Whether or not the League of Nations was a success in the 1920’s is debatable; however, there is no doubt that the League of Nations completely failed in the 1930’s. There is no doubt that the Great Depression cause problems and helped to spark the second World War. The Depression caused unemployment, poverty and hardships, a collapse in Germany industry because of American loans, a buildup of empires, the powers’ self-interest, and Britain and France to not sent troops to resolve problems because they could not afford it, therefore causing the rise of Hitler. I think that there are many causes and setbacks that cause the League of Nations to fully show its weakness and ultimately fail. There were many reasons that affected the League. Flaws, such as the veto system, how slow the decision making was, and the cases of appeasement throughout the years of the League’s rein. When all of these were then put against the fact the nations were under depression, it is worsened the effects altogether. The countries feared each other because they could not afford the cost of war. Britain did not be the weight of war with Germany, even though Germany was just as weak. Therefore, to consider the significance of the Great Depression to the League of Nations, we have to consider these events.
The veto system, allowed powers to deny a decision the League of Nations made. The decision the League of Nations would make took forever to come up with. Because of this, countries like Italy went in to take over land, and they could always succeed. This happened since they could overpower any decisions made by the League of Nations and could come out on top. Since all of them had to be unanimous, it took weeks and months to compose a decision; however, the powers had the right to veto the decision. It took so long because they had to travel there, hear both sides of the disagreement, make a report, vote on the decision and then get back to the problem. Therefore, they defeated the League of Nations to get their way in the long run. The League of Nations did not have the resourced they needed in order to instill rules in order to be listened to by the powers. Cases of appeasement with the aggressor helped to fuel and further their power. Britain and France did not trust each other; therefore, they were too busy with domestic affairs to worry about Hitler’s rise to power.
Although I believe there were many factors in the overall failure of the League of Nations, it can be argued that the Great Depression was the sole cause for its defeat. Starting with the Wall Street Crash, which sent shockwaves and damaged the world economy. Poverty swept through the countries, it had a domino effect tearing apart the markets. Without the depression, events like the Manchuria crisis would have never happened.
However, appeasement, without a doubt, was a major reason was the second World War happened. If Britain and France were to join together to defend rather a giving into the aggressor, Hitler could have been defeated. When German troops invaded the Rhineland, they were too weak so if France would have stopped them and declared war, Germany would not have been able to take over this demilitarized zone. Hitler was taking risks, gambling, in order to build his empire. Hitler wanted the reversal of Versailles (e.g. remilitarize Rhineland Anschluss with Austria), destroy USSR, Russia communist party, establish a large empire in East Europe for his ‘superior’ race, and build up German armed forces. France and Britain appeased Hitler’s action due to the Great Depression and fear of going to war and further damaging their economies.
In the 1920s, there was confidence in the world’s economies, causing less of a chance of going into a war. Since they were able to buy the cheap raw materials and cheap goods from other countries, sell their own materials and goods to others they felt safe and secure in the world economies. Since the Wall Street Crash and the worldwide depression, unemployment rose and countries used tariffs, or taxes, to protect their industries. The tariffs made foreign goods more expensive. These cases of ‘protectionism’ or ‘isolation’ cause the years following to be very hard for the countries to buy resources or sell the merchandises. Ergo, caused unhappy workers, lower wages, and the unemployment of people across the nations which made the possibility of war more likely.
Without the help and tension from the crash, Japan’s industry would not have been threatened. Japan’s main trading ports were the US and China, so when they put up the high tariffs on their good, Japan’s industry suffered. So, Japan decided to expand their empire to Manchuria, which was farmland that had materials. The League of Nation’s second crisis in 1935, where Italy’s Mussolini was trying to solve his countries issues by expanding and shaping an empire, was caused by the results of the crash in 1925. The League of Nations, in both cases, acted slowly. They imposed bans on loans, rubber, tine, metal, and arms in attempts to keep the peace.
In summary, the League of Nations was faulty in every way possible. The problems it faced in the 1930s were tremendously important because they involved large members of the League of Nation and caused the escalation to a catastrophic war, which did ultimately happen in 1939. The reasons for the Manchuria and Abyssinia crises boils down to the Great Depression and the struggling economies. Japan and Italy were trying to find solutions to their economic issues by building up their empires. You could also say that the League of Nation’s decision swayed heavily on the effects of the crash, countries were tired of imposing import and export bans because of the fragile state the economies were in. Countries could not lose their current trading partners. There is always the possibility that if the Wall Street Crash in 1929, would have been prevented, the League of Nations could still exist today, and the second World War could have never occurred in history. The Great Depression was the final straw to the loss of existence for the League of Nations and caused the rise in power and Germany, Hitler, the Nazi’s Party, ergo the second World War.
If the United States had joined, the League of Nations would have been able to supply resources. The Great Depression was one of the causes of the failure of the League of Nations along with other supporting triggers. This is due to the economic difficulties and extremist parties that caused conflicts but in order to keep the people of the nation’s happy, the League of Nations could not continue the extremist parties. The League failed because they were scared of the overall big powers so they wanted to keep them happy. So overall, the League of Nations did not just fail because of the Great Depression, alone, but had a combination of event that wrapped up to cause the overall dysfunctional, and finally the failure of the League of Nations. The Great Depression caused a bunch of distress throughout the world at the time and had a key role in the overall failure of the League of Nations. This sparked the Second World War in September of 1939.