Wilson’s Postwar Plans

Learning Objectives

  • Use primary sources to reflect on Woodrow Wilson’s motivations in the negotiations that ended WWI

Wilson’s actions at the end of World War I had a permanent, long-lasting influence on international relations. In the aftermath of WWI, world leaders faced numerous questions about what international affairs would look like moving forward. President Woodrow Wilson’s ideologies fueled many of the discussions that resulted in the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson’s ideas about public diplomacy, international bodies to regulate conflict, and arms control have all become very normal in international diplomacy today. Even when countries deviate from these ideas, they still frequently pay a kind of lip service to them. In addition, international bodies like the United Nations are spiritual successors to what Wilson envisioned.

Wilson’s legacy as a president and statesman remains controversial, however. Some historians have criticized Wilson for being excessively idealistic, to the point that his ideas about foreign policy are lumped into an entire school of thought known as “Wilsonian Idealism” (as compared to “realism” in international relations). Others have celebrated Wilson for trying to apply moral principles to foreign policy, or have even reinterpreted him as a hard-nosed realist who was trying to ensure a leading position for the United States globally. Still, others have criticized Wilson for the difference between his rhetoric on colonialism and how his actions during the peace negotiations actually played out, or for his commitment to capitalism.

In this hack, we’ll take a closer look at Wilson’s ideas about postwar diplomacy and consider some of his motivations for expressing these views. We will begin by evaluating two passages from a speech given by President Wilson in 1917. As you read, look for the recommendations Wilson introduces and consider Wilson’s possible motivations for those recommendations.

Peace without victory (Passage #1)

Wilson’s first public speech on his hopes for a postwar order of some kind happened in January of 1917. The United States had not yet joined the war, though the support given to the Entente through loans and weapons sales made it clear that the United States had chosen to play a role in this conflict. Speaking to the Senate, Wilson spoke of what he hoped the postwar world might look like—and what role the United States would play in such a world. Read what Wilson had to say.[1]

On the 18th of December last, I addressed an identic note to the governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace…

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise…

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing…

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this…Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit…

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoise of power…

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Peace without victory (Passage #2)

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that, henceforth, inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.

…

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development–unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

…

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling toward a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement, no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world’s commerce.

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Aftermath of the Peace Without Victory Speech

Within a matter of days of Wilson’s Peace Without Victory speech, Germany announced that it was resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, a declaration that would ultimately lead the U.S. government to declare war against the Central Powers. Wilson’s speech proved to be very popular and helped convince America it was okay to go to war.

When the United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, Wilson had to navigate the difficult politics of the situation (remember he had campaigned for president in 1916 on keeping America out of the war). The United States was going to war on behalf of the Entente and many Americans were still suspicious of Great Britain, particularly Irish-Americans; others wanted to stay true to George Washington’s command to Americans to avoid entanglements in European politics and European alliances.

The Fourteen Points

The Fourteen Points statement of principles was Wilson’s way of formalizing his earlier commitment and guiding his plans for the postwar world. Unlike Peace Without Victory, these were supposed to be a codified program, and included specific policy recommendations. They governed a few different broad areas: trade, diplomacy, a postwar division of Europe, and the creation of an international organization to guarantee the peace. Take a look at the points below.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points

The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. However, his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. 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.[2]

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The Fourteen Points became the basis of the Treaty of Versailles, or at least Wilson’s hopes for the Treaty of Versailles. But negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference did not go exactly as planned, as there were competing interests from other Allied Powers (Britain, France, Italy, and Japan) to consider. The treaty did result in a new League of Nations and granted some sovereignty to previously occupied nations, but it also broke up former German and Ottoman territories into League of Nations mandates, which were areas deemed not ready for self-governance, so they were still effectively controlled by Allied powers. It also resulted in damaging reparations required of Germany.

The Treaty of Versailles

Watch this video to review the decisions made in the Treaty of Versailles. Starting at the :35 second mark and watching until 8:30, you’ll learn about Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and his vision for the creation of a league of nations.

Following the signing of the armistice ending WWI in November of 1918, leaders from 32 nations met in the spring of 1919 to discuss the postwar world. Headed by the Big Four (Clemenceau, George, Orlando, and Wilson), the conference resulted in the Treaty of Versailles, which held to some of the principles outlined by Wilson, but disappointed many groups who had hoped that Wilson would advocate on their behalf.

When Wilson went to Europe to negotiate the peace treaty, he was probably one of the most popular individuals in the world. He was all things to all people. To members of the Entente, Wilson was the one who with American troops had finally brought an end to a brutal war. France and Britain already controlled empires, wielded power over their subjects around the world, and still aspired to be dominant colonial powers.

To the defeated members of the Central Powers, Wilson was their last, best hope for a peace that wouldn’t be too harsh, that might preserve their borders or leave them otherwise intact. For national groups in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Wilson’s promise, in particular Article 5 from the Fourteen Points, seemed to promise that they too would receive their own governments and independence. Marginalized groups in places like India, Korea, Egypt, and Vietnam hoped for independence.

The United States did not encourage or believe that the responsibility for the war, which Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, placed on Germany alone, was fair or warranted. The United States hoped to establish a more liberal and diplomatic world, as stated in the Fourteen Points, in which democracy, sovereignty, liberty, and self-determination would be respected.

You can view the transcript for “Treaty of Versailles Explained – End Of WW1 1919” here (opens in new window).

Decisions in Versailles

It should come as no surprise that not everyone was happy about the decisions reached in the Treaty of Versailles. American participation in an extended alliance system was unthinkable to many Americans: it went in direct opposition to George Washington’s maxim to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” For the victorious members of the Entente, Wilson’s promises also represented a threat to their own hopes for the kind of stable world order that they were hoping for. The victorious British and French did not hope for a gentle peace with Germany, against whom they had fought a punishingly difficult war.

In a report back from London, a U.S. State Department official wrote back to Washington on the impact of the Fourteen Points. Among other concerns, he noted that “Even should the danger of a premature armistice be avoided it is feared that we may be tricked by this hypocritical waving of a white flag into concluding a peace which will be but the shadow and not the substance of the complete victory which is within sight, and a peace which will provide Germany with undeserved opportunities for future mischief-making.”

The Role of Other World Events in the Motivation for the Fourteen Points

So far, we can identify some of Wilson’s motivations based on these two documents. He clearly wanted to establish some rules and standards that would prevent future wars. He also wanted to support nationalist aspirations for new countries, independent countries. But why did Wilson want these things? Because he cared deeply about the welfare of other nations? Because it would benefit the United States? Because it would benefit the global community? Was he acting out of self-interest or moral concern? Perhaps it was for all of these reasons at the same time.

Part of the work of historians is not just describing what happened in the past, but also analyzing and reflecting on why it happened the way that it did. Remember, other events played a role in the attitudes these world leaders held at the end of the war. Let’s examine what those might have been.

The Threat of Bolshevism

First, there was the threat of the spread of Bolshevism (and later communism). In October of 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution removed the provisional government in Russia that had replaced the Romanovs and brought the Bolsheviks, a communist movement, to power. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, repudiated the secret diplomacy that had existed during the war and called for a general armistice. He even revealed previously agreements made between the Entente countries of their plans to divide the Central Powers’ territories once the war was over. Lenin pulled Russia out of the war and also out of the peace talks at the end. Wilson was deeply worried about the possibility of Bolshevik revolutions spreading elsewhere—especially because the Bolsheviks themselves wanted to promote this.

Indeed, one of Wilson’s concerns in promoting the Treaty of Versailles was that he thought that it would help prevent the spread of Bolshevism. In a speech in Billings, Montana in 1919, Wilson said the following: “I speak of Russia. Have you seen no symptoms of the spread of that sort of chaotic spirit into other countries? If you had been across the sea with me you would know that the dread of every thoughtful man in Europe is that that distemper will spread to their countries…There are apostles of Lenin in our own midst…These are the things that confront us. The world must be satisfied of justice…This is the best treaty that can possibly be got.”

Trade Advantages

Other goals that Wilson promoted might seem familiar from earlier presidential administrations. Consider Wilson’s third point from the Fourteen Points: “The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.” Remember what you learned earlier in this module about the Open Door policy, where it was the goal of the United States to promote low or nonexistent trade barriers in China?

Playing Favorites

Another criticism of Wilson’s motivations in the Fourteen Points is the inherent favoritism shown towards European nations. But this was a world war: Germany was an empire with colonies all over the globe. What would happen to those colonies? How would Wilson’s ideas about a League of Nations work out for countries outside of Europe? Wilson held racist ideas and believed in racial segregation in the United States, and there are ways that we can see how he applied those ideas to the peace settlement.

Japan, which had fought on the side of the Entente during the war, was invited to participate in the peace settlement at Versailles. Its delegates wanted to include a clause guaranteeing equality of treatment for League members, as Japan’s government was worried about increasing racism levied against Japanese immigrants. Wilson’s position was to downplay the issue, saying “My own interest, let me say, is to quiet discussion that raises national differences and racial prejudices…I would wish them, particularly at this juncture in the history of the relations of nations with one another, to be forced as much as possible into the background.” When Japan’s delegates insisted on holding a vote, Wilson created a requirement that a yes vote be unanimous. While the Japanese proposal won a strong majority, it did not win unanimously.

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Activity #1

Based on the Peace Without Victory speech, the Fourteen Points, and the events at the Versailles Conference, think about how you would rank Woodrow Wilson’s various motivations for the peace. It’s useful to remember that historical actors are frequently motivated by multiple things all at once, but that doesn’t mean that all of their motivations are equal.

In this activity, you get to try to rank the explanations of Wilson’s behavior by order of importance. For the sake of the exercise, there are some “right” answers, but keep in mind, that this is just one possible ranking. There are no wrong answers, as long as you can explain why you chose to arrange the motivations the way that you did.

Then, in the empty box below, explain why you ranked these factors the way that you did. There are no wrong answers here, but you have to explain why you choose to arrange the explanations the way that you did.

  1. “Peace Without Victory.” Wilson speech to Congress, January 22, 1917. Accessed June 15, 2022. http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-Wilsonpeace.htm. ↵
  2. “President Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points.” National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed June 15, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-woodrow-wilsons-14-points. ↵