This whole procedure was flawed heavily from the start and failed to work when put in to action.
First of all, if the League imposed a trade ban upon a country, they could immediately begin trading with countries outside of the League, unstopped by the League’s ‘Free-Trade’ policy, in which it said countries should openly trade with each other without government or any other intervention. And so if the country could still trade, the League was doing nothing to actually stop them, so they can continue violating whatever laws they see fit.
Force was the last measure and had a major flaw; no standing army. If in the case of an outbreak of war, the League would need to take troops from the countries in the League. The country that was closest to the scene of the conflict would be sent in, and due to Britain’s overwhelming Empire that spanned the entire globe; they were called upon the most to fight.
Britain regularly refused to send their army to fight off another country because they were still trying to defend their own Empire from attack. Because of Britain’s refusal, the conflict and war would be a raging one-sided battle before the League managed to round up their own army and get to the war.
Their policy upon preventing war had failed, and had ultimately led to one.
Following on from that, Britain and France did not agree on many things as they had always been enemies. When the Council needed to decide upon something, they voted via veto. Veto is where all parties involved in voting must all agree/disagree to it for it to be passed/scrapped. Because of Britain and France’s rivalship, very little to nothing was passed. The two countries also disagreed upon the Collective Security policy – mainly about the ‘Force’ section.
Britain did not want to keep fighting off multiple countries at a time merely because they were closest. No, they believed in looking after their Empire. France however, disagreed. They wanted a more formal military alliance and wanted to be looked after by Britain’s strong forces.
The League on the whole received a bad reputation because of who was in the League. Many of the countries were mostly white Europeans, which was the source of the accusation that the League was racist. Germany and Russia were not included; Germany because of the fact they had just lost a war and were paying off reparations, and Russia, because of their resent turn to a new political stance – Communism.
This then prompted the accusation that the League was nothing more than a simple Club for Winners.
On top of Russia and Germany being excluded from the League, America was not included. Even though the USA’s president designed the League and put devotion into setting it up, his country voted against them joining it, and because of the votes were against it, they did not join the League. America was the keystone for the League, and without it, the bridge could soon fall. Because these three major countries were excluded from the League, they were free to trade with those who had trade bans upon them.
The Assembly had more problems. The Assembly was made up of 45 countries, and for world peace, all the countries should have been included, but they weren’t. 45 countries did not represent the world’s best interests.
They also only met once a year to discuss small, trivial things. By the time they get to discuss something important, it had probably already passed them by.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In the 1920’s the League had many successes and failures because of their actions.
Successes:
- The League helped refugees from conflicts and safely re-accommodated them.
- The International Court of Justice was set-up for trials against countries.
- The International Labour Organisation improved the working conditions of the common man.
- The League managed to solve a dispute between Finland and Sweden over land ownership of the Aland Islands.
- The Secretariat reduced the number of cases of leprosy.
- The League devised a plan to rescue the Austrian economy from ending in a depression.
- Continued administrating the Port Danzig and Zbar-land via running mandates.
- The League prevented a conflict between Greece and Bulgaria from breaking out.
- In 1926, Germany was allowed to join the League.
The things in which they had successes over were very small issues, such as the working conditions being improved or reducing leprosy.
Failures:
- The League was unable to solve an argument between Lithuania and Poland over who had the rights to own Vilna; another small country.
- The League failed to negotiate a settlement between Italy and Greece.
- Italy invaded Corfu – the League was unable to resolve the issue and could not settle it.
- The League was under minded by America and their own separate peace discussions:
The Young Plan
The Young plan came about due to the German Government complaining about how the amount of reparations they had to pay was still far too large for them to cope. The Young Plan saw it that the German’s reparations needed to be reduced, and in 1929 it was heavily cut.
The Dawes Plan
When the German government failed to keep up the payments in 1923 French troops invaded and occupied the Ruhr land. This slowed their repayments even more.
Charles G. Dawes, an American banker looked into the German complaints of the still, too large to pay reparation and devised a plan to reorganise the German banks and help improve the payments. His idea was that America should give loans to Germany. This loan money was given to Britain and France as a form of reparations. From Britain and France, the money then travelled back to the origin, America, in the form of war debts.
German nationalists did not agree with the plan, and attacked its integrity. They hated the fact that other countries had control over the German economy.
In 1929, the New York Stock Market experienced a crash when a massive selling of shares from 1927 to 1929.
- On 24 October 1929, 13 million shares were sold
- 28 October and
- The disposal of 16 million shares took place on 29 October.
This caused many shareholders to be ruined, taking thousands of banks and businesses with it. This was the Great Depression that went across the World. Unemployment rose to approximately 17 million in the USA, with figures in other countries astronomical.
The effect on the League by the depression was serious. Practically all the countries were pre-occupied by internal problems such as debt, low morale and unemployment. These countries were not interested in the other petty problems of the world and became isolationist and looked after their own country.
The depression even furthered the failure of their “Collective Security.” Trade sanctions were not enforced, in a time of depression everyone needed to trade, and in some cases, they couldn’t afford to trade anyway. Even their Force section was heavily flawed, as countries could not afford to support a war and were not willing to give up men whilst they had problems of their own. Because of this, countries were most likely to get away with aggression and invade.
The League at this point had another failure. Japan decided to invade Manchuria.
Japan had always been angry with the Treaty of Versailles because they had fought against Germany and sided with the Allies but they expect a lot more than what they got. The Japanese army was a powerful force in Japan; their power grew so that politicians could not control them. They decided to claim something for their war efforts against Germany and invaded China and attacked. War soon followed.
The League should have negotiated the attack down as the first part of Collective Security. If that failed, they should have imposed trade sanctions. Then force would be needed. But the League did nothing against Japan; instead they decided to carry out an investigation to see who was to blame for the war that happened. The report, entitled the “Lytton Report” took over a year to be written, in which Japan had settled into Manchuria. It placed the blame of the war onto both the sides, Japan and China.
By this time, Japan could not be removed from Manchuria. Force was not used, and they were left there.
Another form of aggression took place, with Mussolini invading Abyssinia. He attacked and invaded them because of a number of reasons.
- In 1896, Italy was humiliated by Abyssinia after they castrated the Italian prisoners of war.
- Mussolini believed he was the direct descendent of Julius Caesar, and wanted to regain his Roman Empire.
- The Italian people was very depressed, they needed a cause or a victory to boost their morale.
- The Japanese managed to get away with Manchuria in 1931 with no repercussions.
- Mussolini was also angry with the Treaty of Versailles and wanted more.
The Italians felt cheated out of their share in the Paris Peace Conference after their efforts in World War One. Because of an unstable government, the Mussolini party took over in 1921. The new party wanted to rebuild its once glorious empire to what it once and regain its power, and after their defeated invasion attempt in 1896 of Abyssinia. Mussolini saw his chance after Hitler began expanding into Central Europe, and Italy decided to go south and into Abyssinia.
In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia. The Collective Security policy was not carried out fully; they merely negotiated and put a light trade ban upon them which still allowed them to trade oil and petrol.
By March 1936, the League had taken a tougher line of action but it was far too late. The League had failed and in July 15th all Italians sanctions were over. And at this point, the League was seen as broken and corrupted. Germany saw that no action was taken against Italy and Japan and was encouraged to attack.
The League was a very good idea which could have ended the world’s problems because they were working together. But due to America voting against joining the League, it was destined to fail. The cracks in the League grew from there, with the constant accusations of racism and nothing more than a club for winners. The contradiction of free-trade and trade-bans made no sense and failed to work.
The League had many problems along the way, failing to solve disputes and conflicts along with not passing any new world order laws. The cracks were split wide open once the depression struck, when many of the countries became isolationist and came close to becoming communists.
While the League was in ruins trying to keep the peace and working on saving their own economy, countries decided to take the chance to invade to make up for past grievances.