The Disarmament conference was one of the many conferences organized by the League of Nations to disarm Nations for the purpose of peace. Others were the Washington Naval conference of 1922, and the London Naval Conference of 1930. These various conferences all had their imperfections in a way and for a conference to take two years and no result could be regarded as a failure... or was it?.
On February, 1932, the conference had begun in Geneva with a speech by the United States delegate, Ambassador Hugh Gibson. He said that the world's civilization was under threat because of the huge machinery and warfare that was being maintained; he also reminded everyone that they all swore not to wage war on each other so why would a massive amount of arms be needed in the first place?. According to a source, among the points he mentioned, he proposed: effective measures to protect civilian populations against aerial bombings; abolition of lethal gases and bacteriological warfare; prolonging the existing naval agreements that were concluded at Washington and London; and proportional reduction from the figures laid down in the Washington and London Naval agreements*. On May, 1933, it appeared that the conference had done a lot of struggling concerning certain issues, but without any substantial progress. Getting tired of the conference's "slow motion", the American President, President Roosevelt, decided to liven it up a bit by sending a message on the 16th of May which was addressed to the 54 government heads, he defined the primary objective of the conference as " complete elimination of all offensive weapons"*/ and believing Germany to be the " only possible obstacle"*. Roosevelt passed his views to Dr. Schalt, President of the Reichsbank, one of Germany's central banks, who was in Washington, ten days earlier and hoped he would pass them to Hitler.
On May, 1933, France refused to comply with the demands of the conference. They refused to reduce their arms, but would only if the United States and Great Britain would join them and other countries to form some sort of organized security group in order to make sure Germany would also give up arms. The U.S. only stated that they would take part in any measures that the League of Nations would take in to bringing peace and Frances proposal was rejected by the senate committee of foreign relations. The conference was in adjournment from June to October and by then; Hitler was in power and ready to rearm. Germany seemed to have no intention of disarming because they believed they were being cheated. France proposed that the steps of disarmament should not be taken immediately, but wanted a period to see whether Germany humble and trustworthy, and no longer as stubborn as before. Germany declined immediately and on October 14, 1933, withdrew from the conference and gave notice of their withdrawal from the League of Nations and it was their intention to rearm.
Twenty seven months had passed, yet no progress. The reason this conference was "another" failure of the League of Nations was because there were various disagreements and rivalries among the countries. Germany was the primary target of this conference, in my opinion and I say this because of the Paris peace settlement in 1919, treaty of Versailles, which reduced Germany's arms among other things. It was Germany's plan to make sure that every other country would disarm to their level of arms but other countries did not want to let go of their security. Then when Hitler took power in 1933, his own goal was to rearm and ignore the treaty, and when he noticed the way they were being approached by France, the U.S....etc, I believe he left the conference and withdrew from the League because of it. To the issue of other leaders, they clearly showed they did not want to disarm, so the conference was more of a waste.
The United States seemed to be the only country serious in the issue of disarmament. According to a n address by Norman Davis of the U.S. delegation, the United States would keep out of war, but help in any possible way to prevent it (May 29, 1934). The conference didn't only infuriate Germany, but for some reason, Japan terminated the Washington Naval agreement of 1922 on December 1934 and secretary Hull claimed this to be a bad thing because he believed all past agreements were for the benefit of the people and countries who signed them so when the treaty expired, another was made.
The case of Disarmament was one of the points of American President, Woodrow Wilson's, fourteen points, during the Treaty of Versailles and it seemed to be a good Idea at first and quite possible after the First World War because the world had experienced a great war that had left a scar and the people would be scared to see such a thing happen again; but when so much time was wasted and with hatred being brewed in Germany by Hitler, the issue of disarmament would be a fantasy and it lead to the Second World War.
To get to this, I used various sources but focused more on two. One is the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) website, and I chose it because it's a United Nations (U.N.) website and the United Nations happens to be the phoenix arose out of the ashes of the League of Nations so it was my first choice to see if the United Nations took any account of what the League of Nations did and I found them in this site. The other was more of a random choice I made from a group of sites I searched for in the internet, but before using it I had to confirm if the information in it was full proof by check various more and I used it because it had most detail. Other sites are used were encyclopedias and articles that backed up my research, though most had the same thing; they were quite helpful in the completion of this project and also quite reliable since they were also seen in other sites.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Note: *- main source
1. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/WorldWar2/disarm.htm- my greatest source
2. http://worldatwar.net/timeline/other/league18-46.html
3. http://www.unog.ch/80256EE60057D930/(httpPages)/C3CC141ADEC42C68C1256F32002E983B?OpenDocument
4. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1517.html
5. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/fdr.htm
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