When President Wilson attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, it was the first time that a U.S. president had visited another country while in office. Wilson attended the conference with a list of aims, his "Fourteen Points" for ensuring future peace. First, Wilson identified what he saw as the primary causes of World War I; then he listed his ideas for securing a peaceful future--all in a single page. He believed that secret treaties had been one of the main causes of the war, so he called for all future negotiations to take place in the League of Nations. Wilson also recommended a reduction in armaments and an adjustment in colonial claims that took into account the preferences of native populations. Additionally, he saw freedom of the seas as of primary interest to the United States; after all, the U.S. had been drawn into the European conflict after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania passenger ship in 1915.

Due to his poor health, Wilson only managed to get a few of his Fourteen Points included in the Treaty of Versailles. It turns out that there was a deep division between views in the U.S. and views of most European countries about how to recover from World War I. For instance, the U.S. was not interested in acquiring territory after the war, but most of the other Allies were. They hoped to expand their own national borders and to acquire colonies forfeited by the Central Powers as part of the Versailles Treaty.

Unfortunately, Wilson wasn't well enough to do the work that might have persuaded Europe to see things from his point of view. Still, he had been very important in bringing all of the warring parties together into a League of Nations, and Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his role creating the organization.

Study the tabs below to learn more about Wilson's concerns as the United States emerged from World War I.

When Wilson was reelected in 1916, World War I had already been in progress for two years. Many Americans thought that the United States should consider supporting its allies in Europe, and that more military preparation was needed to respond to the war effort successfully. But isolationism was also a very strong idea among the public--Wilson’s re-election campaign slogan had been “He Kept Us Out of War.”

The announcement by the German government in 1916 that they intended to sink any ship either going to or coming from the United States was a wake-up call for most Americans, however. Both the Allies and the Central Powers had repeatedly violated international laws protecting sea travel and maritime shipping, but only the German U-Boat submarines had directly caused the deaths of sailors and merchant marines. Eventually, Wilson had no choice but to declare war on Germany, which he did in 1917.

While the United States hoped to avoid involvement in Europe's conflicts, it did not want to withdraw entirely from global commerce. Wilson was determined to keep the United States neutral during the European conflict so that U.S. business interests could continue conducting trade around the world, even supplying European armies on both sides of the war with food and supplies. The German U-Boat threat to U.S. shipping greatly reduced the amount of supplies being sold overseas in 1916. Therefore, by 1917, Wilson easily convinced U.S. companies--and private citizens--to help provide food and weapons to the U.S. forces when they went to war against Germany.

After the war ended, Wilson worried that, with U.S. war production stopped, the nation's economy might falter. He was right: the Great Depression followed World War I by just a decade. Also, vast amounts of resources were needed to rebuild Europe and ensure its stability. Much of the fighting had occurred in open fields during trench warfare, but there was also major destruction from the aerial bombing of urban areas by the British, French and Germans. Wilson intended to use U.S. resources to rebuild Europe; he hoped that participation in this effort would help American businesses, as well.

Wilson introduced the nation to his Fourteen Points in January of 1918. His specific aims included freedom of the seas, free trade, and an international organization dedicated to collective security and conflict negotiation. Wilson’s primary interest, though, was the formation of a League of Nations, and on this point the delegates were able to agree.