League of Nations Failures
LEAGUE OF NATIONS [FAILURES]-
While the League of Nations could celebrate its successes, the League had every reason to examine its failures and where it went wrong. These failures, especially in the 1930’s, cruelly exposed the weaknesses of the League of Nations and played a part in the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. During the 1920’s the failures of the League of Nations were essentially small-scale and did not threaten world peace. However they did set a marker – that the League of Nations could not solve problems if the protagonists did not ‘play the game’.
Article 11 of the League’s Covenant stated: "Any war or threat of war is a matter of concern to the whole League and the League shall take action that may safeguard peace."
Therefore, any conflict between nations, which ended in war and the victory of one state over another, had to be viewed as a failure by the League.
The first crisis the League had to face was in north Italy In 1919, Italian nationalists, angered that the "Big Three" had, in their opinion, broken promises to Italy at the Treaty of Versailles, captured the small port of Fiume. The Treaty of Versailles had given this port to Yugoslavia. For 15 months, an Italian nationalist called d’Annunzio governed Fiume. The newly created League did nothing. The situation was solved by the Italian government who could not accept that d’Annunzio was seemingly more popular than they were – so they bombarded the port of Fiume and enforced a surrender. In all this the League played no part despite the fact that it had just been set up with the specific task of maintaining peace.
The next crisis the League faced was at Teschen, which was a small town between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Its main importance was that it had valuable coalmines there, which both the Poles and the Czechs wanted. As both were newly created nations, both wanted to make their respective economies as strong as possible and the acquisition of rich coal mines would certainly
While the League of Nations could celebrate its successes, the League had every reason to examine its failures and where it went wrong. These failures, especially in the 1930’s, cruelly exposed the weaknesses of the League of Nations and played a part in the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. During the 1920’s the failures of the League of Nations were essentially small-scale and did not threaten world peace. However they did set a marker – that the League of Nations could not solve problems if the protagonists did not ‘play the game’.
Article 11 of the League’s Covenant stated: "Any war or threat of war is a matter of concern to the whole League and the League shall take action that may safeguard peace."
Therefore, any conflict between nations, which ended in war and the victory of one state over another, had to be viewed as a failure by the League.
The first crisis the League had to face was in north Italy In 1919, Italian nationalists, angered that the "Big Three" had, in their opinion, broken promises to Italy at the Treaty of Versailles, captured the small port of Fiume. The Treaty of Versailles had given this port to Yugoslavia. For 15 months, an Italian nationalist called d’Annunzio governed Fiume. The newly created League did nothing. The situation was solved by the Italian government who could not accept that d’Annunzio was seemingly more popular than they were – so they bombarded the port of Fiume and enforced a surrender. In all this the League played no part despite the fact that it had just been set up with the specific task of maintaining peace.
The next crisis the League faced was at Teschen, which was a small town between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Its main importance was that it had valuable coalmines there, which both the Poles and the Czechs wanted. As both were newly created nations, both wanted to make their respective economies as strong as possible and the acquisition of rich coal mines would certainly