On this day in 1920, the Nobel Prize for Peace is awarded to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for his work in ending the First World War and creating the League of Nations. Although Wilson could not attend the award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, the U.S. Ambassador to Norway, Albert Schmedeman, delivered a telegram from Wilson to the Nobel Committee.
Wilson’s involvement in devising a plan to prevent future international conflict began in January 1918 when he laid out his “Fourteen Points.” The plan addressed specific territorial issues in Europe, equal trade conditions, arms reduction and national sovereignty for former colonies of Europe’s weakening empires, but the primary thrust of his policy was to create an international organization that would arbitrate peaceful solutions to conflicts between nations. Wilson’s Fourteen Points not only laid the foundation for the peace agreement signed by France, Britain and Germany at the end of World War I, but also formed the basis for American foreign policy in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Although the League of Nations never materialized, largely due to the fact that it was never ratified by the U.S. Congress, it formed the blueprint for the United Nations, which was established after the Second World War.
When Wilson learned of his win, he was a lame-duck president battling the residual effects of a paralyzing stroke he suffered in October 1919; he was therefore unable to accept his award in person. (The stroke occurred in the midst of an arduous cross-country tour to ask the American electorate to pressure a reluctant Congress to ratify the Versailles peace treaty and the League of Nations.) In his telegram to the Nobel Committee, Wilson said he was grateful and “moved” by the recognition of his work for the cause of peace but emphasized the need for further efforts to “rid [mankind] of the unspeakable horror of war.” Wilson did not live to see the United Nations take shape in place of his League of Nations. He died at age 68 in February 1924.
What he should have received was a noose and a rickety stool.
“Although the League of Nations never materialized, largely due to the fact that it was never ratified by the U.S. Congress ….”
The reason it was never ratified is because every party involved disliked at least some, or most, of the 14 points; the Axis powers, Central powers, most Americans, and the Senate. The US Senate found Point 14 (League of Nations) especially odious. The Senate realized (at least this time) that Wilson’s real purpose for the League of Nations was to dilute national sovereignty and replace it with a global government.
Theodore Roosevelt, in an article “The League of Nations” in January 1919 warned;
“If the League of Nations is built on a document as high-sounding and as meaningless as the speech in which Mr. Wilson laid down his fourteen points, it will simply add one more scrap to the diplomatic waste paper basket. Most of these fourteen points … would be interpreted … to mean anything or nothing.”
Wilson was a bad president …. as evidenced by his winning the Nobel Prize.
— Mussolini had become Premier of Italy less than 4 years after this League of Nations fiasco
— Also within four years, Lenin came into power and established the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic
— 15 years later Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany …. to a large degree because the Germans felt they had been tricked by Wilson’s peace
This article is yet another “History.com” failure. Going to history.com for truth about history is like asking Satan for truth about Jesus. Does anyone here like their articles?
“tricked by Wilson’s peace?” Germany was SCREWED by the Treaty of Versailles. “Peace” laid the perfect foundation for anyone who was willing to stand up, especially with some gun-toting backers, and promise to restore Germany and some measure of livable prosperity.
Point V was probably the most hypocritical of them all – the right to self-determination.
V. 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 government whose title is to be determined.
It’s always interesting that so many people that list the tyrant Lincoln as the best president in US history often list Wilson as second or third.
Wilson declared that everyone has a basic human right to determine their own way and Lincoln murdered his own people that had formed The Confederate States of America for doing just that.
Hypocrisy so thick you couldn’t cut through it with a chain saw…
Every time I drive across the Woodrow Wilson bridge in DC I symbolically roll the window down and spit in disgust in dishonor to the man who sold U.S. out to the Banksters.