Council, issued an appeal to the majority and minority populations of Upper Silesia in connection to a problem that emerged in the area: it called upon the majority to recognise that it was not in its interest to oppress the minority, and it called upon the minority to acknowledge that it had real interests in loyal co-operation with the government. For the comprehensive realisation of the minorities treaties, said Henderson, were of decisive importance for the maintenance of peace. Should this system break down or the trust in it be shaken, it would entail unforeseeable consequences. The conciliatory, prophetic speech of the British foreign secretary found response all over Europe but it was not enough to change the course of events.
1933 brought a fundamental change: the National Socialists came to power in Germany on 30 January, following which the minority protection system had little chance to survive. This became evident when, in May 1933, the petition of Franz Bernheim concerning the Jewish population of Upper Silesia was examined. Bernheim enumerated German laws and decrees that forbid to "non-Aryan" clerks, lawyers, notaries, and doctors to exercise their profession, moreover drastically limited the admission of Jews to schools and universities. Since the text of these documents ran counter to the provisions of the Geneva Convention on Upper Silesia (1922), Bernheim asked the Council of the League of Nations to implement measures or take actions under Article 147 of the Convention in order to prevent the application of the laws and decrees in concern in Upper Silesia. All that the German representative remarked in his reply was that the internal legislation of Germany, naturally, could not impair its international obligations. In the case the Geneva Convention was violated in Upper Silesia, that could be but a mistake that derived from the erroneous interpretation of the laws on the part of administrative officers. The Council of the League of Nations had no weapons to retaliate for this reply.
In the autumn of 1933, the case of the Jews in Germany was put on the agenda of the Assembly. The French delegation submitted a draft proposal, the first part of which wished to confirm the 4th Resolution of the Assembly in 1922. It was suggested that the states not bound by minority treaties should nevertheless act in conformity with the principles laid down in the treaties. The second part dealt directly with the problem of the Jews in Germany. The German delegation declared this issue sui generis a problem that should be settled internally; this was a sovereign right of Germany. Accordingly, the German delegation prevented the adoption of the second part of the draft at the full session of the Assembly. It could easily achieve this, since resolutions had to be adopted unanimously. Only three months later, Hitler declared on air the withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations.
The reply came quite fast. Scarcely one year later, on 13 September 1934, Jozef Beck, representative of Poland, proposed before the Assembly that minority protection should be transformed into a general system. Furthermore, he declared that the Polish government would refuse any co-operation with the international bodies with respect to the minorities treaties in force until the day the comprehensive minority protection system should enter into force. Poland, therefore, arbitrarily exempted itself from the international protection and supervision of its obligations with respect to minority protection. The League of Nations faced a fait accompli.
The rest of the states affected by the minorities treaties distanced themselves from the Polish step. However, in the autumn of 1935, Romania gave notice to the Secretariat that its government would not submit comments to the petitions and it would not want to represent itself in the tripartite committees either (Romania was elected into the Council of the League of Nations shortly before that). The Romanian government declared passive resistance. However, in 1937, it returned to the full recognition 