Why were there no major wars in the 1920s?
Forming a League of Nations was one of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points. The League’s first meeting was in July 1920, and many people had great hopes for its future. This page is about how the League of Nations contributed to the peace of the 1920s. We’ll look at how the League worked, before considering some of its successes and failures in the 1920s. At the end we will read a brief discussion of the reasons why the world was mainly peaceful in the 1920s. There are two revision activities for this page, and a short revision test at the end.
Overview
First, we’ll take a look at this video to get an overview. Feel free to jot down some notes.
What you need to know
The Aims of the League of Nations
The agreement that each member country signed was called ‘the covenant’. A covenant is a promise. In the covenant each country promised to:
- use peaceful ways of settling disputes and arguments with other countries;
- work towards disarmament; and
- come to the aid of other countries who were attacked.
The League was also supposed to:
- help countries to co-operate with each other in lots of ways, but especially in business and in trade.
- improve the lives of ordinary people in the world by:
- fighting slavery and the drugs trade; and
- improving health and living and working conditions.
The powers of the League
The League could make agreements between its members, and often did so. If a country stepped out of line, perhaps by attacking another, there were three things the League could do:
- Shame – by making a vote in the Assembly or Council that pointed out that a country was in the wrong;
- Sanctions – by making an decision that the countries of the League would not trade, either at all or in certain resources like oil or weapons, with a country in the wrong; or
- Soldiers – by making an decision that the countries of the League would send troops to attack the aggressive country.
The Structure of the League
The structure of the League is best looked at as a diagram. You can download one here. Use it to make notes on this part of your revision.
The Council – This group was the important decision making part of the League. It met about five times a year – far more often than the Assembly. The ‘big four’ – Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan were permanent members of this group. Other smaller countries had temporary membership that changed to different countries every three years. The rules of voting ment that each permanent member had a veto – each member could block a decision taken by the council and stop the League from taking action if they wanted.
The Assembly – This group met only once a year. Each member of the League had one vote. The Assembly didn’t have a great deal of power – it could only ask the Council to do something, but couldn’t order it to do so.
The Permanent Court of Justice – was set up to decide upon disputes between countries. It had 15 members, each from a different member states. It met in a city called ‘The Hague” in the Netherlands. They could only decide on disputes if both countries agreed to use them.
The International Labour Organisation – the ILO met once a year, in order to try to improve people’s working conditions – the hours, wages and conditions under which they laboured. It is one of the few bits of the League of Nations still going today. The ILO tried to persuade governments to pass laws to make peoples work safer, fairer and healthier, and had some successes.
The Commissions – these were agencies set up to deal with particular problems – as you can see from their names. They had some success – the Refugees Commission managed to return 500,000 prisoners of war in Russia to their homes, and the Health Commission funded research into the causes of dangerous diseases like Typhus.
Membership Problems and Weaknesses
The League had some weaknesses right from the start. Several important countries weren’t members. Germany and Russia were not allowed to become members from the start. Germany was banned until she had shown that she was no longer a threat to other countries. Russia had become a commmunist country after a revolution in 1919, and this made other suspicious of her. The most important missing country was the USA. Woodrow Wilson failed to persuade Congress (the USA’s parliament) to vote to join the League.
Why did people in the USA not want to join.
Many people in the US wanted to stay out of the problems of Europe, and concentrate on getting back to normal after the war. This was called ‘Isolationism’. The USA had done really well out of the war, because they had lent money to the British and French. The British and French had used this money to buy weapons and equipment for the war.
Leadership Problems and Weaknesses
The countries that ended up leading the League of Nations, Britain and France, had their own self interests too much at heart to make the League effective, especially when they were faced with important countries that were being aggressive. France was still wary of Germany, and therefore wanted to keep other countries like Italy on their side, in case they needed allies against Germany. Britain wanted to keep hold of her empire, and her soliders and navy were used in doing this. She didn’t want to risk anything that would weaken her armed forces. Britain also wanted to keep Germany as an ally against communist Russia.
Successes of the 1920s
The league generally did quite well at sorting out disputes between two smaller countries, or where both sides wanted to settle peacefully. They also seemed to do well in making agreements that banned war in the future – though these agreements didn’t really mean much when it came to the crunch later on.
Aaland Islands: When Sweden and Finland argued about who owned the Aaland Islands (in 1921), the League found in favour of Finland and Sweden accepted their decision. A
Upper Silesia: In 1921 there was a vote to decide whether Upper Silesia should become part of Poland or part of Germany. Following the votes there were riots in Upper Silesia so the League stepped in to help. Silesian Poles had voted for Silesia to become part of Poland, whereas Silesian Germans had voted for it to be in Germany. The league split the territory between the two and both sides agreed.
Greece v Poland: In 1925 when Greece invaded Bulgaria after a border dispute, the League successfully ordered Greece to withdraw her troops. When they compared this to what had happened when Italy invaded Greece (see Corfu below) the Greeks felt that there was one rule for the powerful countries, and one for the less powerful ones like Greece.
Humanitarian work: The League worked hard to combat slavery and the disease leprosy, as well as returning hundreds of thousands of refugees left homeless after the first world war.
The Locarno Treaty: This treaty was signed in 1925 between France, Germany, Britain and other countries. The most important thing about this treaty was that Germany promised to stick to the borders set out in the Treaty of Versailles and to keep the Rhineland as a ‘demilitarized’ zone. After signing this agreement Germany was finally allowed to join the League of Nations.
Kellog Briand Pact: This treaty was made in 1928. In it, many of the powerful countries of the world promised to stop using War as a way of settling disputes or as a way of getting what they wanted in the world. The treaty sounded like a really good idea, but the problem was that it didn’t set out what would happen if any country broke their promise. There was nothing backing up the fine ideas in the agreement.
Failures of the 1920s
The League struggled to make an impact where the countries involved were important or powerful. It also failed to get countries to agree to disarm properly.
Disarmament: The League failed to get countries to disarm. There were various agreements suggested in the 1920s, but these were not signed by important countries like Britain. Britain was afraid that the treaties would make it responsible for defending those countries that had given up their arms. Germany began to feel that the disarmament that it was forced to do under the Treaty of Versailles was unfair, as other countries weren’t disarming.
Vilna: In 1920 Polish troops invaded Lithuania and occupied Vilna, which they claimed should have been part of Poland. Vilna asked for help. This was a clear case of Poland breaking the rules agreed at Versailles, but the leaders of the League wanted to keep Poland as an ally, against communist Russia and Germany. They did nothing, and in 1923 allowed Poland to keep Vilna.
Corfu: In 1923, whilst mapping the border between Greece and Albania, an Italian general, Talinni, was killed, whilst he was on the Greek side of the border. In revenge, Mussolini demanded damages, and invaded the Greek island of Corfu. The league made Greece pay the compensation Italy had asked for and did not act to defend Greece against this agression from Italy. They wanted to keep Italy as an ally, and Italy was a powerful member of the League of Nations.
What factors prevented war in the 1920s?
The world economy was generally doing quite well. Whilst countries felt that they were getting better off they were less likely to go to war. At the end of the decade, when the world economy went into depression after the Wall Street crash things changed.
The memory of the the “Great War” was still fresh in the minds of many statesmen. They were really reluctant to cause wars after such a destructive event as this.
Activities
Make sure you’ve filled in the diagram, which you can download here.
Use the boxes at the bottom of the page you will find here and sort them into two columns, or make a two sided revision poster. One one side should be successes of the League of Nations in the 1920s and on the other should be the failings of the League of Nations in the 1920s.
Your teacher may set you a test – or if you like you could use the one here.
Other Sites
General Sites
http://www.johndclare.net/league_of_nations1.htm
http://www.johndclare.net/league_of_nations4.htm
A* Sites – if you’re keeping your sights high!
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/history/lang–en/index.htm
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE7342
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