Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The League of Nations (Encore)

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

The First World War was the most horrific war the world had ever seen at that time. When the conflict ended, there was an effort to make sure that such a thing never happened again.  To that end, a deliberative body was created where nations could come together to debate and discuss matters before starting an armed conflict. While having some success, this deliberative body ultimately failed at its stated goal of avoiding another world war. Learn more about the League of Nations and why it failed on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. The First World War was the most horrific war that the world had ever seen at that time. When the conflict ended, there was an effort to make sure that such a thing never happened again. To that end, a deliberative body was created, where nations could come together to debate and discuss matters before starting an armed conflict. While having some success, this deliberative body ultimately failed at its stated goal of avoiding another world war. Learn more about the League of Nations and why it failed. on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The First World War was devastating to all. of the parties which took part. In the over four years during which the war raged in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, most of the belligerent countries were far more focused on winning

the war than they were on what would come after its conclusion. When the United States finally entered the war in 1917, they had been sitting on the sidelines for almost three years, watching the various European powers rip themselves apart. On January 8, 1918, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, made an address before the United States Congress and presented what would become known as his 14 points. The 14 points didn't deal with the minutia of the war currently being fought in Europe, but rather it was an outline for what the international system should look like after the war. The first four points were a statement of general principles. It stated that all agreements between countries should be public and not

secret, that there should be freedom of navigation on the high seas, that trade and economic barriers to trade should be kept at a minimum, and that national militaries should be kept as small as possible. Points 5 through 13 dealt with the territorial questions of individual countries in the war, including colonial claims, Russia, Belgium, Italy, France, Turkey, Poland, Austria, and the Balkans. The 14th point, however, was a call to create a, quote, League of Nations to ensure peace and justice, end quote. The idea of an international organization to try to mitigate conflict states back over 125 years before Wilson's proposal. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant proputed an international assembly to promote peace, and there was another call for a formal body after

the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, several prominent Europeans had advocated for such a body as well. The problem was all of these calls to create an international organization never found their way to someone who could actually get something done. Intellectuals promoting something was one thing, but a world leader advocating it would have been quite another. Wilson's idea of a League of Nations was heavily promoted on both sides of the conflict. The 14 points were republished in German newspapers during the war, and many Germans, both in and out of the government, assume that these points would be the basis of any future peace treaty. When the armistice was signed and the war ended in November of 1918, Wilson took it

upon himself personally to make the League of Nations a reality. He left for Paris on December 4th, 1918, and remained in France until July, save for a two-week return trip to the U.S. in late February in early March. It was the longest any American president has ever been outside of the country during their term of office. Because the United States had no territorial claims, Wilson's primary goal of the Conference of Versailles was the creation of the League. Wilson personally chaired the sessions at the Versailles Conference relating to the creation of the League of Nations. He actually came down with a Spanish flu for several weeks, which meant that he wasn't around to stop some of the more onerous parts of the treaty which were intended to punish Germany.

Nonetheless, Wilson did get the League of Nations passed, and it was Section 1 of the Treaty of Versailles. There were several things that the establishment of the League lacked that Wilson wanted. For example, Wilson wanted to get rid of colonies or at least start the decolonization process. The League of Nations did nothing to address this. Wilson was also a believer in the right of self-determination. If a region was disputed between two countries, he felt that the people who live there should be able to determine under which country they would live. This was also not part of the founding documents of the League of Nations. The section of the Treaty of Versailles which founded the League of Nations was signed on June 28, 1919.

And the official starting date of the League was January 20th, 1920. It wasn't exactly what Wilson wanted, but it was still a major advance in international relations. The League of Nations was to be headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with preliminary work being done in London. The organization's structure consisted of a general assembly, compromising, every member nation. When the League had its first session in 1920, there were 42 countries and membership peaked at 58 countries in 1935. There was also an executive council that consisted of just the major powers of France, Britain, Italy, and Japan, plus other countries which were voted on by the General Assembly for a three-year term. Finally, a permanent secretariat was led by a

secretary-general, who managed the various agencies run by the League and its day-to-day affairs. Woodrow Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. While President Wilson spearheaded the creation of the League of Nations, he would still have to be approved by the United States Senate by a two-thirds majority. When Wilson returned to the United States, he began a cross-country campaign to get America to join the League, and at the end of his tour, he suffered a stroke which disabled him for the remainder of his second term in office.

The traditional explanation is that it was isolationist in the Senate who killed the League of Nations ratification. This isn't quite true. There were three groups of senators, those who were for it, those who were against it, for various reasons, actually, and a group known as the Reservationists. As the name implied, the Reservationists were not against the League of Nations per se, but had reservations about some part of the treaty. In particular, joining the League would require the United States to go to war if any League members were attacked. The pro-treaty senators and the reservationists had enough to actually ratify the treaty, but it would have required some compromises, and Wilson refused to compromise on anything. It was actually Wilson, who encouraged

the pro-treaty Democrats to vote no rather than compromise. On the final vote taken on March 19, 1920, it was 49 in favor and 35 against. With the world's largest economy, and the League of nation's biggest supporter now out, it seriously hampered the organization. The League of Nations, however, was not a complete failure, as it is often portrayed. They successfully negotiated border disputes between Sweden and Finland, Poland and Lithuania, and Greece and Bulgaria. They administered the disputed areas of the Sarland between France and Germany, as well as the city of Danzig, disputed between Germany and Poland. The League was behind the Geneva Protocol, which banned the use of chemical gas and warfare. They established the Permanent Court of Indyghuror. They established the Permanent Court of

International Justice, the predecessor to the International Court of Justice. They also established agencies for international cooperation in science and culture, the precursor to UNESCO. They worked with helping refugees, creating standards for communications and transportation, took steps to try to end the slave trade, and also worked on trying to end diseases like leprosy and malaria. Despite all of these achievements, in the end, the failures overwhelm their successes. The big problem with the League of Nations is that they had no teeth. They couldn't enforce anything that they passed. With the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, the League of Nations proved themselves to be imminent. They couldn't stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1932.

They didn't prevent Mussolini's annexation of Ethiopia in 135. They didn't do anything to prevent Hitler from taking over the Sudeten land in Austria in 1938. Germany, in fact, had quit the League of Nations in 1933. The League was so often afraid of failure that they chose to do nothing rather than something. In 1920, the first year they existed, the Soviet Union attacked a port on the Caspian Sea in what was then the nation of Persia. Persia, which was a member of the League of Nations, appealed for help, but the League chose to do nothing because the Soviet Union wasn't a member at that time, and probably would have just ignored them. They felt that if they were ignored, it would harm their credibility. In reality, not honoring their commitments probably did more damage

in the long run than having the Soviets ignore them. Germany, Japan, and Italy considered the League of Nations to be a joke and ignored them in their plans for conquest. When war officially broke out in 1939, most of the members were not involved with the war, and those who were involved with the war were almost all on the Allied side. This made Switzerland uncomfortable hosting an organization that had become a de facto allied group, so they shut down their headquarters in Geneva. The one thing that the League of Nations did do in response to the war was to expel the Soviet Union after their invasion of Poland and Finland. They couldn't expel Germany because they had already quit. The Soviet Union was the only country

in the history of the League of Nations to have ever been kicked out. In December 1939, the League of Nations General Assembly passed a resolution, transferring most of its power to the Secretary General, allowing the organization to at least exist on paper during the entire duration of the Second World War. The Irish diplomat, Sean Lester, served as the Secretary General of the League of Nations throughout the entire war, and Lester remained in Geneva the whole time, overseeing the few humanitarian programs that the League still ran. During the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allies recognized the need for a new organization to replace the League of Nations. They called it the United Nations, which was the name used

for the Allies during the war. Even before the war ended, a planning conference laid the groundwork for the new United Nations in San Francisco in 1944. Much of the strong of the United Nations was actually based on the League of Nations. The major difference was that the Executive Council was now called the Security Council, and the major powers all had a veto. There was one final meeting of the League of Nations after World War II. On April 16, 1946, the last meeting took place in Geneva. The purpose of the meeting was to liquidate the League. All of the League of Nation assets were transferred to the United Nations, including the property of its headquarters, the Palace of Nations, which today is the

the UN's Geneva headquarters. A committee of nine people from different countries oversaw the liquidation and transfer of assets and the payment of all debts. The League of Nations officially dissolved on July 31, 1947. Today, there are over 15 million pages from the League of Nations archive in Geneva, and there's an effort to digitize the entire collection, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2022. In the end, while the League of Nations did fail to prevent the Second World War, It wasn't a complete failure. They did have a few moderate successes, and if nothing else, it did lay the foundation for the United Nations, which succeeded it. One of the great advocates of the League of Nations was the British diplomat Robert Cecil. He was one of the organization's architects, along with Woodrow Wilson, and even campaigned with Wilson for five weeks in the United States to help with ratification. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937 for his work. At the very last session of the League of Nations in 1946, he addressed the Assembly.

and said, quote, Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the charter, no less than the machinery of the covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace. I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong, which nations like individuals depend.

The League is Dead. Long live the United Nations. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in everything everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.