The Collapse of the League

It is us today, it will be you tomorrow

On 30 June 1936 the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, stood before the Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, two months after Italian troops had taken his capital, and asked what the members had done with the promise of the Covenant. Italian journalists whistled from the gallery. He told the delegates that God and history would remember their judgement, and that if they would not act for Abyssinia they should understand that it was their turn next. A fortnight later the League lifted its sanctions on Italy. The collapse had begun with the Depression. After the Crash of October 1929 every government looked inward: Japan, which had lost half its silk exports, took Manchuria from China in September 1931 and answered the League report of 1932 by leaving in March 1933; Britain and France, with millions unemployed, would risk neither trade nor war for a distant province. When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia on 3 October 1935 the League did impose sanctions, on 18 November, but not on oil, coal or steel, and it kept the Suez Canal open to Italian troopships; within a month the British and French foreign ministers had secretly offered Mussolini two-thirds of the country. The Rhineland was remilitarised while the sanctions were still running. AQA asks why the League collapsed and expects the two crises to be used as evidence for the structural weaknesses, no army, absent powers, slow decisions and the reluctance of Britain and France, that the 1920s had already shown. It asks through sources, an account and a judgement. This module gives you the dates and figures of both crises and the shapes to argue them in.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a source answer.

The collapse, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• The Wall Street Crash begins the Depression and world trade starts to collapse
• The Japanese army stages an explosion at Mukden and occupies Manchuria
• The Assembly adopts the Lytton Report by 42 votes to 1 and Japan walks out of the League
• Italian forces invade Abyssinia and the League imposes sanctions without oil
• The Hoare-Laval Pact is leaked and Hoare resigns
• Addis Ababa falls, Haile Selassie addresses the Assembly, and sanctions are lifted

Why did the League fail over Manchuria and Abyssinia?

The League had settled Bulgaria in a fortnight in 1925. Which explanation best accounts for its failure against Japan in 1931 and Italy in 1935?

• Both aggressors were permanent members of the Council with the veto and the will to walk out; the League had no army and Britain and France, the only members with fleets, would not fight in Manchuria, which was far away, or risk driving Mussolini towards Hitler over Abyssinia, which was near; the Depression made sanctions a cost nobody would bear and left the United States, the largest trading power, outside them; and the procedure was slow, so that Lytton reported a year after Mukden and the sanctions on Italy omitted the one export, oil, that would have stopped the war.
• Manchuria and Abyssinia were too far away for the League to reach.
• The United States told the League not to act.
• Japan and Italy had legal rights to the territories.

Manchuria and Abyssinia, side by side

The judgement question wants both crises as evidence. One row per stage, so that the second crisis reads as the first one repeated with the excuses removed.

Question 1: how do you know?

Source A: a description of a cartoon by David Low published in the Evening Standard on 19 January 1933, during the Manchurian crisis. A Japanese soldier in uniform, rifle on his back, stands wiping his boots on a doormat labelled League of Nations that lies at the entrance to a building marked Manchuria; behind the door, timid figures representing the League powers peer out, and one holds a box labelled Face-Saving Outfit. The title is The Doormat. AQA Question 1 says: Source A is critical of the League of Nations. How do you know? Tap the TWO details that show the criticism most directly.

• The League is drawn as a doormat on which the Japanese soldier wipes his boots, which presents it as something an aggressor walks over on his way in.
• The Japanese soldier carries a rifle.
• The League powers cower behind the door holding a Face-Saving Outfit, which mocks the Lytton Report and the Assembly vote as devices for looking as if something had been done.
• The building is labelled Manchuria.
• The cartoon appeared in a London newspaper.

The Depression and the League

Select the THREE statements that correctly explain how the Depression weakened the League.

• The Depression turned every government inward: Britain and France cut their armed forces and would risk neither trade nor war for a distant province, and the United States raised its tariff in 1930 and retreated further from world affairs.
• It produced the aggressors: Japan lost half its silk exports to America and its army sold Manchuria as a source of raw materials and land, and in Germany the slump carried Hitler from 12 seats to power, so that by 1933 two Council members had governments that saw conquest as the way out.
• It made economic sanctions a weapon nobody would use: trading nations with millions unemployed would not cut exports to Japan in 1932, and in 1935 the sanctions on Italy left out oil, coal and steel because Britain feared for its own trade and for Mussolini as an ally against Hitler.
• The League went bankrupt in 1931 and could not pay its officials.
• Most members left the League during the Depression.
• The Depression persuaded the United States to join the League.

Question 2: how useful are two sources?

AQA Question 2 gives you two sources and asks how useful they are to a historian studying one thing, for 12 marks. The two below are described for this module; the exam prints the real text. Enquiry: why the League of Nations failed in the 1930s. Source B. From the report of the Lytton Commission, published in October 1932, which found that the Japanese military operations after Mukden could not be regarded as legitimate self-defence, that the new state of Manchukuo had not been created by a spontaneous movement of its people, and which recommended that Manchuria become an autonomous region under Chinese sovereignty. Source C. From the speech of the Emperor Haile Selassie to the Assembly of the League on 30 June 1936, in which he described the Italian use of gas against his people, said that he had come to claim the justice the Covenant promised, that fifty-two nations had promised him help and given him none, and that what was happening to Abyssinia today would happen to them tomorrow. The method is the same for both: content (what it says about the enquiry), provenance (who, when, why, and what that does to its value), and own knowledge to test it. Source B is useful for what the League could do well: an impartial inquiry that named the aggressor; its limit is that it took a year, that its remedy was to give Japan much of what it had seized, and that the report itself contains no explanation of why nothing followed, which own knowledge of the Depression and the walkout of March 1933 supplies. Source C is useful for the view of the victim and for the accusation, made to their faces, that the members had broken the Covenant; its purpose was to shame them into acting, so it does not weigh the reasons they had not, and a historian reads it beside the sanctions list of November 1935 and Hoare-Laval to see what the shaming was aimed at. This meant that B shows the League working and C shows what the working was worth, and a top-level answer uses both for the enquiry.

In the shoes of Britain and France, 1931 to 1936

Four decisions in the two crises. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice taught the aggressors.

• October 1931. You are the League Council. Japan has occupied Manchuria and China has appealed under the Covenant. Japan says it acted in self-defence and will accept an inquiry. What do you do?
• November 1935. You are the British government. Italy has invaded Abyssinia and the League has named it the aggressor. Oil sanctions would stop the Italian army within months; Mussolini says oil sanctions mean war, and you want him against Hitler. What do you do?
• December 1935. You are Hoare, the British foreign secretary, meeting Laval in Paris. The sanctions are hurting nobody, the war is going on, and Laval proposes a deal. What do you agree?
• July 1936. You are the League Assembly. Addis Ababa has fallen, the emperor has spoken, Italy has annexed Abyssinia, and Hitler has reoccupied the Rhineland while you were busy. What do you do about the sanctions?

From cause to consequence

Because the Depression halved world trade and put millions out of work, Britain and France would risk neither exports nor war for a distant province, and Japan took _____ in September 1931 knowing it. Because the League sent a commission rather than imposing sanctions, the verdict on Japan came eighteen months after the invasion and Japan answered it by _____ in March 1933. Because Mussolini saw that a Council member could seize territory and walk away, he invaded _____ in October 1935. Because Britain wanted Mussolini as an ally against Hitler, the sanctions of November 1935 left out _____ and the Canal stayed open. And because the two powers running the sanctions were caught offering the aggressor two-thirds of the country in the _____ Pact, the League lost the trust of every small member and played no part in the crises of 1938 and 1939.

The Lytton vote

On 24 February 1933 the Assembly of the League adopted the Lytton Report by 42 votes to 1, the one vote against being Japan. By how many votes was the report carried?

Question 1: how do you know, marked

AQA Question 1 asks: Source A (the Low cartoon The Doormat) is critical of the League of Nations. How do you know? It is marked for 4 on identifying the message and supporting it from the source with own knowledge. Which answer scores all four?

• I know because Low draws the League as a doormat that a Japanese soldier wipes his boots on while the League powers hide behind the door with a face-saving outfit, which presents the League as something to be walked over and its leaders as concerned only with appearances. That fits January 1933: Japan had held Manchuria for sixteen months, the Lytton Report had condemned the conquest without proposing any action, and the Assembly was about to adopt it and watch Japan walk out.
• The cartoon shows a soldier wiping his feet on a mat.
• Low disliked the British government and drew cartoons against it.
• The cartoon supports Japan because the soldier looks strong.

Question 3: an account, marked

Question 3: Write an account of how the Abyssinian crisis of 1935 to 1936 damaged the League of Nations. The crisis began with a clash between Italian and Abyssinian troops at the oasis of Wal Wal in December 1934, which Mussolini used as the excuse for a war he had been planning to avenge the Italian defeat of 1896 and build an empire. Because Abyssinia was a League member, the emperor appealed to Geneva, and because Britain and France wanted Mussolini in the Stresa Front against Hitler, they spent the summer of 1935 trying to buy him off rather than warning him, which led him to conclude that they would not act. On 3 October 1935 around 400,000 Italian troops invaded with aircraft and gas, and the League for once moved quickly, naming Italy the aggressor within a week and imposing sanctions on 18 November. This in turn exposed the League, because the sanctions omitted oil, coal and steel and Britain kept the Suez Canal open, so that Italian troopships passed under British guns to a war the League had condemned. The damage became fatal in December, when the Hoare-Laval plan to give Mussolini two-thirds of Abyssinia was leaked, showing every small member that the two powers running the sanctions were bargaining with the aggressor behind them. As a result Hitler judged the moment safe and remilitarised the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, Addis Ababa fell on 5 May, the emperor was whistled at in the Assembly on 30 June, sanctions were lifted in July, and Italy left the League in December 1937 for the Axis. The account shows a League that had the means and lost the will, and that never again attempted to stop an aggressor. What earned the marks: a sequence of events with dates and figures; each linked to the next by because, this in turn and as a result, so that the account explains how the crisis damaged the League rather than describing the war; and a closing sentence that says what the chain shows. That structure, sustained, is what reaches the top level of the 8-mark account.

Question 4: the 16-mark judgement

"The Depression was the main reason for the collapse of the League of Nations in the 1930s." How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

• One paragraph on the Depression with dated evidence: what it did to Britain and France, to Japan and Germany, and to the willingness of members to use sanctions
• At least two paragraphs on other reasons with dated evidence from Manchuria and Abyssinia: the structural weaknesses of no army, unanimity and the absent United States, and the choices of Britain and France over oil sanctions, Suez and Hoare-Laval

Question 4: the judgement, tested

A student has argued that the Depression was the main reason for the collapse of the League. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST that judgement, in the way the top level of Question 4 requires?

• The Depression explains why members were unwilling in the 1930s, but the League had already shown the same unwillingness before it, letting Poland keep Vilna in 1920 and paying Italy for Corfu in 1923 in the years of prosperity, so the slump deepened a weakness it did not create; and in 1935 Britain and France chose to omit oil from the sanctions and to offer Mussolini two-thirds of Abyssinia for reasons of alliance against Hitler, not of trade, which means the collapse came from a structure that depended on two powers and from the choices those powers made, with the Depression as the condition that made the choices easier.
• The United States never joined, so the League was doomed from 1920 and the Depression is irrelevant.
• Mussolini and Hitler were the real cause because they wanted war.
• Japan invaded Manchuria because of the Depression, so the Depression must be the main reason.