Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to your Oak National Academy history lesson with me, Miss Goult and our fourth lesson into the inquiry, what kind of peace was made in 1919? Now, if you're joining here and you haven't done the previous three lessons of this inquiry, you need to go back because this lesson won't make any sense.

If you have done the previous three, brilliant, and today we're going to look into, was the League of Nations doomed from the start? For this lesson, you will need a pen, so I suggest at this point, you pause the video if you haven't got a pen, get a pen and write the title.

So we're going to start looking at the League of Nations by looking at this political cartoon, which was published in 1919, just after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and it's called as you can see, The Gap in the Bridge.

So have a look at what you can see, pause the video and just note down anything significant that you can pick out from this cartoon.

Right, welcome back.

So, in this cartoon, you may have noticed across the middle of the cartoon, there's a bridge which says Belgium, France, and then a gap, then England and Italy.

So that's obviously the gap in the bridge that is being referred to.

We've got this sign up here, which says, this League of Nations bridge was designed by the president of the USA, and then we can see on the right of the image, the president of the USA, so Woodrow Wilson, leaning against the keystone, USA.

So the keystone in a bridge is what you'd call the most important bit and we can see it would fit into that gap.

So we can see Woodrow Wilson there relaxing, leaning on it.

He's the last bit needed to unite those European countries to make the bridge strong and to make to bridge usable.

So why isn't Wilson completing the bridge? Well, as we know from our earlier lessons, Woodrow Wilson was known for being an idealist.

That meant he wanted things this perfect image of peace, a peaceful world and everyone working together and talking about issues instead of going to war.

So he had this grand idea of European peace, and thought that through introducing a League of Nations, where countries that hadn't somewhere to talk about their problems instead of going to war, that he could save the future of Europe.

There was a big problem though, and as we can see this in our image is that gap in the bridge, the USA was not part of the League of Nations.

The richest, most powerful country in the world was leaving war-torn Europe to fend for itself.

So we know that in 1919, people in Europe were optimistic for a future without war, but as historians, we can look back and see another war had broken out by 1939.

So how did this happen? How did the League of Nations fail? And was it doomed from the start? So we'll look into that today.

So, if we go back to our inquiry question, what kind of peace was made in 1919? Was it self-interested peace? Were the country's doing it because they wanted to gain from it? Was it a vengeful peace, were they doing it out of revenge? Or was it peace from trying to do the right thing? The League of Nations was this peace that came from trying to do the right thing, right? Countries don't want to go to war again, but this idea was diluted, so it was made weaker by the fact that Britain and France in particular, were very self-interested and also that the USA was not involved in the League of Nations.

Okay, so having gone through a bit of information here, it's a good idea for us just to check what we understand and check what we know.

So we're going to have a three-question quiz.

I will read out the options.

I'll ask you then to pause your video and you can either write down the answer, or say the answer, or point to the answer, we'll see if we've got the right one.

So first of all, we'll start off nice and easy.

Whose idea was the League of Nations? Was it David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, or Woodrow Wilson of the USA.

Pause your video now.

Of course, it was Woodrow Wilson of the USA.

Okay, question two, what was the League of Nations? So option one, an organisation set up to make sure that Germany followed the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, two, an international organisation to ensure that war did not break out again, three, an organisation set up to avoid governments facing revolutions.

So pause the video now if you want some thinking time, and then restart when you're ready.

So there was sort of two correct answers for this, and I'll go back to that in a minute, option two is the one that encompasses everything.

So it was an international organisation to ensure that war did not break out again.

If I go back, though, option one, an organisation to make sure that Germany followed the terms of the Treaty of Versailles isn't wrong.

The League of Nations did do that, but option two includes everything.

Okay, next question, which country has not become a member of the League of Nations? Was it Britain, France for the USA? Pause if you need a bit of thinking time.

Welcome back, and you're right, of course, it's the USA, which meant the actions of the League of Nations were severely limited.

So moving on, we're going to learn a bit more about the League of Nations and how it works, and I'm going to keep testing you as you go through, so you can check that you understand what you've learned.

So first of all, the Covenant of the League of Nations, were the aims which had to be followed, so they get referred to as covenant or as the aims. So there were three main aims of the League of Nations, and once I've gone through them, then we'll have a little test on them.

So the first one was to stop war, they wanted to stop war, the League of Nations wanted to deal with problems in Europe by negotiation, by talking to both sides, and trying to work out a solution.

The league wanted to make sure that they used collective security to keep everyone safe and collective security men that every nation, relied on all the other nations to keep peace.

Members of the League promised to take action, if there was a risk of danger.

So they were all agreeing to help each other.

So number one is stop war.

Okay, number two, disarmament.

Now, disarmament just means to reduce the number of weapons each country has.

So the way I remember it is it's got the word arm in the middle, like your armed forces or your army and it's disarmament.

Okay, so they want to reduce the number of weapons in a country.

This was a major goal, but in order to be successful, this needed to be led by Britain and France who had the strongest fighting forces in Europe.

They really feared conflict in the future, so it was really difficult for them to agree to disarm, and that's just worth noting, it still was an aim of the League of Nations though.

Number three is to uphold and enforce, so to uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

The league was created out of the trauma of World War I and the creation of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Treaty of Versailles provided an opportunity to restructure Europe, and the League of Nations had to support this.

Otherwise any stability in Europe would quickly disappear.

So this really refers to the last lesson as well, and the idea of self-determination.

So the League of Nation's job was to uphold that.

So let's look again at our inquiry question, what kind of peace was made in 1919? So, if we think about whether it was self-interested, vengeful, or come from doing the right thing, those three aims make it very clear that overall the peace has come from doing the right thing.

There is an element of revenge in that upholding of the Treaty of Versailles, but really, they want to promote long lasting peace.

Welcome back, I promised that there would be a quiz.

So this is the quiz on the covenant or the aims of the League of Nations.

So you can see if I point this way, the correct way, and there's a box A, below B, and C, and in those boxes will pop up the icons that were there when I was talking about the different aims of the League of Nations.

What I'd like you to do now is write down A, B, and C, pause your video, the icons will pop up and see if you can remember what the aims were.

So I'll say that again, write down A, B, C, pause the video when the icons have popped up and write down what you think the aims were and any extra details that you can remember.

So here we go.

The icons are going to pop up now.

Pause your video and see if you can remember what the aims were.

Welcome back and well done for having a go.

So we'll go through these aims and see if you've got them correct.

So A, one of the main aims was to stop war.

So you can see we've got that hand, and then some people fighting.

So the League of Nations wanted to stop war, they wanted to prevent future war in Europe.

So B, we've got that image of a graph going down and a bomb, and one of that main aim was disarmament, so the reduction of armed forces and weapons in a country, needed to be led by Britain and France.

And C, we've got a thumbs up and then something that looks like an agreement is to uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

So three main aims. So we've already said that the US who created the League of Nations, it was Woodrow Wilson's idea, was not a member.

Why would this cause difficulties? Why is it going to make things difficult? Pause your video and answer that question.

So why is the fact that the USA was not a member, why is that going to make things difficult? Pause your video and have a go at answering that.

Okay, welcome back.

So you might have come up with some ideas, these are two that I came up with.

It could if the USA was not a member, which it wasn't, it could mean that the peace that was created from the League of Nations was self-interested.

Britain and France were not as powerful as the USA, and were not as invested in this idea of European diplomacy, this idea of negotiation, they wanted to keep their own power.

Another problem that could arise is that the peace could be vengeful, it could include revenge, and vengeful ideas.

And it could be directed at punishing Germany, which could make Germany want to take revenge on Britain, and France.

So these are some problems that we've got already.

Right, let's have a look at the structure of the League of Nations.

So the League of Nations needed a structure that would allow nations to meet, discuss and resolve international problems. It was based here in Geneva in Switzerland.

Now, all member states could send a representative to the assembly, and the assembly met once a year, and all member nations of the League had one vote here.

It was like the League's parliament.

It had ultimate authority over the League's actions, and all nations were equal and had one vote and there were 42 members.

However, it was too large to react quickly and they only met once a year, so a smaller group called the Council was set up, and they met more frequently so they took major decisions and most major nations were members of the League, and those are the two main bits that you need to know.

The great powers attempted to control the Council so that's Britain, France, Italy and Japan who were permanent members of that Council of the League.

So we've got the Permanent Court of Justice, so that's some judges that would meet and settle international disputes.

There's also the Secretariat and they ensured that the League ran smoothly, and they organised the work of the assembly under the Council.

There was also the International Labour Organisation so that worked to improve working conditions, and then finally the Special Commissions, which will pop up at the bottom, and they did lots of different things around the world to help refugees, for example, to help women, to help health, to end slavery, so the League of Nations was huge.

The main bits that you need to know though is this idea that there's an assembly that met once a year with 42 members, and the council was the great powers that took most of the major decisions.

Now in terms of membership, USA was not a member despite the fact they were 42 members, all of the defeated nations in the First World War were not allowed in the League of Nations, although Germany did join in 1926, and Russia was also not included, because other nations didn't like that Russia was communist, so they had a different system of government.

It was never an organisation of all of the states or even of all of the most important states.

The League as you can probably guess from these images was dominated by Britain and France.

And there was a big problem that Britain and France disagreed over the role that the League should play.

France wanted to enforce the Treaty of Versailles and the other peace treaties in 1919, whereas Britain saw it as a place for discussion, but didn't really think that it had any real authority or power.

And this weakened the League a bit because it meant that people who were running it had different ideas about it.

The real test for the League was to do with security and when it had to deal with aggression.

Now the Council could raise armed forces from the member states, but many countries did not want to agree to this.

So the Council what I said, there was that main decision making body could ask the members to raise an army if there was a problem.

But lots of countries didn't want this, particularly after how difficult the First World War would be.

The league could sometimes pressure small countries to obey them, but it was too weak to deal with very strong countries like Japan, and Italy.

The league was not as strong as Wilson had hoped.

Member states were meant to allow the League to use their armies to create a more peaceful world, but in practise, the member states didn't want to do that, they wanted to keep control of their own armies.

So if we refer back to our inquiry question, what kind of peace was made in '19? So while the League of Nations was in some ways, self-interested, and in some ways, vengeful as we've seen, Britain and France, taking control, being the most powerful country, but also enforcing that Treaty of Versailles, not allowing Germany to join the League of Nations, it was an attempt to do the right thing.

It was seriously limited by the post-war environment of Europe, where countries were really worried about war breaking out again and didn't necessarily want to work for the greater good, they wanted to protect themselves.

Also the structure of the League of Nations, so for example, the assembly to make any decisions, there had to be a unanimous vote, that meant everyone had to agree, which meant it was very difficult to have decisions made.

So in bringing this all together, you can see that I've got a set of scales.

On one side, we've got that the League of Nations had a strong start, and on the other side, we've got that the League of Nations was doomed to fail.

And this is the debate that historians have been having since the League of Nations was set up, okay? Was it a good thing that was strong and actually was the reason that it ultimately failed to do with other issues? Or was it doomed to fail because of the structure and the way it was set up and the behaviour of Britain and France? So that's what we're going to look at today.

So on the next slide, there's going to be lots of different facts about the League of Nations that will pop up.

So before we get on to that, you can draw a set of scales if you want to, or you can just draw a table that has League of Nations had a strong start on one side of the page League of Nations was doomed to fail on the other side of the page.

So pause your video now, and make that table or draw those scales like I've got here.

So now you can see that we've got this League of Nations had a strong start on one side, League of Nations was doomed to fail on the other side, this is now a number of facts about the League of Nations, what I would like you to do in your table is to write them under the correct heading.

Now, I should say there's some that you could maybe put in the middle as well.

So strong start, doomed to fail, which side would you put each of those facts in? So pause your video now, the colours don't mean anything, it was just to help divide up the statements that you can see them that they're all separate.

So pause the video and write down your facts on either side.

Welcome back and well done.

So I'm going to go through my answers.

Again as historians if you've not quite got the same as me, sometimes there can be that debate about different factors and when we look at them in different ways, so that's something I'll go into a little bit but do not panic if you've got some slightly different questions, sorry slightly different answers to me.

Right, so League of Nations had a strong start, say three things that were clear about the strong start, it had this aim of stopping war and that was something that people in Europe wanted.

Number two, the campaigns for improving lives, so we said about the special commissions did much to improve difficult situations in the world, e.

g.

helping refugees returned home.

And there was a structure which enabled nations to meet and to discuss international problems, three very clear strengths.

Right, now if we go to the middle, I've put the aim of disarmament in the middle.

Now, this is something that you could argue about.

Some people might say, well, actually, that's a really strong start for the League of Nations, but I put it in the middle because I think, based on Britain and France being unwilling to disarm, that actually makes it quite weak.

Britain and France are supposed to be the leading countries, and they're not willing to actually disarm.

Okay, the next one, 42 member states with equal voting rights.

Now, again, I've put this in the middle, because the idea of having 42 member states is great, and it's really good to give everyone an equal opportunity, but at the same time, it was almost impossible to get the assembly to make any decisions, because everyone was so equal.

And third, the aim of enforcing the Treaty of Versailles, now the Treaty of Versailles provided some structure and stability to Europe, following the First World War.

However, we've just debated was it a piece of revenge? We looked at that a couple of lessons ago, so is it a good thing to be enforcing this massive punishment on Germany, and that is a debate, and that's why I've put that one in the middle.

Now, these ones are the ones that I think are the ones that show that the League of Nations actually, it was going to be very difficult for it to be successful.

So first of all, the League of Nations could sometimes pressure small nations to do as they wish, but it was too weak to deal with great powers like Japan and Italy, therefore, it wasn't able to do its job properly.

Britain and France disagreed on the League, how the League should be run.

They were the most powerful countries in the League, so they should be the ones that are agreeing on it.

So that's another big reason why it was doomed to fail potentially, and also Germany not being allowed to be a member meant that that was an example of when a piece of revenge was being made, because Germany is being excluded because of their actions in the First World War, it also makes them more likely to want revenge in the future.

So returning to our inquiry question at the end of our four lessons, okay? So what kind of peace was made in 1919? And we've looked at in our lessons, the Treaty of Versailles, and we looked at the aims, and we looked then at the experiences of the different countries, well we looked at experiences first, then aims and then the outcomes of the Treaty of Versailles, we looked at the problem of self determination, and this lesson, we've looked at the League of Nations.

So was it a peace that was self-interested? Was it vengeful? Or did it come from doing the right thing? And the answer is that this peace was a bit of all of these things.

However, this post-war that means after the First World War situation in Europe, meant that even if peace came from doing the right thing, there was too much self interest and the war had caused so much hurt that the countries, particularly Britain and France were incredibly vengeful in their treatment of Germany.

So, it's up to you now to make this final decision on what you think and how much you think each factor played in.

So now pause the video, read the slides and answer the comprehension questions, resume once you're finished, and we'll talk about the answers that we all got.

These are our comprehension questions, and we'll start, work through them one at a time.

I'm going to give you a little more information on question five when we get to it.

So question one, what was the League of Nations? So good job, we had that quiz on this, near the beginning of the lesson.

So an acceptable answer is it was an organisation set up to keep the peace after the First World War.

I hope that based on this lesson, you could have put a bit more detail in on this one.

So I've got here the League of Nations was Woodrow Wilson's idea.

It was an organisation designed to help countries solve problems through diplomacy instead of through war.

To uphold the Treaty of Versailles, to improve lives and jobs, and to encourage disarmament.

You might have also commented on the number of members, how the voting system worked, the Assembly, the Council, and that would have been great as well, and you can see that second answer gives a lot more specific detail.

Question two, what were the three main aims of the League of Nations? So an acceptable answer just list the three main aims so to stop war, disarmament, and to uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

A good answer would give it a little bit more detail than that, say the three main aims of the League of Nations were to stop war through collective security.

Remember, that was countries acting together and through diplomacy, so talking about problems instead of fighting.

To encourage disarmament and to uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

All of these aims were designed to stop future wars.

So that answer just nicely brings everything together at the end.

Question three, what was some of the achievements of the League of Nations? So an acceptable answer would be, it helped refugees, a more detailed answer would refer to the special commissions and if you remember that's the group, sort of on my diagram, it was at the bottom, and it showed some of the work that was done, so the special commissions of the League of Nations did some excellent work to support suffering groups.

One example of success in its campaigns was the support given to help refugees return home.

Question four, why was the League of Nations weak from the start? Acceptable answer, the USA was not a member.

Now that is acceptable, but it doesn't explain why that makes it weak.

We know, we know that the USA is the most powerful country in the world at the time.

Woodrow Wilson, the president of the USA has thought of it but that answer doesn't show me that you know that, so here is an answer that does show that.

The League of Nations was weak from the start because the most powerful country in the world was not a member.

To make that even better, you should say, the USA was not a member.

This meant that there was no one country in absolute power, Britain and France were the next most powerful and they could not agree on the role of the League and how it should be run.

Additionally, because all 42 member states had an equal vote in the assembly, it was very difficult for them to make decisions.

This made the League slow at making decisions and therefore slow to act.

That is a much better explanation, but you can see even I, in that first sentence haven't put the USA in, it needs to be really clear that the USA is not a member.

There are also lots of reasons why the League of Nations was weak.

You could have talked about the structure a little bit more, you could have talked about the fact that it was vengeful, you could have talked about the fact that Britain and France were self-interested, you could have talked about the fact that Germany wasn't involved.

So just to say there's lots of different potential correct answers to these questions, right.

So before we go on to question number five, just another reminder of what kind of peace was made in 1919? 'Cause this gets us ready to answer number five.

So was it self-interested? Was it vengeful? Or was it from doing the right thing? Now, we've gone through this a few times this lesson that essentially, the League of Nations comes from this idea of doing the right thing, but was seriously limited by the fact that Britain and France were self-interested, and we're acting in a vengeful way towards Germany.

So let's use this to look at our final question.

Explain why some people thought that the League of Nations might not be capable of stopping future wars and I've given you some key words and sentence starters, so we'll look at the key words first, and this idea of self-interest from Britain and France, from vengeful or actions of revenge, from the idea of doing the right thing isn't a reason why it wouldn't be capable, but you would want to weave that in.

Through self-determination, we know that self-determination caused real problems and if you need, you could have a look back at last lesson to see a little bit more about that, and then we've obviously got the key words League of Nations so there's some sentence starters there.

One reason why some people thought the League of Nations might not be capable of stopping future wars is and then another reason is, and do not forget to add all that detail and to explain.

So once you finish your work, we would absolutely love to see it.

So if you'd like to ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging at @OakNational and #LearnwithOak, and that brings us to the end of our inquiry into what kind of peace was made in 1919.

It's been really interesting to unpick some of the different strands of what happened in 1919, and the impact of that, and I hope that through this inquiry, you've built up your knowledge and come to an understanding of what kind of peace was made.

I hope you enjoy continuing to learn history with Oak.

Have a wonderful rest of your week and of your day, goodbye.