But, in my opinion, I think that in the 1920´s the League had more failures than successes. First of all because the fact of the USA creating it and then not joining it, is a huge failure and disappointment. Secondly, something that is very linked to the first reason, is that Britain and France, which were the main members now with the absence of the USA, didn’t care as much as Woodrow Wilson to promote peace. I am not saying that they preferred war, but if their country was safe, and not being attacked by anybody, they were “happy”. And last reason, but not the least one, is that both countries in Vilna, for example, acted not as they should have acted but as it was more convenient to them. These are the reasons for which I think that the League of Nations was a complete failure.
As I have said before, the main reason or fact that took the League to failure was that the USA did not join it. And, besides this, the League was very disorganized. The two main members had other priorities. British politicians, for example, were more interested in rebuilding British trade and looking after the British Empire than being an international police force. France’s main concern was still Germany. It was worried that without an army of its own, the League was too weak to protect France from its powerful neighbour. I think that the idea of Woodrow Wilson of creating an international body to consolidate peace was a great idea, but what made it fail was the lack of organization and importance, principally from France and Britain.
The economic crisis of 1929 made the whole system of the League of Nations collapse. The depression began as a stock market and financial crisis, especially with the crisis of the New York stock exchange in 1929. The depression passed from finance to industry and from USA to the whole world. Export of American capital came to an end. Americans, with their incomes low, couldn’t buy foreign goods. People couldn’t collect the money they were owed or the money they thought they had in the bank. People could not buy, so factories could not sell. Unemployment grew rapidly: skills of older people grew rusty and young people had no opportunity to learn. This made the people feel discouraged and frustrated. This depression affected the whole world, so, it made the work of the League more difficult because there was any country with enough money and with a good economic position to solve all international problems regardless of the cost, as the League established that it should be.
The League wasn’t able to end with any European or world conflicts because some of the most important countries weren’t members (such as USA, Russia, temporarily and Germany, temporarily); the League had no forces of its own and member countries didn’t want to use theirs; it couldn’t stop a strong country from conquering a weak one because there wasn’t any punishment so countries just ignored the League. Some examples of European and world conflicts in the 1930´s are: Italy conquered Abyssinia, Japan conquered Manchuria, The Germans put military forces in the Rhineline and Czechoslovakia was shared among some countries and dissolved. Some other reasons were the lack of troops, the decisions were slow, the Treaties it had to uphold were seen as unfair, the economic sanctions did not work, the self-interest of leading members, that America and other important countries were absent, it was too liked to the Treaty of Versailles, the economic crisis of 1929, the failure of the world disarmament conference. But the real explanation for the failure of the League of Nations is simple: when aggressive countries such as Japan, Italy and Germany defied the League, specially Britain and France were not ready to support by economic measures.
