What had a greater impact on the reputation of the League of Nations, the Manchurian crisis or the Abyssinian crisis?

William Bates, 10W At the start of the 1930s, two events severely damaged people's belief in the ability of the League to stop wars involving major powers. In this crisis the league failed to act fast enough or made the wrong decisions. This showed that smaller countries were not protected by the league and those larger aggressors such as Mussolini. These crisis are known as the Manchurian and Abyssinian crisis. Manchuria was a region in china that Japan wanted to control. This was because Manchuria was rich in natural resources that Japan was short of and could no longer import after the Wall Street Crash which had had a devastating effect on the Japanese economy as the USA was one of their key trading partners. The Japanese armed forces suggested that if they invaded Manchuria they may be able to get the things that were in short supply, in reality the armed forces wanted to fulfil their imperial ambitions and justify their own existence. In September 1931, the Japanese said that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the Manchurian railway, which Japan controlled. In reality the Japanese had put prisoners into Chinese army uniforms and shot them by the railway. By February 1932, Japan had taken the whole of Manchuria. By March the same year they also took Shanghai and china went to the League of Nations. The Lytton commission was set up in April and after a year of stalling found that the Japanese where guilty but by then it was too late. Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) was the last of the ancient free African countries. In the past Italy had attempted to invade it but had failed and the Italians wanted revenge for their defeat at Adowa in 1896. Also Mussolini had economic problems at home and Abyssinia was rich in a few types of raw materials as well as being a big country on the map. Mussolini wanted an empire like the Romans and Abyssinia was one of the last places where he could expand without taking the land from another European power.

Late in 1934 there was a dispute about the border at WalWal between Abyssinia and the Italian Somaliland and fighting started. Haile Selassie, the emperor of Abyssinia, asked the League for help, but all they did was ban arms sales to both sides. 100,000 Italians invaded Abyssinia and even used poison gas on red cross hospitals. However Britain and France had no interest In Abyssinia, but did not want to anger Mussolini into siding with Hitler. So Britain and France came up with the Hoare-Laval Pact where 2/3 of Abyssinia went to Italy. However it was leaked to the press and the idea was abandoned. In the end Italy invaded Abyssinia, had paltry sanctions imposed that did not stop them buying oil, then left the league of nations and signed the Rome-Berlin axis. The Manchurian crisis did make the league look cowardly by acting so slowly and showed smaller nations League could not and would not protect them. It also showed that the league could not and would not use force. Moreover counties such as Italy realised that Britain and France were not prepared to use force. However the Manchurian crisis was not of any interest in Manchuria. This gave them some excuse . Many people still believed in the league after its 1920s successes such as the Aaland Islands dispute. However surly if there was a crisis involving a European power in an area that contained many British and French colonies were located ? The Abyssinian crisis had a much greater impact on the League of Nations that the Abyssinian crisis. It showed that if a strong nation ignored the League, the League could do nothing about it and also many of the sanctions were shown to be useless as they often excluded key imports and never included America as they were not in the League of Nations. Britain and France had put forward their own interests before collective security with the lack of sanctions on oil and coal and not closing the Suez Canal because it would have lost trade. The Hoare-Laval pact demonstrated that even Britain and France had given up on the League of Nations, and were following a policy of appeasement. By this point the four major powers that were Japan, Italy, Britain and France had all betrayed or left the League. In a way they got the worst of all worlds from the Abyssinian crisis as of the great powers, only Britain, France and the USSR remained in the League and Hitler had re-militarised the Rhineland while Britain and France were pre-occupied with the Abyssinian Crisis.