There were many after effects of the Fourteen Points. The helped shape the new world and indirectly led to WWII. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points set up an idealistic peace by an idealistic man; however, when the time came for the Fourteen Points to become a new proposal to peace, they were warped and diluted by Europrean political leaders hoping for vengeance and the destruction of Germany. The great pillar of hope that the Fourteen Points harbored was not felt in the USA so much as in the European countries hoping for a way out of war. By the time the Versailles treaty was signed, their dreams were gone. The treaty did include some of the Fourteen Points main ideas, such as a Leauge of Nations. But even then the League was manipulated so much until it had no power, because the European leaders wanted to keep theirs. The hopes of kindness to Germany was ruined, instead the treaty made them pay and stay small. A group of Isolationist senators, headed by Henry Cabot Lodge, saw what happened to the Fourteen Poitns and dissapproved. The seven senators strongly opposed convinced thirty-nine others not to ratify the treaty, so thus the US wasn’t involved in the treaty or League of Nations that was created by it’s head of government. In contrast to senator Lodge, Wilson still believed the treaty contained the basic ideas of the Fourteen Points, and he campaigned throughout the US to gain support. However, because of the extreme pressure applied to him during this trip, he suffered a stroke, and was handicapped the rest of his presidency. The men at Versailles had succeeded in losing the best ally the treaty could have, and the best enforcing nation in the world at that time. Nonetheless, because of the weak League of Nations the treaty established, Germany could rebuild an army, set up a new government, and begin it’s imperialistic ways again. If Wilson’s Fourteen Points were followed as Wilson wanted them and attempted for them to be followed, WWII would have been avoided or postponed. Had it been postponed, though, nuclear war would have been a possibility for the world, thus ending civilization. In retrospect, the modifying of the Fourteen Points might have potentially saved humanity, but in all likely hood it didn’t, it just allowed 25 million souls to perish in the worst conflict in the world.
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