The League of Nations in the 1920's - Success or Failure?

The League of Nations in the 1920’s

Success or Failure?

The League of Nations was formed for one main reason: to ensure that a war like world war one NEVER broke out again. It wanted to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security, as well as raise living conditions of men and women worldwide. It planned to do this by having a Covenant that all nations should follow, whether or not they were in the League. The Covenant was:

To promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security:

By the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war.
By the prescription of open just and honourable relations between nations.
By the firm establishment of international law as the rule of conduct between governments.
By the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another.

The nations that were in the League were most of the world, with the exception of the defeated nations of World War One (Germany, Austria, Hungary) who were refused entry and the USA, who refused to join. The main nations in the League were Britain, France and Italy, because they were powerful nations at the time. When part of the covenant of the League was broken, the League could respond with sanctions. There were three.

Verbal Sanctions: warning an aggressor nation that she would need to leave another nation’s territory or face the consequences.

Economic Sanctions: financially hit the aggressor nation so that she would do as the League required.

Physical sanction: military force would be used. But, there was no army that the League could summon directly. They had to be pulled from a country’s army, and no country HAD to give an army.

Now, the League did have successes. Examples of these are Upper Silesia in 1921. In Upper Silesia, the Treaty of Versailles gave the inhabitants a vote ...

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Verbal Sanctions: warning an aggressor nation that she would need to leave another nation’s territory or face the consequences.

Economic Sanctions: financially hit the aggressor nation so that she would do as the League required.

Physical sanction: military force would be used. But, there was no army that the League could summon directly. They had to be pulled from a country’s army, and no country HAD to give an army.

Now, the League did have successes. Examples of these are Upper Silesia in 1921. In Upper Silesia, the Treaty of Versailles gave the inhabitants a vote to see if they wanted to be a part of Poland or Germany. Unfortunately, this could not be decided by the inhabitants of Upper Silesia and could have gone on a quick downward spiral into fighting. To prevent this from happening, the League came in and split Upper Silesia between Poland and Germany in equal amounts. This was a peaceful solution and the problem was resolved. Upper Silesia’s situation was a success.

It was a success because it was within the League’s power to stop the possible conflict. The country’s involved were not major parts, and Upper Silesia was a small country not capable of a major fight, but yet, it could still stir trouble. But the League was able to manipulate Upper Silesia and divide it without a problem, because there was no major force preventing them from doing it. Other successes of the League of the same fashion were the Aaland Islands of 1921 in which Finland and Sweden disputed over a small set of islands and the Greco/ Bulgarian Border Patrol incident. These were both resolved peacefully due to the involved nation’s lack of power.

The failures of the League however where on a much higher note. An example of this was the Division of the Ruhr in 1923, where Germany had gotten behind in it’s war reparation’s, and France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr to seize coal mines and get money from them which was not paid in the reparations. The League did not act upon this whatsoever. The occupation ended in 1924 when the invader nations left on their own will.

The reason why the League was powerless on this matter was because it needed French support, and by trying to interfere in this matter, they would have lost it. France was too much of a nation to lose from the League and also too big to put on any sanctions that could affect it. There was a similar situation like this when Poland invaded Vilna in 1920 due to the population of Pole’s there, and the League did nothing due to Russian proximity. They did not want to tick Russia off as they knew it was not a good idea to do so. The bigger the nations were, the harder it was for the League to deal with them.

In my conclusion, I think that the League of Nations was a big fat failure. It’s failures far exceeded it’s small successes. The small countries that were involved in the smaller disputes were willing to accept the authority of the League, but when a greater power was involved (French invasion of the Ruhr), the League’s authority proved to be ineffective. It appeared that the League could not deal with determined aggressors, which was later shown in Japanese and Italian aggressions, which could not be stopped by the League’s actions.

Not only that, there were some situations that did not defy the League’s covenant yet still counted towards the failure of the League. They could NOT achieve disarmaments. Like the Washington Naval Agreement of 1922 in which the USA, Britain, France and Japan agreed to reduce their fleets, but the League played no part in. Another is that the League was not invited to talks between the great powers and Germany relating to the future of the Treaty of Versailles agreement.

Another mistake of the League was to refuse the defeated nation’s entry to the League at first. Maybe if this happened, it could have stopped German anger at the Treaty of Versailles and possibly stopped World War 2.

And, last but not least, the League was effectively disbanded upon the breakout of World War Two. If it was successful, a war would not have broken out and it would never have disbanded.

How can something with so many failures be successful? Well, it can’t. And that is my view upon it.