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PAPER 1 QUESTION ON THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

a) What were the aims of the League of Nations? (4)

You need 4 points to get the 4 marks available or two well

explained points

The four main aims of the League of Nations were to encourage disarmament, to
discourage aggression from any nation, to improve living and working conditions
in all parts of the world and to encourage more countries to co-operate,
especially in business and trade.

As you see this pupil has clearly noted 4 aims and so gets 4 marks

b) Why did some countries not join the League when it

was set up in 1919? (6)

For this answer 3 well explained reasons are required

Some countries did not join the League of Nations when it was set up for many
reasons. The USSR did not join because it simply wasn’t allowed to as it had
recently had a communist revolution, so the League, who hated communism,
had felt it unnecessary for the USSR to join.
Germany weren’t allowed to join for obvious reasons – the League was founded
in order to discourage aggression and encourage peace. Only peace-loving
countries were allowed to join the League and Germany had not yet shown it
was a peace-loving country. They had supposedly been the ones to start World
War One and so, in the League’s opinion, hadn’t proved they were a peace-
loving country
The USA didn’t join the League of Nations as, even though Woodrow Wilson
(the American representative) had been the one to suggest a League of
Nations should be set up, he didn’t have the approval of the remainder of
USA. The Americans were firm believers in isolationism and wished to have no
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part in European affairs – they had been involved in WW1 and weren’t too
happy about this as they believed it should have remained a European war.
They thought that if they were League members, then they would have to
send their troops to every little European dispute and they weren’t prepared
to do this and so did not wish to join the League of Nations. They also
thought that if they were League members, they would have to pay out lots of
money to Europe and didn’t wish to do this

You can clearly see that this pupil has explained 3 reasons and so
gets the full 6 marks

c) The following are all reasons for the failure of the

League of Nations
i. the lack of an army
ii. the effects of the economic depression
iii. the aggression of Japan and Italy

Which reason do you think was the most important?

Explain your answer fully. (10)

KEY POINT

In this answer all three reasons must be explained in three separate

paragraphs and then a conclusion written as to which reason or
combination of reasons you think is most important

There were many reasons for the failure of the League of Nations. The lack of an
army played a part in the failure of the League because the League didn’t have
an army of its own which meant that the leading members of the League (France
and UK for example) had to send their countries armies to fight for the League.
But Britain and France very often did not want to send their armies for rational
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reasons such as their own armies were struggling and were extremely weak after
WW1 and were not prepared for fighting. Also, without the support of the other
main and powerful countries i.e. the USA, the League didn’t have an army to fight
for their cases overseas – countries far out from Europe. For example, when Japan
invaded Manchuria, the closest country to this area would be the USA but as they
weren’t members of the League of Nations, they wouldn’t help. Because there was
the lack of an army to fight for a country who had appealed to the League for help
against an aggressor, the League could not fulfill one of its most important aims
and the main reasons for its set up – discouraging aggression from countries all
over the world. Not fulfilling these aims made the whole system a failure.

The effects of the economic depression caused the League to fail because it
made many countries aggressive – Japan invaded Manchuria as they didn’t have
enough food or raw materials for its growing population and Italy invaded Abyssinia
for similar reasons. The economic depression put many countries in a bad position.
Britain suffered mass unemployment and the USA whose stock markets had
crashed and the value of shares had plummeted, wanted back all their money that
they had leant to European countries before, during and after WW1. Britain and
France therefore were not in a good position at all to be settling anybody else’s
minor disputes e.g. Japan invading Manchuria and Italy invading Abyssinia. They
didn’t want to send in their armies and they definitely did not want a war to
escalate. They also didn’t really want any other country to become aggressive
towards them as a result of them sending in their armies to settle any disputes so
they struggled to really have that much of a helpful effect.

The effects of Japan and Italy’s aggression caused the League to fail as they
became powerless - when Japan invaded Manchuria, the League could not impose
economic sanctions (stop trading with them) or send an army to protect the small
and vulnerable area that was Manchuria as the closest country to send an army
would be either the USA or the USSR, both were not League members and these
two countries were also the only countries that really traded with Japan on a large
scale, that would have affected them greatly. Therefore, these two methods would
not have worked and so the League could not do anything to stop the invasion,
making them powerless and more likely to fail. Italy’s aggression when they invaded
Abyssinia caused the League to fail as it made them fall apart. Because Britain and
France were so desperate to not have a war begin to escalate, they didn’t close off
the Suez Canal which would have quickly and easily stopped the invasion. This made
them quite unpopular and again they had failed to stop the aggression, failing to
fulfill one of their main aims and so making them a failure all round.
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.
In conclusion, I think that the most important reasons as to why the League
of Nations failed are linked – a combination of reasons caused the failure - the
effects of the economic depression and the aggression of Japan and Italy for
example. I think this because the economic depression caused all these disputes to
escalate – Japan invading Manchuria and Italy invading Abyssinia for example. The
depression also put Britain, France and the League in a bad position to stop any
aggression and it caused the UK and France to go behind the backs of the other
League members in order to sort out a compromise with Italy over the Italy and
Abyssinia dispute as they didn’t want a war with Mussolini or for him to ally with
Hitler which he did do anyway. The mistrust between Leagues members led to its
failure as it meant that the League of Nations was no longer working as a team. All
these reasons combined led to the failure of the League not just one as they old
lead on to each other as do their results.

Notice that all three reasons have been explained and a well
explained conclusion reached. This got 10 marks!