Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

The great powers, the veto and the failure to curb the dictators

Why will a state accept economic loss for a principle in one decade and not in the next?

Option B5 · The changing role of international organisations: the league and the UN, 1919–c2011 › Key topic 2 · The League challenged, 1930–39 — one of 3 lessons in this key topic. Paper 2 Section B — breadth study in change: The changing role of international organisations: the league and the UN, 1919–c2011, key topic 2 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

Learn it, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this lesson carries all three.

What the specification asks for

“The roles of the Great Powers, including the problem of the veto and the failure to curb the dictators.” — examined through causation. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

What the League could actually do

The Covenant provided a graduated response. A dispute could be referred to the Council, which would investigate and report; a state going to war in defiance of the Covenant would face economic and financial sanctions applied by all members; and if those failed the Council could recommend what military contributions members should make.

Two features determined how this worked in practice. First, every step depended on member states doing something: the League had no revenue of its own beyond contributions, no forces, and no power to compel a government. Second, unanimity in the Council meant that a great power could block a finding against itself or its friends.

The word veto is used loosely about this period and should be handled precisely. The League had no formal veto of the kind the United Nations later created; it had a unanimity rule, which produces the same practical effect by a different route. A candidate who says veto should explain that they mean unanimity, or say unanimity instead.

Why sanctions are hard

Economic sanctions require the states applying them to accept a loss. A country that stops buying a commodity pays more for it elsewhere; a country that stops selling loses a market and the employment attached to it. In the 1920s that price was small and the disputes were remote. In the 1930s the price was large and the disputes involved states whose friendship the great powers wanted.

The Depression made this worse in a way that is often left out. Governments facing mass unemployment were extremely reluctant to close export markets, and the currency and trade disorder of the early 1930s had already reduced the willingness of states to act together on anything economic.

There was also a strategic calculation. Britain and France were increasingly worried about Germany after 1933, which made them unwilling to drive Italy into German alignment over Abyssinia; and both were unwilling to face a war in Asia over Manchuria while European problems were unresolved. Neither calculation is disgraceful in itself, and both meant that the League's members would not do what the Covenant required.

The members who left

Membership itself became a problem. Germany joined in 1926 and left in 1933; Japan gave notice in 1933 after the Lytton Report; Italy left in 1937. The Soviet Union joined only in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after attacking Finland.

The pattern is worth stating carefully. An organisation that condemns a member's action, and whose only sanction is the member's continued membership, gives that member an easy exit. Japan and Germany both discovered that leaving cost them nothing, and the demonstration effect on everybody else was considerable.

That is the structural point the United Nations founders acted on in 1945. They concluded that keeping the great powers inside the organisation mattered more than being able to act against them, and they built the veto deliberately for that reason — which is why the next key topic's central argument is whether that trade was worth making.

It is worth adding that the League's members were not only unwilling but frequently unavailable. Disarmament had been one of the Covenant's central commitments, and the World Disarmament Conference that opened at Geneva in 1932 collapsed within two years when Germany withdrew from it and from the League together. An organisation whose members could not agree to limit their own weapons in a period of comparative peace was unlikely to agree to use them against one another in a crisis, and the two failures belong in the same explanation.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1933
Germany and Japan both leave the League. Why this date: It demonstrates that departure was costless, which removes the League's principal hold over a member.
1934
The Soviet Union joins the League. Why this date: Membership was still valued in the mid-1930s, which complicates any account of the organisation as already dead.
1937
Italy leaves the League after the Abyssinian crisis. Why this date: The third of the aggressor states departs without penalty, four years after the first two.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • Unanimity — The Council rule that allowed any member present to block a decision.
  • 1933, 1937 and 1939 — The departures of Germany and Japan, of Italy, and the expulsion of the Soviet Union. (Notice periods meant formal withdrawal sometimes took two years to take effect.)
  • No revenue and no forces of its own — The League's capacity to act independently of members. (It could and did administer territories using contingents supplied by member states.)

The people to place

  • Anthony Eden — British minister associated with support for League action over Abyssinia.
  • Pierre Laval — French premier and foreign minister; co-author of the Hoare-Laval Pact.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

  • The 'members, not machinery' reading: The same rules produced settlements in the 1920s and failures in the 1930s, so the variable was the willingness of Britain and France to accept cost for a principle rather than any defect in the Covenant. Contested by The reading that a machinery which depends entirely on members' willingness is defective by definition, since an institution that works only when nobody objects has added nothing to ordinary diplomacy..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The League had a veto like the United Nations.

This: It had a unanimity rule in the Council, which produced a similar effect by a different route. The formal veto held by five permanent members is a United Nations creation of 1945.

Not this: Britain and France failed to act because they were cowardly.

This: They made calculations: the Depression made closing export markets costly, and after 1933 both were unwilling to drive Italy towards Germany. The calculations can be criticised without being reduced to cowardice.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The League and its leading members.

The distinction: The League could only recommend; Britain and France decided. Saying the League failed to act obscures the fact that acting was a decision for governments, and it is those decisions a causation question is asking about.

Blurred: Sanctions imposed and sanctions effective.

The distinction: Sanctions were imposed on Italy in 1935. They excluded oil, coal and steel and the Suez Canal stayed open, so the question is not whether sanctions work but whether these sanctions were meant to.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer explains the 1930s by what sanctions cost the states applying them. Closing a market during a depression means unemployment at home for a principle abroad, and after 1933 Britain and France additionally wanted Italy on their side against Germany — so the machinery did not change between 1925 and 1935, and the price of using it did.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: The point that sanctions require the sanctioning state to accept a loss, connected to the Depression. It explains a failure of will as an economic calculation rather than a character flaw.

The cap that bites here: The 8-mark question is held at 4 marks if only one cause is explained.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. Explain TWO ways in which the League's position in the 1930s was different from its position in the 1920s. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
  2. Explain TWO causes of the League's failure to curb the dictators. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
  3. Explain TWO causes of members leaving the League in the 1930s. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
  4. How significant was the role of the great powers in the failure of the League, in the years 1919–46? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
  5. How far was the League's failure caused by its own rules? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Did the League fail because of its structure or because of its members?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on the great powers, the veto and the failure to curb the dictators, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain the great powers, the veto and the failure to curb the dictators — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue the great powers, the veto and the failure to curb the dictators against the historical mind with the strongest claim on it — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 15 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

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The debate is against The Charge Against the Members — the case itself, argued at its strongest, because on this strand there is no single person whose position the learner has to defeat.

The same people, elsewhere in the option

Carry on through the option