The League of Nations ! By: Abby ! !

What is the league of nations !? The league of nations was an organization used to help encourage international peace amongst the countries in the world. The members believed that the league could replace the need for battle with open discussion, public opinion would always be listened to, and weak countries would have a voice as well as the strong. It consisted of 28 Allied states and 14 neutral states.

The league of nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland !

The first act of business ! The league of nations thought that if all the countries were to reduce the amount of weapons they had, the chance of war breaking out would be eliminated. It was working and Germany was almost completely disarmed, but the world disarmament act just kept getting postponed and eventually was never followed through with completely.

The members of the league, at one point of another ! Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, El Salvador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Persia, Peru Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Siam, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, United Kingdom, Uruguay Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Finland, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Ethiopia, Ireland, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Ecuador, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Egypt.

The league of nations during a conference !

The successes and failures of the league !

Successes…. The league of nations successfully helped Finland and Sweden decide who should own the Aaland Islands. The league of nations decided that the islands should stay with Finland because that’s where they were originally from, however no weapons should ever be kept there. They both agreed on this arrangement and everyone was happy. Upper Silesia held a referendum to decide if they should be a part of Germany or a part of Poland, the votes were close so they called in the league of nations and they decided to give half of Upper Silesia to Germany and the other half to Poland and then everyone was happy. There were a few more times the league of nations were successful which were in Memel (1923), Turkey (1923) and also, the incident between Greece and Bulgaria (1925).

Failures … The league of nation failed to resolve the conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia over some coal mines,  This event may also be known as Teschen. The league of nations also failed to help Lithuania keep Vilna as their capital, rather than having Poland take it. The league of nations had more failures than it did successes for example The War between Russia and Poland (1920 – 1921), The invasion of the Ruhr (1923), Italy and Albania (1923), Italy (1919)

…Eventually when world war 2 came around the league of nations was shut down and replaced with the united nations because it had failed to do what it was supposed to do, which was prevent any future world wars.

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