The Great War
4 Wilson Fights for Peace
Alternate title: “Woodrow Wilson ruins EVERYTHING!”
This episode corresponds to Chapter 11, Section 4.
OBJECTIVES
61. Summarize President Wilson’s Fourteen Points
62. Outline the goals of the members at the Paris Peace Conference.
63. Describe the Treaty of Versailles and international and domestic reaction
to it.
64. Explain some of the consequences of the war.
LXI. Wilson presents his plan
A. Wilson arrived in Europe with a hero’s welcome. The job of
negotiating a treaty is usually the job of diplomats, but Wilson
assumed that his academic training, his postwar popularity, and his
plan for peace ★
B. Wilson’s plan for world peace known as the “Fourteen Points”. It
was broken down into three groups:
1. Points 1–5 proposed measures to prevent another war.
a. There should be no secret treaties among nations.
b. Freedom of the seas should be maintained for all.
c. Tariffs and other economic barriers among nations
should be lowered or abolished in order to foster free
trade.
d. Arms should be reduced to “the lowest point consistent
with domestic safety, thus lessening the possibility of
military responses” during diplomatic crises.
e. Colonial policies should consider the interest of the
colonial peoples as well as the interest of the imperialist
powers.
2. Points 6–13 addressed how ethnic groups could form own
nations or join others. Called “self-determination”, Wilson
believed that a world of nation-states where ethnic groups ruled
themselves ★
3. Point 14—the one Wilson considered the most important—
called for an international organization—a League of Nations—to
enable nations to discuss and settle problems without war.
LXII. The Allies Reject Wilson’s Plan
A. Wilson was blind and naive to the anger of the Entente leaders
against Germany. Germany, long an aggressor in Europe, was seen as
untrustworthy. (For most of German history, the country has often
acted unilaterally without consulting other countries, with bold laws
and declarations of war, and with the better-than-you attitude of
“you’ll thank us later.” Whether attempting to force Martin Luther into
exile, or urging Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia, or with oppression of
Jews in the Holocaust, or the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis, Germany has
long had a way of pissing off its neighbors—W)
B. The distrust of Germany was across the board.
1. The French premier Georges Clemenceau lived through 2
German invasions of France (both the 1870 Franco-Prussian war
and the 1914 Invasion—W) and wanted to prevent it from
happening again.
2. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George just won re-election
on a campaign slogan of “Make Germany Pay”, ★
3. Italy had a complicated role in WWI. They were originally
allied with Central Powers (Remember, they were the Idiots in
“Grandma Always Hated Idiots”—W), but switched to the Entente
powers when France and Great Britain offered them Austrian
lands if they joined the Entente. They did, and won an important
battle over Austria-Hungary that pushed Austria-Hungary out of
the War. Italy’s Vittorio Orlando went to the Paris Peace
Conference expecting to claim their land.
C. Peace conferences usually have all of the countries together to
negotiate the terms of settlement, but this Conference did not invite
the defeated Central Powers or Russia, who abandoned the War after
its communist revolution. Instead, the “big four”—Wilson, Clemenceau,
Lloyd George, and Orlando worked out the treaty among themselves.
1. The Weeper: Orlando did not speak English, and was quickly
marginalized at the Conference. When it became clear that Italy
was not going to get the land it had been promised, Orlando ★
2. The Schoolteacher Visionary: Wilson was so focused on the
League of Nations that he abandoned his other 13 points to
create it. Promises of demilitarization and self-determination of
countries ★
3. The Bitter Old Soldier: Clemenceau thought that the League
would be weak, and figured there would need to be a council of
victorious countries to protect France from further attack. He
wanted to dismember Germany to make sure it would never
threaten France again. He hoped to give large portions of East
Germany to Poland, to take over portions of the Rhineland, and
to make other portions of the border into a new independent
country. Then, he wanted to charge Germany with HUGE
reparations payments ★
4. The Brilliant Winner: Lloyd George was against everything
that everyone else wanted. He did not want to give up British
influence to the League of Nations. He did not want to see the
British Empire broken up by self-determination of nation states.
He did not want to wreck Germany, who he saw as an important
trading partner. He did not want to weaken Germany, whom he
saw as an important buffer between Communist Russia and the
rest of Europe.
D. Lloyd George appointed a soft-hearted British diplomat to the
League of Nations committee, so Wilson thought that Britain was on
the American side of “forgive and move on”; but he appointed tough
hardliners to the reparations committee, making Clemenceau think
that he was in “screw Germany” French camp. In this way, he played
both France and the USA off each other. The result was that Wilson
caved on all the stuff that would disturb Britain, and Clemenceau gave
up on dismantling Britain’s trading partner. The Conference opened in
January 1919; by March, Lloyd George ★
LXIII. Debating the Treaty of Versailles
A. Provisions of the Treaty
1. Political Geography
a. The Treaty created 9 new nations, including Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
b. It shifted the boundaries of others in a (weak—W)
attempt to make ethnic borders match government
borders—creating “nation states”. (This was part of
Wilson’s 14 Points, believing that an ethnic nation should
have self-determination, and thus avoid ethnic conflict.
The unexpected consequence is that it means that
different nationalities no longer have to deal with each
other, and do not have to find any common ground—W)
c. The Ottoman Empire reached the end of its long, slow
decline when it was split into the new country of Turkey
and 5 “mandates” in Southwest Asia under the control of
the British and the French: Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq,
and Trans-Jordan. The Brits and French ★
2. Limits on Germany
a. The German army was gutted and limited to a size so
small that it could barely defend itself. The goal was to
limit the country from threatening its neighbors and to ★
b. The region of Alsace-Lorraine was returned (“Returned.”
A-L has been a disputed region of both countries since the
1600s, and a pawn in both countries’ nationalist rivalries
since the 1700s—W) to France.
c. Germany was forced to pay reparations fines to repair
the damages from the war, amounting to $33 billion to the
Entente countries ($393.6 billion in 2011 US Dollars—W).
B. The Treaty’s Weaknesses
1. Besides weakening Germany, it also attempted to humiliate
the country. In particular, the war-guilt clause forced Germany
to accept total responsibility for the war—no matter what role
the other countries played ★
2. The reparations payments were unpayable, and basically
meant that its rivals were going to seize German assets. Plus,
Germany was stripped of its profitable colonial possessions,
making the reparations even tougher to pay.
3. Although Russia fought on the Entente side of the war and
suffered MUCH HIGHER casualties than any other country, they
left the war before it was over and was not invited to the Paris
Peace Conference. The Conference actually stripped more land
from Russia than Germany—a move that the USSR was
determined to take back.
4. Though Wilson promised self-determination for colonized
people, it ignored the French and British colonization of South
and Southeast Asia. This flared up in the French colony of
Vietnam, where people there were demanding the same selfdetermination rights that Europeans were beginning to realize
(but more about this later—W).
C. Strong US Opposition to the treaty
1. Some Americans, notably Herbert Hoover, thought that the
treaty was too harsh, and feared economic fallout in Europe—★
2. Others felt the Treaty failed at decolonization, claiming that it
just exchanged one group of colonial rulers for another—
particularly where ethnic groups thought that the new
boundaries did not match their national boundaries.
3. But the main sticking point was the League of Nations. It
threatened the long-held US foreign policy of isolation, because
it pushed the USA into other countries’ problems.
4. Senators like Henry Cabot Lodge mistrusted the provision for
joint action—even though it was voluntary—insisting that the
Treaty recognize the Congress’ right to declare war.
D. Wilson Refused to Compromise
1. Wilson ignored the Republican majority in the Senate when
choosing members of the US delegation at negotiations. If
Republicans had been at the negotiations, it would have been
FAR MORE likely that they would have supported the treaty.
2. Instead, in September 1919, Wilson went on an 8,000-mile
speaking tour (attempting to use the bully pulpit of the
Presidency—W) to convince the American people to support
League. He gave 34 speeches in 3 weeks. Then, on October 2,
Wilson suffered a stroke, ★
3. The Treaty came up for vote in the Senate in November 1919;
Senator Lodge introduced a number of amendments to the
treaty that would make it more palatable to Americans—
including reassurance that the USA would not be forced to
accept League of Nations foreign policy. The Senate rejected
both the amendments and the treaty.
4. As Wilson recovered, he refused to compromise with the
Senate, proclaiming “I will not play for position…This is not a
time for tactics. It is a time to stand square. I can stand defeat;
I cannot stand retreat from conscientious duty!” The Treaty
came up for vote again in March 1920, the amendments and the
Treaty failed again.
E. In 1921, after Wilson was no longer President, the US and Germany
finally signed a separate treaty to formally end the War. But the US
never signed the Treaty of Versailles and never joined the League of
Nations—though it did keep a seat on the League ★
LXIV. The Legacy of the War
A. When Warren G. Harding became POTUS in 1921, he pledged a
“return to Normalcy” (a word he made up, but liked so much that he
used it anyway. The word is “normality”.—W). Quote: “America's
present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy;
not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not
surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not
experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but
sustainment in triumphant nationality”. The country ★
B. But the War had forever changed the USA. It pushed the USA onto
the world stage with a stronger military. It increased the power of
government over peoples’ lives. It accelerated social change for both
African Americans and women. The fears and antagonisms provoked
by propaganda remained fresh in the public consciousness, and had no
channels for people to deal with those fears.
C. In Europe, the destruction of war and the losses of lives damaged
the social and political systems—leaving wreckage that would take
decades to settle (and may never be settled—W). Communism became
established in Russia, while fascism broke out in Italy, Spain, and
Germany. ★