The Treaty of Versailles was signed with Germany after World War One. The treaty was the harshest peace treaty of the war, forcing Germany to accept the guilt for the war and the Treaty restricted the German army to 100,000 troops with no submarines or airplanes. The Germans were outraged due to the severe provisions of the treaty. Furthermore, Germany was not invited to the peace conference. Isolating Germany at the Paris Peace Conference foreshadowed to the isolation of Germany in the League of Nations. Germany, initially, was excluded from being a member of the international body and, as a punishment with respect to the Treaty of Versailles; therefore, she was not invited to the League. Just as Germany, Russia, also known as USSR, was also excluded from the League of Nations. There was a different reason lying behind Russia’s exclusion and that was due to the adoption of communism in Russia. Not considering the two potentially powerful countries of Europe as part of the League ended up in tension rather than reconciliation. The two found the solution in acting together on their interests. They signed the Treaty of Rapallo which would support their economic recovery after WWI. With the aid of the treaty Germany began training her soldiers in the Russian territory, thus violating disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. The League was supposed to enforce the reduction of the army sizes of countries and that was another common point between the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles. Violating this common point Germany showed his anger towards the leaders of the League and proved how ineffective their policy was. Germany and Russia were regaining their strength with the agreement which meant a threat to the newly formed small states. Afterwards, USSR and Germany became part of the League. They, however, quitted from the League because of the disagreement about military sizes. Albeit the League supported the disarmament of nations, there were several conflicts and invasions happening. However, there should not have been any conflicts since the purpose of disarmament was to decrease chance of a war. As a result, the exclusion of Russia and Germany brought a weakness to the League, which would end up in taking the League’s last breath. Both the failure of disarmament policy and isolating the potential European major powers demonstrated that the League of Nations was not on a right track.
The League of Nations had three things to do when there was a hassle. These three things were known as the League’s sanctions. The League had and assembly to decide, peacefully, what to do when there was a dispute. The guilty nation was introduced verbal sanctions – warning an aggressor nation that she would need to leave another nation’s territory or face the consequences. If these offender countries disregard the League’s decision, the League could introduce economic sanctions. The aim of economic sanctions is to punish the guilty nation economically, so that the people would revolt against their government and make the government accept the decision of the League. The League telling the member countries not to have any kind of trade relations with the aggressor country was also possible since it bore the intention of pushing the aggressor towards bankruptcy. If economic sanctions did not work, the last thing the League could do was introducing physical sanctions – in order to make the aggressor accept its decision to use military force. At that point, however, emerged a couple of complications. First, when the League put verbal sanctions into practice the aggressor would not give up. Second, when the League introduced economic sanctions not every country would agree with the decision since all countries sought benefits for themselves. Third, the League lacked military to use against any military dispute, but that was its physical sanctions. All these complications contributed to the further weakening of the League. The sanctions’ goal was to avert disputes, but they were so ineffective that they could not accomplish their purpose. For example, physical sanctions are the last step for avoiding a dispute but it was impossible to do so. The League possessed no military, except for the British and French militaries but they were damaged due to the World War One, and thus it could not take actions when there was a controversy. The dictators of Germany and USSR were aware of the League’s weakness and it was the primary reason for them not to compromise on certain issues, such as the German invasion of Poland in 1938 and the Russian invasion of Finland in 1937. It was apparent that the League of Nations was ineffective in keeping peace and influencing on countries. Incapability of the League brought itself collapse and was instrumental to the beginning of World War Two.
The World War One played the biggest role for the establishment of the League of Nations as the League was founded to avoid a future global war. Every single person hoped the creation of an international body could bring peace to Europe and to the world. In the very beginning of its life, the League was wounded when the Republican senate of the US refused to join the League. Apart from establishing peace around the world, the League also hoped to achieve disarmament and cooperation, especially in terms of economy and social life. The League was successful in achieving its goals, but only in the beginning. This success did not last long. The successes of the League were overshadowed by its weaknesses. The weaknesses covered all strong points of the League as if they were not achieved at all. Several examples of its success were solving the conflicts between following countries: Bulgaria and Greece in 1925, Iraq and Turkey from 1925 to 1926, and Poland and Lithuania in 1927. Moreover, the League attained successes in social improvements, such as the problems of refugees and famine relief; and it also controlled drug areas. On the other hand, the weaknesses of the League were very crucial. The absence of the U.S. had negative impacts on the League as the British and the French were not ready to take care of all member countries. Instead of seeking benefits for all the states, France and Britain sought benefits only for themselves which undermined the strength of the League. A great deal of countries thought the Treaty of Versailles was unfair and harsh, still France and Britain were, initially, enforcing the provisions of the treaty. They could not foresee the consequences of their action. If only they knew another global war was coming because of them… Another major failure of the League was its sanctions. They had absolutely no sense. Many people believe, without hesitation, that without sanctions the League would have survived more. Once again the major European powers, France and Britain, proved that their series of mistakes, under the title of “keeping peace;” led to bigger troubles, conflicts, and eventually a future global war. The League of Nations pushes people think that if it had included USA, Germany, and USSR the history would have been written differently. At least, the failure of the League had taught the powerful countries a very important lesson because the United Nations, a new version of LoN which was established after the World War Two, still exists nowadays.
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