President Wilson said that his Fourteen Points would provide a framework for
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By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Table of ContentsWoodrow Wilson See all media Date:January 8, 1918...(Show more)Context:Treaty of Versailles...(Show more)Key People:Woodrow Wilson...(Show more) See all related content → Top Questions What were the Fourteen Points?The Fourteen Points were a proposal made by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in a speech before Congress on January 8, 1918, outlining his vision for ending World War I in a way that would prevent such a conflagration from occurring again. They also were intended to keep Russia fighting on the Allied side, to boost Allied morale, and to undermine the Central Powers. How did the Fourteen Points seek to change the world?While half of the Fourteen Points addressed specific territorial issues between the combatant countries, the remainder were a vision for peace. They prescribed a program of transparency in international relations, free trade, freedom of the seas, reductions in armaments, national self-determination, and adjustment of colonial claims that gave equal weight to the peoples of the colonized countries. Most important, they envisioned an international organization to guarantee the independence and territorial integrity of all member countries. How important were the Fourteen Points?In October 1918 Germany requested an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. Though the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles did not adhere to the idealistic Fourteen Points and World War II soon followed, those principles influenced the later world order. They informed all the decolonization movements and set a new standard of national identity. The idea of the League of Nations was the seed that led to the creation of the United Nations. Why did the Fourteen Points fail?In negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, the representatives of Britain, France, and Italy wanted to strengthen their own positions and felt it necessary to leave Germany too weak to start another war. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson accepted almost any compromise of the Fourteen Points as long as the treaty provided for the League of Nations. Many in the U.S. Senate thought joining that organization would sacrifice national sovereignty, so the body voted down the treaty. Summary Read a brief summary of this topicExamine how the Allied powers dismembered the Central Powers of World War I by a treaty that failed to prevent World War II See all videos for this articleFourteen Points, (January 8, 1918), declaration by U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson during World War I outlining his proposals for a postwar peace settlement. On January 8, 1918, President Wilson, in his address to a joint session of the United States Congress, formulated under 14 separate heads his ideas of the essential nature of a post-World War I settlement. The text of the Fourteen Points is as follows: Britannica Quiz World War I: Fact or Fiction?1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. 2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. 3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. 4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now 5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. 6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest coöperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. 8. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. 9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. 10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. 11. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. 12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees. 13. 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. 14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. On October 3–4, 1918, Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, sent a note, via Switzerland, to President Wilson, requesting an immediate armistice and the opening of peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points. Germans would later argue a “betrayal” when faced by the harsher terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. What were Wilson's 14 Points used for?Wilson subsequently used the Fourteen Points as the basis for negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war. Although the Treaty did not fully realize Wilson's unselfish vision, the Fourteen Points still stand as the most powerful expression of the idealist strain in United States diplomacy.
What were Wilson's 14 Points and what did they say?They prescribed a program of transparency in international relations, free trade, freedom of the seas, reductions in armaments, national self-determination, and adjustment of colonial claims that gave equal weight to the peoples of the colonized countries.
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