When the Manchurian crisis occurred the league wasn’t really concerned with it, as the main countries including, Britain and France, were all sorting out their own economy and weren’t really prepared to make any major enforcements to stop Japan invading China. Mussolini and Hitler were both over looking the actions taken by the league and saw that the league was weak in it’s power against Japan so Hitler started planning his actions whilst Mussolini started to test the league again. The Abyssinian crisis was not only for the Italian governments purpose of directing its publics attention away from their economic problems but it was a test of the leagues strength.
With the Manchurian crisis it involved Japan a country far away from the mainly European based league but with the Abyssinian crisis, it took place in Europe and there were British and French colonies all extremely close to Italy and Abyssinia.
The league yet again took very little action against Italy but did learn from the Manchurian crisis that morally condemning a country didn’t work, so they placed poor economic sanctions on Italy. Germany and Austria didn’t place the sanctions on Italy, oil wasn’t sanctioned and the Suez Canal was still open for use by the Italians, so they didn’t really hold back the Italian force.
Hitler again was overlooking the proceedings of the Abyssinian crisis and chose that time to reoccupy the Rhineland. He knew if the French opposed him he would have to withdraw his troops but he took the gamble and planned it very well and he got away with it. The British just referred to it as Hitler marching in his own back yard and even though the French didn’t like it if they were to act then it would be by themselves and no French politician was prepared to bring France into a possible Second World War situation.
With Hitler using all the failures of the league as excuses for his actions and the British and French not acting against any of Hitler’s major steps, Hitler’s confidence and popularity grew and the league was quickly being known as a very weak force against big powers such as Germany, Italy and Japan. The leagues decisions took a long time to be made and the actions of the aggressor countries by that time had already been made, as time went on the league made more and more excuses for not acting until they absolutely had to, this is when Hitler took a major step and tried to conquer Poland. Britain had already signed a pact with Poland saying that it would protect it from invasion. The rest is WW2.
