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How did the League of Nations respond to Japan's invasion of Manchuria?

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The League of Nations responded to Japan's invasion of Manchuria by sending a fact-finding mission to China under the leadership of Lord Lytton. On the basis of the Lytton Commission's report, the League ordered the Japanese to leave Manchuria, but they refused. Instead, they left the League of Nations.

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The League of Nations was established after World War I to try to build and maintain a more peaceful world following the immense tragedy of that war—a war which many believed could have been prevented had more diplomatic avenues been open in 1914. The League was an attempt to foster an attitude of internationalism and cooperation.

However, like the Articles of Confederation (the earliest document that joined the United States together), the League of Nations was fatally flawed in being too weak to be effective. Unlike the later United Nations, there was no peace-keeping aspect to the League that could have given China military aid against Japan.

Japan violated the League of Nations in 1931 when it invaded Manchuria. The League's chief weapon, economic sanctions, was ineffective. Japan, ruled by a reactionary Emperor under the influence of generals with expansionist ambitions, simply ignored the League's demand that it leave China...

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and instead withdrew from the League. This paved the way for other militaristic dictatorships, such as Germany and Italy, to also leave the League in the 1930s.

Nationalism won out over internationalism, and an unchecked Japan perpetrated atrocities on the badly weakened Manchuria. The lesson of Manchuria was that international organizations needed military power to be effective.

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In September 1931, Japan used railway explosion as an excuse to invade China. By February 1932, Japan had conquered the whole area and established their own government there named Manchukuo. Suffering enormously from Japan’s military attack, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. In response to the Chinese claims, the League sent a commission led by a British official called Lytton to investigate the issue. In October 1932, a year after Japan’s invasion, the Lytton Report was published and Japan was found guilty. In February 1933, the League held a special assembly where all its members except Japan voted that the Japanese army should leave China. Japan refused to do so. It left the League and further expanded its aggressive movements. Then the League couldn’t do anything about it because main League members wanted to maintain Japan as a normal trading partner (so economic sanctions wouldn’t work), and no country wanted a war with Japan.

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