Week of February 21, Monday Lecture

I. Foreign Affairs in Early 20th Century

• Third World
• Europe
• "Cooling-off" Treaties

II. American Response to the Outbreak of WWI

IMAGE: German Submarine

III. Demanding The Rights of Neutrals

Wilson's Declaration of Neutrality
Wilson's First Warning to Germany
IMAGE: The Sinking of the Lusitania

IV. 1916 Election: Wilson's Peace Campaign

V. America Enters the War

Wilson's War Message to Congress

• Important Role in Winning the War
• Importance of Administrative Government
  IMAGE: Bernard Baruch and the War Industries Board
• Wilson leads an Idealistic Crusade
  IMAGE: Holding Back the Hun
  IMAGE: American "Crusaders"

VI. Wilson's Fourteen Point Plan

The Fourteen Points

VII. Peace Conference:

Wilson's Ideas on Peace, 1917
IMAGE: The Big Four
The Treaty of Versailles, 1919 (from BYU)

• Compromises
• Reparations
• League of Nations
  The Covenant of the League of Nations (from BYU)

VIII. Senate Debate

IMAGE: Cartoon Depicting Senate Opposition to the League

IX. The Failures of Peace

In my view, most Americans probably supported the Peace Treaty in some form and
compromise should have been possible but our political system failed in the face of
Wilson's intransigence and the partisan politics of the Senate. Neither Wilson's idealist
foreign policy nor Lodge's blunt aggressive America-first policy was appropriate for
the problems the nation faced. The end result was failure and a guarantee that WWI
would not be the war to end all wars.

return to America and the First World War

created: February 10, 2000
last updated: February 23, 2000

Copyright 2000, Mark Kornbluh