Woodrow Wilson: Fourteen Points

Context

Following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in the summer of 1914, Europe’s major powers—linked into two rival alliances—mobilized their armed forces and plunged Europe into World War I. By the end of 1917, more than a million French soldiers lay dead. France’s British, Russian, and Italian allies had suffered similar losses, as had their German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman enemies. Still, after more than three years of war, none of these powers had publicly declared its war aims or had seriously sought a negotiated end to the war. This secrecy and determination to fight to the bitter end frustrated repeated American efforts to negotiate peace in 1916. After German submarines sank several U.S. merchant ships, President Wilson persuaded Congress to declare war on Germany, and the United States joined the Allied coalition.

The war remained deadlocked in bloody trench warfare when Wilson presented his Fourteen Points. Millions had died, and yet the frontlines had hardly moved in three years. These losses, rather than moving the warring nations to make peace, encouraged them to escalate their efforts and territorial demands so that the youths of their nations would not have died in vain. In 1915, for example, Allied leaders met in London and agreed that after victory France would receive Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar Valley, and the remaining German territory west of the Rhine would become an independent nation—a buffer. Italy would receive South Tyrol, Trieste, and other Austro-Hungarian territories. Russia would gain control of Constantinople and other Turkish territories, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire would go to Britain, France, Italy, and Greece. Germany's leaders, in turn, also hoped for substantial territorial gains, as did their Austrian and Turkish allies.

Peace movements, however, sprang up among the people in these nations and in the United States. These movements grew in size as the war continued, and their leaders presented varied suggestions for negotiating a peace settlement. Many of them also suggested creating an international organization tasked with preserving peace between nations and preventing war through collective action. Among the organizations was the League to Enforce Peace in the United States, which included former president William Howard Taft among its members, and the League of Nations Union in Great Britain.

In 1916 American efforts to negotiate peace led by both President Wilson and private citizens—including the automobile mogul Henry Ford and the noted reformer and activist Jane Addams—failed. That November, Wilson had won reelection with the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Less than six months later, he led the nation into World War I. Yet Wilson remained suspicious of the British, French, and Italian allies and insisted that the United States remain an associated power rather than a full ally of its cobelligerents. This stance underlined Wilson's divergent war aims. Inspired by American progressives who had worked to clean up their cities, eliminate corruption, and improve city services and society through collective action, Wilson hoped to remake the world and reform the international system. As he remarked in a speech to the Senate on January 22, 1917, entitled “A World League for Peace,” he hoped for a “peace without victory”—a just peace that would allow the major powers to create institutions to preserve peace in the future.