By Patrick Allitt, Emory University
World War I had ended, and Germany had signed an armistice. It had to sign a peace treaty next. President Woodrow Wilson approached the Versailles peace negations with more hope than experience, and he was very disillusioned with the resulting treaty.
Woodrow Wilson’s Expectations
When America had entered the war, Wilson had said in his war address: “We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensations for the sacrifices we shall freely make.”
He hoped that the other participants in the war were going to be equally high-minded.
Wilson also decided that he’d go and participate directly at the peace negotiations at Versailles, and when he arrived, he was greeted in Europe as a great hero and liberator.
Before going, he had convened a group called the Inquiry—a committee of political experts—so that they could plan the principles upon which peace negotiations ought to take part.
This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
The Fourteen Points
The Inquiry is famous for what are called the Fourteen Points, that is, really a set of principles upon which a lasting European peace treaty should be based.
The Fourteen Points included things like the surrender of all conquered territories—all parts of Russia taken away by Germany in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk would be restored—and open treaties—there would be no more secret diplomacy on the part of the European powers. Groups like the Hungarians and the Czechs within the Austro-Hungarian Empire would become self-governing with democracies of their own.
Point Fourteen of the Fourteen Points was that there should be an international organization, a League of Nations, to settle further disputes peacefully. To Wilson, that was the most important of all.
British and French Expectations
David Lloyd-George was the British Prime Minister and Georges Clemenceau was the French leader, and they presided over nations that had been involved in over four years of desperate and costly warfare.
The electorate that stood behind them, their own people, were pressing them very hard to get the Germans to accept blame for having started the war in the first place, and to make them pay reparations in compensation for the suffering and destruction they had caused.
Lloyd-George had just won an election, and one of his slogans was, “Hang the Kaiser”. That was the kind of mood in public debate in Britain at the time. When Georges Clemenceau heard about Wilson and the Fourteen Points, he made a very memorable, cynical comment: “God gave us the Ten Commandments, and we broke them. Wilson gave us the Fourteen Points, we shall see.”
Wilson Succumbs to Britain and France
In the negotiations, as they unfurled in Versailles, Wilson did have to begin giving way to his western allies, particularly Lloyd-George and Clemenceau. He had to accept the idea that in the treaty was going to be included a clause specifying German guilt for the war, and German responsibility for reparations.
The British government even tried to specify that Germany should pay money that would be used to pay British war veterans’ pensions, on the grounds that they’d been responsible for the war. The Allies were very eager to make sure that German colonies around the world should be transferred, either to the League of Nations, or to the victors.
Germany Felt Betrayed
The German negotiators, felt absolutely betrayed by Wilson, as they watched him conciliating the British and the French, and one-by-one accepting the more vengeful principles they were trying to include in the treaty.
The Germans had initially agreed to negotiate because of the Fourteen Points, but now they found that the points weren’t becoming the governing principles on which the treaty was being made.
A Forced Acceptance
They were in such a weak negotiating position that, with great dismay and reluctance, the Germans were forced to accept the treaty, but it wasn’t one in which they felt any confidence. They didn’t think it was just, and they didn’t think it was right that they should have been forced to do it.
When first presented with it, they wrote a 443-page criticism of the whole document, pointing out the ways in which it violated the Fourteen Points. They were asked to shrink the size of Germany, to give part of their western lands to France, to give part of their eastern lands to Poland, to give Poland a corridor to the sea, and to break up the Austro-Hungarian Empire once and for all.
Wilson’s Bubble
Wilson himself was dismayed by the way in which things had gone, and accepted the new terms only in the expectation that the League of Nations, which to him was the most important of principles, would come into existence, and would be able to correct the worst features of the treaty.
In other words, his vision of the immediate future was that when the passions of war had ended and then calmer heads prevailed, the League of Nations would be an organization whose members collectively would sort out the obvious shortcomings of the treaty as originally signed.
Some historians speculate that Wilson would have more moral authority if he hadn’t been at Versailles, but his descent into the bickering and quarreling of the victors in 1919 had cost him a lot of his authority.
Common Questions about the Treaty of Versailles and the US
Before going to Versailles, Wilson had convened a group called the Inquiry, a committee of political experts, so that they could plan the principles upon which peace negotiations ought to take part.
The British and French wanted to get the Germans to accept blame for having started the war in the first place, and to make them pay reparations in compensation for the suffering and destruction they had caused.
Germany felt absolutely betrayed since the Fourteen Points weren’t becoming the governing principles on which the treaty was being made.
