From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (68 page)

Germany was the key, and here Wilson had to balance his desire for an early end to the war against the need to keep the alliance together and palliate the Allies and Republican war hawks at home. As a belligerent, he abandoned of necessity his "peace without victory" stance of 1917. He came to blame Germany more for the origins of the war and view German autocracy and militarism as threats to the peace. While continuing to seek "impartial justice," he concluded that Germany must be defeated and its government purged of autocratic and expansionist elements. A reformed Germany could be reintegrated into the community of nations.
¹⁰³

From the time the United States entered the war, Wilson worked tirelessly to achieve a peace along these lines. Recognizing their mutual dependence and hoping to establish a solid basis for postwar collaboration, he actively promoted cooperation with the Allies, pushing his military leaders to work closely with the British and French and agreeing to a unified command. American and Allied scientists shared information and collaborated in solving problems such as the U-boat, chemical warfare, camouflage, and signals.
¹⁰⁴
Aware, on the other hand, of the Allied secret treaties and deferring to America's unilateralist tradition, he carefully maintained his freedom of action, making clear that his nation was fighting for its own reasons, refusing to join a formal alliance, and even referring to the United States as an "Associated" rather than "Allied" power. In the best tradition of the 1776 Model Treaty, he declined to appoint a
political
representative to the Allied Supreme War Council.
¹⁰⁵

The administration in late 1917 mounted a major overseas propaganda program, the first such effort in U.S. history.
¹⁰⁶
Under the leadership of the zealous journalist George Creel, a Committee on Public Information (CPI) had already begun drumming up support for the war at home. Wilson soon extended the program abroad to counter German propaganda and educate world opinion about his peace principles. In the major cities of Europe and Latin America and in revolutionary Russia and China, hastily established CPI offices translated stories from the U.S. press for placement in local newspapers, distributed photographs and war posters,
and in some areas showed films such as
America's Answer
, a depiction of the arrival of U.S. troops in France and their movement to the western front. Wilson's speeches were translated and widely distributed in books and pamphlets.
¹⁰⁷
The CPI campaign won some support for the Allied cause and for Wilson's peace aims. It also raised hopes among peoples throughout the world. Abroad as at home, Wilson conceded to Creel, U.S. propaganda had "unconsciously spun a net for me from which there is no escape," high expectations that could lead to a "tragedy of disappointment."
¹⁰⁸

Wilson also had to contend with a Russia torn by war and revolution. He cheered the overthrow of the tsarist regime in March 1917, declaring the newly formed and moderate Provisional Government a "fit partner" for a "league of honor" and quickly recognizing it. He also sought to boost its prestige by sending to Petrograd a mission headed by Elihu Root. With characteristic American optimism and abysmal misunderstanding of what was happening, Root reported that the government could survive and even continue the war with limited U.S. assistance. Wilson promised $450 million in aid (of which $188 million was actually transferred) and dispatched transportation experts to keep the railroads going, a YMCA mission to boost army morale, and a Red Cross team to provide relief and, on the side, encourage the people to back the government and continue the war. Such well-intentioned gestures had little impact on a complex and fluid situation. Lenin's Bolsheviks overthrew the shaky Provisional Government in November, sparking a prolonged civil war. The new rulers in March 1918 negotiated a separate peace, allowing Germany to shift forces to the western front.
¹⁰⁹

After six months of relentless pressure from the Allies and much "sweating blood" on his part, Wilson in July 1918 reluctantly agreed to interventions in Siberia and North Russia.
¹¹⁰
The operations occurred under very confused circumstances; the motives behind them and Wilson's support for them remain elusive. In early 1918, the Allies began to advocate intervention in Siberia to keep the eastern port of Vladivostok open and vital supplies out of German hands. Subsequently, they pushed
for intervention at the northern ports of Murmansk and Archangel and urged support for a seventy-thousand-man Czech Legion committed to fighting the Central Powers—and also the Bolsheviks. Stunned and outraged by Lenin's separate peace, Allied leaders desperately sought to sustain some kind of eastern front against Germany.

Wilson sympathized on this point. As much as he understood Bolshevism, moreover, he despised it. He never felt Lenin's regime represented the Russian people. He refused to recognize it. Following the November Revolution, the administration continued to channel funds and supplies to anti-Bolshevik forces through the Provisional Government embassy in Washington and reimbursed the British for their aid. But Wilson was keenly aware from his own travails in Mexico the limits of military force in solving complex political problems. He feared that interference in Russia, as in Mexico, might actually solidify Bolshevik control. In June 1918, precisely when German forces advanced to within artillery range of Paris, he acceded to Allied pressure. Wilson wanted to demonstrate that he was a "good ally," thus establishing a basis for postwar cooperation.
¹¹¹
He also hoped that the twenty thousand U.S. troops he sent to Siberia would help thwart any Japanese ambitions in that region. When the Czech Legion reached Vladivostok in June, threw out the Bolshevik government, and vowed to fight with the Allies, he saw the "shadow of a plan" for a viable eastern front and felt a moral obligation to aid the Czechs. If Russians rallied around their "slavic kinsmen" against the Bolsheviks, so much the better, although he placed strict limits on the number of U.S. troops and the ways they could be used. He convinced himself that limited and indirect Allied aid might inspire representatives of the "Real Russia" to rally against the Bolsheviks and would thus be an act of liberation rather than interference.
¹¹²
The United States did not intervene sufficiently to influence events in Russia. Its intervention did feed the myth among Soviet propagandists and some revisionist historians that Wilson had sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government.

The autumn of 1918, in historian Arthur Walworth's apt phrase, was "America's moment."
¹¹³
By the summer, the United States had more than a million troops in Europe, with another three million in training. At Château-Thierry in June, U.S. forces helped blunt the German drive
toward Paris. In the late summer and early fall, the doughboys played a key role in the Allied counteroffensive that forced the Germans back to the Hindenburg Line. The mere presence of huge numbers of fresh U.S. troops had a hugely demoralizing effect on an exhausted German army.
¹¹⁴
The United States thus determined the outcome of the war. And under Wilson's leadership, it was poised to shape the peace. Inspired by the president's vision of their nation's new role and by the chance for leadership and constructive achievement, Americans excitedly took up the challenge. As early as January 1918, preparing for the Fourteen Points address, House boasted of "remaking the map of the world" in two hours. A "remarkably productive morning!" he added.
¹¹⁵
Lansing's nephew Allen Dulles waxed eloquent about "pulchritudinous [American] youth" taking up the "greatest obligation and opportunity that a nation ever had. . . . We are called to put the world in order again."
¹¹⁶
The Americans would soon learn that huge expectations and intractable problems were an integral part of their new world role.

Negotiations for an armistice with Germany revealed the challenges that lay ahead and the conflict between Wilson's hopes for an enduring peace and his appeals for a crusade against German autocracy. Seeking to divide the Allies and salvage some semblance of victory, a dispirited Germany in early October approached Wilson directly for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. A new parliamentary government sought to avoid the punitive terms favored by Britain and France and was prepared to make concessions.

Wilson's position was extremely delicate. He still believed that a fair peace was the best way to end the war. At home, however, he faced congressional elections that would affect his ability to negotiate a settlement and sell a League of Nations to his own people. His Republican foes vigorously pressed for a hard line against Germany. Wilson also recognized that the Allies wanted a victor's peace, sought territorial gains at Germany's expense, and preferred to leave the armistice to the military to ensure that Germany could not use a cease-fire to prepare for resumption of the war. He proceeded with great caution, exploring Germany's commitment to the Fourteen Points and its willingness to evacuate territory then held. He told a skeptical Democratic senator that he was thinking of "a hundred years hence." When advised that if he was too conciliatory he might be destroyed politically, he retorted that "I am willing if I can serve
my country to go into a cellar and read poetry for the remainder of my life."
¹¹⁷
Under pressure from the Allies and critics at home and eager to gain control of the peace process, he gradually toughened his stance, at one point even acceding to Allied occupation of German territory and insisting that Germany's "military masters and the monarchical autocrats" must go.
¹¹⁸
He sent House to deal with the Allies, instructing him only that he would know what to do.

The armistice emerging from these confused triangular discussions ended the fighting but also set the tone for what would follow. House confronted vengeful Allies who feigned ignorance of the Fourteen Points. After difficult negotiations, he secured their agreement in principle, but Britain reserved the right to interpret freedom of the seas, and France insisted that Germany must compensate the Allies for civilian and property losses. The military was to handle the armistice, opening the way for occupation of German territory. House claimed a "great diplomatic victory." Under the circumstances, he may have got as much as could be expected. But it was not what Wilson had envisioned, and it opened the way for more serious problems. The fundamental contradiction between Wilson's desire to join with the Allies in defeating Germany and mediate between the two sides made it difficult if not impossible for him to achieve his lofty goals.
¹¹⁹

Greater challenges awaited in Paris, where the peace conference opened on January 12, 1919. In heading the U.S. delegation himself, Wilson broke precedent, becoming the first president to go to Europe while in office and personally to conduct major negotiations. He remained abroad for more than six months, with only a two-week interlude in the United States, suggesting the extent to which foreign relations now dominated his agenda. The president has often been criticized for this initial venture in summit diplomacy. To be sure, his deep personal involvement deprived him of the detachment that can be invaluable in negotiations and severely strained his already frail constitution. Given the urgency of the negotiations, his personality and leadership style, and the fact that British and French heads of government were leading their delegations, it is impossible to envision him acting any other way.
¹²⁰

The peacemakers confronted monumental problems. Europe lay devastated, "a laboratory resting on a vast cemetery," Czech leader Thomas Masaryk observed.
¹²¹
Old boundaries were torn asunder, leaving intractable territorial problems. The German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires lay in ruins, raising hopes of nationhood for peoples throughout Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East and leaving a powder keg of conflicting nationalist and ethnic aspirations. Anarchy prevailed in many areas. The threat of revolution hung like a storm cloud over Germany and Central Europe. A truly daunting agenda included disarming the losers, reviving European economies, confronting the Bolshevik challenge, and creating new states in Europe and the Middle East.

The passions set loose by four years of fighting further complicated the peacemaking. Excluded from the conference, the defeated Germans nervously awaited their fate, while among the victors a spirit of revenge prevailed. France had lost two million men, the most of any belligerent, suffered massive destruction to its territory, and was intent upon avenging its losses. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau embodied his nation's spirit. "I had a wife, she abandoned me," he once snarled; "I had children, they turned against me; I had friends, they betrayed me. I have only my claws, and I use them."
¹²²
The seventy-seven-year-old "Tiger" survived an assassin's bullet during the conference. He expressed open cynicism for the Fourteen Points. Britain too had suffered enormous losses, and although its government and its prime minister, the charming, shrewd, and hard-bitten Welshman David Lloyd George, supported much of Wilson's program, they could not go too far toward conciliating Germany without risking domestic political backlash. The Allies had sweeping imperial goals. On the other side, the war and Wilson's rhetoric raised hopes of freedom among nationalities and oppressed peoples across the world. Representatives of many different peoples—African Americans included—came to Paris in search of guarantees of racial equality. Chinese nationalists looked to the peace conference to end great-power domination of their country. The young Vietnamese patriot Nguyen Tat Than (later to adopt the sobriquet Ho Chi Minh) rented a tuxedo to present a petition to the conference for his country's independence. Spokespersons for Haiti and the Dominican Republic appealed to Wilson in Paris for self-determination.
¹²³