The League Of Nations

Setting up the league
1. The aim of the League of Nations was to bring peace through preventing wars, encouraging disarmament, and make the world a better place by improving people's work conditions and tackling disease
2. Its organisation comprised of an assembly, which met once a year; a council, which met more regularly to consider crises; a small secretariat to handle the paperwork; a Court of International Justice; and a number of committees such as the International Labour Organisation and the Health Committee to carry out its humanitarian work
3. Its main strength was that, because it was set up by the Treaty of Versailles, anyone who had signed it joined meaning 58 members had joined by the 1930s. To enforce its will it could offer arbitration through the Court of International Justice
4. The main weaknesses were that everybody hated the Treaty of Versailles; its aims were overly ambitious; Germany,Russia and the US were not members; it had no army; its organisation was cumbersome; and all decisions had to be anonymous
Successes and Failures
1. The League of nations was successful in creating a better world
  1. It had brought half a million POWs home
  2. It had helped Turkish refugees
  3. It attacked drug smugglers and slave traders
  4. It supported measures against malaria and leprosy
2. The League of Nations was quite successful in stopping border disputes
  1. It settled a dispute between Sweden and Finland over the Aaland islands
  2. It stopped a war between Greece and Bulgaria
3. However, when faced with strong nation who chose to ignore the league- like Italy in 1923 over Corfu- It could do nothing
Manchuria and Abyssinia
1. In the early 1930s, two events destroyed people's belief in the league's ability to stop wars
  1. The downfall of both situations were both due to the fact that the league were too slow to react or made bad decisions about how to suppress the aggressor nation
    1. This served to show that smaller countries could not expect protection from the League and that aggressors (such as Hitler) had nothing to stand in their way
2. Manchuria
  1. By February 1932, India had invaded and conquered Manchuria
    1. It took a year for the league to declare that Japan should leave, at which point Japan left the league of Nations
      1. The league couldn't send an army in and needed America to back a trade sanction so in the end they did nothing to stop it
3. Abyssinia
  1. In 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia
    1. The Abyssinian emperor went to the league for help but all they did was ban the sale of arms which actually did more harm to Abyssinia
      1. The league then decided to offer Italy a part of Abyssinia but they invaded them brutally anyway
        Far from stopping Italy, Britain and France tried to make a secret pact to give Abyssinia to Italy
4. The Effects
  1. It became clear that if a strong nation decided to ignore the league then there was nothing it could do
  2. The league's delays and slowness made it look scared
  3. The sanctions were shown to be useless
  4. Everyone realised that Britain and France were not prepared to use force
  5. The four major powers- Japan, Italy, Britain, and France- all betrayed the league
  6. Smaller countries realised the league could not and would not protect them
  7. Britain and France decided that the League was useless to stop war, and followed instead the policy of appeasement
  8. Hitler was encouraged to move ahead with his plans

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The League Of Nations

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	Created by seth.bragg over 10 years ago