What Was the League of Nations? | World War I Review

The League of Nations had five permanent members: Japan, Britain, Italy, France, and the United States. Germany and Russia were not included. An organization like the League of Nations was first suggested with Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points Plan, and that was what the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I was kind of modeled after. Part of the treaty said that the League of Nations would be created.

The league was created, and it had five permanent members, but it excluded Germany and Russia. Germany as the major nation on the enemy side during World War I was excluded, and Russia who had signed a treaty with Germany and surrendered to them, or surrendered to the Central Powers, was also excluded. The league would have a general assembly and a court of international justice.

The General Assembly would be where any delegates could meet together and actually come up with the solutions to problems, any kind of political, international disputes that came up. The court of international justice would be the court where people were tried for international crimes. It would try to use economic sanctions and if necessary force to guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of every nation.

First, the league would try to use economic sanctions, so they would make certain economic allowances toward certain countries to try to get them to do what they were supposed to do. Kind of like bribery, but they may give them a lower tariff if they agreed to certain conditions, that kind of thing. If a nation still would not comply with whatever the league was asking, then the league would use force.

Now, the league didn’t have any kind of military of its own, so that meant that these five permanent members would have to supply the force to go out and enforce whatever the league was trying to comply. That was going to make things a little tricky. What they were trying to guarantee with the economic sanctions, or force if necessary, was the territorial integrity and political independence of every nation.

Territorial integrity, meaning that the borders would not be breached. If the borders of a nation -once the borders of a nation- were set after World War I, after the Treaty of Versailles lined out which countries were -which areas of land- belonged to which countries, then those borders were set. If any other country tried to encroach over the border and take part of another country’s territory, then that would be where the league would come in.

Or if any other any one country tried to infringe on another’s political independence and try to take over the government of that nation, or tell them what kind of government they had to have, then that’s where the league would step in. In practice there were many problems with the league. We already talked about how would be tricky to force them to without having a military of its own.

Some of the problems that the league had: it was almost impossible to set anything into motion because a unanimous vote was required for action. In order for any idea to be passed as a law or some kind of plan within the league there has to be a unanimous vote. Well, there usually wasn’t going to be a unanimous vote on something. One country would have a problem with whatever wanted to be done.

One country would want things a little bit different, and then they would agree but then another country wouldn’t want that change, and so it was really hard to get everybody to 100 percent agree to something, so it was really hard to get anything set into motion and actually get done. There was a lot of planning, a lot of ideas, but not a lot actually getting done. It created a number of artificial and unsuccessful countries, Sudetenland for example.

With the Treaty of Versailles signing into existence some new countries and some small countries that hadn’t existed before or had existed as colonies to larger nations, making these artificial countries, these new countries set them up for failure basically.

These countries were unsuccessful because they weren’t in existence before the war, and it was unlikely they were going to be a world just all of a sudden know how to function on their own when no one there had been ready to take on the role of being in charge of the government, being in charge of ruling these new countries.

They created these countries and kind of set them up for failure because they didn’t have any kind of government set in place, and the league wasn’t authorized to set that up because the league wanted each country to have political independence. The league couldn’t go and tell them what kind of government to have. The league also had no power to regulate economies. If someone’s economy was struggling, they couldn’t go in and regulate that.

If one country was charging outrageous tariffs for incoming goods or outgoing goods, then they couldn’t regulate that they could try to talk to them, but they had no power to regulate it, no way to enforce any kind of regulations they might want to put into place. It excluded two major nations Russia and Germany. We talked about this above. Germany was the big enemy during World War I and Russia surrendered to Germany’s side, the central powers and stopped helping the allies.

They were both kind of not included in the League of Nations, but they were still two really big countries and countries that still had a good amount of influence in Europe. For them to be excluded was kind of a big deal and -a slap in the face- a slap in the face to both of those countries. That stirred up some unhappiness because the Russians and Germans were going to feel insulted that they were not invited to be a part of the League of Nations.

It was going to make them less willing to cooperate with the league because they didn’t have any kind of say in what the league was coming up with, any ideas they had. Not that that many were being enforced anyway because they couldn’t come up with the unanimous vote to put anything into the motion. Then it also had no power to force the nation to disarm.

So much as it couldn’t force a nation to do anything else, it couldn’t force a nation to comply with leaving a territory alone both politically and territorially, it didn’t have the power to force a nation to disarm. The league could say, “Hey you shouldn’t be building up all those military units, you shouldn’t be building these tanks, you shouldn’t be building those planes, you shouldn’t be training soldiers.”

The league could say that, but they had no power to enforce it. There were a lot of problems with the league. The league had a lot of great ideas, but they didn’t have a lot of ways to put them into motion.