The League of Nations

• What was the League of Nations?

  • The League of Nations was a vision for bringing the world together in peace
  • It was to be a group of countries that would work together and solve problems, like a world parliament
• Who joined the League of Nations?

  • When the League was founded there were 42 members, and this rose to 58 by 1934
  • There were four permanent members of the Council who made all the big decisions: Britain, France, Italy and Japan
• Why was it formed?

  Countries would work together to achieve four aims:

  • To stop war from breaking out
  • To encourage disarmament
  • To improve working conditions
  • To tackle deadly diseases
• Where was the League based?

  • In Geneva, Switzerland
  • Switzerland had not been involved in the war, so it was seen as a peaceful country
  • Another key international organisation, the Red Cross, was also based there, so it seemed like a sensible place for the headquarters
• Woodrow Wilson was one of the key figures in its creation. Was the USA an important member too?

  • No - the Senate refused to agree to it and as much as Wilson tried to convince his people that it was a good idea, they had seen many young Americans die in the First World War and wanted to isolate themselves from Europe
  • Wilson was devastated
• Did all the other powerful countries join?

  • No - Britain and France were suspicious of the new Communist government in Russia, so Russia was not allowed to join
  • And the countries that had lost the war could not join - so no Germany, at first
  • This changed in 1926, when the Locarno Treaty was signed and Germany was allowed to join the League
  • But Germany's membership was short lived; once Hitler came to power, he took Germany out of the League again
  • In addition, Japan and Italy both left after they invaded other countries in the 1930s
• What did Britain and France think of the League?

  • At the Paris Peace Conference David Lloyd George had been critical of the idea - but then on 25 March 1919, he issued the Fontainebleau Memorandum in which he said that he completely supported the League
  • It helped that in the final peace treaties, colonies belonging to Germany and the other losing countries were given to the League of Nations to be run as mandates
  • The idea was that the League would run these colonies until they were ready to be independent, but some historians have said that Britain saw this as an opportunity to add to their already vast empire
  • Britain generally regarded the League of Nations as a place for countries to discuss ideas, but without any real power
  • France, however, was glad of anything that might help protect is from another German invasion
• How did the League plan to keep peace?

  • It was thought that the League would work through collective security, the idea that if all countries worked together, they could make sure that peace was kept and that the interest of every nations were looked after
  • In 1920, the League also set up an international court that would establish international laws
  • This was called the Permanent Court of International Justice
  • If every country was following the same laws, there would be less chance of them disagreeing
• And if the League couldn't prevent disputes?

  The Covenant set out how the League would deal with aggression:

  • Mitigation: getting countries together to talk through problems
  • If this didn't work they could use moral condemnation - a good telling off
  • Finally, economic sanctions could be enforced, where members of the League would not trade with the warring countries

  The League didn't have its own army, as it was a peaceful organisation. If an army was absolutely necessary, the League was to ask its members to lend it their armed forces.
• The Assembly

  • The League of Nations worked like an international parliament
  • Every member could send representatives to the Assembly, which met once a year, on the first Monday of September, to discuss and vote on matters
  • Every country had an equal vote and in order to pass a vote the decision had to be unanimous - every country had to agree
  • If not, the motion couldn't be passed and would have to be referred to the Council
  • The Assembly was in charge of: deciding when a new country could join; the election of judges to the Permanent Court of International Justice; voting for the non-permanent members of the Council; and deciding how the League's money was to be spent
• The Assembly pt. 2

  • The first meeting was held in a Swiss hotel and 42 nations were represented
  • Some of the most powerful countries in the world attended - Britain, France, Italy and Japan - as well as some of the smaller nations such as Belgium, Holland, Cuba and Peru
  • The losing nations in the Great War - Germany, Austria - weren't allowed to join and neither was Russia because its new Communist government wasn't recognised yet (they eventually joined in 1934)
• The Council

  • An assembly of 42 countires which met once a year would not be enough to ensure that the League ran smoothly; it was too large to react quickly in an emergency, so there was also a Council which met more frequently
  • In the Council there were four permanent members: Britain, France, Italy and Japan
  • Four other countries would be chosen to sit on the Council, each for a three-year term
  • This was later increased to nine non-permanent members
  • The Council had the power of veto; it could stop a ruling with its vote
  • Even with the Assembly did manage to make a unanimous ruling, the Council could still stop it
• The Permanent Court of International Justice

  • The League set up and funded the Permanent Court of International Justice
  • This was a court of law that would settle international arguments
  • Any country could bring an issue to the court and eleven judges and four deputy judges would listen to both sides before reaching a verdict
  • The Court could then advise the parties involved in the argument
  • However, this was just advice; it wasn't a compulsory ruling and since the League had no army it was difficult to make countries agree unless they wanted to
  • The Court was elected by the Assembly and the Council, and judges would fill that role for 11 years
• The Secretariat

  • This was the civil service of the League, meaning that it was in charge of administration and organising any action that the League wanted to take
  • It was a body of experts from different areas, such as finance, who were responsible for carrying out any decisions taken by the League, with the exception of military issues
• Special commissions

  These were special groups put together to tackle issues that the League was worried about

  They included:

  • The International Labour Organisation
  • The Disarmament Commission
  • The Health Organisation
  • The Slavery Commission
  • The Commission for Refugees
  • The Permanent Central Opium Board

  Other commissions helped underdeveloped countries with economic issues, supported under-represented or minority groups such as women, and supervised the mandates
• The strengths of the League of Nations

  • It was written into all of the peace treaties at the end of the First World War, so all nations involved had signed an agreement that recognised the organisation
  • It had a vast membership
  • As there were so many members, economic sanctions and moral condemnation were daunting punishments for many countries
• Weaknesses of the League of Nations

  • Many important countries did not, or would not, join the League. The USA, for example, never joined. This undermined the League as a 'global' organisation and meant that if a country faced economic sanctions, it could still trade with some of the most powerful and richest countries
  • The League had no army, which meant that it could not force people to obey it
  • The structure was very complicated. It confused people and slowed action
  • Decisions had to be unanimous, which meant that decision-making was slow
• International Labour Organisation's aim

  To bring workers, employers and government together to improve the conditions that people worked in
• International Labour Organisation's successes

  • 1922 - recommended banning the use of white lead in paint as it was poisonous
  • 1930 - helped Greece set up social insurance (to help people if they were unemployed because of an illness)
  • 1928 - 77 countries agreed to set a minimum wage
  • In Tanganyika, Africa, slave labour was being used to build a new railway, but conditions were so bad that 50% of workers died; the League challenged this and reduced the death rate to 4%
• International Labour Organisation's failures

  • 1919 - tried to stop children under the age of 14 from working; this suggestion was not adopted by most members because they thought it would cost too much money
  • 1935 - suggested that the working day should be limited to eight hours; when members voted on this issue, only four voted in favour of it, saying it would cost industries too much; similarly, the suggestion that workers should be paid for their holidays was unpopular - one member said that it would be 'industrial suicide'
• The Commission for Refugees aims

  To return prisoners of war home and support refugees by improving camp conditions, finding new homes, or returning them to their own countries once the threat of conflict had passed
• The Commission for Refugees successes

  • 1921 - the League helped free around 427,000 out of 500,000 prisoners of war still imprisoned from the First World War and returned them to their homelands
  • 1917 - revolution led to civil war in Russia; by 1921, 1.5 million people had fled Russia to refugee camp and the League helped them find new homes
  • 1922 - Turkey clashed with Greece, and the violence forced people to flee to refugee camps. The League set up refugee camps and sent doctors to help treat diseases such as cholera and smallpox in these camps; homes were found for around 600,000 Greeks fleeing from Turkey between 1919 and 1923
  • Created the Nansen Passport, a document that could be used as identification by refugees
• The Commission for Refugees failures

  • 1933 - the League tried to appoint a High Commissioner for refugees, who were mainly Jewish, fleeing from Germany. Germany rejected this proposal, so a unanimous vote could not be reached and the motion was defeated. The commissioner was appointed, but as an independent body separate from the League of Nations, which meant that they had less power
• The Slavery Commission successes

  • Organised raids on the camps of slave traders in Sierra Leone, setting 200,000 people free. In 1927 Sierra Leone announced that slavery was to be abolished altogether
• The Economic and Financial Committee successes

  • Austria and Hungary had lost the war and were trying to rebuild their economies; the League sent financial experts to help so that the two countries would not go bankrupt
  • Developed codes for importing and exporting so that all members were following the same rules
• The Economic and Financial Committee failures

  • When global depression hit after 1929, this commission was unable to cope
• The Organisation for Communications and Transport aims

  • Regulated transport developed during the war in order to keep people safe
• The Organisation for Communications and Transport successes

  • Introduced shipping lanes, which meant that fewer collisions occurred
  • Produced an international highway code so that car drivers followed the same traffic rules wherever they travelled
• The Health Committee successes

  • Started an international campaign to kill mosquitoes, which spread diseases such malaria and yellow fever
  • Worked with the government in Russia to organise an education programme to teach people about how the disease typhus was spread
  • Sent doctors to look after refugees in Turkey and helped improve living conditions in refugee camps in the 1920s
  • The Health Committee was later renamed the World Health Organisation, which still exists today
• The Permanent Central Opium Board aims

  • To stop the cultivation and distribution of opium - opium was legally used as a painkiller but some drugs companies also sold it illegally
  • After 1925 the Board became the Permanent Central Narcotics Board and tackled other drugs as well
• The Permanent Central Opium Board successes

  • Introduced a system where companies had to have a certificate to say that they were allowed to import opium for medicinal purposes
  • Blacklisted four large companies that were involved in trading illegal drugs
• The Permanent Central Opium Board failures

  • Some historians claim that key members of the League were not really dedicated to stopping the sale of opium, as they made large amounts of money from it
• Vilna

  • 1920
  • After the First World War countries that had been in Austria-Hungary's empire were given independence
  • Lots of countries were created or re-established including Poland and Lithuania
  • Vilna was to be the capital of Lithuania, but the majority of people living there wanted to be Polish
  • A Polish army took control of the city and Lithuania asked the League for help
  • The League told Poland to remove its army, but was refused
  • France saw Poland as a potential ally against Germany and refused to help
  • Britain would not send troops without the support of other countries
  • So, the first time the League was asked to settle a dispute they did nothing, and Poland took Vilna
• Upper Silesia

  • 1921-25
  • Upper Silesia was on the border between Germany and Poland at the end of the First World War and both Germans and Poles were living there
  • Both nations wanted to claim the area, as it was important to iron and steel production
  • In 1921 a plebiscite was organised to decide who would own Upper Silesia
  • Britain and France sent troops to police voting stations and to make sure the vote was fair and calm
  • Germany won 60 percent of the votes, but Poland claimed that many of the people who voted for Germany no longer lived in Upper Silesia
  • They complained and the League of Nations decided to split Upper Silesia into regions according to how the people had voted
  • Germany received most of the rural areas, while Poland received the industrial zones
• Upper Silesia pt.2

  • The outcome was accepted by both Germany and Poland, and the League made sure that the partition went smoothly by ensuring that rail links, water and electricity were still supplied to each side of Upper Silesia
  • However, the final settlement was considered unfair by the Poles; they received roughly half the population of Upper Silesia, but only a third of the land
  • Around half a million Poles were now in confirmed German territory
  • The Germans weren't fully satisfied either
  • They lost three quarters of the coal mines they had owned prior to the settlement - a valuable source of income
  • In 1922 the German government complained to the League and was awarded the right to import coal at a heavily discounted rate
  • When this agreement ended in 1925 relations between Germany and Poland worsened
• The Aland Islands

  • 1921
  • Both Sweden and Finland claimed the Aland Island, which were between the two countries, and threatened war on each other
  • The League investigated each country's claim
  • They decided that the islands should go to Finland
  • However, Finland was not allowed to build forts on the islands, so that they could not be used as a base from which to attack Sweden
  • Sweden agreed to these terms, so the League had successfully avoided war
• Corfu

  • 1923
  • After the war the boundaries of Greece and Albania were still to be agreed upon
  • The League gave the job to an Italian general named Tellini, but while he was surveying an area of Greece, Tellini and his team were murdered
  • At the time, Italy was ruled by a dictator named Benito Mussolini
  • When he heard about what had happened, he was furious and blamed the Greek government
  • He demanded that the murderers should be executed and that he should be paid compensation, but the Greeks did not know who had murdered Tellini and his team
  • On 31 August Mussolini invaded and occupied Corfu, killing fifteen people
  • Greece appealed to the League, which condemned Mussolini's act of aggression but agreed that Greece should pay the compensation
  • The League would look after this money and it would be awarded to Italy once the killers were found
• Corfu pt.2

  • Mussolini still wasn't satisfied
  • He complained that the Conference of Ambassadors, a group of powerful countries including Britain, France and Japan, and persuaded them to undermine the League
  • Greece was forced to apologise and pay compensation directly to Italy
  • Mussolini did withdraw his troops from Corfu
  • In this instance, when a large country had threatened a smaller one with military action, the League had proved that they could be ignored and overturned by other international groups
• Bulgaria

  • 1925
  • When Greek soldiers were killed on the Bulgarian border, Greece invaded
  • Bulgaria appealed to the League for help
  • The League condemned the Greeks and ordered them to withdraw troops and pay compensation
  • Greece thought that the League was being hypocritical, as Mussolini had got away with similar actions in Corfu in 1923
  • However, Greece was a small country and unwilling to risk poor relations with powerful members of the League such as Britain and France, so they obeyed
• The Wall Street Crash

  • 1929
  • The American economy crashed
  • The country was plunged into a devastating depression
  • This would last throughout the 1930s
  • America traded with countries across the world and had lent a lot of money during and after the war, so global economies were also affected
  • The whole world faced economic depression and in desperate times, people lost faith in their governments
  • Some people turned to extremist parties such as the Nazis in Germany who promised to make Germany strong again by overturning the Treaty of Versailles
  • The League was powerless to do anything to help people or to control these new party leaders who were willing to resort to violence to get their own way