Talk:Fourteen Points

--Ubtree (talk) 11:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)==reception and outcome?== It would be helpful to have a discussion of how the points were initially received by other governments, and what was the eventual outcome of the various points.--Bcrowell 15:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, along with information on the Supporters, Irreconciables, and Reservationists. --Standaman2009

Possibly the effect of this treaty on European nations' government, society, and economy. Urspy 20:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Would also be nice to have a 'laymen's explanation', as Wikipedia usually does - I know many who use Wikipedia primarilly because of its readable, and while copies of the speech are useful it would also be nice to have a 'common english' explanation of what each point means. Aerothorn 00:56, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

This article needs a serious facelift.

I agree with aerothorn, there needs to be a simple explanation of the 14 points summarising the general idea or position that the 14 points take. --Arakash 14:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the statement "Europeans generally welcomed Wilson's points" in the opening paragraph, since this is controversial, and citation 1, which it was claimed supported this statement, does not support the statement. --Ubtree (talk) 11:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

NPOV?

I believe the view of the Fourteen Points outlined on this page is at some points pretty blatantly biased towards elevating the significance of the Fourteen Points, possibly as a result of the American government/university-only list of references. Specifically: "The idealism displayed in the speech... encouraged the Central Powers to surrender" and "By early 1918, it was clear that the war was nearing its end." -- excessively grandiose statements considering the actual military situation on January 8 (i.e. the Spring Offensive was approaching and had at least some chance of resulting in German victory).

The impact section also ought to be changed, i.e. mention the failure of the Fourteen Points, despite the enthusiasm of the Germans, to dictate the terms of the armistice with Germany (Compiègne), which the Versailles treaty was then based on. Also "Opposition to the Fourteen Points among British and French leaders became clear after hostilities ceased": I think in fact they were clear before hostilities ceased, which was why the Fourteen Points were ignored as a basis for armistice negotiations. Being a Year 12 Modern History student studying WWI, I am not the definitive authority on the Fourteen Points, but I will go ahead anyway and make some NPOV-increasing edits to this article soon enough; please list objections/comments below if you have any. Moskvax 13:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, what about the famous sentence, don't remember who mentioned it: "Mr. Wilson your fourteen points bore me, God only had ten." 200.77.35.88 (talk) 23:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That would be Georges Clemenceau. Luctor 22:22, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

It might also be informative to at least mention the apparent rift between the ideals Wilson displayed in the Fourteen Points and his use of troops to countermand self-determination in Latin America (i.e. deploying troops to Nicaragua and Haiti to force selection of their presidents) and Russia (i.e. deploying troops to the Soviet Union to support the White Russians in 1917 and not withdrawing them until 1920). Vlad2000 20:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The speech's "power" over the Central Powers?

The claim: "The idealism displayed in the speech... encouraged the Central Powers to surrender" is baseless and just plain wrong. Being defeated militarily was what encouraged the Central Powers to surrender, not an enlightened speech about an attempted peace plan that basically fell through. It's main structure and ideals were not accepted by the majority as a lot of it was based on Wilson's idealism alone evident by the amount of conflict he had with the Republicans, the French and the British (self-governing territories vs imperialism), the Italians (secret agreements not recognised), the Germans (the French wanted the Kaiser hung) and the Japanese.

This part of the article should be erased as there is no basis, nor proof of the claim and the article loses nothing without this statement. 81.158.202.47 14:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

That is one sentence from the lead section. Lower down, the article goes on:

The speech was widely disseminated as an instrument of propaganda, to encourage the Allies to victory. Copies were also dropped behind German lines, to encourage the Central Powers to surrender in the expectation of a just settlement. Indeed, a note sent to Wilson by Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, in October 1918 requested an immediate armistice and peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points.

The Central Powers did not fight to the bitter end, like the Nazis in the Second World War: do you think the expectation of a just peace settlement had no impact on their decision to surrender? -- ALoan (Talk) 15:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

"gave Wilson a position of moral leadership among the Allies". I also think this part of the statement is debatable and empty. "The idealism displayed in the speech gave Wilson a position of moral leadership among the Allies, and encouraged the Central Powers to surrender". The entire sentence is unnecessary. The "moral leadership" and "idealism" of the speech is irrelevant; it was the terms that mattered to the Germans as is clearly stated in the following paragraph. The rest of the first 2 paragraphs are fine and much more informative; they mention the relevance of his fourteen points to the Paris Peace Conference and the failures of the Treaty of Versailles/relevancy to his presidency etc.

The sentence is not only out of place and subjectively written/stated (as others have pointed out) but it is also irrelevant given the other points in the article, which are made on a clearer, more informative basis and that is why I feel the sentence should be removed.

81.158.202.47 17:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

--- Speaking of the Kaiser, how is his name not even mentioned in this article? (And also, in the 14 points? ;) ). Maybe the idea is that stuff regarding him is compartmentalized in related articles? IDK. Seems a little 'off'. I could be wrong. Know Einstein (talk) 21:07, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Hi... I'm really new so I don't know how to do this, but there are another set of 14 points commonly used in business... maybe someone could please post tag at the top referring to people looking for that to look up Total Quality Management? Just a suggestion... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.33.78.148 (talk • contribs) this is mason, i am awwesome!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.251.63.170 (talk) 00:31, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protect this page?

I've noticed a lot of vandalism has occured to this page recently, and I think it might be time to protect it. Anyone else agree? OverSS 21:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Not really - there is not so much vandalism that it is diffcult to revert. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a stray thought, anyway. If it does increase, though, it should be considered. OverSS 21:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. If it does increase. It should be considered. If the vandalism continues. I agree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.240.241.2 (talk) 02:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Which points were adopted during post-war reconstruction of Europe?

In the introduction, it states

However, only three of the points were adopted completely in the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and the United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.

And in the last paragraph,

However, history shows that, despite the idealism, the post-war reconstruction of Europe adopted only four of the points completely.

So which is it? And which of the points were adopted? Chrishans 05:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Which four points were adopted during post-war reconstruction of Europe? Can some one add them. 96.229.69.6 (talk) 02:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The "history shows..." sections "only three" and "only four" have been deleted. I don't believe there's a consensus on which were or were not "adopted completely". If restored because there actually is such a consensus, an editor should be mindful to cite the source and enumerate the 3 or 4 or whatever. patsw (talk) 20:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

An earlier version of the article referenced Hakim, Joy (1999). War,Peace and All that Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512767-6. on the number of points implemented.

The reference had two problems. First, the book in question is a small history supplement written for 6th grade pupils covering episodes in all of U.S History in 11 volumes. Secondly, the pages in the book covering the Fourteen Points (16 through 20) fail to mention how many of the points were implemented. If at all possible try to read those pages because it demonstrates an unrelenting pro-Wilson POV on the part of the author. patsw (talk) 20:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Speech

There is a wikified version of the speech in a subpage: Fourteen Points/Text. Should the speech, in the article, be also wikified? Anyway the subpage must be deleted if it serves no current purpose. - Nabla 16:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Used the subpage wikification, partially. Deleted. - Nabla 16:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The wikified and numbered points were removed on 29 April 2007 by 72.147.68.10 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) in his only contribution. I do not think we should include the whole text in this article. Besides, the text is available at Wikisource. I have reverted the edit and restored the wikified version. -- Petri Krohn 02:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Wilson's Speech vs. Treaty of Versailles

The last paragraph of this section is not logical: "At the end of World War I, only two foreign armies had entered Germany, and both advances had been brief and ultimately trivial - the advance of Russian troops into the Eastern border of Prussia, and French troops occupying Mühlhausen/Mulhouse for a few days, both at the outbreak of the war. Otherwise no foreign army entered the German 1918 borders during the War. This made the peace seem unfairly punitive to many, particularly Germans." (Why would not entering Germany make the peace seem unfairly punitive, especially to Germans?) --Hkwhitten (talk) 19:46, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Rhetoric section

The section about Fourteen Points and rhetoric looks like a high school essay and should be removed. It's informational content is very small. I would remove it myself but I see that a previous removal was reverted, so some discussion on it might help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1000:157D:4B4:F9F7:1D9F:5B6B (talk) 20:47, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Total agreement it should go: I am on this page because that section is quite off-topic and its style rudely intrusive. Nor does it tell us why any or all of the 14 Points was/were rhetorically effective (persuasive) or not. Dadofsam (talk) 20:44, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Removed sections

Opposition from the Allies

I have removed the following: "Opposition to the Fourteen Points among British and French leaders became clear after hostilities ceased: the British were against freedom of the seas ; the French demanded war reparations. Wilson was forced to compromise on many of his ideals to ensure that his most important point, the establishment of the League of Nations, was accepted. In the end, the Treaty of Versailles went against many of the principles of the Fourteen Points, both in detail and in spirit. Rather than Wilson's proposed "peace without victory," The Treaty of Versailles sought harsh punishment of Germany both financially and territorially. "France reclaimed Alsace and Lorraine, lost in 1871, despite the fact that barely one in ten of the population were French-speakers." The resulting bitterness in Germany, impoverishment of the German people, the release from military service of thousands of unemployed soldiers, together with competing political parties, notably the Communists, and the economic depression of the 1920s in Germany (which the Versailles Treaty helped create) all conspired to lay the seeds for the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Financial loans from the United States to Germany helped lift the German economy out of depression, but it was not a source of the rise Nazism, which was more the result of the above factors and the unequal "guilty party" treatment of Germany.

Both financially and territorially under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany became a subservient, essentially non-sovereign stcate) Germany was also stripped of its right to vindicate itself by trying its own war criminals, Such emasculation of the once proud Prussian people primed their ears for Hitler's Fascist answers to perceived injustices (which were more easily called to mind than those inflicted on distant battlefields over a decade prior) suffered at the hands of the Allies, particularly The French, whom due to proximity were unforgiving in their enforcement of reparation payments.

Wilson's lofty Fourteen Points were, like any political ambition, realized only partially. He espoused that, "Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished." In that, Wilson was correct and failed to inspire the "Victors" to break the cycle of conquest and subjugation which had plagued the globe since the advent of warfare. The Treaty of Versailles did achieve the final of Wilson's Fourteen Points, "A general association of nations...affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike" In such was laid the legal construct for the United Nations as it presents today- a theoretical international peacekeeping body.

Wilson was a progressive globalist, ahead of his time and not trusted or accepted by many (See- Failure of the U.S. to ratify the Treaty of Versailles). Article II of The Constitution of the United States provides an outline of executive, or presidential powers. Clause 2 permits and requires "that the president [He] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors..." "The President may enter the United States into treaties, but they are not effective until ratified by a two-thirds vote in the Senate." This allegedly did not happen with respect to The Treaty of Versailles. [citation needed]

Although the Fourteen Points declared that the peoples of Austria-Hungary should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development, this principle was selectively applied to German-speaking or Hungarian populations. Hungarians had comprised 54% of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary, and formed 88% of Hungary after the Treaty of Trianon, yet 3.3 million Hungarians were left in successor states, and formed the majority in specific districts of southern Slovakia and Transylvania. Similarly, "under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye, more than 3.2 million Germans in Bohemia, Southern Moravia and the hastily constituted Austrian province of Sudetenland found themselves the reluctant citizens of a new state, Czechoslovakia." This exclusion of the will of German-speaking populations from Bohemia and Moravia, and instead incorporating them into Czechoslovakia was a stark violation of principle five of Wilson's Fourteen Points—in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the people concerned must have equal weight with the claims of the government whose title is to be determined—the principle that all people should have a positive freedom of (or at least significant say in their) self-determination. The "problem for self-determination was that none of the peacemakers saw it as applying to their own empires--only to the empires they had defeated." The lingering perceived injustice of the German-speaking peoples who were excluded from this principle is arguably a factor in the events leading to the Second World War. The German-speaking population of southern Tyrol was cut off from the rest of Tyrol and incorporated into Italy, also against their will."

My reasons for doing so was it this was highly unneutral in that it goes out of its way to prove that Versailles was "unfair" to Germany, and more imporantely it is more concerned with explaining (perhaps excusing is a better word) National Socialism as a reaction to Versilles, which is getting way, way off topic. Moreover, it is highly unlogical; it says that if only the 14 points were applied to Versailles, then National Socialism would have been avoided, and at the same time says it was unfair that Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. I don't see how the return of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule can be said as a violation of the 14 points, given that Point 8 says that Alsace-Lorraine should be returned to France. A very silly arguement. The point about the French violating the 14 points by asking for reparations is also wrong because the 14 points say nothing about reparations. The basic thesis is a counter-factual assumption that if only the 14 points had been applied, then everything would have worked out for the best. The problem with counter-factual history is that if almost impossible to prove or disprove, and the same goes with counter-factual assumptions. The assumption that if only Wilson had his way with everything, then everything would have worked out fine is just an assumption. More importantly, one of the things that most annoyed Germans about Versailles was the existence of Poland and the Free City of Danzig. Point 13 says "An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant". So, at least with Poland, the 14 points were applied, and that is probably the thing about Versailles that most offended Germans in the 1920s-30s. So the claim that it was only because the French and the British went and subverted the 14 points as the main cause of World War II is highly questionable. And the claim that "proud Prussian people" were forced to turn to Nazism because of Versailles, which besides for being an apologistic argument meant to excuse those Germans who supported the Nazis, is very stupid. If the terms of Versailles turned Germans into Nazis as suggested above because Germany became a "subservient, essentially non-sovereign state" than the terms of the post-1945 settlement must had made Germany into a raving hotbed of Nazism. After 1945, Germany lost far more land than she had ever lost under Versailles, and moreover after 1945 there were wholesale mass expulsions of Germans which were carried out with a great deal of brutality, something that the peace-makers of Versalles had rejected as barbaric. There was nothing even remotely like the expulsions and flights of the Germans that took place after W.W.2 in the post-1919 era. In 1919, the Allies make a sincere attempt to ensure that those regions of Germany that had a Polish majority went to Poland while regions with a German majority stayed part of Germany. It was not perfect, and could not be because the ways in which different populations were mixed, so inevitably somebody was going to end up on the "wrong" side of the new frontiers. The only way to prevent that would have been mass expulsions, which is something the Allies rejected as inhuman (perhaps a sign of how unjust Versailles was to Germany?). Contrary to what is being claimed above, as the East Prussian plebiscite of 1920 proved, the Allies did seek the opinions of the people concerned about whatever they wanted to live in Germany or Poland. In 1945, regions with a German majority were given to Poland, and all of the Germans expelled. Which of the two were more unjust to Germany? And after 1945, the Allies did not something that the peace-makers of Versailles never did, namely they occupied all of Germany and abolished the German government, which makes Versailles look very mild by comparsion. By any objective measure, Germany was treated far more harshly after 1945 than in 1919, and so if the logic of the above holds, then Germany after 1945 should had become a hot-bed of Nazism as a reaction to the peace settlement of 1945. Finally, the Nazis did not make their electoral breakthrough until the Reichstag election of 1930, a good 11 years after Versailles, and that was mainly due to the Great Depression. Likewise, the claim about American loans as a non-factor in the rise of National Socilism is wrong. American loans in the 1920s helped to fuel a bubble economy in Germany whose bursting in 1929 helps to explain the severity of the Great Depression in Germany. There is a very good book called The Nazi Seizure of Power by William Sheridan Allen, which deals with a town called Northeim where the Nazis won 65% of the vote in 1932, which is way above the national average. The interesting thing about Northeim is that as Allen shows is that Versailles, "war guilt", the 14 points, etc did not figure at all as factors in explaining why the Nazis did so well in Northeim. The main reason why the Nazis won 65% of the Northeim vote was that the middle classes of the town believed that Social Democrats were going to stage a violent revolution, and the Nazis were the bulwark of order. The claim that the SPD was a violent revolutionary force was preposterous even at the time, but nonetheless that was one of the principle reasons for people voting Nazi. So, in short it is German domestic politics, not the Treaty of Versailles that were the major reasons for Nazi electoral success in the early 1930s. There is so much wrong with the above it would take more days to summarize it all. But the major point is that it all off topic by seeking to explain (very badly) the reasons for the rise of Hitler.--A.S. Brown (talk) 01:41, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

One further point. Much of the text I removed is a copyright vio from Niall Ferguson's book, The War of the World. It is one thing to quote from a book, and another to quote without quotation marks.--A.S. Brown (talk) 02:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Failure of the U.S. to ratify the Treaty of Versailles

I have removed the following:

United States Senator Henry Cabot Lodge opposed ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.

"The United States Senate refused to consent to the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, making it invalid in the U.S. and effectively hamstringing the nascent League of Nations envisioned by Wilson. The largest obstacle faced in the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles was the opposition of Henry Cabot Lodge. It has also been said that Wilson himself was the second-largest obstacle, not least because he kept the leaders of the Republican-led Congress in the dark during treaty deliberations and refused to support the treaty with any of the alterations proposed by the United States Senate. One of the largest obstacles was over the League of Nations; Congress believed that committing to the League of Nations also meant committing U.S. troops to any conflict that might have arisen (see also Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations).

The last vote on the treaty occurred in the Senate on March 19, 1920, and fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority required for the Senate to consent to ratification. The U.S. did later sign a separate peace treaty with Germany without joining the League.".

My reasons for removing the above is that it deals with the Senate rejecting the Treaty of Versailles which is 'off topic. This is a page about the 14 points, not the Treaty of Versailles! This page needs a serious re-write. First, this page should talk about the origins of the 14 points, which is something at present is not addressed very well. Ideally, this page should explain the origins of all 14 of the points. Then the page needs to talk about how the public reception of the points, and how they were viewed by other nations, which is again something that is not being done very well at present. If one can get stomach Marxism, then Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 by Arno J. Mayer might be a good place to start with the origins of the 14 points--A.S. Brown (talk) 01:56, 4 July 2011 (UTC).

References

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Fourteen Points. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111027113951/http://www.ekh.lu.se/ehes/paper/Spoerer_Lund.pdf to http://www.ekh.lu.se/ehes/paper/Spoerer_Lund.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:03, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Lead Section Review

The lead section of this article includes too much information. By the end of the 3rd paragraph, it becomes extremely hard to follow and doesn't really give a concise explanation of exactly what the Fourteen Points were. I think it could really help the article, because after the introduction, it really breaks down in an easy to understand and straight-forward format. The article gives Background, Context, the Fourteen Points and then the Reaction from around the world. The article doesn't waste a readers time... and lead section should do the same.

In terms of citations and information, each sources seems to be high-quality and point readers to the actual online source or relevant book. The only places I think could use a citation was the last paragraph of the introduction and the 'Reaction by the Allies' section. When I read this line, "As a major public statement of war aims, it became the basis for the terms of the German surrender at the end of the First World War" it screamed for a citation, otherwise it's just a biased claim. At the end of that paragraph, it's already been marked [citation needed], so someone felt the same way as I did.

Overall, it's a good article that could just use some touching up. MLoson20 (talk) 02:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Alsace-Lorraine

The Fourteen Points were a little ambiguous about Alsace-Lorraine. They simply called for "righting the wrong done to France" rather than demanding that Germany give up the provinces. The Germans apparently, when seeking an armistice, persuaded themselves that they might get away with holding a plebiscite. Might be worth posting if somebody has a source to hand.

They also apparently persuaded themselves that they might be able to hold on to some or all of their conquests in the east, although it's hard to see how that squares with the demand that Russian territory be evacuated. Maybe they thought Poland, the Ukraine or the Baltics might not count as "Russia". Paulturtle (talk) 04:14, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, there is the possibility of having independent Polish, Ukrainian, and Baltic countries but also having these countries be under German influence--a bit like the situation right now in real life, in fact! All of these countries are either already a part of the German-dominated European Union or strongly want to join it right now in real life, after all. 68.4.99.100 (talk) 06:35, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

The interpretation of the Fourteen Points by Woodrow Wilson's advisers

This document is an interpretation of the Fourteen Points by Woodrow Wilson's advisers:

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/doc31.htm

It appears to be legit. I can prove that it is legit if necessary. Should it have a place in this article? AFAIK, it was made right after the Armistice with Germany. 68.4.99.100 (talk) 06:35, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

The Treaty of Versailles

The section of the Treaty of Versailles is full of misinformation, information not germane to the subject, and a rather biased and incorrect view of history. To start with, that section was added by this IP from Sweden back in 2011 who wrote: "However president Wilson became sick in the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, making the way clear for the right-wing and German hating french chancellor Georges Clemenceau to change a lot of Wilson's plan. Most debatable was that Germany got the entire blame for the whole war and that Germany should pay an astronomical amount of money to France until the year 1981. Germany were also denied an airforce, and the German army was not to exceed 100.000 men. The difference between president Wilson's rather honorable peace offer towards the German Empire (unlike what he had to offer the Austrian-Hungarian empire) and the final Treaty of Versailles led to great anger in Germany.."

This section has changed a bit since that time, but the core arguments remain. I don't like to criticise the editors, but whoever wrote this is not well informed. The 14 points say nothing about Germany having the right to an air force after the war, so this claim that the Treaty of Versailles forbidding Germany to have an air force being a violation of the 14 Points is utter nonsense. The same goes with the size of the German Army. Nowhere does 14 Points say anything about Germany being allowed to have army that was larger than 100, 000 men, so this that is also nonsense. Likewise, the 14 Points say nothing about the reparations, so again this is nonsense. Just for the point, the Treaty of Versailles says Germany would pay reparations, but contrary to this IP wrote with this claim about "astronomical" reparations, the Treaty of Versailles says nothing about the amount of reparations. All the Treaty of Versailles says is that a conference will be held later to determine the amount of reparations. That conference was held in London in 1921 and in theory assigned the figure of 132 billion marks. I say in theory because the reparations were divided into A, B, and C bonds. The bulk of the reparations were assigned to the C bonds, which were as the American historian Sally Marks noted were totally "chimerical" as the Allies did not intend to collect the C bonds, which only existed to give the impression to French public opinion that substantial sums were going to be collected. For those inclined to accuse me of OR, please consult page 237 of "The Myths of Reparations" by Sally Marks which can be found on pages 231-255 from Central European History, Volume 11, Issue # 3, September 1978. The Allies intended to collect only the A and B bonds, which totaled 50 billion marks, which was an amount that was slightly smaller then what the Germans the 51 billion marks that the Germans had offered to pay (see the same page of the article by Marks for confirmation of this point). This claim that the Allies and the French in particular imposed unreasonable heavy reparations on the Reich in the Treaty of Versailles is simply not true. Finally, article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles says that the "responsibility" (note the word "guilt" is never used) rests with Germany and its allies. Including Article 231 as one of the supposed violations of the 14 points which article blames on Clemenceau is a lie. This article gives the impression that Wilson was opposed to Article 231 and that article happened against his will. The 14 Points say nothing about who was responsible for the unleashing the war in 1914. More importantly, article 231 was written by a future secretary of state John Foster Dulles who was serving as part of the American delegation at the Paris peace conference. Everything I have always read says that Dulles was an American, not a Frenchman. It is Dulles who wrote article 231 and it was the American delegation who put clause into the Treaty of Versailles. Article 231 was not the work of the French as this article is trying to claim here. Parts of this article are not about history at all, but rather myth. This section gives one the impression that Wilson was opposed to article 231 because he knew that Germany was "innocent" of starting the war and that it was just that "right-wing and German hating french chancellor Georges Clemenceau" who just went and messed everything up because of his insane hatred of Germans The fact that this IP does not know that Clemenceau was the premier of the republic and calls him a "chancellor" is another sign that this person is very, very misinformed and biased. Wilson always believed that Germany was responsible for unleashing the war in 1914 as anyone who takes the time to actually read his statements will know. Finally, article 231 did not cause the rise of the Nazis as this article claims. In a speech in 1927 at the inauguration of the Tannenberg war memorial, President Paul von Hindenburg repudiated article 231. Given that the Nazis did not make their electoral breakthrough until 1930 Reichstag elections, that was all very old news by then. I have never read any RS that ever made that claim this article makes that because in 1919 article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles assigned the responsibility for the war to Germany and its allies that German voters started to vote Nazi in 1930. Article 231 had been repudiated in 1927, and anyhow this article makes clear the supposed connection between article 231 and the appeal of the Nazis.

I am not anti-American or anti-German, but this section is trying to engaging in POV-pushing. What this section is trying to explain is the origins of World War Two and National Socialism. Note the line "German outrage over reparations and the War Guilt Clause is viewed as a likely contributing factor to the rise of National Socialism". This is a widespread, but erroneous belief that the Treaty of Versailles caused Nazism and hence World War Two. There is an old saying "victory has thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan". Because the Treaty of Versailles is widely seen as a disastrous treaty that caused the most bloody war in history, there is a marked tendency in the English-speaking world and especially in the United States to disclaim all responsibility for the Treaty of Versailles. This is where the POV-pushing comes in. There is a legend that Woodrow Wilson had a vision for just peace contained in the 14 Points and that if only the 14 points were carried out to the letter, that a just peace would happened, the Germans would had been happy, and there would been no World War Two. This is essentially what this section is trying to claim. Note the way that way it is the French who are blamed here for the Treaty of Versailles. In other words, all of the bad things that happened in Europe between 1919-1945 are the fault of the French. This claim that the Treaty of Versailles was all the work of Clemenceau is a lie. If that was really the case, then the Rhineland would had been annexed to France, Danzig would had been annexed to Poland, Germany would have been allowed an army bigger than 100, 000 men (that clause was work of the British delegation), and is what is now northern Iraq would have been assigned to the French mandate of Syria rather than the British mandate of Iraq. The Treaty of Versailles was the compromise product of much difficult talks between the American, British and French delegations over a six month period between January-June 1919. This is point that is wrong. It is true that Wilson got sick, but the Paris peace conference lasted six months and for most of six months, Wilson is well. The only reason why this totally false claim is being made that the Treaty of the Versailles was all the work of the French is to absolve the British and the Americans for any responsibility for all the bad things that happened in Europe after 1918. It is a "victory has thousand fathers" approach in that it gives the main share of the credit for the Allied victory to the Anglo-American while disparaging the contribution while at the same time assigning to the French the main responsibility for the Treaty of Versailles. That are actually a few articles around here that take this approach like the article on Lord Milner. Note the way that this section does not talk about point 13, which calls for a Polish to be reestablished with "free and secure access to the sea". German public opinion was not willing to accept any losses of land to Poland, indeed many Germans were not prepared to accept the existence of any Polish state at all. For those not familiar with the subject, it was the Danzig crisis in 1939 that led to Germany invading Poland in 1939. I suppose that is this not being mentioned here because that would suggest that Wilson did play an important role at the Paris peace conference. A Polish state was declared in November 1918 and at the Paris peace conference it was decided to sever Danzig from Germany to create the city-state of the Free City of Danzig to give Poland "free and secure access to the sea".

Likewise, note that way that Nazism is being portrayed here as an understandable, if extreme reaction to the Treaty of Versailles. It is true that the Treaty of Versailles was universally hated in Germany and German public opinion was not willing to accept its terms. But that is not the reason for the reasons of Nazism. In 1928, the Treaty of Versailles was still very much in force and in the Reichstag elections of that year the Nazis won only 2% of the German vote. The Nazis did not make their electoral breakthrough until the Reichstag elections of September 1930 when they won 17% of the vote. It was the Great Depression, not the Treaty of Versailles that caused the rapid rise in popularity in Nazi support in the early 1930s. More correctly, it was the fear of the unwashed masses impoverished and unemployed by the Great Depression rising up in a Marxist uprising that caused the German middle class to vote for the Nazis. For anyone truly interested in the subject about why Germans voted for the Nazis, please read Who Voted for Hitler? by Richard Hamilton and The Nazi Voter by Thomas Childs. Both books make the same point that I am making here, namely that the tendency to vote Nazi was closely related to income level. The higher income in Germany, the more one was to vote Nazi and the lower income level, the less likely one was to vote Nazi. What terrified middle class Germans in the early 1930s was the possibility that the Social Democrats and/or the Communists would rally all these unemployed people to stage a revolution, which thus required a "really aggressive anti-Marxist fighting force" as one middle class German put it that would be the "party of order" that would crush Marxism in Germany forever. In 1933-1934, an American sociologist by the name of Theodore Fred Abel interviewed numerous Nazis to ask why they had joined the NSDAP. Abel's interviews are especially interesting because in 1933 and 1934, Nazis had no reasons to lie about their reasons for joining NSDAP. Of all the people Abel interviewed, 98% gave anti-Marxism as their reason for joining the NSDAP. Note that they did not say anything about the Treaty of Versailles or the 14 points. What is this section is assuming here is that hatred of the Treaty of Versailles is what caused Germans to vote Nazi, and that assumption is wrong. Disliking the Treaty of Versailles did not automatically lead to support for the Nazis in the way that this article is trying to claim. If that was the case, then the Nazis would won 100% of the German vote, which they never did. Their best performance was the Reichstag election of July 1932, when they won 37% of the German vote. The tenor of that section seems is that the 14 points represented the basis for a lasting peace and that German anger at the Treaty of Versailles was justified, hence the turn towards Nazism as a response. Finally, note the counter-factual assumption that if there was no Nazi dictatorship, then would had been no World War Two. It is true that Hitler started the war and the war was fought in a very barbaric fashion because of him. But World War Two would had happened even if Hitler had never had existed. German public opinion was not willing to accept the frontiers with Poland, and a German attack on Poland would had happened at some point along the line even without Hitler. Long before Hitler came to power, the Free City of Danzig was known as "Europe's most dangerous city". That name was a reference to the fact that Danzig was a flashpoint in German-Polish tension and everybody thought that if World War Two is going to start, this is the place where it will start. And that turned out to be true. It is a bit eerie reading accounts from 1924 or 1929 talking about Danzig as "Europe's most dangerous city" because these accounts foreshadow what happened in 1939.

One can make the case that because German elites were not willing to accept the international system created after 1918 and were out to challenge that system that world war was inevitable. Quite a few historians such as Williamson Murray do make that case. But the Treaty of Versailles and the 14 Points are not relevant. The only way that the Allies could had made German elites happy would have been to lose the First World War. That is the thesis of the book by Niall Ferguson The Pity of War that is included in the bibliography. Ferguson argues at great length that Britain should not had declared war on Germany and the best thing that could had happened would have been for the Reich to defeat France and Russia. Ferguson is a conservative British historian and so he likes to wrap himself up in the Union Jack. He does not say explicitly that Britain should had lost the war because presumably the conservative British audience he was writing for would not like that message, but he strongly implies that. Ferguson is one of those British conservatives for whom the British empire was the greatest thing that ever existed and its demise is the greatest tragedy of all time, and The Pity of War is a long elegy for the lost empire as Ferguson spends the better part of 500 pages saying what mistake it was that Britain went to war in 1914 because that marked the beginning of the end of the British empire. The problem with Ferguson's approach is it does not explain anything that happened in history-this histography of moaning and whining about how it was a mistake to go to war in 1914 because it caused the decline of the British empire that Ferguson is promoting explains absolutely nothing. I have number of issues with Ferguson's book that need not be discussed here, but at least he is more more honest than this IP from Sweden. What German elites together with quite a few ordinary Germans wanted was "world power status" to use their favorite term, namely for the Reich to be the world's number one power. This entire thesis that if only Wilson had been allowed to have his way with the 14 Points at the Paris peace conference, then everything would had worked out fine, is bogus. It was unrestricted submarine warfare and Zimmermann telegraph that were the immediate American casus belli in 1917, but the more broader cause was that American elites perceived the German claim to "world power status" as a threat to the United States. Right from the start in 1914, Wilson had leaned in a pro-Allied neutrality, largely because he thought that a German-dominated Europe would be a threat to the United States. And before Wilson, both the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft had tended to lean in a pro-British and anti-German direction, which again reflected the belief that Germany was a potential threat to the United States while Britain was not. If one actually reads the 14 points, it is very clear that Wilson was seeking to restrict German power in Europe. Note the clauses in the 14 Points calling for Germany to pull out of Russia, France, Belgium, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro, plus returning Alsace-Lorraine to France and allowing the Polish-speaking parts of Germany to be included in a reborn Polish state. It is hard to difficult to see how one square this demand for "world power status" for Germany with the reduced power for Germany that the 14 points are calling for.

Likewise, a great many Germans believed that their country had actually won World War One and their nation had only been defeated by the alleged "stab-in-the-back" in the form of the November revolution of 1918. Anyone who has read the works of Fritz Fischer will know that the German leaders in World War One envisioned vast territorial changes in their favor, which could only be achieved by winning the war. Germany lost the First World War and by definition any peace was going to favor the Allies. There was nothing Wilson could had done to reconcile these people who wanted these immense territorial changes and believed that Germany actually won the war to their defeat. If one reads any of Hitler's speeches, he makes clear that what he is mad about is that Germany lost the war in 1918. The Treaty of Versailles is a secondary issue for him. What was really mad about was the November revolution as he keeps hammering the point that it was the "November criminals" who "stabbed" in the back the German army just as it was supposed to be on the brink of victory. The only way that the Allies could had people like Hitler happy would have been to lose in 1918 as anyone who has read his speeches and Mein Kampf will know. It is really besides the point what kind of peace that the Allies delivered in the Treaty of Versailles. For right-wing German nationalists, the only outcome to the First World War that would had made them happy would have been a German victory. Getting back to Ferguson, he is the only historian in English that I am aware of who makes that point, through as already noted he says it would be better just to have the Russians and French lose. It is really dishonest on the part of this section to make out that Wilson could had done that and everything that went wrong was all the work of dastardly Frenchman Clemenceau who decided to ruin the peace of Europe just because he was a Frenchman and that is what Frenchmen do when left up to their own devices.

I'm sorry for the length, but this section is truly awful. Most of the material here is not germane and much of it is wrong or misleading. What I suggest here is a rewrite. There was a sustained German propaganda campaign against the Treaty of Versailles all through the 1920s-1930s-1940s that harped obsessively on the supposed betrayal. What Wilson promised Prince Max of Baden in October 1918 was not that the 14 Points would be the basis of the peace treaty, but rather the 14 points would be the basis of the peace talks, which is a different thing. This section should probably be about the propaganda campaign against the Treaty of Versailles rather the present French-bashing rant that is now. --A.S. Brown (talk) 09:09, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

References