The League of Nations
The Controversial History of the Failed Organization That Preceded the United Nations
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Narrated by:
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Colin Fluxman
About this listen
The United Nations is one of the most famous bodies in the world, and its predecessor, the League of Nations, might be equally notorious. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson's pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived. At the end of World War I, Wilson's pleas at the Paris Peace Conference relied on his 14 Points, which included the establishment of a League of Nations, but while his points were mostly popular amongst Americans and Europeans alike, leaders at the Peace Conference largely discarded them and favored different approaches. British leaders saw their singular aim as the maintenance of British colonial possessions. France, meanwhile, only wanted to ensure that Germany was weakened and unable to wage war again, and it too had colonial interests abroad that it hoped to maintain. Britain and France thus saw eye-to-eye, with both wanting a weaker Germany and both wanting to maintain their colonies. Wilson, however, wanted both countries to rid themselves of their colonies, and he wanted Germany to maintain its self-determination and right to self-defense. Wilson totally opposed the "war guilt" clause, which blamed the war on Germany.
Wilson mostly found himself shut out, but Britain and France did not want American contributions to the war to go totally unappreciated, if only out of fear that the US might turn towards improving their relations with Germany in response. Thus, to appease Wilson and the Americans, France and Britain consented to the creation of a League of Nations. However, even though his participation in the crafting of the Treaty of Versailles earned him a Nobel Prize that year, Wilson soon learned to his consternation that diplomacy with Congress would go no better than his diplomacy with European leaders. The only major provision that Wilson achieved in Europe, the League of Nations, was the most controversial in the United States. Both aisles of Congress had qualms about the idea, believing it violated the Constitution by giving power over self-defense to an international body. Other interests in the United States, especially Irish-Americans, had now totally turned against Wilson. The President's interest in national self-determination extended to many European countries, including Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Belgium, but it excluded one critical country: Ireland, a country currently embroiled in a revolution against Great Britain. Worse, Irish-Americans thought the League of Nations would harden Anglo control of global institutions. Simply put, Wilson returned home to find many Americans weren't buying the League of Nations. While the Senate was able to build a slim majority in favor of ratification, it could not support the necessary two-thirds majority.
Although the League of Nations was short-lived and clearly failed in its primary mission, it did essentially spawn the United Nations at the end of World War II, and many of the UN's structures and organizations came straight from its predecessor, with the concepts of an International Court and a General Assembly coming straight from the League. More importantly, the failures of the League ensured that the UN was given stronger authority and enforcement mechanisms, most notably through the latter's Security Council.
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Story
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
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Cogently organized, meticulously balanced
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 06-15-18
By: Noah Feldman
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The Quartet
- Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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From Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.
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bias is not good history
- By Craig on 01-24-18
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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Churchill
- The Prophetic Statesman
- By: James C. Humes
- Narrated by: Matthew Brenher
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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James C. Humes reveals the astonishingly accurate predictions of Britain's most famous prime minister and how his critics' perceptions of them shaped his political career. Who could have foreseen the start of World War I twenty-five years before the assassination of a Serbian archduke plunged Europe into war? Who could have predicted the rise of al-Qaeda nearly eight decades before anyone had heard of Osama bin Laden? Winston Churchill did.
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The voice in the wilderness--Are we listening yet?
- By Jean on 12-16-12
By: James C. Humes
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Bismarck
- The Man and the Statesman
- By: A.J.P. Taylor
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In this compelling biography, historian A. J. P. Taylor reevaluates Bismarck's motives and methods, focusing on the chancellor's rise to power in the 1860s and his removal from office in 1890.
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Good, but read a primer first
- By Paolo Menuez on 06-12-18
By: A.J.P. Taylor
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The World Remade
- America in World War I
- By: G. J. Meyer
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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After years of bitter debate, the United States declared war on Imperial Germany on April 6, 1917, plunging the country into the savage European conflict that would redraw the map of the continent - and the globe. The World Remade is an engrossing chronicle of America's pivotal, still controversial intervention into World War I, encompassing the tumultuous politics and towering historical figures that defined the era and forged the future.
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"100% America" - a disturbing place to be
- By DPM on 04-01-17
By: G. J. Meyer
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On China
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 20 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this sweeping and insightful history, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book length to a country he has known intimately for decades and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. On China illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and tight line modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, and Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing.
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Another History of China
- By Elton on 09-23-11
By: Henry Kissinger
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The Cold War
- A New History
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jay Gregory, Alan Sklar
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.
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WOW
- By Cordell eddings on 10-13-07
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The Deluge
- The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
- By: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in the social and industrial order.
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Not For The Faint of Heart
- By David on 07-15-15
By: Adam Tooze
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American Creation
- Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the first shots fired at Lexington to the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, Joseph J. Ellis guides us through the decisive issues of the nation's founding, and illuminates the emerging philosophies, shifting alliances, and personal and political foibles of our now iconic leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams.
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Good But Not Quite There
- By Slide01 on 06-02-13
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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Hitler
- By: Joachim C. Fest, Richard Winstton - translator, Clara Winstton - translator
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 41 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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This masterful biography by one of Germany’s best known journalists was the leading nonfiction best seller in Germany. Fest shows Hitler as the receptacle of the dreads and resentments of a shaken social order, gifted with an uncanny instinct for all that was hollow behind the appearance of power, at home and abroad. Though a warped human being, he was neither clown nor puppet, as many liked to think; Hitler appears here as an enormously astute politician, impressing and hypnotizing Germans and foreigners alike with the scope of his projects and the theatricality of their presentation. Fest uncovers in Hitler a constantly destructive personality....
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Should be part of high school education
- By Rex Riethmeier on 12-25-18
By: Joachim C. Fest, and others
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The Russian Revolution
- A Captivating Guide to the February and October Revolutions and the Rise of the Soviet Union Led by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Timothy Burke
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The Russian Revolution was the most important and progressive political event of the 20th century. There is a lot to learn from these explosive political episodes and many remarkable stories to discover.
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Data without understanding
- By Greg Becker on 01-26-19