How Succesful Was The League Of Nations In The 1920s
Uploaded by RyanPeakesGirl on Jul 06, 2006
The League of Nations was an organisation designed to maintain peace throughout the World. It was created during the Paris Peace Conference. The League of Nations was the idea of Woodrow Wilson, the president of the USA.
The League’s main aims were to bring together all nations in a parliament to discuss and settle disputes, to protect the independence of countries and safeguard their borders, to improve peoples living and working conditions, and to make war obsolete by persuading nations to disarm.
From the beginning of its creation the League of Nations had to overcome many obstacles. One of the major problems the League had was that the USA never joined, thus leaving Britain and France in charge of the League. Without the USA the economic sanctions that the League would impose on others, would not be as effective. Both Britain and France were not strong enough, to be able to lead the League of Nations; they were both weakened during World War One. For Example they had both lost a lot of their armies and their economy was weakened.
Another weakness of the League was that it did not have an army of its own, and it would have to depend solely on the co-operation of the armies of its members. In addition the council of the League met once a year and the assembly met five times a year, thus causing the League not to be able to talk about a problem immediately.
The League of Nations had to deal with many disputes during the 1920’s. A few of these disputes were settled successfully while some were failures. Some successes were the dispute between Poland and Germany regarding Upper Silesia. The League sent British and French Troops to maintain order. There the League organised a successful plebiscite, but the voting turned out equal and the area was split. The industrial area went to Germany, and the rural area stayed to Poland. The League safeguarded rail links between the two countries, and made arrangements for water and power supplies from one side of the border to be supplied to the other.
One more success was the dispute between Sweden and Finland over the Aaland Islands, after the League had studied the matter the islands were given to Finland and Sweden accepted this decision. ...