Download The Fourteen Points

The Fourteen Points
 As World War I drew to a close,
the scale of destruction and
massive loss of life was shocking
 President Woodrow Wilson wanted
a “just and lasting peace” to ensure
that a war like the Great War would
never happen again
 Wilson outlined his vision of world
peace in a speech he made to the
U.S. Congress in January 1918,
before the war ended
 His plan for peace was called the
Fourteen Points
Self-Determination
 Wilson’s first four points called for
open diplomacy, freedom of the
seas, the removal of trade barriers,
and the reduction of military arms
 The fifth point proposed a fair system
to resolve disputes over colonies
 The next eight points dealt with selfdetermination, or the right of people
to decide their own political status
 For example, Wilson wanted the
different ethnic groups within
Austria-Hungary to be able to form
their own nations
The League of Nations
 The fourteenth point, which
Wilson believed was the
most important, called for
the establishment of the
League of Nations
 The League would be an
organization of nations
that would work together
to settle disputes, protect
democracy, and prevent
future wars
The Fourteen Points
 The components of the Fourteen
Points expressed a new philosophy
for U.S. foreign policy
 The Fourteen Points applied
the principles of progressivism
to foreign policy
 The ideals of free trade, democracy,
and self-determination sprang from
the same ideals that Progressive
reformers supported within the
United States
 Most importantly, the Fourteen
Points declared that the foreign
policy of a democratic nation should
be based on morality, not just on
what was best for that nation
Paris Peace Conference
 President Wilson led the group of
American negotiators who attended
the peace conference that began in
Paris in January 1919
 By doing so, he became the first
U.S. president to visit Europe while
in office
 Republicans and others back home
criticized Wilson’s decision to leave
the country
 They argued that it was more
important for Wilson to stay and
help the nation restore its economy
after the war than to work toward
peace in Europe
Paris Peace Conference
 Wilson had a dream
of international peace,
though, and he wanted
to make that dream a reality
 He believed that a lasting
peace required a fair and
unbiased leader, such as
himself, to attend the Paris
Peace Conference
 Otherwise he felt sure that
the European powers would
continue to squabble over
land and colonial rights
Paris Peace Conference
 The American delegation arrived
in France a few weeks before the
conference was scheduled to begin
 President Wilson enjoyed a hero’s
welcome in Paris, when thousands
of Parisians lined the streets to
cheer his arrival
 Before the conference began,
Wilson also traveled to London
and Rome, and in each city, he
received the same heartfelt
welcome
The Big Four
 The Paris Peace Conference began
on January 12, 1919
 Leaders of 32 nations, representing about
three-quarters of the world’s population,
attended the conference
 The leaders of the victorious Allies
dominated the negotiations
 Those leaders, President Woodrow
Wilson of the United States, British
prime minister David Lloyd George,
French premier Georges Clemenceau,
and Italian prime minister Vittorio
Orlando, became known as the Big Four
 Germany and the other Central Powers
nations were not invited to participate
Conflicting Needs
 The delegates arrived at the Paris
Peace Conference with competing
needs and desires
 President Wilson had a vision of
a better world where nations dealt
with each other openly and traded
with each other fairly
 While at the same time reducing
their arsenals of weapons
 Many of the other Allies, however,
wanted to punish Germany for
its role in the war
Conflicting Needs
 Other leaders came to the Paris
Peace Conference seeking
independence
 Some wanted to build new nations,
such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
 Delegates from Poland, which had
been divided between Germany and
Russia during the war, wanted to
re-establish their nation
 A young Vietnamese chef named
Ho Chi Minh who worked at the
Paris Ritz hotel asked the peacemakers
to grant his nation independence from
France
 Ho Chi Minh would later lead
his people in taking Vietnamese
independence by force
The Treaty of Versailles
 The Allies eventually reached an
agreement and presented their
peace treaty to Germany in May
 The final treaty was much harsher




than Wilson had wanted
The treaty forced Germany to disarm
its military forces
It required Germany to pay the Allies
reparations, payments for damages
and expenses caused by the war
This amount far exceeded what the
German government could actually
afford to pay
The Allies also demanded that
Germany accept sole responsibility
for starting the war
The Treaty of Versailles
 The treaty did include some
of Wilson’s Fourteen Points
 It would establish a League
of Nations
 Some ethnic groups in parts of
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia would receive the right
of self-determination
 The treaty would create nine new
nations, including
 Czechoslovakia, Poland, and
Yugoslavia
Treaty of Versailles
 The Central Powers also had
to surrender control of their
colonies to the Allies
 The treaty placed some of
the colonies under temporary
control of Allied nations until
the colonies were deemed
ready for independence
The Treaty of Versailles
 Germany strongly protested
the terms of the treaty
 Threatened with French military
action, however, German officials
signed the Treaty of Versailles
on June 28, 1919
 Wilson was disappointed at the
treaty’s harshness but believed
that the League of Nations could
resolve any problems the treaty
had created
The Fight over the Treaty
 President Wilson returned to the
United States on July 8, 1919, and
formally presented the treaty to
the U.S. Senate two days later
 Wilson needed the support of
both Republican and Democratic
senators to ratify, or approve,
the treaty
 The Republicans had won control
of the Senate in 1918, and getting
their support proved difficult for
the Democratic president
The Fight over the Treaty
 The senators quickly divided
into three groups
 The first consisted of Democrats
who supported immediate
ratification of the treaty
 The second group was the
so-called irreconcilables, who
urged the outright rejection of
U.S. participation in the League
of Nations
 The last group was the
reservationists, who would
ratify the treaty only if changes
were made
The Fight over the Treaty
 The reservationists focused their
criticism on the part of the
League of Nations charter that
required its members to use
military force to carry out the
League’s decisions
 Some Republicans believed that this
conflicted with the constitutional
power of the United States Congress
to declare war
 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
head of the Committee on Foreign
Relations, led the reservationists
The Fight over the Treaty
 Wilson refused to
compromise with
the reservationists
 He took his case directly
to the American people
 In 22 days Wilson traveled
8,000 miles and gave 32 major
speeches, urging the public to
pressure Republican senators
to ratify the treaty
 He warned of serious
consequences if the world’s
nations did not work together
in the future
The Fight over the Treaty
 After a speech in Pueblo,
Colorado, on September 25,
1919, Wilson collapsed
 He suffered a stroke in early
October and never fully
recovered
 Wilson spent the rest of his
term living privately in the
White House, cut off from
everyone except his wife
and his closest aides
The Fight over the Treaty
 In November 1919, Senator
Lodge presented the treaty to
the U.S. Senate for ratification
 He included a list of 14
reservations, or concerns
about the treaty
 Wilson was unwilling
to compromise
 Following Wilson’s instructions,
the Senate rejected Lodge’s
revised treaty on November 19 and
again in March 1920
The Fight over the Treaty
 After Wilson left office in 1921,
the United States signed a
separate peace treaties with
Austria, Germany, and Hungary
 The United States never joined
the League of Nations
 Without the United States,
the League’s ability to keep
world peace was uncertain
 Perhaps Wilson’s only real reward
was the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize
The Impact of the Great War
 World War I was a devastating
conflict that shocked the world
with its staggering cost
 By the end of the war, combat, disease,




and starvation had killed more than
14 million people
The war left some 7 million men
permanently disabled
The war had cost more than $280
billion, significantly more than any
previous war in history
When the war ended, Americans
were eager to return to normal life
But the war had changed the world,
and there was no going back to the
way things had once been
Political Impact
 The consequences of World
War I were felt far beyond the
battlefield
 The war led to the overthrow
of the monarchies in Russia,
Austria-Hungary, Germany,
and the Ottoman Empire
 It contributed to the rise of the
Bolsheviks to power in Russia
in 1917
 It fanned the flames of revolts
against colonialism in the
Middle East and in Southeast
Asia
Economic Impact
 World War I devastated
European economies
 As a result, the United States emerged
as the world’s leading economic
power
 Despite this new financial power,
the United States still faced economic
challenges at home
 The demand for consumer goods
increased as Americans raced to buy
items that had been in short supply
during the war
 This increased demand led to
inflation, and many Americans
struggled to afford ordinary,
day-to-day items
Economic Impact
 Farmers, who had increased
production to meet the needs
of European markets during
the war, were particularly hard
hit when postwar markets no
longer need to buy their food
 Despite these economic
setbacks, most Americans
looked forward to the new
decade as a time of peace
and prosperity
Social Impact
 The war had drawn more
than a million women into
the American workforce
 Their service to the nation
contributed to the passage of
the Nineteenth Amendment
in 1919
 Which gave women the right
to vote
 In 1920 the states ratified
the amendment
Social Impact
 The war also encouraged
many African Americans
to move to northern cities
in search of factory work
 This changed the
population patterns
of northern cities and
led to new and often
uneasy race relations
Impact in Europe
 The effects of the war in
Europe were devastating
 European nations had lost
almost an entire generation
of young men
 France, where most of the
combat took place, was in ruins
 Great Britain was deeply in debt
to the United States and lost its
position as the world’s financial
center
 The reparations imposed
on Germany by the Treaty
of Versailles were crippling
Impact in Europe
 World War I would not be
the “war to end all wars”
as many had hoped
 Too many issues were left
unresolved, and too much
anger and hostility would
remain
 Within a generation, conflict
would again break out in
Europe, pulling the United
States and the rest of the
world back into war