To what extent was the League of Nations a success?

Although I have shown that the league had quite a few successes it was most famous for it’s failures. In the 1920’s the league had many successes but after the Great depression the League of Nations fell apart. Every country was hit by the depression and because of high unemployment and poor living conditions, each country started to look out for it’s own interests which made them selfish and less willing to cooperate. One of its most spectacular failures was in 1931 with the Manchurian crisis. The Manchurian Crisis began in 1927 when Japan saw the land in Manchuria as a good investment as it was already near all of Japan’s recently acquired colonies such as Korea and Formosa and so created the south Manchurian railway service to exploit Manchuria’s resources. By 1931 Japan controlled most of Manchuria’s economy. The great depression had caused Japan like the rest of the world, much hardship. Many factories were closed; people were left homeless and unemployed. The Japanese army officers got impatient, they thought that the ideal way of helping the Japanese out of the depression was to take over Manchuria and although the Japanese government did not agree they went ahead with their plans. On the 18 September 1931 Japanese army officers blew up a section of the South Manchurian railway in Shenyang, they blamed it on the local Chinese people living there and used it as an excuse to occupy the area. The Chinese government went to the League for help and the League ordered the Japanese to leave the area. The Japanese government agreed and blamed it on ‘some military hot heads’. But while this was going on the Kwantung army continued to invade Manchuria against the Government’s orders and by the end of 1931 it occupied almost the whole of the area and had made it into a semi independent state called Manzhouguo. A way to stop the Japanese was to impose economic sanctions on her but the British were un-willing to do this because if they did then the Japanese would seize it’s main ports in South east Asia (Singapore and Hong Kong) and also economic sanctions would be useless without the cooperation of the USA who was Japan’s main trading partner. Another thing that could have been done would be to impose military sanctions but neither France nor Britain were willing to risk their armies and navies and even if they did it would require of army of the size of the USSR or the USA and neither of these was a member of the league. The only thing left the league could do would be to try and persuade the countries to reach a compromise. Lord Lytton of Britain was sent to investigate and a year later he produced a report to try and satisfy both sides. It suggested that the Japanese would leave Manchuria but that it would carry on being a semi-independent state free from Chinese rule. In response the Japanese resigned from the league and continued to occupy the Chinese providence known as Jehol. The Manchurian crisis had knock on affects for the league, because now even it’s strongest supporters seemed doubtful about whether or not it could maintain world peace.

The next big failure for the league came in 1935 in the Abyssinia crisis. In the 1930’s almost all of Africa was part of some European empire and only two states remained independent, one of these states was Abyssinia. Italy had the three states surrounding Abyssinia; Libya, Eritrea and Somaliland and now wanted Abyssinia as well. Not only would Abyssinia provide a wealth in natural resources but it would also be revenge for Italy who failed to conquer Abyssinia in 1896. The leader of Italy Mussolini had been planning to take Abyssinia since the 1920’s even while publicly signing a treaty of friendship with Haile Selassie (Emperor of Abyssinia) In December 1934 there was a disputed between the Italian and the Abyssinian soldiers at the Wal-Wal oasis, 50 miles inside Abyssinia. Mussolini claimed that this was his land and demanded an apology and began to prepare his troops for an invasion. Halile Selassie went to the league for help and the league immediately condemned Italy for it’s actions and ordered all of it’s members to impose economic sanctions on Italy (stop trading with it) these sanctions did not work because Italy’s allies still continued trading with Italy. Also the one thing that the Italians needed to fight was oil, and this was the one thing that was still being traded with Italy. A reason why Britain and France were unwilling to act too harshly against Italy was that it was their main ally against Hitler and was desperate not to anger Mussolini and so followed their own agenda. Both the British foreign secretary and the French prime minister drew up a plan called the Hoare-Laval plan. This plan gave large areas of Abyssinia to Italy and reserved the south of the country for Italian trade. The Italians agreed to this but there was much pressure from people who thought that this was unfair to Abyssinia and so the British Foreign minister, Samuel Hoare resigned and the plan was scrapped. There was now nothing to stand in the way of Italy taking over Abyssinia. The league’s reputation was in shreds; Britain and France had followed their own agenda while the rest of the league was imposing sanctions and now Mussolini annoyed at the sanctions imposed on Italy began to look for support from Hitler’s Germany.

 The final blow to the league came with disarmament although it had not had much success with the area in the 1920’s; the problem came to a head in 1932-33. The Disarmament conference had already decided to prohibit bombing of civilian populations, limit the size of their artillery but could now agree on how to do it as no-one seemed to want to destroy the planes capable of bombing Civilians and even the proposal to ban the manufacture of chemical weapons was defeated. But the biggest problem was Germany.  By now most countries felt that Germany had been unfairly treated by the treaty of Versailles but the question was whether to let Germany rearm or to make everyone else disarm to the level of Germany. The Germans walked out of the conference in 1932 when it’s efforts to try and get everyone to disarm to its level failed. Then after a note sent by the British seemed superior it angered them further. In December 1932 an agreement for equality was agreed and in January Germany announced that they were coming back. In February Hitler became chancellor and immediately began secretly re-arming. In May Hitler promised not to disarm if in 5 years all other nations destroyed their arms. In June, Britain produced a disarmament plan and in October Germany withdrew from the disarmament conference and later from the league altogether. Disarmament had failed. Many felt that is was because Britain and France were divided on the issue, because in 1935 Britain much to the French dismay signed a treaty with Germany which allowed it to rebuild it’s navy as long as it stayed below 35% of Britain’s.

In conclusion, I still agree with my original statement that the League of Nations was as much a success as it was a failure because although the failures of the League were more public and infamous the successes of the League were equally important if less prominent. In particular I consider that the fact that the League maintained its commitment to peaceful solutions to problems in the face of adversity was its strongest legacy, even though these solutions were not always successful. I believe that the main factor that caused the failure of the League was the Great Depression as this caused the main Powers of the League to become selfish and uncooperative. If the Great Depression had not happened I believe that the League would have been more successful.