Wilson's 'Fourteen Points'

A TIMELINE

2 April, 1917: In his war address to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson spoke of the need for the United States to enter the war in part to “make the world safe for democracy.”

Sept-Dec 1917: Wilson set up ‘The Inquiry’, a team of about 150 advisers led by foreign-policy adviser Edward House, to devise recommendations for the coming peace conference. 

November 1917: Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia.  Lenin published the secret treaties that revealed how Britain, France, and Italy intended to divide and annex conquered lands.  Historian Jennifer D.  Keene suggests that the 14 Points were an attempt to undermine the appeal of Communism – to show that the entry of the United States into the war would make a better world. 

5 January 1918: the British prime minister David Lloyd George delivered a speech outlining British war aims, many of which were similar to Wilson's. 

8 January, 1918: Wilson made a speech to Congress in which he introduced his Fourteen Points. 

Summer 1918: The speech was used for Allied propaganda and was translated into many languages for global dissemination.  Copies were dropped behind German lines, to encourage the Central Powers to surrender in the expectation of a just settlement. 

4 October, 1918: After the failure of the Spring Offensive, many German leaders looked to the 14 Points; Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, requested an immediate armistice and peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points. 

14 December 1918: Wilson arrived in Paris; he was greeted as a Messiah.  He insisted that the League of Nations be agreed first of everything, and incorporated into the peace settlements. 

19 March 1920: Wilson FAILED to persuade Congress to join the League of Nations. 

PRINCIPLES

    •   Wilson referred to World War I as the "final war for human liberty". 

    •   The main purpose of the Fourteen Points was to propose specific goals  for ending the war and rebuilding the postwar world. 

    •   Also, if US soldiers were going to die, Wilson wanted to establish exactly what the United States was fighting for. 

    •   Wilson took many progressive ideas from domestic US politics, and translated them into foreign policy (eg free trade and democracy). 

    •   Wilson believed that the War was the outcome of the ‘Old World’ way of international relations, which needed completely reforming.  He therefore proposed sweeping changes, including:
◦  no more secret treaties;
◦  freedom of the seas & free trade;
◦  disarmament;
◦  the dismantling of the central European empires and
◦  the creation of new states according to the concept of national self-determination. 

    •   Most important of all was Point 14, which called for a “general association of nations” that would offer “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.”

    •   Wilson saw his task as re-creating international relations to “secure the future peace of the world” and “that the world be made fit and safe to live in”. 

CONSEQUENCES/ SIGNIFICANCE

    1.    Nationalist Germans argued a “betrayal” when faced by the harsher terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles, and this undermined the legitimacy of the Weimar Government that had accepted the Peace of Versailles – aiding the rise of Hitler. 

    2.    French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau thought the Four Points too idealistic.  In particular, he did not agree with Wilson's plan for "peace without blame" for Germany, and insisted on reparation penalties against Germany.  Thus Wilson’s insistence that the League be agreed first almost led to the collapse of the Peace Conference, which was only saved by Lloyd George’s Fontainebleau Memorandum. 

    3.    Nevertheless, with the exception of the treatment of Germany, Wilson’s Fourteen Points broadly formed the basis of the Treaty of Versailles. 

    4.    The creation of the League of Nations was a radical milestone in international relations, and the basis of the United Nations today. 

    5.    The idea of "self-determination" inspired anti-colonial nationalist leaders and movements to seek independence from colonial rule. 

    6.    In the 1930s, the small ‘self-determination’ nation states of Central Europe proved too weak to resist Nazi expansionism. 

    7.    President Wilson was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his efforts in establishing peace in Europe and around the world.