Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Narrator: Rather than have their country invaded, German military leaders seek an
armistice, an immediate ceasefire that would give the warring parties time to sit
down and talk. Almost a year earlier, Wilson had presented his plan for just peace.

Robert Schultzinger: When Wilson described why the United States was fighting, one
of the slogans he developed was that the United States was fighting this war to
end all wars. He said the United States was fighting to make the world safe for
democracy.

Female Speaker: When Lenin takes over, he makes public secret treaties, and that
basically shows that while the Allies claimed they were fighting a war for right
and democracy and human freedom, that behind closed doors, they had negotiated these
territorial exchanges of what they were going to gain when they won. This just seemed
like they were just fighting a war of conquest, just like Germany is, so what’s
the difference? Lenin challenges the world to make its war aims clear, and Wilson
steps up with the Fourteen Points.

Robert Schultzinger: Fourteen different headings of how the world should be reordered
after the war to create what he called “a peace without victory”, and what he meant
by that, was that the world after the war would differ from the world before by
ending these secret alliances, these secret treaties. He thought that the war had
been so devastating to the participants in Europe, that now they would be willing
to end this kind of greed that had led to the war.

Thomas Zeiler: History since then has been a contest over who’s vision would win
out: a realist view that nations are basically bad and that they will fight each
other and just going to build up your strength as much as you can, and deal with
others that way from a position of strength, or that nations are capable of cooperating.

Robert Schultzinger: That is everyone looking out for everyone else’s interests,
through a general international organization, an organization that came to be called
the League of Nations. That was the centerpiece of Wilson’s program.

Thomas Zeiler: That’s Wilsonianism, or liberal internationalism. Based on an arbiter,
an organization that could lift itself outside the realm of nations and alliances,
and make policy decisions, or at least assess and judge and hand down decisions
on which nation is right or wrong in a conflict.

Narrator: Even when the Fourteen Points were first issued, Britain and France would
not support it.

Female Speaker: They’re not fighting for just high principles. They are fighting
to defeat Germany, and they want a piece of vengeance against Germany, and they
are fighting for territory. They expect German colonies to be transferred to them
when the war is over, and they expect Germany to pay. Wilson issues the Fourteen
Points. Clemenceau doesn’t even read them until Germany sues for an armistice based
on them, and so, right there, we’re seeing the foundation for problems that will
become clearer when the peace is actually being negotiated.