League of Nations : Ask Biography

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The League of Nations (LON) was an intergovernmental organisation founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War, and was the precursor to the United Nations. The League was the first permanent international organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The League's primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing war through collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an army, when needed, for the League to use. However, these powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could also hurt the League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. When, during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that "the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."

After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. In May 1933, Franz Bernheim, a Jew, complained that his rights as a minority were being violated by the German administration of Upper Silesia, which induced the Germans to defer enforcement of the anti-Jewish laws in the region for several years until the relevant treaty expired in 1937, whereupon they simply refused to renew the League's authority further and renewed anti-Jewish persecution. Hitler claimed these clauses violated Germany's sovereignty. Germany withdrew from the League, soon to be followed by many other aggressive powers.

The onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to avoid any future world war. The United Nations replaced it after the end of the war and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League.