The League of Nations

Death of the League of Nations

The League of Nations’ ineffectiveness was revealed by its incapability of dealing with nations which were starting conflicts and wars. As the Great Depression, which started in 1929, evolved into world-wide economic and political chaos, more and more nations chose to use war as a way of dealing with problems, instead of diplomatic discourse. In 1931, Japan, which had become a military dictatorship, attacked Manchuria and later the rest of China.

Germany and Japan left the League of Nations in 1933, which rendered it even more ineffective.

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Then, in 1935, Italy, under the leadership of the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, conquered the only remaining independent state in Africa, Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia.) This was a consequence of Mussolini’s ambitions of acquiring a colonial empire like France and Britain and of making the Mediterranean Sea an “Italian Lake.” Even though the League of Nations did impose sanctions on Italy, they were clearly not severe enough. Notably, they did not include an oil embargo. Later, Mussolini stated that if the League had imposed oil sanctions on Italy, it would have been impossible for Italy to continue the war against the Abyssinians.

The Spanish Civil War also proved the ineffectiveness of the League. France was under great political instability with the rise of Fascist-type political parties such as the Croix de Feu and the Cagoule (which was supported by WWI’s Marshall Pétain) and a weak coalition government called the Front National - which consisted of political groups as far apart on the political scale as ultra-left-wing Communists and centre-right-wing Radicals. The French government was scared that trying to save the Spanish Republic from the Franco’s Fascists would trigger a revolution in France. Even though Britain was not in the same political turmoil as France was, it did not want to take part actively in the Spanish Civil War. Therefore, the League did not take any action against the Fascist uprising, even when Hitler’s Germany actively took part in the fighting.

Finally, when the League of Nations did implement economic sanctions on Fascist Germany, too many countries which were either allied with Germany or neutral continued to trade. As a consequence, the League’s sanctions were ineffective. The French and British policy of Appeasement essentially let Hitler do whatever he wanted, and notably go against the Treaty of Versailles by militarising the Rhineland, uniting Germany with Austria and invading Czechoslovakia.

The world now knew that the League was either incapable or not willing to act decisively against nations which consciously chose not to work towards world peace. Perhaps as a direct consequence of its ineffectiveness, the world fought the Second World War, starting on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. This would, eventually, give birth to the United Nations, just as the First World War had given birth to its predecessor, the League of Nations.