Why Did the League of Nations Fail?

687 Words3 Pages
To what extent was the league of nations doomed to fail, due to the limitations of its covenant and structure? + Why might the failure of the US to join the league be viewed as critically important? The league of nations was an international organization formed in 1920 to promote cooperation and peace among nations, the point was to eliminate any threat to peace as a whole, to cooperate together and form a strong partnership. The league of nations was doomed to fail due to it not having a military alliance, its failure to maintain peace and the absence of major powers. Article 11 of the League’s Covenant stated: "Any war or threat of war is a matter of concern to the whole League and the League shall take action that may safeguard peace." This was a major reason for the failure of the league. On several small occasions such as Italy in 1919, Italian nationalists, angered that the "Big Three" had, in their opinion, broken promises to Italy at the Treaty of Versailles, captured the small port of Fiume. The Treaty of Versailles had given this port to Yugoslavia. For 15 months, an Italian nationalists governed Fiume. The newly created League did nothing. The situation was solved by the Italian government who could not accept the fact that the Italian nationalists were seemingly more popular than they were – so they bombarded the port of Fiume and enforced a surrender. In all this the League played no part despite the fact that it had just been set up with the specific task of maintaining peace. There were many similar events such as the Polish vs the Czechs for the mines Teschen where again the League of nations did very little. Already the idea of maintaining peace seemed a far-fetched one. The structure of the league also had a huge part to play in the failure of the league, the leagues organization was very bad, decisions couldn’t be reached, members couldn’t
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