Wilson’s Naive Fourteen Points
After the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson secretly convened a group of 150 academic experts to devise a lasting peace that would prevent future wars. Over the next nine months, the group produced some 2,000 reports and 1,200 maps.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
On January 8, 1918, in a speech before a joint session of Congress, Wilson unveiled the group’s results to the unsuspecting public, which became his “War Aims and Policy Terms.” These included what became known as the “Fourteen Points” for world peace.
Details of the Fourteen Points
The fourteen points were an idealistic, progressive attempt to avoid future wars. They also reflected Wilson’s vision for a postwar world, which did not necessarily coincide with the visions of other world leaders. The points had been itemized and written so they could be easily interpreted by the average European.
The first five points addressed international relations, while the last eight points addressed territorial claims after the war. The fourteenth point called for creating an international organization to deliberate and promote disarmament, democracy, and human rights. And, if needed, it would act as international policeman in future conflicts. This was the centerpiece of Wilson’s fourteen points, and it proved to be the most controversial of them all.
International Response
The fourteen points sought to undermine the Central Powers’ will to continue fighting by inspiring the Allied war effort. They were also an effort to extend Wilson’s progressive domestic agenda into foreign policy. The points were broadcast throughout the world and were showered from rockets and shells behind enemy lines.
The leaders of U.S. allies Great Britain and France were generally unimpressed by Wilson’s points. Moreover, they were dismayed by his presumptiveness in telling them how to dictate peace when the U.S. had not yet even been involved in the war for one year. After reading the fourteen points, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau proclaimed, “Even God Almighty has only ten!”
Before the points could be fully absorbed, Wilson added more principles and particulars throughout 1918 as the war was finally concluding. All these ideas (delivered at different times) gave the Central Powers the impression that they were changing and therefore negotiable. In October 1918, they agreed to an armistice based on Wilson’s original document—the fourteen points.
Peace Negotiations
Wilson traveled to Paris to directly participate in the peace process in December 1918, becoming the first sitting president to attend peace negotiations in a foreign country. During the process, Allied leaders used Wilson’s points to place sole blame of the war on Germany, even though Britain and France (and even Russia and Serbia) bore responsibility as well. This “war-guilt clause” attached to the final treaty oppressed the Germans and created animosity from which a new nationalism, led by Adolf Hitler, emerged.
Among Wilson’s points was the idealistic notion of self-determination, or the right of people to decide their own political fates. From this came many new nations, including carving Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland from Germany. Because these new nations were dominated by German-speaking people, Hitler later invaded and annexed them back into Germany by citing Wilson’s own principle of self-determination as justification.
The greatest source of contention was Wilson’s insistence on creating a League of Nations, his fourteenth point. Allied leaders used this insistence against Wilson by threatening not to join the League if various other points were not withdrawn. As a result, many points were not implemented, even though Germany had agreed to stop fighting based solely on the fourteen points. This caused more resentment that later fomented into the Nazi movement.
American Opposition
The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. Although it did not contain many of Wilson’s fourteen points, it did create his coveted League of Nations. As such, Wilson returned to the U.S. to persuade Americans to support the treaty. But when he returned, he found much more opposition than he had anticipated.
Treaties require a two-thirds majority approval in the Senate to be ratified. At the time, the Senate was controlled by Republicans who generally opposed the Democratic president. Many senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, expressed reservations about the treaty. In particular, they worried that involving the U.S. in a League of Nations would surrender national sovereignty, which was unconstitutional. Instead of working with the senators on a compromise, Wilson stubbornly embarked on a nationwide speaking tour to appeal directly to the people in favor of the treaty.
Wilson traveled throughout the country and delivered 40 speeches denouncing his opponents and pleading for support. However, the violence and unrest occurring in the U.S. after the war had caused a general resentment among the people, and consequently most of them opposed the treaty. Wilson worked himself into exhaustion and suffered a debilitating stroke after returning to Washington.
Legacy of the Fourteen Points
President Wilson’s refusal to compromise destroyed any chance for the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. And although the League of Nations was established, the U.S. never joined. Ironically, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the treaty and the League, even though his country never endorsed either one. The U.S. did not make peace with Germany until two years later, when Congress passed a resolution declaring the war over.
Wilson’s idealistic internationalism, calling for the U.S. to fight for democracy, progressivism, and liberalism, has been a contentious aspect of U.S. foreign policy, serving as a model for “idealists” to emulate and “realists” to condemn.
The fourteen points, while steeped with good intentions, reflected a naïve outlook on international affairs that was mostly scorned by other world leaders. Wilson’s insistence on invoking the points during the peace process indirectly created more animosity among the warring nations and set the stage for the German ascendancy in the next decade, which would lead to World War II.

