Consequences of the Failure of the League in the 1930's

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Consequences of the Failure of the League in the 1930's

The first main failure was to disarm large countries as an example so

that others would follow, so when Hitler began rearming he used it as

an excuse to do so. He had already left the league so it was helpless

but the other country officials didn't object to Germanys rearming

they felt that Germany should have some sort of protection. The only

pact signed over the rearming was between the British prime minister

and Hitler saying that Germanys navy could be 33% of what ever

Britain's was. Hitler only signed it to please the British to try and

show he was an honest man but he didn't have much use for a navy

anyway as he had aircraft now for across sea battles.

When the Manchurian crisis occurred the league wasn't really concerned

with it, as the main countries including, Britain and France, were all

sorting out their own economy and weren't really prepared to make any

major enforcements to stop Japan invading China. Mussolini and Hitler

were both over looking the actions taken by the league and saw that

the league was weak in it's power against Japan so Hitler started

planning his actions whilst Mussolini started to test the league

again. The Abyssinian crisis was not only for the Italian governments

purpose of directing its publics attention away from their economic

problems but it was a test of the leagues strength.

With the Manchurian crisis it involved Japan a country far away from

the mainly European based league but with the Abyssinian crisis, it

took place in Europe and there were British and French colonies all

extremely close to Italy and Abyssinia.

The league yet again took very little action against Italy but did

learn from the Manchurian crisis that morally condemning a country

didn't work, so they placed poor economic sanctions on Italy. Germany

and Austria didn't place the sanctions on Italy, oil wasn't sanctioned

and the Suez Canal was still open for use by the Italians, so they

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