IB History The End of Collective Security Notes

The League of Nations and Collective Security

1. The League of Nations was established in January 1920 as part of the Paris Peace Settlement. It began with 42 member states and peaked at 60 members by 1933.
2. The League's Covenant (Articles 10-16) embodied collective security: if one member was attacked, all others would act together to protect it. Article 16 allowed economic and military sanctions against aggressors.
3. However, the League had critical structural weaknesses from the start: decisions required unanimous votes in the Assembly, and permanent Council members (Britain, France, Italy, Japan) held veto power.
4. The United States never joined the League, despite President Wilson championing it. The US Senate rejected membership in 1920, depriving the League of the world's most powerful economy and military.
5. Germany and the Soviet Union were initially excluded from the League. Germany joined in 1926 (and left in 1933); the USSR joined in 1934 (and was expelled in 1939). This meant key great powers were absent for much of the interwar period.
6. The League had no army of its own. It relied entirely on member states voluntarily contributing troops and enforcing sanctions. In practice, no member was willing to risk its own soldiers or economic interests to police the world.
7. During the 1920s, the League achieved some successes: resolving disputes in Upper Silesia (1921), the Aaland Islands (1921), and preventing war between Greece and Bulgaria (1925). These were all disputes between small states, however.

The Impact of the Great Depression on Collective Security

1. The Great Depression (1929) destroyed the fragile international cooperation of the 1920s. World trade fell by 70% between 1929 and 1932, and nations turned to protectionism rather than cooperation.
2. The Depression fuelled disillusionment with democracy and liberal capitalism. Authoritarian regimes rose in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere, openly challenging the post-war international order.
3. US isolationism deepened. In July 1933, Roosevelt rejected proposals at the London World Economic Conference to stabilise international currencies. The Neutrality Acts (1935-1937) banned arms sales to belligerents.
4. Britain and France, the League's two strongest members, were financially and militarily weakened by the Depression. Neither was willing to spend money on military enforcement when their own populations faced mass unemployment.
5. The Depression created the conditions for Hitler's rise to power in January 1933. He immediately began dismantling the Versailles settlement, withdrawing from the League and the Disarmament Conference (October 1933).

The Manchurian Crisis (1931-1933)

1. In September 1931, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria following the staged Mukden Incident (a fabricated attack on a Japanese-owned railway). Japan renamed the territory Manchukuo and installed a puppet government.
2. China appealed to the League, which sent the Lytton Commission to investigate. The Commission reported in October 1932 that Japan was the aggressor and recommended Manchuria be returned to China.
3. Japan simply rejected the report and left the League (March 1933). No sanctions were imposed, no military action was taken. The crisis proved that a great power could defy the League and walk away without consequences.
4. Britain and France were unwilling to act because they had significant economic interests in Asia and feared antagonising Japan. Britain's priority was protecting its own empire; France needed British support and would not act alone.
5. The Manchurian Crisis set a devastating precedent: it showed Mussolini and Hitler that aggression would go unpunished. The League had failed its first major test.

The Abyssinian Crisis (1935-1936)

1. Italy's invasion of Abyssinia (October 1935) was the League's final and most damaging failure. Unlike Manchuria (a distant region), Abyssinia involved a European great power attacking a fellow League member in a clear act of unprovoked aggression.
2. The League imposed economic sanctions on Italy but deliberately excluded oil, coal, and steel from the embargo. Without an oil ban, Italy's military machine continued operating. The Suez Canal also remained open to Italian shipping.
3. The Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935) exposed the hypocrisy of Anglo-French policy. British Foreign Secretary Hoare and French PM Laval secretly planned to give Italy two-thirds of Abyssinia. When leaked, public outrage forced both to resign.
4. Emperor Haile Selassie addressed the League Assembly in June 1936, warning: "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow." His words proved prophetic as the League's failure emboldened further aggression.
5. The Abyssinian Crisis destroyed the League as a credible peacekeeping body. It also destroyed the Stresa Front and drove Italy into alliance with Nazi Germany, forming the Rome-Berlin Axis (October 1936).

The Failure of Disarmament

1. The Geneva Disarmament Conference (1932-1934) was the League's major attempt to reduce armaments and prevent future wars. It brought together 61 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union.
2. Germany demanded military equality: either other nations should disarm to Germany's level, or Germany should be allowed to rearm to theirs. France refused, fearing any German rearmament would threaten its security.
3. Germany withdrew from the Conference and the League in October 1933. Hitler used the failure of disarmament to justify German rearmament, claiming other nations had broken their promise to disarm.
4. In March 1935, Hitler publicly announced German rearmament and conscription, openly violating Versailles. Britain responded not with sanctions but with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (June 1935), legitimising German naval rearmament.
5. The failure of disarmament demonstrated that no enforcement mechanism existed to prevent a determined state from rearming. Collective security required collective will, and by 1935, that will had evaporated.

Appeasement and the Final Collapse

1. After the League's failures, Britain shifted to appeasement: the policy of making concessions to aggressors to avoid war. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1937-1940) became its most prominent advocate.
2. Appeasement was driven by several factors: horror of another world war (10 million died in WWI), belief that Versailles had been too harsh, fear of communism more than fascism, and Britain's military unpreparedness.
3. The remilitarisation of the Rhineland (March 1936) was the first major test of appeasement. Britain argued that Germany was merely "marching into its own back yard" and refused to support French military action.
4. The Munich Agreement (September 1938) represented the peak of appeasement. Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, and Mussolini agreed to give Germany the Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference that dismembered its country.
5. When Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia (March 1939), appeasement was finally discredited. Britain and France issued guarantees to Poland, pledging to defend it against German aggression.
6. By 1939, collective security had been replaced by bilateral guarantees and power politics. The League was irrelevant, the Disarmament Conference had failed, and the international order established at Versailles had been systematically destroyed.

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