Germany was not allowed to join the League in 1919. As Germany had started the war, according to the Treaty of Versailles, one of her punishments was that she was not considered to be a member of the international community and, therefore, she was not invited to join.
In October 1933, some nine months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the German government announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations. The ostensible reason was the refusal of the Western powers to acquiesce in Germany's demands for military parity.
Germany, identified as the aggressor in World War I, was barred from admission at first, and admitted in 1926. Russia, now the Soviet Union, was not invited to join the League due to the radical policies of the new communist government. The Soviet Union finally became a member of the League in 1935.
When the League was set up, Germany was excluded from joining. The United States never joined so for many the League was ineffectual. Germany, after the Locarno Pact 1925 managed to secure negotiations for Germany to join. In September 1926, Germany was admitted to the League, to join all the other great powers.
Germany was not an original member of the League of Nations when it was established in 1920. Germany joined in 1926 and remained a member until Adolf Hitler withdrew the country from the League in 1933.
The League of Nations was made up of 42 founding member states, including the major Allied powers of World War I such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Japan. Germany was not initially a member due to its role in the war, but it was later admitted in 1926.
Despite formulating the concept and signing the Covenant, the United States never joined the League of Nations, and some relatively-isolated sovereign states in Asia also did not join, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mongolia, Nepal, and Bhutan.
Entry into the League was needed for the Locarno Pact to come into operation. Germany was given great power status on the Council of the League as a permanent member and as a result had the power to veto decisions.
The Soviet Union only became a member of the League of Nations in 1934, a year after Germany left, and was expelled from the League on 14 December 1939 for aggression against Finland.
Germany had to pay huge sums of money to the countries it had fought in compensation for the damage. In addition, France, England, and the United States wanted to prevent Germany from becoming strong enough to start a new war. They allowed Germany to keep only a small army. Rally against the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles resulted in Germany losing: The land lost was some of the most productive. Germany needed the revenue from these areas to rebuild the country and pay the £6.6 billion of reparations. Most Germans saw the restrictions placed on the German army as taking away Germany's right to defend itself.
During the broken reign of the Holy Roman Empire, no strong centralized form of government existed. The fact that German States existed as separate governments with no desire to give up power and the fact that no central idea for a government could be reached made the development of a unified Germany impossible.
Congress did not ratify the treaty, and the United States refused to take part in the League of Nations. Isolationists in Congress feared it would draw the United Sates into international affairs unnecessarily.
In the 1930s, the world economic depression encouraged nations to be more aggressive towards each other. Fascist dictatorships took power in Germany, Italy and Japan, which were intent on empire-building and these countries defied the League. Japan conquered Manchuria in 1932.
The credibility of the organization was weakened by the fact that the United States never joined, and Japan, Germany and Italy quit in 1933-1934. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland.
With the reunification of Germany on 3 October 1990, Berlin was reinstated as the capital city of united Germany and the Länder of the former German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany in its membership of NATO.
Sometimes labeled as the “League Of Victors” for its exclusion of Germany (until 1926) and the Soviet Union (until 1934), the League of Nations was often seen as a little more than an instrument to protect French and British international, economic, and colonial interests.
German Entry and the Locarno Treaties
The security pacts concluded at Locarno and signed at London, December 1, 1925, provided that the treaties should enter into full force as soon as all the ratifications had been deposited and Germany had become a member of the League of Nations.
Following the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, firm restrictions were placed on the German military, most notably, the entire army was restricted to just 100,000 men, while the navy was reduced to just 15,000 men.
Non-membership of the League of Nations
Despite Woodrow Wilson chairing the committee which drafted the Treaty of Versailles Covenant, America voted against becoming official members of the League of Nations in 1919.
On February 28, 1919, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts began an assault on President Woodrow Wilson's proposal to establish a League of Nations that ultimately culminated in the Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles.
Why did the Americans not want to join the league of nations? They believed in isolationism and didn't want to get involved in Europe's affairs. Many Americans thought the Treaty of Versailles was unfair. There were many German immigrants living in USA.
Austria opposed the idea of German unification as it saw this as a threat to its own empire.
There are many reasons for this. First, the “Germans” were never really as united a people as you imagine. Historically, well into the Middle Ages, they were divided into tribes or nations and did not really begin to develop a shared identity until the Battle of the Lech in 955 .