League of Nations

International organization formed after World War I to solve international disputes by arbitration. Established in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1920, the League included representatives from states throughout the world, but was severely weakened by the US decision not to become a member, and had no power to enforce its decisions. It was dissolved in 1946. Its subsidiaries included the International Labour Organization and the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands, both now under the United Nations (UN).

The League of Nations was suggested in US president Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points in 1918 as part of the peace settlement for World War I. The League's covenant was drawn up by the Paris peace conference in 1919 and incorporated into the Versailles and other peace treaties. The member states undertook to preserve the territorial integrity of all, and to submit international disputes to the League.

Organization
The covenant of the League of Nations set out the rules for the organization. Its main body was the assembly in which each member had a vote. Important decisions were taken by the council, a body made up of both permanent and temporary members, the latter being elected by the assembly for a one‐year term. The original permanent members were Britain, France, Italy, and Japan; Germany became a permanent member from 1926. Both the assembly and the council had to be in unanimous agreement before action could be taken. The secretariat acted as the League's civil service, and was responsible for carrying out the decisions of the council and assembly.

The League had a number of important subsidiary organizations:

International Labour Organization (ILO) formed in 1919, based in Geneva and concerned primarily with working conditions and social welfare.

High Commission for Refugees (Nansen Office) created to assist refugees, primarily from the USSR and Eastern Europe. Built on the work of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen as first high commissioner, the High Commission declined in importance after his death and the entry of the USSR to the League. It formed the basis for post‐1945 refugee work by the UN.

Permanent Court of International Justice created in The Hague in 1922 and based on ideas for some form of international court put forward at the Hague congress in 1907; now known as the International Court of Justice (one of the principal institutions of the United Nations).

Politics and diplomacy
The League of Nations suffered many problems even from its foundation. To many Germans it was the tool of the victors of World War I, particularly as the Treaty of Versailles incorporated many of the League's aims and ideas. Germany and the USSR were banned from the League in 1920, a decision that undermined its strength and contradicted the League's claims to be working for world peace in an atmosphere of equality and respect. When the USA chose to exclude itself, refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, the League's powers were further weakened. Without Germany (until 1926), the USSR, and the USA, three of the world's most influential nations, the League was not a complete global organization and was unlikely to achieve its stated aims.

Many regarded the League as being founded to protect British and French domination of the world. The League enabled Britain and France to retain a hold over their colonies in apparent contravention of point 5 of Wilson's Fourteen Points, which stated that colonies should have the right to negotiate their future. The spirit of points 10 and 12 were also considered ignored – although these argued for the self‐determination of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, rather than the rights of colonial subjects, they were seen to have established a principle of freedom for subject peoples. The absence of the USA from the League removed the most powerful support for these principles.

In the political and diplomatic field, the League was permanently hampered by internal rivalries and the necessity for unanimity in the decision‐making process. Additional problems were caused by the rise of military dictatorships in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, when the League was powerless to deter large states such as Italy, Japan, and Germany from doing as they pleased.

Italy
The first major failure of the League to impose its will on a member state came in 1923, when Italy, under the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, invaded the Greek island of Corfu, and extracted money and an apology for the murder of an Italian diplomat. Italy had been a founding member of the League in 1920, and its democratic government under Vittorio Orlando had been keen to support the League's aims. However, when Mussolini came to power in 1922 he had no sympathy with the peaceful and democratic aims of the League and ignored its protests over the invasion of Corfu. The incident seriously undermined the credibility of the League. Not only had it proved powerless to solve a dispute between two member states, one of whom was a permanent member of the council, but also leading members of the League were seen to be prepared, even from an early stage, to sidestep the covenant of the League in matters of war and diplomacy.

Attempts to impose economic sanctions against Italy for the invasion of the independent African kingdom of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) 1935–36 collapsed because the embargoes did not restrict the flow of oil. Mussolini was able to continue his campaign, and in 1937 he withdrew Italy from the League.

Japan
In 1931 no action was taken against Japan's aggression in Manchuria. When the League's representative, Lord Lytton, criticized Japan's actions, and called for a withdrawal, Japan announced in 1933 that it would simply leave the League, although its resignation did not take place until 1938. Again the League had proved ineffective – once outside the League nothing could be done to curtail Japanese ambitions.

Germany
The upholding of the Treaty of Versailles was one of the founding principles of the League of Nations. Under its terms Germany had surrendered Alsace–Lorraine to France, and large areas in the east to Poland, as well as making smaller cessions to Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Belgium, and Denmark. The Rhineland had been demilitarized, German rearmament restricted, and the Germans forced to make large reparations. However, when Hitler came to power in 1933, France and Britain adopted a policy of appeasement. Although Hitler withdrew Germany from the League in 1933, when David Lloyd George, one of the key founders of the League as Britain's prime minister in 1919, visited Hitler in September 1936, he declared that he was impressed with his policies.

When Hitler sent his troops into the Rhineland in 1936, Britain and France raised no objections, so League intervention was impossible. The League took no action when Germany annexed Austria in 1938, although the enforced Anschluss (union) was in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 Britain and France worked with Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia in the interests of avoiding a war in Europe. The Munich Agreement (September 1938) between France, the UK, Germany, and Italy, which compelled Czechoslovakia to surrender its Sudeten‐German districts, went totally against both the Treaty of Versailles and the stated aim of the League of Nations to uphold the territorial integrity of its member nations. European concession to the power and demands of Hitler had destroyed any credibility that the League retained in the policing of world affairs.

When Hitler launched his invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 the League was powerless to act to protect one of its members –World War II had begun without reference to the League. Although Britain and France declared war on Germany, the League was irrelevant to their action. When the USSR launched its war against Finland in November 1939, it was expelled from the League of Nations, but this had no effect on the Soviets or the Russo–Finnish war.

Impact on world affairs
The League enjoyed some success in the humanitarian field (international action against epidemics, drug traffic, and the slave trade), in organizing population exchanges after the Paris peace conferences had established new national boundaries, and in deferring arguments over disputed territories and former German colonies by mandating a League member to act as a caretaker of administration for a specified period of time, or until a permanent solution could be found. Mandates were created for Palestine (Britain), Southwest Africa (South Africa), and the free city of Danzig (Gdańsk).

However, long before the outbreak of World War II, individual nations had abandoned international security arrangements and reverted to a system of direct negotiation and individual alliances.