At the start of the League of Nations there was a genuine mood of co-operation and goodwill between the member states. The League was also popular with countries around the world and got a lot of support a further 14 nations joined in the first 4 years of the League and no nations left. The League also vowed to put The League’s interests above its individual states interests. The League promised to help all states globally, whether important or not, big, small even if they were not a member state, The League wanted a fair and peaceful world. In 1920 the League managed to provide vaccines to combat the outbreak of typhus, cholera and dysentery, which were rampaging through Europe. The League also settled a dispute between Finland and Sweden over land in 1921. And in 1925 The League successfully intervened in an invasion of Bulgaria by Greece. This proved that the league could work and was being implemented well in world affairs, this also gave the League valuable experience which should have helped it in later issues, increasing its likelihood of being effective. However these successes were not repeated in other circumstances. In 1922 the Turks broke the rules that their peace treaty stated and went on a military offensive, and could only be resisted if Britain and France’s armies worked together, this was the Chanak crisis, this proved that Britain and France were not as strong as they used to be, this was clear from the outset of the League as there was no official army that the League could control it was up to individual states to provide their own army, there was no large army made up of different states troops that the League could control. This was a flaw in the design of the League as instead of concentrating the Leagues power into one force it separated it into little ones, which is less effective in fighting. The League’s integrity worsened in 1923 when three of its most important member states invaded countries without the League’s backing. Italy invaded Corfu after a small skirmish occurred on Greek territory. Mussolini (Italy’s leader) rejected a role for The League of Nations to settle the dispute. In January 1923 Germany could not pay France’s reparations instalment so France and Belgian forces invaded an area of Germany called the Ruhr and demanded payment through goods like coal and steel as the Ruhr was a very important industrial area for Germany. The French remained in the Ruhr for two years until Germany was lent money by USA. It was not clear from the outset that the League would not uphold what it promised to do. This was a weakness in the League that could have been suspected but the League had vowed that it would uphold peace for all countries whether they be members or not, and would be strict with all invasions.
These events damaged the League as it showed from the outset that perhaps the League was not going to uphold peace when its member states (especially the most influential ones) were involved. Or perhaps the League did not have the strength to oppose the member states wishes or could not afford to lose their membership. Although not all wounds had been healed after the First World War and many nations still harboured resentment to other countries for various reasons. Italy and Japan were angry with Britain and France as they felt that they did not get what they were promised for fighting alongside them in the First World War. Italy and Japan were economic have nots as they did not really get paid reparations or gain any land whereas France and Belgium gave themselves plenty of both, as it was France and Britain who created the Peace Treaties which dealt out the reparations and land. This meant that Italy and Japan were still bitter and would want to reclaim land and try and recover economically after losing many lives and spending so much money in the War. It was clear that Japan and Italy were not completely happy with the League as Britain and France were the most senior states and Italy and Japan had unresolved issues with them. Japan had one more thing to be unhappy about when her proposal that all races should be seen as equal was rejected by the League, which essentially meant that many states saw White people as superior to Asian people, this alienated Japan further. It was clear from the beginning that there would be problems with the economic have-nots of the War, and Japan and Italy proved this, in 1931 and 1935. In 1931 Japan invaded China and the League failed to stop them, in 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia to very limited response from The League, Japan left the League in 1933 and Italy in 1937.
The League was not destined to be a failure from the outset, but the factors it had to work against outweighed the things it had going for it. In reality all the support, enthusiasm and co-operation was mainly happening between a number or small nations who would affect very little in the big picture. Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, USA, Austria-Hungary, Britain and France played the largest roles in the World War and they were the most powerful nations. Only Britain, France, Italy and Japan were in the League but Italy and Japan as mentioned earlier were discontent, which only left two loyal big powers in the League, which limited their capabilities. The fact the League had no army was a big part as it was up to the member states to deploy troops and if they didn’t the force would be weakened. The League could put economic sanctions on countries, but by doing that many member states lost trade with them so the sanctions were not beneficial to the League so in some cases just disintegrated and were not upheld, e.g. sanctions on Italy in reaction to invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
The League was a good idea and probably did delay major conflicts for about 10 years as the World was not ready for peace after the bloodshed of the First World War and many conflicts had not been resolved which meant the League had very little chance of functioning properly as it faced a very uphill task which not enough countries were dedicated too achieving.
