Editing League of Nations (section)

====World Disarmament Conference====
{{Main|World Disarmament Conference}}
The Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|pp=113, 123}} The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932–1934 [[World Disarmament Conference]].{{sfn|Northedge|1986|p=114}} Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and [[Czechoslovakia]] felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed.{{sfn|Henig|1973|p=173}} Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became [[Adolf Hitler's rise to power|German Chancellor in 1933]]. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|p=114}}

The [[World Disarmament Conference]] was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Temperley |first=A.C. |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216023 |title=The Whispering Gallery Of Europe |year=1938}}</ref> A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference.{{sfn|Goldblat|2002|p=24}} The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi=10.1007/s11698-010-0049-9|title=Why did the League of Nations fail? |year=2011 |last1=Eloranta |first1=Jari |journal=Cliometrica |volume=5 |pages=27–52 |s2cid=19944887 }}</ref>