariah countries, deeply distrusted. The solution was to get together at the nearby city of Rapallo, Italy, where they quickly negotiated the Treaty of Rapallo. In a friendly agreement, they made a clean break with the past, repudiating all old financial and territorial obligations. They agreed to normalize their diplomatic and economic relations. Secretly the two sides established elaborate military cooperation, while publicly denying it. This enabled Germany to rebuild its army and air force secretly at camps in the Soviet Union, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.