Joseph Avenol, secretary-general of the League of Nations, sold out the organization he had sworn to uphold.

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By John W. Osborn, Jr.

Rarely has a biography title been so fitting as Betrayal From Within, James Barros’ chronicle of Joseph Avenol’s performance as secretary-general of the League of Nations during the years between the world wars. Avenol drained the League of its political and moral authority through what historian Arthur W. Rovine described as his “consistent backing for British and French appeasement policy and sympathy for the dictators of the Right….[Avenol's] weak commitment to democracy and growing appreciation of a ‘new order’ in Europe left little room for support of the League of Nations and its Covenant.”

Even worse, when Adolf Hitler attempted to master all of Europe, Avenol was “plotting for the enemies of his country [France] before an offer to lay down arms was accepted,” recalled one of his own deputies. “He had plans to please them before the blood of his massacred countrymen was cold; he spoke with complacency of a new state when the glory of the old was being mangled under the tanks of the invaders; he conspired to betray the trust placed on him and to corrupt the honour of his associates in a debased self-interest.”

It is hard to imagine a more miscast actor for his historical role. With little interest and less skill in international affairs and diplomacy, Avenol was sent to the League from the French Treasury Department in 1922 to handle the organization’s finances. He moved up to the top spot in 1933 because the first secretary-general had been British and there had been a private agreement at Versailles that the next would be French. As Rovine pointed out, “Avenol worked to implement French foreign policy…rather than the ideals and obligations of the League.”

Even such an appeaser as Lord Halifax commented that Avenol’s “main object appeared to be to protect the League of Nations from having to decide any difficult questions of principle.” With his reactionary politics and belief that the League should stick to nonpolitical humanitarian and technical issues, Avenol was “neither prophet, nor judge, nor apostle; a complete technocrat,” as one French journalist described him.

Avenol took office in June 1933, four months after Japan walked out of the League because of its opposition–albeit ineffectual–to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Five months later Germany quit, then Italy left in 1937. Avenol worked to stifle criticism and action against these nations in an effort to lure them back. As Barros wrote in Betrayal From Within: “The continual hope of their return should at some point have been recognized as an illusion and failure admitted. This Avenol refused to do.”

Avenol had argued Japan’s side in the Manchurian crisis before he took office, and in the League’s decisive test–when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935–his concern was not to stop Benito Mussolini’s aggression but, rather, to keep Italy as a member of the League and an ally of France against Germany. British diplomat Anthony Eden recalled having to listen, annoyed, as Avenol “surpassed the French Ministers in excuses for Mussolini’s attitude.” Eden would have been astounded had he seen a letter that Avenol wrote to a French Foreign Ministry official claiming that the crisis was really about Great Britain struggling with Italy for control of the Mediterranean, after which, he feared, Britain would reach an understanding with Germany that would weaken France.

Avenol favored the Hoare-Laval Pact–an attempt to appease Mussolini by recognizing some of his claims on Ethiopia while preserving some of the nation’s independence. He worked behind the scenes to weaken his own organization’s sanctions against Italy, not even disciplining Italian employees of the League who donated a gold bar to the war effort. After Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie fled, Avenol went to Rome, in what George W. Baer called “an extraordinary trip of dubious propriety,” to try to arrange–unsuccessfully–for Ethiopia’s expulsion from the League.

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