Was The League Of Nations A Utopian Dream Doomed To Fail?

Ever since the outbreak of the great war (World War I), many have argued that the causes for this war were the alliance systems and secret diplomacy, thus when the war had come to an end, there were attempts made to prevent such a situation from taking place again. One of these attempts was reflected by Woodrow Wilson in 1918 when he set forth his famous 14 points, one of which (number 14) was the creation of a peace keeping League of Nations. These 14 points where rejected by Germany immediately, thus, another revised version of the 14 points was created which was known as the treaty of Versailles (and other treaties such as Locarno etc.), where some of these points were passed (including the League of Nations one).

As a short thesis statement, this essay will look at the time in which the League of Nations was created and which factors triggered it’s creation including some of the responsibilities the freshly created organisation was given (in which it was successful). Furthermore, examples of the failures will be set forth.

The League of Nations covenant was approved in February 1919. In June of the same year the treaty of Versailles was signed by Germany,

In conclusion, one can say that the League of Nations had too many weaknesses to succeed. For example the fact that the League of Nations had no peace-keeping force at it’s disposal (such as the one the UN currently has) was a major weakness since it depended on it’s members when taking any action. In addition the League did not seem to have enough international importance or did not emphasise their international presence (for example the UN has world wide recognition and a very strong international presence at the moment but the League of Nations lacked all these). Another failure was that of collective security, the League failed to triumph due to the fact that when the League was created people believed that governments and people in general would be interested in preserving the peace and would be willing to act together, however this was not the case as we can see from some of the above given examples. In addition to that, there were too many conflicts arising at the time when the League of Nations was formed (as mentioned above), this was to be a great factor to the League only being a utopian dream destined to fail. Nonetheless one must not forget the successes the League had (which are not many), such as dealing with the disputes at Danzing or at the Aaland Islands. However, the actions taken by the League of Nations seemed to be tainted with failure making it nothing but another factor to the outbreak of the Second World War and a dream doomed to fail.

even though they considered the Versailles treaty as unfair or a “diktat”. The US, however refused to ratify the treaty. The importance of the Versailles treaty was basically that it involved the League of Nations as a peace keeping committee. For example, as it was agreed that the Saar basin (a coal mining area) was to be granted to France for 15 years (for reparations) and was to be under supervision of the League of Nations. In addition the port of Danzing (a German port, but essential for Baltic trade) was declared to a “free city” status and once again under the supervision of the League of Nations (yet it was open to trade). Similarly the city of Memel was placed under League of Nations supervision. Although Germany had signed the treaty (involuntarily), they were not included in the League of Nations until September 1926 (Russia was abs!

Some topics in this essay:
League Nations, league nations, Germany France, World War, Nations Italy, Nations September, Britain France, France Hitler, Nations Italian, Nations Abyssinia, Danzing German, treaty versailles, versailles treaty, britain france, dream doomed fail, failure league, dream doomed, utopian dream, doomed fail, set forth, failure league nations, council league nations, peace keeping, league nations involved, league utopian dream,