Why did the League of Nations not work?

Yin717

Active member
I remember doing this in school about 2 years ago and we learnt that by WW2 the League of Nations was closed because it just didn't work. Now, since I know the United Nations was such a success I have always wondered, why didn't it work? I mean, even Hitler considered a pile of rubbish and left it nearly as soon as he started his military expansion. And when Japan knew the League of Nations couldn't do anything to stop it's expansion it too left the League of Nations. But I really want to know is why didn't it really work?
 
The League Of Nations did not work as some of the main players stayed out of it. Also it was to soon after the carnage of WW1 for any of the other countries to want to go to war again. The United Nations has got its failings but it has also done a lot of good
 
LoN had no ability to send troops to enforce anything. The UN forces in Korea gave the UN some clout, of course they are now refered to & function as "peacekeepers" only.
 
In fact UN forces in Korea were mostly US forces(paid by the US ),and without the US there would be no 'UN' forces in Korea,but without the UN,Truman would yet be send troops to Korea .
 
There were a lot of Countries that sent troops to Korea, okay the US did the lion share of the work there but there was still a large input from many other places.
 
There were a lot of Countries that sent troops to Korea, okay the US did the lion share of the work there but there was still a large input from many other places.
Of course,there was a commonwealth division and units from other countries,but there was no significant role of the UN as such;a number of UN members opposed the sending of troops to Korea ,and as the UN had no troops ,it was the US who took the decision .
In WW II the UN were the countries that were fighting against Germany,Italy and Japan .But after the war ,what was the UN ? A collection of quarreling countries (most of them dictorships ).The United Nations were the Disunited Nations .
 
However, it has helped in bringing the world together to settle disputes rather than the occasionally chat with diplomats and then blowing each other to pieces. Also, doesn't the UN have it's own small task force made up of international troops?
 
Because it was a toothless dog barking at people. It had no ability to enforce anything, dictators only respect force or severe economic retaliation.
 
In original draft for the UN they should have been able call on countries to supply them with planes , ships and troops, but this was vetoed by a couple of the major players of the day
 
I really want to know is why didn't it really work?

1/ The democratic nations that had survived world war 1 didn't have the stomach for another fight. The average Joe on the street had been convinced that the war was the war to end all wars, and was more than happy to believe it.

2/ There was a rise in extremist politics all around the world. The old order had been destroyed by the war in many countries and the Great Depression had sapped the confidence of others. Most politicians didn't really know what was right or wrong, or even what was going on so they found it hard to draw a line in the sand until it was too late.

3/ The main players didn't really care about China or Eastern Europe until it became apparent that it was going to effect their own interests.

4/ It had no teeth. Power comes from the barrel of a gun and, as was stated by another poster, is the only thing that rouge states respect.

since I know the United Nations was such a success etc

Disagree. The only thing I can think of that the UN ever did that was note worthy was the fight in Korea, and that was only possible because the Soviets were boycotting the UN at the time and couldn't impose a veto. Apart from that the UN seems to be good for writing reports, watching tragedies and spending money on things no countries care about or could do better by acting unilaterally.
 
I remember doing this in school about 2 years ago and we learnt that by WW2 the League of Nations was closed because it just didn't work. Now, since I know the United Nations was such a success I have always wondered, why didn't it work? I mean, even Hitler considered a pile of rubbish and left it nearly as soon as he started his military expansion. And when Japan knew the League of Nations couldn't do anything to stop it's expansion it too left the League of Nations. But I really want to know is why didn't it really work?
In generally - because it was first try to create and run autoritative international organization. Nobody had experience needed to run it successfully. And, when global problems arose (shortly before WW2), the League just didn't have means nor even procedure to solve those problems.

I also disagree statement on success of UN. However, even being not ideal and obviously having trouble and no procedures to solve all problems the Globe faces, UN still works much better than League.
 
The big players

My understanding is that the League of Nations failed because the "big players" did not or could not participate. Even though it was the brainchild of Woodrow Wilson, the US Congress voted not to join the organization (which is rather ironic, considering that the League was meeting on American soil). Germany was barred from joining, and due to the communist revolution in Russia, they were not invited, either.

The effectiveness of the subsequent United Nations is highly debatable. Like the others who have posted here, I believe the only significant action of the United Nations was the defense of South Korea, and that was a half-century ago. Now it seems to be just a group of observers. It would be interesting to see what would happen now if the aggressive North Korean regime tried once again to take the South, particularly because the North may or may not possess nuclear weapons.
 
The only ideals and organisations that work are those that their followers or participants are ready to fight for.

LoN was a gentlemens club where everyone sipped tea and talked pretty but no one was ready to blaze the guns for anyone else so not much of a league.
 
League of Nations

I would imagine that a plenary session in the League of Nations would most likely resemble one of those horrible, pointless "training seminars" that American businesses are so likely to send their employees. You know the type; a bunch of out-of-touch "facilitators" ramble on for a week about a field in which they worked twenty years back. No one learns anything and the entire production is one great waste of time and money.
 
The social successes of the League of Nations

At a social level the League did have success and most of this is easily forgotten with its failure at a political level. Many of the groups that work for the United Nations now, grew out of what was established by the League. Teams were sent to the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organisation started a campaign to wipe out leprosy. This idea - of wiping out from the world a disease - was taken up by the United Nations with its smallpox campaign.

Work was done in the Third World to improve the status of women there and child slave labour was also targeted. Drug addiction and drug smuggling were also attacked.

These problems are still with us in the C21st - so it would be wrong to criticise the League for failing to eradicate them. If we cannot do this now, the League had a far more difficult task then with more limited resources.

The greatest success the League had involving these social issues, was simply informing the world at large that these problems did exist and that they should be tackled. No organisation had done this before the League. These social problems may have continued but the fact that they were now being actively investigated by the League and were then taken onboard by the United Nations must be viewed as a success.
 
I remember doing this in school about 2 years ago and we learnt that by WW2 the League of Nations was closed because it just didn't work. Now, since I know the United Nations was such a success I have always wondered, why didn't it work? I mean, even Hitler considered a pile of rubbish and left it nearly as soon as he started his military expansion. And when Japan knew the League of Nations couldn't do anything to stop it's expansion it too left the League of Nations. But I really want to know is why didn't it really work?



The League of Nations was founded at the Paris Peace Conferences in 1919 with the aim to preserve everlasting world peace. However, only twenty years later the Second World War began, destroying all high hopes that were placed upon the League. But the League showed weaknesses from its very beginning.

The League’s foundation was already a difficult process. It was the idea of the idealistic Woodrow Wilson and at the Paris Peace Conferences it was only him who stood fully behind it. Clemenceau, Lloyd-George and Orlando were rather interested in their own affairs. For example intended Clemenceau to send only a few deputies to the committee of the League with the main aim of getting concessions in the Rhineland question.

To put the high aims into practice the League of Nation would have needed a strong executive body, but it had only a few weapons it could use against aggressive countries: Negotiations, economic sanctions and, in extreme case building up an army, which was never applied. Particularly bad was, that it’s main weapon, economic sanctions, was weakened by the fact that three major economies weren’t members from the League’s birth.

After WW1 the USA, the world’s biggest economy, went into its policy of isolation again in order to keep out of European affairs. The other two were Russia, for being communist, and Germany for starting the war. The Russians didn’t mind, but the Germans did. To them the League appeared as a “Club of Victors” and the German perception of the League of Nations was, like everything related to the Treaty of Versailles, rather negative.

Later, after they still joined, it was easy for Hitler to withdraw and leave again. Hence Trade bans by League countries were rather ineffective and in the late thirties they were almost inapplicable. After the World Street Crash most countries suffered under the Great Depression and nobody wanted to aggravate the situation by enforcing trade bans.

But its main problem was the lack of commitment of its members which led, step by step, to a loss of its credibility. Two affairs are here mentionable:

In 1931 Japanese forces invaded the Chinese province Manchuria. The League tried to intervene using diplomacy, but the Japanese troops were not under Japanese control. Later the Japanese even withdrew from the League of Nations, to continue the work of the generals in Manchuria legally and invaded even more of China. Then, only a few years later Italy invaded Ethiopia. This time the League put economic sanctions on Italy, but they didn’t work. Not all League countries supported the decision and carried on trading with Italy and the selection of banned goods proved also rather ineffective. War important oil was not part of it.

To make things worse for the League secret diplomacy re-appeared. Britain and France negotiated alone with Italy and developed the Hoare-Laval plan. But this failed too and Italy went on to capture the whole of Ethiopia.

This doesn’t mean the League was a total failure. It still showed some success, for example in solving the disputes over the Aaland Islands, Memel or Upper Slesia. But far too often it was not able to find a solution: at Fiume, Turkey and others. It appears that the League was able to solve little problems, but failed at the big ones. This probably indicated to Hitler that the League of Nations was no threat to him when he used the right tactics – use little escalations to increase your power and you will get away with it.

World War 2 showed the final failure of the League. With a strong and decisively acting League Hitler may could have been stopped. Instead the League almost ceased to exist at the end of the thirties. However, this was not a failure of the League itself, but of its members. Their policy of appeasement, based on a misjudgment of the situation and Hitler, allowed Germany to rearm drastically and to cancel the Treaty of Versailles step by step.

The League was dramatically overcharged with the problems it faced. Its weakness however its members did not intend to give the League more power, they rather cared about their own problems. They also did not believe in the idea of the League of Nations and the European powers resumed their old policies before 1914. This inevitably led to a Second World War after Hitler came into power.

It appears that time was not ripe, but the mistakes made were useful to learn from. The UN today is much more powerful, is able to intervene militarily and its members are (a bit) more committed than at the League.

But everlasting peace is still far away.
 
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The UN is worthless. It's only a sleeping dragon snoring in its sleep. It couldn't stop the war between Russia and Georgia, nor did it stop many other conflicts and wars.
 
Also, it's very ironic that the five nations in the security council: US, UK, Russia, China, and France are the five nations that develop and sell weapons the most.
 
Woodrow Wilson, the "creator" of the League of Nations, could not get the US to ratify a treaty to join the League of Nations.
Many nations saw "one world government" as a threat against their sovereignity.
 
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