Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles

1. Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles Lecture 4

2. It was the strength of the opposition forces , both liberal and conservative , rather than the ineptitude and stubbornness of President Wilson that led to the Senate defeat of the Treaty of Versailles. • Using the documents and your knowledge of the period 1917-1921 , assess the validity of this statement. • USE American Spirit Readings: • Pages 248-253 • Pages 258-264

3. TO DO : • Define the terms in the question • Determine the “essence” of the question • Brainstorm relevant outside information

4. To Do : • Read each document – try to write a quick one sentence summary of each document • Categorize documents into three groups • Wilson supporters and liberal internationalists • Reservationists – conservative internationalists • Irreconcilables – isolationists

5. Who in your opinion was MOST responsible for the demise of the Treaty of Versailles? You must be able to categorize evidence. What evidence supports placing the responsibility for the demise of the Treaty ratification on each potentially responsible group?

6. Liberal v. Conservative • Liberal – Interventionists /Internationalists • Conservative – Isolationist • Terms: Liberal and Conservative meanings differ when applied to foreign vs. domestic affairs. Progressives were liberal on domestic issues but many of the “irreconcilables” were progressive although they were “isolationist” (conservative) when it came to the Treaty of Versailles.) • Reservationists - Internationalists

7. It was the strength of the opposition forces , both liberal and conservative , rather than the ineptitude and stubbornness of President Wilson that led to the Senate defeat of the Treaty of Versailles. • Using the documents and your knowledge of the period 1917-1921 , assess the validity of this statement.

8. Recognize the complexity of the question • The tension between: • Wilson’s “ineptitude and stubbornness” vs. • The strength of the opposition forces, both liberal and conservative • The thesis may argue for one of these contributing factors over the other but the best answers recognize the “other sides” role in the defeat , if only in a few references or sentences • DO the DBQ Thesis Worksheet on this question

9. The 96 senators who were eligible to vote on the treaty belonged to one of three groups: • Wilson Supporters and liberal Internationalists • Reservationists led by Henry Cabot Lodge • Irreconcilables who were mostly isolationists

10. I. WILSON'S FOURTEEN POINTS JANUARY8,1918 a speech to Congress which was his proposal for peace after World War I

11. Fourteen Pointsa mixture of : • Human rights principles • Preventive medicine in dealing with the causes of warfare • European territorial division of spoils • Wilsonian idealism with the proposed League of Nations

12. 1. No secret treaties (A) • Secret diplomacy abolished • Nations would practice diplomacy openly and make no secret treaties • All treaties open covenants arrived at openly

13. 2. Freedom of the seas (M)(I) • Ships allowed to move freely during peace and war

14. 3. No economic barriers between nations (I) • Removal of tariff (taxes on imports) barriers to allow free trade

15. 4. Arms cuts (M) • Nations would reduce their armaments

16. 5. A voice for colonized peoples (N) • Self determination for former colonies • Competing claims over colonies settled impartially in the best interests of the colonial peoples • National borders adjusted to allow for self rule • Protection of ethnic and national groups under foreign rule • prevent genocide • attempted by Ottoman Turks against Armenians

17. 6. Germany out of Russian (I) 7. Germany out of France and Belgium (I) 8. Alsace - Lorraine to France (I) 9. Expansion of Italy (I)

18. 10. Autonomy for Czechs, Magyars, Bulgars (N) 11. Poland's independence (N) 12. Autonomy for Greeks, Armenians, etc (N) 13. Free passage thru the Dardanelles (I)

19. 14. A league of nations "A general association of nations should be formed on the basis of covenants designed to create mutual guarantees of the political independence and territorial integrity of States, large and small equally."

20. Wilson was also against war reparations

21. 2. Woodrow Wilson Versus Theodore Roosevelt on the Fourteen Points (1918)

22. II. TREATY OF VERSAILLES JUNE 28 1919

23. A. The four leaders who dominated the conference: • President Wilson (US) • Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Britain) • Premier Georges Clemencaeau (France) • Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando (Italy)

24. B. Germany is required to: 1. Admit guilt 2. Pay war reparations • Allies take temporary control of the German economy 3.Return the rich Alsace - Lorraine region to France 4. Surrender her overseas colonies 5. Disarm • German rearmament is strictly limited

25. C. Redrew Map of Europe • Divided the Austria-Hungary empire into four nations • Sudetenland • Created mandates in the former Ottoman Empire and Germany’s former colonies

26. D. Established the League of Nations • Executive Council (like the Security Council) • Decisions would require unanimous approval for action • Agreed to not make war without arbitration • Unilateral action amounted to war against the entire league • Article X • Executive Council could “advise upon measures necessary to maintain order and keep peace in the world.”

27. Woodrow Wilson on the League of Nations “I think I can say of this document that it is at one and the same time a practical and humane document. There is a pulse of sympathy in it. It is practical, ad yet it is intended to purify to rectify to elevate…”

28. Wilson’s Reasons for Ratification • “Collective Security” • League of Nations would simply make the world a safer place by • reducing the chances for war • stopping needless arms building • Enable US to assume its rightful role in the forefront of world affairs • where we could use our best intentions and leadership to promote world peace • “We are participants in the world, whether we wish to be or not… What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well…”

29. III. THE RATIFICATION FIGHT

30. TIMELINE • February ,1919 – trip to Washington listened to harsh criticism • March, 1919 - Wilson allows 4 changes • July , 1919 – presented the Treaty to Congress • August , 1919 – Wilson met with entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee • DOCUMENTS -Read: 1,2,3,4 – The Text of Article X; Wilson testifies for Article X (1919) ; The Lodge-Hitchcock Reservations(1919) ; The Aborted Lodge Compromise (1919) • late in the summer of 1919- Wilson took his case to the people

31. Speech Wilson 1919 • When you read Article X, therefore you will see that it is nothing but the inevitable , logical center of the whole system of the Covenant of the League of nations, and I stand for it absolutely. If it should ever in any important respect be impaired, I would feel like asking the Secretary of War to get the boys who went across the water to fight… and I would stand up before them and say, Boys I told you before you went across the seas that this war was a war against wars, and I did my best to fulfill the promise, but I am obliged to come to you in mortification and shame and say I have not been able to fulfill the promise. You are betrayed. You have fought for something that you did not get.”

32. Wilson’s speech defends Article X of Treaty as essential to achieve goals for which the war was fought.

33. TIMELINE • November , 1919 Senate voted • with reservations 39- 55 defeated • DOCUMENTS - Read: 5. Wilson Defeats Henry Cabot Lodge’s Reservations (1919) • without reservations 38 – 53 defeated • DOCUMENTS - READ : 6. Lodge Blames Wilson (1919) • March 19, 1920- with reservations 49 for 35 against (7 short of 2/3 needed for approval) • November - 1920 Presidential Election - Wilson believed it would be “solemn referendum” on the League

34. Woodrow Wilson “Appeal” to the CountryOctober 3, 1920 • “This election is to be a genuine national referendum… The chief question that is put to you is, of course: Do you want your country’s honor vindicated and the Treaty of Versailles ratified? Do you in particular approve of the League of Nations as organized and empowered in that treaty? And do you wish to see the United States play its responsible part in it?... [The founders of the Government] thought of America as the light of the world as created to lead the world in the assertion of the rights of peoples and the rights of free nations … this light the opponents of the League would quench.

35. Wilson’s appeal to the country views election of 1920 as a referendum on the Treaty.

36. Factors that Defeated the Treaty Ratification: 1. Climate of post war U.S. • Rising intolerance towards things “un-American” • Ku Klux Klan reborn • Red Scare • The Great Migration

37. 1. Climate of post war U.S. B. Backlash against the Great War • Questioning the wisdom of having participated in a war that had caused many American deaths and wounded • Stories of Allied greed and desire for revenge disillusioned many who thought that the war had been fought to “make the world safe for democracy” • revulsion of the treaty led to desire to return to isolationism

38. 2. Political Opposition • Irish Americans • German Americans • Italian Americans • Conservatives • Liberals • Isolationists • Senate Republicans • Anti-Wilsonites

39. 1a. Wilson • supported ratification un- amended • Democrat • Internationalist • Liberal –foreign policy because he was an internationalist

40. 1b.Other Internationalists Liberals who believe the treaty does not do enough to change the old world order or enough to put in place the protections against future war; against the treaty with any restrictions on the power of the League of Nations

41. The New Republic May 24,1919an editorial from the new liberal periodical Liberals all over the world have hoped that a war ,which was so clearly the fruit of competition and imperialist and class-bound nationalism , would end in a peace which would moralize nationalism by releasing it from class bondage and exclusive ambitions. The Treaty of Versailles does not even try to satisfy these aspirations. Instead of expressing a great recuperative effort of the conscience of civilization which for its own sins has sweated so much blood, it does much to intensify and nothing to heal the old and ugly dissensions.

42. refers obliquely to issues (war guilt and reparations) that sully the treaty from the editor’s viewpoint; students should make those issues explicit • Based on the excerpt / document do you think The New Republic editorial is for or against the Treaty ratification • LIBERAL • For or Against ??? • Probably Against – liberal internationalist against

43. The New Republic’s liberal position that war was caused by imperialism and nationalism and that Treaty intensifies dissension and will not heal wounds.

44. 1b.John Maynard KeynesEconomic Consequences of the Peace,1920 “According to [the French] vision of the future, European history is to be a perpetual prize-fight , of which France has won this round, but of which this round is certainly not the last…. For Clemenceau made no pretense of considering himself bound by the Fourteen Points and left chiefly to others such concoctions as were necessary from time to time to save the scruples or the face of the President [Wilson]. … The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation of degrading the lives of millions of human beings and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable – abhorrent and detestable , even if it were possible even if it enriched ourselves, even if did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.

45. Based on the excerpt / document do you thin John Maynard Keynes is for or against the Treaty ratification • For or Against ??? • Seeds for future war sewn in the treaty

46. J.M. Keynes foresees that the Treaty’s destruction of Germany will lead to the decay of European civilization.

47. 1b.WEB Du Bois“The League of Nations”, Crisis, 1921 • Forty-one nations , including nearly every Negro and mulatto and colored government of the world , have met in Geneva and formed the assembly of the League of Nations. This is the most forward –looking event of the century. Because of the idiotic way in which the stubbornness of Woodrow Wilson and the political fortunes of the Republicans become involved, the United States was not represented , but despite its tumult and shouting this nation must join and join on the terms which the World lays down. The idea that we single-handed can dictate terms to the World or stay out of the World , is an idea born of the folly of fools.

48. WEB Du Bois“The League of Nations”, Crisis, 1921 • Liberal- represent the disappointment and dismay that lingered in the years after the treaty fight. • Editorial in the NAACP periodical Crisis • one can still hear echoes of the hopes that Wilson had raise when he spoke of anti colonialism and self determination of his 14 points. • Du Bois still on the road to being radicalized wishes a plague on both the Internationalist and Reservationists houses but his sympathies still rest with the League

49. W.E.B. Du Bois editorial in Crisis argues that U.S. must join League and that both Wilson and Republicans are responsible for the defeat of the Treaty.

50. 1b.Jane AddamsPeace and Bread in time of War, 1922 The League of nations afforded a wide difference of opinion in every group. The Woman’s Peace Party held its annual meeting in Chicago in the spring of 1920 and found our branches fairly divided upon the subject…. The difference of opinion was limited always as to the existing League and never for a moment did anyone doubt the need for continued effort to bring about an adequate international organization.