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The Successes and Failures of the League of Nations

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During the 1920’s the League of Nations primary desire was to end war across all fronts and to promote international co-operation. Therefore the best criteria that can be used to classify a success, was whether war was avoided and a peaceful settlement formulated after a crisis between two or more nations. Although this aim was the most important the league also tried to help economic problems in other countries. This applied to the economic collapse of Austria and Hungary between 1922-3. When Austria-Hungary faced bankruptcy the league organised loans for them and slowly they were able to begin economic recovery due to the League’s aid. As stopping conflict was a priority for the league their first success was sorting out The Aaland …show more content…

The Locarno Pact in 1924 saw foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany meet in Switzerland to discuss matters including the request of Gustav Stresemann for a mutual guarantee of the Rhineland which was met with the approval of Aristide Briand; under the leadership of Briand, Stresemann, and Austen Chamberlain. This lead to the signing of a series of treaties of mutual guarantee and arbitration. The “Spirit of Locarno” symbolized hopes for an era of international peace and goodwill. In 1936, denouncing the Locarno Pact, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. Other attempts to keep the peace included the Kellogg Briand Pact in 1928 and the Disarmament Conference in 1932. Unfortunately they failed to live up to their purpose. The Kellogg Briand Pact promised to end war and in this sense it made no immediate contribution to international peace either. I proved to be ineffective in the years to come. First of all the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia from 1935-6, and the German invasion of Poland, were prime examples of this. 61 Countries met in Geneva for the Disarmament Conference. The main conflict was that the USSR wanted all countries to disarm but Germany wanted all countries to have equal arms instead. As a consequence to this the conference failed as no agreement could be made. There were three mains reasons for

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