The League of Nations (LON) was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I, and was the precursor to the United Nations (as it can be described in many web pages).
In the 1930’s, the Economic Crisis affected every single aspect of life during that period, that’s why, the League of Nations was able to recognize their failures which demonstrated their weakness. In the League’s Covenant is 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." This means that any conflict between nations, which ended in war and therefore, the victory of one state over another, had to be seen as a failure from the League.
As a first problem, in 1919, the League of Nations had to face in north Italy the angered induced by the well known “Big Three”. Italian nationalists thought that at the Treaty of Versailles, some promises were broken. In the Treaty, the port of Fiume was given to Yugoslavia. An Italian nationalist called d’Annunzio governed this port for about 15 months. The Italian government couldn’t accept that the nationalist was apparently more popular than them, so they put explosives in the port of Fiume and forced him to give up. In this situation, the League didn’t play a big part and neither looked up for a specific solution, despite it just set up the specific task of keeping peace between nations.
The second problem the League had to face was at Teschen, a small town between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Teschen was important because it had valuable coalmines there, which were wanted by both the Poles and the Czechs. Both nations were recently created, soy they wanted to make their economies as strong as they could and with the acquisition of rich coalmines, they would be able to achieve their goal, having also good results and creating security in people with an “established” economy. In January 1919, the Polishes and Czechs troops fought against each other in the streets of Teschen, at this event, many innocent people died. So far, the League of Nations was called for help and decided that the majority of the town should go to Poland while Czechoslovakia should acquire one of Teschen’s suburbs. This suburb will have the most valuable coalmines, that is why the Poles refused to accept this type of solution. Even though no more violence happened, neither fights nor struggles, there was a continuous argue between both countries for the next twenty years.
Years before 1920, the capital city from Lithuania had been taken over by the big Russia. Because of this, the 30% of the population was from Poland and the 2% were Lithuanians. So in 1920, Poland took Vilna. At this point, Lithuania asked the League for help but it was impossible to persuade the Poles to leave. Vilna stayed in Poland until the outbreak of World War Two, when the Poles forced them to leave.
In the same year, Poland invaded land held by the Russians, attacking the army. So then, by 1921, the Russians had the only choice of signing the Treaty of Riga, on which they gave Poland nearly 80,000 square kilometers, so they doubled their size.
These are some of the reasons why it is thought that the League of Nations failed so many times, on which it is able to recognize many others such as:
1. Italy left the League in 1937 and with them, few other countries left the League too.
2. In 1938, Britain and France tried to establish a new policy 'appeasement' which was basically on negotiating directly with Hitler; in the next year, this policy failed when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.
3. In 1939, when World War II broke out, the League When war broke out in 1939, the League disappeared and its seat inside Geneva remained empty and desolated throughout the war.
4. In 1943, at a Conference in Tehran, America, Britain and Russia agreed with setting up of a new international organization, known as the United Nations, when war ended.
5. On 12 April 1946, the League went to Geneva and abolished itself in a formal way. This was the turning point on which it was widely recognized the United Nations as the new “League of Nations”.
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