14 Points
Woodrow Wilson came to presidency as a third party candidate. Once in office many people had no idea who he was or how he came to be president. But later towards the end of his second term, the whole world would know his name and his plan to bring peace to the entire world. This plan, which he gave through a state of the union address before Congress, came to be known as the Fourteen Points. Theses Fourteen Points or guarantees, he felt, were essential to a peace settlement to end W0rld War I. They included freedom of the seas, arms limitations, economic interdependence and removal of barriers of trade, fair settlement of colonial claims or national self determination, no secret alliances or open diplomacy, and the final point which called for “a general association of nations.”
Unfortunately not all of the Fourteen Points were carried out following World War I, and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference. In 1918 the German chancellor asked for an armistice to talk peace based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Wilson was more difficult to work with than the Germans expected. He refused to consider the armistice until the Berlin government had changed hands and Germany admitted defeat. But even after a new government took over in Germany and they laid their weapons down, more problems arose. The allies greatly opposed the generous peace plan based on the Fourteen Points, and proved to create many problems for Wilson and his peace negotiations due to their lust for German blood. Britain resisted the freedom of the seas and France demanded war reparations from Germany. Our allies didn’t want the treaty to be based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points. They believed that would let Germany off too easily. England and France made a deal with Wilson saying they would join the League of Nations if in return they would get what they wanted from Germany. Wilson knew this was a bad idea because this would violate the Fourteen...