The League of Nations; Why Did it Fail?

1839 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The success and failure of the league of nations

In the First World War approximately 16,543,185 people were killed within the four year span (World War I Casualties 4). After this devastation countries from all over the world gathered in France for Peace Conferences. Their goal; to prevent anything reminiscent of what had happened during the Great War from ever occurring again. It was during these conferences that the League of Nations (LON) came into existence. Their first meeting was held on the sixteenth of January 1920, six days after the Versailles Conferences had come into effect (MacMillan 94). The League showed a serious attempt by many countries throughout the world at international cooperation, and offered the idea of a collective, global, security. The LON was to act as a governing body in the post WWI landscape for all states, offering them security and the hope of peace continued world peace. The League’s aspirations were outlined in its covenant, which was divided into twenty six different articles. All of the member counties had to agree the articles outlined in the Covenant, “in order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security” (The Covenant of the League of Nations 1). However, the League failed in this goal, as only twenty years after its creation World War Two broke out. By this point the League was an absolute and utter failure, and considered to be irrelevant by the majority of the world’s powers. Despite the fact that it had been created to prevent another World War, a much worse one broke barely two decades after its creation. One of the many problems with the League, and a reason for its breakdown, was with the countries themselves, and how it was run internally. The failure of the League of Nation... ... middle of paper ... ...010. gcov.asp>. MacMillan, Margaret. “Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World.” Random House: New York, 2001. Print. McAleavy, Tony. Twentieth Century History: International Relations since 1919. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ., 2002. Print. Peters, Harold A. "Germany Withdraws from League of Nations, Disarmament Pact." UPI's 20th Century Top Stories Oct. 14 1933: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 01 June 2010. Shimbun, Yomiuri. "War Responsibility - Delving into the past - Who Should Bear the Most Blame for the Showa War?" Daily Yomiuri Online. 13 Aug. 2006. Web. 28 May 2010. . "World War I Casualties." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 17 May 2010. Web. 30 May 2010. .

Show More
Related

  • Book Exploration of State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth Century Japan by Thomas Donald Conlan

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...st tozama implicitly believed that the onus of responsibility rested not on themselves, but on the competing regimes to secure support by granting rewards. Instead of land grants guaranteeing obligation, service (chusetsu) demanded adequate compensation,” (Conlan 150).

    Read More

  • Women in World War Two

    1430 Words  | 3 Pages

    A war starting was really overwhelming for everybody but there was not time to complain, but to take actions the government quickly realized that with men fighting in the front line a demand had to be satisfied. Political and social leaders ...

    Read More

  • The Rape of Nanking

    2406 Words  | 5 Pages

    When most American people think of Germany, they think of sports cars made for the autobahn, sauerkraut, Adolf Hitler, and the Holocaust. Compared to Germany, when most American people think of Japan they think of sushi, Godzilla movies, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II was such a significant event in history that almost 70 years after it came to an end, today’s younger generations often associate former Axis controlled countries with the war. People around the world are filled with disgust and immense hate when they hear the name Hitler, mainly because of his leadership under the Holocaust; which was the discriminatory mass genocide of 11-17 million people, the vast majority of which were European Jews. Hirohito, former Emperor of Japan, should strike a similar bell with people when they hear his name because Japan carried out genocide on Chinese civilians and soldiers in World War II. Japan’s attack on the Chinese city of Nanking, was one of the most atrocious events in history. This event has been named both the Nanking Massacre and the Rape of Nanking. The torturous, violent techniques used by the Japanese army upon Chinese civilians and soldiers including dehumanizing them, addicting them to drugs, and other perverse and violent acts, are some of the most grosteque methods ever recorded that could only be thought of by sadistic Japanese soldiers. The events committed by the Japanese army in Nanking, are equally as disgusting as the acts that Nazi Germany committed and should become a major topic involved with World War II in the future, despite the lack of light shed on it in the past for various reasons.

    Read More

  • The Origins of the Samurai and Bushido Codes

    2486 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...the Japanese military in World War II and the spontaneous atrocities that occur in most other. There is much of the blame on the Japanese society and its interpretation of bushido that had virtually no concept of individual human rights, which found its epitome in the Japanese military, to whom the concept had no semantic value whatsoever.

    Read More

  • Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor

    904 Words  | 2 Pages

    "World War 2 Casualties." World War 2. N.p., 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. .

    Read More

  • Why Did The Treaty Of Versailles Caused The Second World War

    1659 Words  | 4 Pages

    The League of Nations was created shortly after World War One and had a similar purpose to the Treaty of Versailles - to keep peace between the countries. However, the League was too apathetic and in the long run, was full of failures. The League had many instances in which they weren 't able to keep the peace between countries. Examples of these failures are when Italy attacked the port of Fiume which was given to Yugoslavia, or when France and Belgium invaded Germany’s biggest industrial zone, Ruhr. For both of these

    Read More

  • Japanese Involvement in the War

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    War changes people’s lives; it changes the way people act, the way they think, and what they believe in. The people of Japan hold tradition and honor above everything else, this is something that did not change throughout the war. Though the world is changing right before the Japanese peoples’ eyes, they keep honor and tradition locked into their minds as well as their hearts. Frank Gibney’s statement, “There is no question that the Japanese people had participated wholeheartedly in the war effort.” is partly true as well as not. True in the sense that the Japanese did do certain things that may be counted as participating in the war, yet these acts were not done wholeheartedly.

    Read More

  • Kissinger and Me

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... failures of these nations as well as their responsibility to affect resolution of this conflict by adopting smarter policy.

    Read More

  • League Of Nations Essay

    1453 Words  | 3 Pages

    The League of Nations was an Intergovernmental Organisation which persisted from 1919 up until 1946 where it was formally replaced with the United Nations towards the end of the Second World War. Many consider the League as one of the International Systems greatest failures due to it being widely regarded as an ‘ineffective instrument to tackle aggressors’ (Catterall, 1999, p. 52) and its inherent failure to prevent international conflict. However,

    Read More

  • League of Nations: Aspirations and Limitations

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    The League of Nations sounds like a superhero team and in a sense, the goal that The League was trying to achieve could have been something straight out of a comic book. Originally proposed by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I, The League was born after some alterations. The League of Nations’ main intention was to bring an end to the war and prevent another one of the same atrocious proportions from happening in the future. Forty zealous countries joined this fight, but the most powerful country of all was not among them: The United States of America. While many Americans agreed with the goal of The League, many did not and those that did not were ones in power. The portion of the “mission statement” for The League that caused

    Read More

  • Cold War Anti Imperialism

    1512 Words  | 4 Pages

    League of Nations: A world organization that was established to promote international cooperation and peace.

    Read More

  • First World War The League of Nations

    506 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the United States the league was met with fierce opposition from those who thought it unwise to enter America into a collective organization, which would restrict its power and influence. Congress especially concerned with Article X, which morally bound the U.S. to aid any member of the League of Nations that was victimized by aggression, and revoke...

    Read More

  • When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip

    1578 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mintz, Steven, and Sara McNeil. "The War's Consequences." Digital History. Ed. John Lienhard, Grace Lin, and Micharl Rapp. Digital History, 2013. Web. 6 May 2014.

    Read More

  • The Main Reason for the Failure of the League of Nations

    532 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Main Reason for the Failure of the League of Nations In theory the League of Nations was a good idea and did have some early successes in the 1920’s. But ultimately it was a failure, when it hit a crisis in the 1930’s. The whole world was hit by a depression in the late 1920s. When a countries economy falls, this is called a depression. Businesses lose income, trade is reduced, and unemployment rises and prices fall.

    Read More

  • Causes Of The Great Depression

    206 Words  | 1 Pages

    The national body met for the first time in 1920. The league of nations held its first meeting in a Swiss hotel. A new era was beginning. Not a lot of people joined. The league of nations believed they could help the world by having open discussions and tried to stop the threat of war but couldn’t. Everyone was affected. There were millions of signatures to banish war, then the Germans hired a new leader...adolf hitler. Then more war happened. But something amazing happened and demand peace by reason. “Words cannot describe the feeling of winning this war”. The crowds from the world war 1 winning was absolutely huge.

    Read More

More about The League of Nations; Why Did it Fail?

Open Document