Why Did The League of Nations Fail To Keep Peace In The 1930s?

If a country was thought to be an aggressor (attacking another country) then the League would take 3 steps to try and stop the aggressor.

• First the aggressor was "told off"

• If that didn’t work then economic sanctions (all trade and business with the aggressive country is to be stopped) were imposed.

• Finally, as a last resort, (which never happened) the League would call on its members to supply them with troops and use military force.

At first the League seemed to be working, it had resolved several difficult situations without force. In 1921 it had solved a dispute between Germany and Poland over Upper Silesia, helped refugees after the war and fought against slavery.

As time went on though and countries started to recover from the First World War the league lost its hold on power. This was probably because the U.S.A. didn't join the League (even though it was Woodrow Wilson the President of the U.S.A's idea) and without the strongest country in the world it was never really going to be a success.

In 1931 the Japanese (a permanent member of the council) captured the Chinese province of Manchuria, attacked Shanghai and took over the province of Jehol. The reason for this invasion (according to the Japanese) was that their railway had been taken over and they had to defend it. The League took a year to make a decision on the crisis and in the end decided that Japan was the aggressor and “told them off”. Japan took no notice of this and resigned from the League. Economic sanctions never took place as Britain and France thought that Japan was too important to stop trading with, and no country wanted to send any troops to a place that was that far away. This would have sent a message to other countries such as Germany and Italy that the League was weak and that it could be disobeyed.

In 1934 Italy decided to test the power of the League of Nations itself. It set its sights on Abyssinia a small un-developed country that was independent. It bordered Italy’s colonies on two sides and Mussolini thought that it was “up for grabs”. Italy invaded Abyssinia with a far superior army equipped with the latest arsenal whereas the Abyssinians had only limited resources. The Abyssinian King appealed to the League and the L       eague decided that Italy was the aggressor. Italy ignored the “telling off” and this time some economic sanctions were put into  use but oil was not sanctioned so Italy could still power its army. Britain and France could have also limited Italy’s supplies by not letting them go through the Suez Canal. In the end Britain and France gave Italy parts of Abyssinia but Italy went and conquered Abyssinia all the same.

The only thing that the League of Nations accomplished by failing to stop these aggressors was to encourage other countries to see how much they could break the rules. In the case of Adolf Hitler (who broke just about every rule possible) he once said, “if they had tried to stop me at the beginning I would have failed”.