There had been a series of failures that led to the destruction of international peace by 1939. The cause for world war two was because of the invasion of Poland by Germany. Britain and France agreed that after the Munich pact, if Germany were to invade Poland , they would start a war against Hitler. However Hitler could have been stopped a long time before the invasion of Poland however due to the international peace failures he did not stop and no one stopped him. There were many factors that led up to the failure of international peace in 1930.
There were important long term factors which help to explain why war broke out in 1939. One factor was the Versailles Treaty. It was an important factor and one of the reasons there was a war outbreak because Hitler resented it. Hitler hated the treaty because it had weakened Germany’s armed forces and had limited their armed troops. The treaty also took parts of Germany and this annoyed Hitler as he believed that all German speaking people should be in Germany as we see in the Anschluss. All these factors and many more led to the abolishment of the treaty.
The treaty of Versailles was originally set up to weaken Germany to protect neighbouring countries from another war however Hitler went against this cause for international peace. By 1934 Hitler had begun going against the treaty by re capturing German territory as well as re arming… The failure of the League of Nations in the 1930s also contributed towards the outbreak of war. This was because the League was proven to only be useful when solving small disputes such as the Vilna, Upper Sileasa…and Corfu.
This was good in the short term however when it came to dealing with the bigger more important disputes such as the Manchurian crisis the league was useless and lazy. For example, when the league had the opportunity to assist Japan during the Manchurian crisis their actions were very slow when they started to deal with the dispute. However by the time they had eventually come up with a solution to the dispute the damage had already been done.
The main reason they did not act faster was because they did not want to do anything that may have led to another war outbreak. To conclude the League of Nations was a failure at resolving international affairs to make international peace because within a short matter of time its purpose had been defeated and Hitler took great advantage of that especially since the USA was not present. During the 1930’s the appeasement policy was seen to be a means of preserving peace with Germany by giving Hitler all he wanted.
People began to believe that appeasement could help to bring back international peace. Especially since at the time, Britain's military was not strong enough to part-take in a major war and therefore could not risk a war. There were some advantages of appeasement: 1) The appeasement policy would give Britain time to rearm 2) people believed it would be good for Britain to appease Germany since the Treaty of Versailles was very much harsh on Germany and this would be a means of sympathizing and protection on their behalf.
However there were also disadvantages such as: 1) due to the constant demand from Germany Britain would therefore have to keep giving if they wanted to be on good terms with Germany. 2) This meant that with Britain and France giving into Germany, Germany could once again become powerful thereby becoming a threat to the British Empire which would not help to make international peace for anyone. Despite the negatives, The Appeasement policy was signed and soon after, the policy failed.
Hitler's aim was to unite majority of the German speaking peoples of the Sudetenland into Germany. The Sudetenland was a part of the democratic republic of Czechoslovakia. Both Britain and France were happy about the creation of Czechoslovakia but yet they gave part of it to Hitler giving him more power to start another war. When Hitler demanded the whole of the Sudetenland he began to break up Czechoslovakia. This demand led to the Munich Conference where only Britain, France, Italy and of course Germany were present but surprisingly the Czechs were not invited.
This conference was aimed at giving Hitler his demand of Sudetenland and without consulting Czechoslovakia about their own future, the Sudetenland was given to Germany. It was soon after realised that Hitler could not be trusted and was not interested in international peace. Britain and France began to quickly rearm and Poland was assured that she would be backed by both Britain and France as they believed that Poland would be Hitler's next target which it was. Anther factor which contributed to the failure of international peace was the Nazi – Soviet Pact in 1939.
This was an agreement between Russia and Germany to not invade each other. The reason for this pact was the fact that Hitler was trying to reclaim all land that the Treaty of Versailles took away. He mainly wanted to take back the Polish Corridor. He knew that Britain and France would not do anything if he invaded because he knew they were weak and feared him, but he was not sure about Russia which was strong. So he took precautions. He presented the idea of this pact to Stalin of Russia.
The agreement entailed that both countries would attack Poland together and once they conquered Poland, they would ration out the land between each other. Stalin agreed and in the later part of 1939 they invaded Poland and succeeded. This Pact ended all possible cooperation between Britain and France with USSR and Hitler had no intention of sticking to the negotiation he had made with Stalin. All these things that Hitler did slowly created the collapse of International Peace and sadly the start of another World War and international peace was not found due to the hostility between countries.
