The Treaty also outlined that Germany would not be permitted to join the league until they could prove that weren’t an aggressive nation and that they posed no threat to any other countries. The League was dealt its first major blow when the treaties were revealed to the world, Woodrow Wilson had been voted out of power in America to make way for new president Warren G. Harding. Harding decided that America would go into isolation and focus on their own problems that had arisen in the USA thus they would not be joining The League. This left Britain and France to take control of the league despite the problems they already had in their own countries. Also at this time Russia’s communist government decided that they would not be joining The League, after this the decision was made that Russia would not be allowed to join again.
The first major dispute The League was asked to resolve was the Polish taking control of the capital of Lithuania, Vilna , Lithuania was a country re-formed at the Paris Peace Conference and the Majority of Vilna’s population were polish people that were in the areas of Poland that were merged into Lithuania. The Polish weren’t happy with this and in 1920 a private Polish army took control on Vilna, Lithuania approached The League to ask for assistance. The League started to react quickly and began to put the three steps into motion, after condemning the Polish they began to look into any trading happening between Poland and countries in the league, there wasn’t any. So The League approached the armies of Britain and France to try and enforce the third step, both armies refused to help in fear that making enemy’s at this time it could lead to another war and no country in the world wanted that at this time. At this point The League backed off and let the Polish keep Vilna.
This shows us that The League were not very strong or well established at this time, we can infer this because the first hurdle they came to they backed down and let Poland keep Vilna. Regardless of any repercussions that could subsequently come against the Lithuanian people.
The League did however have its positive times and their success an example of this was Upper Silesia, Upper Silesia was a rich steel mine on the boarder of Poland and Germany. Both countries wanted control over the area, The League was consulted. It was decided that there would be a vote to decide who would take control of the area, The League also called in the Armies of Britain and France to police the polling stations. After the vote The League decided that the area would be divided, the commercial areas were given to Germany and the rural areas to Poland.
We can see that here The League had a good result, although the Polish weren’t happy that they didn’t get the commercial areas but The League did the right thing by calling a vote for the German and Polish people. This at least made the Polish feel like they were being included in some decision making. So overall The League made the right decision.
The very first of The Leagues failures was a disagreement between Czechoslovakia and Poland. In 1919 they were arguing over Teschen, Teschen is a small town between Czechoslovakia and Poland rich in coal mines. Both the Poles and the Czechs wanted to control the rich coal mines, similar to the dispute at Vilna The League was consulted to help. On the January of 1919 the Czech and Polish troops took to the streets of Teschen and fought resulting in massive loss of life.
The League decided that the Poles would receive the bulk of the town whereas the Czechs received one of the suburbs, the suburb contained the richest coal mine. The Poles refused to accept this, although after this there was no more physical fighting between the nations, over the next twenty-five years they constantly disputed the decision and argued. This was a mass failure for The League as 2 of their members were fighting for a very long period of time this would have effected any decision making within The League, thus it would have had a knock on effect to all the countries involved in any sort of dispute.
To conclude I would agree that The League of Nations was doomed to fail from its creation, I think this because as soon as they ran out of options or things didn’t go their way they simply gave up. This had knock on effects to not only their member countries but also the other world countries, an example of this is the dispute over Teschen in 1919. The League’s failure to fully resolve the dispute led to arguments between Poland and Czechoslovakia for the next twenty- five years, it also led to the decision making in The League being impaired as two of their members were fighting.