Differing Opinions About the End of the War

Learning Objectives

  • Weigh contradictions and opposing perspectives in primary sources to draw conclusions about history and to demonstrate an understanding of historical actors

Criticism from Russia

Remember that Wilson had criticized the Bolsheviks and was worried about the spread of their ideas beyond Russia’s borders? Well, the Bolsheviks had their own ideas about what Wilson was trying to accomplish: they believed that Wilson was acting in his own interest. Russia was undergoing a civil war while Wilson and the Entente were negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. Nevertheless, this did not stop Lenin from commenting on the peace negotiations in Western Europe. After all, Wilson had authorized a limited intervention with U.S. troops in Russia. Many of Wilson’s ideas had begun with Lenin as a way to try and minimize his potential impact. Unsurprisingly, Wilson found himself being criticized by Lenin and others over his actions, and about the nature of the peace settlement overall.

Lenin’s Letter to the workers of europe and AMERICA

Lenin wrote the following letter and published it in the Russian newspaper Pravda on January 24, 1919. In it, he discusses why the war was fought, and what he thinks Wilson was trying to gain.

That war fully exposed itself as an imperialist, reactionary, predatory war both on the part of Germany and on the part of the capitalists of Britain, France, Italy and America. The latter are now beginning to quarrel over the spoils, over the division of Turkey, Russia, the African and Polynesian colonies, the Balkans, and so on. The hypocritical phrases uttered by Wilson and his followers about “democracy” and “union of nations” are exposed with amazing rapidity when we see the capture of the left bank of the Rhine by the French bourgeoisie, the capture of Turkey (Syria, Mesopotamia) and part of Russia (Siberia, Archangel, Baku, Krasnovodsk, Ashkhabad, and so on) by the French, British and American capitalists, and the increasing animosity over the division of the spoils between Italy and France, France and Britain, Britain and America, America and Japan.

Beside the craven, half-hearted “socialists” who are thoroughly imbued with the prejudices of bourgeois democracy, who yesterday defended “their” imperialist governments and today limit themselves to platonic “protests” against military intervention in Russia – beside these there is a growing number of people in the Allied countries who have taken the communist path, the path of Maclean, Debs, Loriot, Lazzari and Serrati. These are men who have realised that if imperialism is to be crushed and the victory of socialism and lasting peace ensured, the bourgeoisie must be overthrown, bourgeois parliaments abolished, and Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat established.

Lenin was not alone in criticizing Wilson. Leon Trotsky, one of the leading Bolsheviks also wrote about what he thought Wilson’s intentions were.

Trotsky “order out of chaos”

Leon Trotsky wrote something similar in January of 1919 that was also published in Pravda.

The American president Wilson who, like the fraud and hypocrite Tartuffe, roams across blood-drenched Europe as the highest representative of morality, the Messiah of the American dollar, chastises, pardons and settles the destinies of nations. Everyone asks him, invites him and pleads with him: The King of Italy, the perfidious ruling Georgian Mensheviks, the humiliated and favour-begging Scheidemann, the moulting tiger of the French middle class, Clemenceau, the fireproof safes of the City of London and even the midwives of Switzerland…

Poland which was yesterday asphyxiated, dismembered, mutilated and bled white, today in a last and overdue drunken orgy of nationalism attempts to plunder Prussia, Galicia, Lithuania and Byelorussia…

The map of Europe is continuously changing, but the deepest changes occur in the consciousness of the masses. That rifle which yesterday served nationalist imperialism today in the same hands serves the cause of the social revolution. The American stock market which for a long time skilfully kindled the European blaze to give its bankers and industrialists the possibility of warming their hands in its flames low despatches its chief salesman and its supreme broker, the honey-worded rogue, Wilson, to examine more closely whether the matter hasn’t gone too far. Not so long ago the American millionaires were laughing into their shaven chins, rubbing their hands together: “Europe has become a madhouse, Europe is exhausted, ruined, Europe is turning into a cemetery of the old culture; we shall pay a visit to its ruins, we shall buy up its best monuments, we shall invite the most august scions of all the European dynasties to tea; Europe’s competition is disappearing, industrial life will come decisively over to us and the profits of the whole world will begin to flow into our American pockets.”

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Opposition to the Treaty of Versailles

Not only did foreign powers criticize Wilson’s attitudes and actions—these policies were plenty controversial on the American homefront as well. Just because something happened in history does not mean it happened without opposition—history is complicated and messy. At home, Wilson found himself being criticized for the Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles. Many American were leery about the possibility of becoming permanently involved in European affairs. Henry Cabot Lodge, a senator from Massachusetts, led much of the opposition to the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. While he was willing to accept much of the treaty, he published a list of reservations (as a political barb against Wilson, he had fourteen specific reservations). Perhaps the most widely discussed reservation had to do with Article X of the League of Nations covenant, which obliged member states to come to the defense of any member state attacked by another state. Lodge and others noted that this meant that Congress, which had the constitutional right to declare war would have no role to play in these decisions.

While some of the opposition to the Treaty of Versailles came from “reservationists,” who were willing to accept it if changes were made, other opposition came from so-called “irreconcilables.” Perhaps the best-known irreconcilable was Senator William Borah of Idaho. Borah had only gone to war against Germany hesitantly, and he remained completely in opposition to U.S. membership in the League of Nations.

Senator William Borah’s Response to Wilson

In a speech he gave before the end of deliberations on the treaty, Senator William Borah made many of his concerns about the Treaty of Versailles clear.

We are in the midst of all of the affairs of Europe. We have entangled ourselves with all European concerns. We have joined in alliance with all the European nations which have thus far joined the league, and all nations which may be admitted to the league. We are sitting there dabbling in their affairs and intermeddling in their concerns. In other words, Mr. President—and this comes to the question which is fundamental with me—we have forfeited and surrendered, once and for all, the great policy of “no entangling alliances” upon which the strength of this Republic has been founded for 150 years.

…

You have put in here a reservation upon the Monroe doctrine. I think that, in so far as language could protect the Monroe doctrine, it has been protected. But as a practical proposition, as a working proposition, tell me candidly, as men familiar with the history of your country and of other countries, do you think that you can intermeddle in European affairs; and, secondly, never to permit Europe to.

We can not protect the Monroe doctrine unless we protect the basic principle upon which it rests, and that is the Washington policy. I do not care how earnestly you may endeavor to do so, as a practical working proposition your league will come to the United States….

When this league, this combination, is formed four great powers representing the dominant people will rule one-half of the inhabitants of the globe as subject peoples—rule by force, and we shall be a party to the rule of force. There is no other way by which you can keep people in subjection. You must either give them independence, recognize their rights as nations to live their own life and to set up their own form of government, or you must deny them these things by force…If we stay with our contract, we will come in time to declare with our associates that force—force, the creed of the Prussian military oligarchy—is after all the true foundation upon which must rest all stable governments. Korea, despoiled and bleeding at every pore; India, sweltering in ignorance and burdened with inhuman taxes after more than one hundred years of dominant rule; Egypt, trapped and robbed of her birthright; Ireland, with 700 years of sacrifice for independence—this is the task, this is the atmosphere, and this is the creed in and under which we are to keep alive our belief in the moral purposes and self-governing capacity of the people, a belief without which the Republic must disintegrate and die.

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Activity #2

These different perspectives on Wilson as well as Wilson’s own words illustrate just how much people can disagree in history. This also demonstrates why it is so essential to read multiple sources and documents from a given time period so that you learn to see beyond just one side of an issue.

Consider Point Fourteen from the Fourteen Points: “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”

Look at both sides of the issue. Based on the several documents we’ve introduced in this hack as well as the things you’ve learned in this module, make a list of at least three “pros” for the creation of a league of nations and three “cons” for the creation of a league of nations. Connect each of your points to one of the sources introduced in this hack or to another specific piece of evidence. You can use the space below to jot down your ideas.

Pros:

Cons:

Now, in a short paragraph, reflect on both the pros and cons of the league of nations. Put yourself in the shoes of an American factory worker in 1919. How do you imagine you would feel about the creation of a league of nations? Support your answer with evidence. There is no right or wrong answer, but consider what would make the most convincing or compelling explanation.