Bear in mind that WILSON is a propaganda movie made during world war 2 and designed to glorify this warmongering president. Wilson claimed to be against militarism but introduced conscription. Wilson claimed world war 1 was all about democracy but had people imprisoned for opposing the war -
http://mises.org/daily/6223/
In March - April of 1917 the German Empire resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, an act that the United States under President Wilson had threatened would guarantee our declaration of war against them. In addition, and more importantly the German Foreign Minister telegraphed the German Ambassador to Mexico instructions on encouraging Mexico to go to war against the United States. This was based on an assumption the Germans that the United States would go to war anyway because of their resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. The two acts separately, and certainly together, formed such a strong causus belli that President Wilson would have been held in strong disregard had he not asked for a declaration of war.
I am not a strong supporter of President Wilson. I think that he was a weak president overall and I strongly disagree with his progressivism. He backed the wrong policies for the time, or for any time. He was also a blatant racist and helped to create the environment that brought about the strongest revival of the Klu Klux Klan since Reconstruction. However, he had little choice but to ask for a declaration of war. He was no "war monger."
No human being is a "saint". Woodrow Wilson did do some things that reflect badly on him as a person and a President. What President hasn't?
His stubbornness scuttled any chance that the U.S. could have joined the League of Nations (Senate Republicans and isolationists were opposed anyway but Wilson should have at least tried to be more accommodating and wiser in garnering moderate Republican support before and during the Peace Conference). His moralizing approach to national and international affairs may have been born of principle, and up to a point worked to his advantage, but was ultimately an unrealistic way to negotiate public policy.
During the war he did jail some who protested against American entry, notably the Socialist Eugene V. Debs. Wilson's last Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, initiated the postwar "Red Scare" that rounded up many "undesirable aliens" and further violated peoples' constitutional rights. (It was the much underrated and unjustly derided Warren G. Harding who put an end to these practices in the first weeks of his administration.)
He was indeed a racist, a man of the 19th-century South in that respect, who claimed that one of the virtues of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation was that "it was all so terribly, terribly true" (though blaming him for creating the environment for the revival of the KKK is a major stretch: if anyone encouraged that revival it was Griffith and his movie). Unhappily, such attitudes did not set him much apart from most of his fellow citizens, north or south.
But a "warmonger"? Nonsense. He tried to stay out of the war as long as he could. He was roundly criticized (mainly by militaristic Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt) for refusing to declare war over the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. He finally made the decision to ask for a declaration of war only after the Germans left him with no choice, through their actions on the high seas and blatant efforts to foment war between the U.S. and Mexico and destroy America's territorial integrity. He entered the war with reluctance though with his characteristic zeal and sense of righteousness. Had Charles Evans Hughes won the election of 1916 he would have brought the country into the war too, as Hughes himself always acknowledged. Would a victory by Imperial Germany have been preferable -- even knowing what came later? As for conscription, Abraham Lincoln enacted conscription too. Was he a warmonger? (And why the use of a Communist-era term anyway? Sounds like an agenda here.)
Now, I happen to believe that, despite these and other mistakes or misjudgments, Wilson was in fact a good and unquestionably strong President. "Weak" is one word that cannot characterize his presidency in any historically accurate sense. His Progressivism and the reform legislation he got enacted helped make this country's economy and government sounder and more democratic overall, and these accomplishments last to this day. With respectful disagreement, his policies were indeed the right ones for his time and have greatly benefited this nation. And he presided over victory in WWI. (I have no intention of getting, or inclination to get, into a dispute over the legacy of Woodrow Wilson. I merely feel a statement of a contrary assessment was called for, and that's all I care to get into on that broad subject.)
Perfect? Far from it. He was a man of his times and subject to his own prejudices (and foresight), bad judgments (and wise decisions) and shortcomings (and strengths) -- as are we all. But a "warmonger"? A silly, evidence-free statement.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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Thank you very much, Mr_Beale. Great avatar, too.
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Give to Causes For Free: http://theanimalrescuesite.com
I also put in a quick squib agreeing with your assessment of this movie on your thread titled "Excellent film". Glad you saw and liked this film, always one of my favorites, but underappreciated by many.
shareWilson was a hypocrite. He had people imprisoned for opposing the war. He introduced conscription while accusing the enemy of militarism. If it was a true democracy then why not have volunteers? People who wish to go to war can go and those who are against don't.
The proposal of the German-Mexican alliance was just that, a proposal. It stipulated that if the USA entered the war against Germany then an alliance with Mexico was on the table. It was no different than the British and French politicians asking for America to enter the war on their side before 1917.
Wilson's intervention in the European war was a disaster. The Germans surrendered on the basis of his 14 points. Wilson accepted this but then realised that the British and French had organised secret treaties and deals with other countries and nationalities and they refused the 14 points. The British had a naval blockade of German ports during the war and kept this up even though the Germans had surrendered. The British kept up this blockade of foodstuffs until nearly 1 million Germans had died of starvation and malnutrition. Then they signed the Versailles treaty. The British who had this policy of starvation are the great upholders of "democracy" that Wilson raved about.
www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/starva tion1919.html
Wilson did have a bad and unjustified policy of jailing some people who spoke out against the war. This did go against his stated belief in "freedom", but he was far from alone in this hypocrisy.
Once again you equate the draft with "militarism". That is utterly stupid and inaccurate. There is nothing either "militaristic" or undemocratic about having a draft. It was passed by Congress and lasted only for the duration of the war. A state can call upon its citizens to help defend the country. No freedom is absolute. All freedoms are tempered by the requirements of a civil society, and freedom does not mean anarchy, with people free to do as they wish. Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Germany -- as well as Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire -- each had a draft.
Militarism has nothing to do with a lawful draft voted upon by the freely elected representatives of the people (and, by the way, it was supported by the vast majority of Americans). Militarism is the philosophy that governed much of Germany's foreign policy and its organization of the Second Reich, at all levels of society, where there was no freedom of speech at all, people were forced into the service of the state and the military was the dominant element in society. None of this existed in the United States, even during the height of wartime restrictions. War is also not a normal state of affairs, and especially in a war for survival, some liberties are curtailed, as happened in the U.S., Britain and France. Most of these freedoms hadn't existed in Germany even in peacetime.
The statement that there was no difference between the secret plan of Germany offering Mexico territories lost to the U.S. in the Mexican War of 1846-48 if it declared war on America, and Britain and France asking America to enter the war before 1917, is both asinine and dishonest. Britain and France didn't offer America land or any other incentive to enter the war. Germany offered Mexico another country's territory in a war of conquest. To say they were the same is factually incorrect and an outright lie.
Everyone knows that the Versailles Treaty was badly drawn up and needlessly punitive and helped lay the groundwork for World War II. (Marshal Foch said of it, "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years," as accurate a prediction as has ever been made.) That Wilson couldn't get all of his Fourteen Points included in full, or that he made compromises of his own, is well established. Unfortunately such things happen all the time. Germany may have relied on Wilson's proposals but it was their bad luck that Wilson couldn't wave a magic wand and have everything his own way. Many of the actions of the victors can be legitimately criticized. That said, what were Germany's plans had she won the war? This isn't speculation because we know. The Imperial German government would have annexed large swaths of territory in France and Russia as well as all of Belgium and Luxembourg (both neutral countries Germany simply invaded). It would have demanded massive reparations from the Allies at least as punitive, if not more so, than those levied on Germany. It would have taken over many colonies and seized Allied shipping. Versailles was a bad peace but the alternative would have been just as bad...not that, from the evidence, you'd have objected to a German win.
Wilson's intervention in the war was not a "disaster". America's entry helped bring about an end to this wasteful and bloody conflict sooner than it otherwise would have and ultimately probably saved more lives than it cost. It was the bad peace that all concerned made that eventually became a "disaster".
WILSON is a propaganda movie made during world war 2 that pushes intervention, internationalism and globalism which were also the aims of the Roosevelt administration. Wilson supported the League of Nations and FDR supported the United Nations. (Roosevelt was of particularly bad character See here - www.jrbooksonline.com/fdr-scandal-page/fdr.html )
WILSON is one of many world war 2 propaganda movies made by Hollywood. The absolute worst would have to be MISSION TO MOSCOW www.imdb.com/title/tt036166/ This is an attempt to whitewash Stalin and his mass murdering dictatorship which killed 20 million people. www.holodomor.org.uk www.katyn.org.au Studio head Jack Warner was personally asked by FDR to make such a film.
Getting back to WILSON a cogent argument could have been made for the USA not to fight as an ally of Britain. At that time the British were the traditional enemy of the USA. Does the American revolution of 1776 ring a bell? And during the war of 1812 it was the British who burned down the White House - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington But Woodrow Wilson didn't want to talk about these things.
The movie portrays Wilson as a president guided by humanitarian principles. If he was such a great humanitarian then why didn't he speak out against and condemn the starvation blockade of German civilians? www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/starva tion1919.html
Wilson sent US troops into the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Haiti before America declared war on Germany so I don't know how anyone can say he wasn't a warmonger - http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
bloody-3
Are you happy or sad that the Allies won WW2?
"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."
I agree in regards to his being a racist and allowing his Justice Department to violate people's civil rights but also his holding on to the office after his stroke was selfish and thoughtless.
By holding on, he placed the country in a bad situation. What if there was a natural disaster like a flood, fire, etc or what if a major power had invaded the United States.
Conscription is immoral if sometimes necessary I don't think it was in WW1 and there was no.excuse for the persecution of anti-war.activists.
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