Wilson & the Treaty of Versailles

At the end of World War I, a number of major concerns were raised about Germany and what should be done to prevent her from rising as a military power once more. Woodrow Wilson proposed his Fourteen Points for the purposes of negotiation at the peace conference. An analysis of what emerged in the form of the Treaty of Versailles shows that in many ways, the Germans emerged from the war with much of her army leadership intact and with very little democratic change in the governmental system. Considering how much importance Woodrow Wilson placed on the peace conference and on his hopes for certain peace-keeping mechanisms, the question can be raised as to whether Wilson actually sold out his ideals at the Paris Peace Conference or whether some other reason can be given for the failure of the allied forces to impose all that Wilson stated he wanted on the defeated Germans. The First World War, known then as the Great War, was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Clearly, it did not achieve this lofty goal, and German power was not kept in check as was intended. Within a few years, Germany was again a threat to the same nations that had defeated her in World War I. The defeat of Germany led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and that document was intended to lead to a new and more peaceful world. To achieve this, though, the victors believed they had to bind Germany so that the German military would never again be able to threaten the rest of Europe. There

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supply. Basically, Hoover thus sees Wilson's failure to have been not a mater of selling out his principles but of having too many principles in the first place: The use of such power would not have been in accord with American ideals. The President's disavowal of its application, in advance, no doubt weakened him in his negotiations. He was too great a man to bargain in that way. American idealism indeed was unfitted to participate in a game played with power as the counters. Hoover cites a number of problems that developed for Wilson in and because of Paris. One was a growing extreme nationalism in the new states. Wilson set policies of "self-determination," "independence," and similar concepts in his Fourteen Points, starting a wave of nationalism. Another problem was that the United States is a very different form of government than those of the Allies, with separate powers so that the Allies were not sure the President could be considered to be speaking for the American people and the new Congress, a Congress known to be hostile to the President. Another weakness was that American diplomats were not skilled or experienced in the art of diplomacy as practiced in Europe. CHARACTERISTICS OF WILSON Many com

Category: History - W