Wilson Announces Fourteen Points: WWI Peace Blueprint
Woodrow Wilson stood before Congress on January 8, 1918, and laid out fourteen specific conditions for ending the war, ranging from freedom of the seas to the creation of a League of Nations. The speech was radical because it proposed dismantling the old European system of secret treaties, colonial land grabs, and balance-of-power diplomacy. Wilson wanted borders drawn along ethnic lines, giving subject peoples the right to govern themselves. The Allied leaders in London and Paris listened with deep skepticism. Georges Clemenceau reportedly quipped that even God had been content with only ten commandments. When the Paris Peace Conference convened a year later, the Fourteen Points were systematically gutted. The League of Nations survived, but Wilson's own Senate refused to join it, leaving the institution fatally weakened from birth.
January 8, 1918
108 years ago
Key Figures & Places
Woodrow Wilson
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Fourteen Points
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Woodrow Wilson
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Fourteen Points
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World War I
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League of Nations
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Ottoman Empire
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Gallipoli campaign
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United States Congress
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Droit des peuples à disposer d'eux-mêmes
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Bataille de Crouy
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