Although the League of Nations prevented war from breaking out between some nations, it also had many failures. Its greatest failure was containing all the major world powers. The first problem they faced was that the country whose president came up with the idea for the League of Nations refused to join it. The prestige of the League of Nations was greatly influenced by the fact that America was one of the most powerful states. Another weakness of the league was that Germany was not allowed to join because it was the reason the war had started. Since Germany was unable to join, it lost any strength Germany had against the aggressor nations. Russia was also not allowed to join due to their communist government. This left the League of Nations without the support of the three most powerful nations and would only leave them to impose economic sanctions on the nations. (Darity 385-386) In addition to clearly failing to land the highest profile roles, he also failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II. Article 11 of the League Covenant states: "Any war or threat of war is a matter of concern to the entire League and the League shall take actions which will safeguard the peace." This means that any conflict between two nations that resulted in war would be considered a failure for the League (Benjamin). The first nation that led to the failure of the League was Italy. In 1919, Italian nationalists felt that the “Big Three” had not kept the promises they made to Italy in the Treaty of Versailles. Italian nationalists decided to capture a small port in Fiume. This port was granted to Yugoslavia by the Treaty of Versailles. The League did not intervene to resolve this disagreement. Instead, for 15 months Fiume was governed by d'Annunzio, an It...... middle of paper...... The nations failed to prevent Japan from seizing the province of Manchuria as a satellite state or to oust the Italy from Ethiopia. This allied both Japan and Italy with Nazi Germany. Germany conquered Austria in March 1938, and the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia was ceded by Hitler. In March 1939, Germany conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia. The League's failure to control Germany led to the start of World War II when they invaded Poland (Merriman and Winter). Although the League of Nations had some success, its failures were more notable. They had worked hard to ensure that their members were protected from any form of war, but in the end some countries had power that had surpassed the League's power. The League of Nations later became the foundation of the United Nations after World War II. The United Nations also had to address many issues that the League had previously faced.