On October 1929, the wall street crash occurred. The Wall street is a place in New York where the stock Exchange is situated. The crash was an economic collapse which affected almost every country in the World
When companies need more Money, they can borrow it from the bank, or they can sell shares (small parts of the company) If you buy a share you receive a dividend (a parto f the companies profits) but the real reason to buy shares is speculation (an investment that is very risky but could yield great profits)
To specualte you have to buy your shares when they are cheap and sell them when they a re expensive. Shares are bought and sold on the stock market and to many US citizens this was an easy way to get rich. By 1920, 4 million Americans owned shares but this increased a lot as the years passed, by 1929, there were 20 million Americans who owned shares out of a population of 120 million and in this year share prices rose at an incredible rate. At this stage, people were very confident that the share prices Hill keep rising and so there were more people buying shares than selling them.
The main problem was, although everything seemed to be runned perfectly, that most of the Americans who could afford cars, fridges, washers, etc. Already had bought them and so there was no sense of keeping producing these as no one will by them. In June 1929, official figures showed a fall in industrial production, this meant that factories were producing less, and so investigators started to sell their shares. There was a big fall in share prices, and banks tried to buy shares to stop the fall in prices but on Monday the 28th there was a massive fall in share prices when the banks had stopped buying shares to support prices and on Tuesday the 29th there were 13 million shares sold. This was a huge crisis and many people committed suicide.
Historians do not agree about how successful the League of Nations was in the 1920´s. However, in contrast, they agree that in 1930´s it was a failure. How far can the failure of the League of Nations in the 1930´s be blamed on Great Depression? This can be answered in two ways.
In one side, YES the League of Nations failed because the Great Depression because of many factors. To begin with, unemployment caused by the Great Depression made powerful countries within the League of Nations to pay more attention in domestic problems instead that in international conflicts. For example Britain was suffering high unemployment so they didn’t involve in sorting out international disputes. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in 1929 and by early 1932 it had reached to 6 million workers. Many countries didn’t want to impose economic sanctions because they thought this would damage their own economy. The Wall Street Crash produced much unemployment and this cause polarization. This means that extremist as the Nazi were elected to solve economic and political problems to overthrown the treaty. This was an international conflict because empires were produced and this brought war.
Many countries tried nationalist regimes and believe they could strengthen their nation through militarism. In Italy economic problems encouraged Mussolini to look abroad for distractions from the difficulties facing government. In Japan the economy was in collapse and this led to take control of Manchuria as the leaders wanted to try to distract their people´s attention away from eceonomic problems at home. All this consewuences, made the Leagues position to weaken considerably.
But in the other side, we can say that the failure of the League of Nations was caused by other factors. The structure of the League was weak because very important countries such as United States which never join, Germany which was not a member until 1926 and left in 1933, the USSR did not join until 1934 whilst Japan left in 1933 and Italy in 1937. Without these major countries, the League lacked authority. There was a lack of troops, the League did not have its own army and so it relied in the co-operation of its members.
The treaties that the League of Nations support were seen as unfair, this is because many countries didn’t respected them and although it was an organization done in order to uphold peace treaties, its decisions seemed to be harsh and unjust. The decisions taken by the League were slow as the members met too infrequently although decisions had to be taken fast and with determination. Also, the economic sanctions didn’t work and they were supposed to be the Leagues main weapon but they were afraid of not having work without the support of the USA and when they were encourage to impose them, they were easily broken.
Since 1900 Japan economy and population had been growing rapidly. By the 1920´s it was a major power. They had a very powerful army, navy and they had a strong industry. The Depression hit Japan badly. Both China and USA put up tariffs against Japanese goods. The collapse of the market put its economy in crisis. In 1931 they had the opportunity they had been looking for to expand the empire.
The fatal blow to the League of Nations came when the Italian dictator Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935 equipped with tanks, aeroplanes and poison gas. Like Japan, Italy was a leading member of the League and like Japan they wanted to expand its empire by invading another country. Abyssinia bordered on the Anglo-Egyptian territory of Sudan and the British colonies of Uganda, Kenya and British Somaliland. The Abyssinian emperor Haile Selassie appealed to the League for help but the League was not doing the things correctly. To start with, the British and the French failed to take the situation seriously as they were desperate to keep good relations with Mussolini, who seemed to be their strongest ally against Hitler with whom they signed an agreement in 1935 known as the Stresa Pact, to stand united against Germany.
The League had to do something and the aggressor was clearly showed but decisions were done very slow and it said that it could not claim this problem as it was in an inaccessible part of the world and a committee was done to agree what sanctions were about to be imposed to Italy.
More important still, the Suez Canal belonged to Britain and France and it was the Italians´main supply route to Abyssinia and closing it could have resulted in war with Italy, this failure affected very much Abyssinia.
After studying the League of Nations and the Great Depression I conclude that the League of Nations failed in the 1930´s because of many factors and one of these factors was the Great Depression. I think it was a very important cause of the failure of the League because of the harsh consequences it had over the European countries but it wasn’t the only one, many things lead to its failure.
