Essay On The League Of Nations

846 Words2 Pages

Though the League of Nations prevented the out break of war among some nations, it had many failures as well. It’s biggest failure was containing all the world’s major powers. The first issue they faced was that the country whose president came up with the idea of the League of Nations, refused to join. The prestige of the League of Nations was greatly effected because America was one of the most powerful states. Another weakness of the league was that Germany was not allowed to join because they were the reason the war started. Since Germany was not able to join, they lost out on whatever strength Germany had against aggressor nations. Russia was also not allowed to join because of their communist government. This left the League of Nations without the support of the three most powerful nations and would only leave them to enforce economic sanctions on the nations. (Darity 385-386) Aside, from clearly failing to obtain it’s most high profile roles, it also failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II. In Article 11 of the League’s Covenant, it stated “Any war or threat of war is a matter of concern to the whole League and the League shall take action that may safe guard peace.” This meaning that any conflict between two nations which resulted in a war, would be considered a failure for the League (Benjamin). The first nation that resulted in a failure for the League was Italy. In 1919, Italian nationalist felt the “Big Three” broke promises to Italy at the Treaty of Versailles. The Italian nationalists decided to capture a small port in Fiume. This port was given to Yugoslavia by the Treaty of Versailles. The League did not step in to help solve this disagreement. Instead for 15 months Fiume was governed by d’Annunzio, an It... ... middle of paper ... ... Nations failed to stop Japan from taking over the Manchurian province as a satellite state or to force Italy out of Ethiopia. This allied both Japan and Italy with Nazi Germany. Germany took over Austria in March 1938 and the Sudeten part of Czechoslovakia was ceded by Hitler. March of 1939 Germany took over the rest of Czechoslovakia. The leagues failure to control Germany led to the start of WWII when they invaded Poland (Merriman and Winter). Though the League of Nations did have some success, their failures outweighed them. They had worked hard to ensure their members would be protected from any form of war, but in the end, some countries had the power that over ridded the Leagues power. The League of Nations later became the foundation for the United Nations after World War II. The United Nations also faced many issues that the League had previously faced.

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