The League of Nations was an intergovernmenal organization founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I. The League of Nations sought to maintain world peace and settle disputes through arbitration and cooperation, but it never backed up its statements with muscle; while the League of Nations demanded that Italy stop its invasion of Abyssinia, it allowed for the Italians to conquer the country without reprisals. In addition, Nazi Germany took over Austria and Czechoslovakia without the League of Nations acting against Hitler's reich. Many founding members of the group left, and the United States, which had been instrumental in creating the league, decided to not even join it in the first place due to its isolationist policies. The League of Nations' failures ended in World War II from 1939 to 1945, and it was replaced by the new and more powerful United Nations in 1946.