922 Ch. 22 • The Great War
peace. His “Fourteen Points” were based upon his understanding of how
the Great War had begun and how future wars could be avoided. The first
point called for “open covenants, openly arrived at,” in place of the secret
treaties whose obligations had pulled Europe into war. Wilson also called for
freedom of the seas and of trade and the impartial settlement of colonial
rivalries. Other points included the principle of nonintervention in Russia;
the return of full sovereignty to Belgium and of Alsace-Lorraine to France;
autonomy—without mentioning independence—for the national groups
within the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and the independence of Romania,
Serbia, Montenegro, and Poland. The last of the Fourteen Points called
for the establishment of an organization or association of nations to settle
other national conflicts as they arose. If the desire of the European peoples
to live in states defined by national boundaries had been one—if not the
principal—cause of the war, then a peace that recognized these claims would
be a lasting one. Or so thought Wilson, and many other people as well.
Germany now appeared willing to accept Wilson’s Fourteen Points as
grounds for an armistice, hoping to circumvent the British and French
governments, which clearly would demand unconditional surrender and
were not terribly interested in Wilson’s idealism. The British, for example,
opposed the point calling for freedom of the seas. As Wilson considered
what to do with the German proposal for an armistice, a number of U.S.
citizens were killed when a U-boat again sank a British ship off the Irish
coast. An angry Wilson then replied to Prince Max that the German mili
tary authorities would have to arrange an armistice with the British and
French high command, and not with him. Germany called off unrestricted
submarine warfare and tried to convince Wilson that recent changes in the
civilian leadership in Berlin amounted to a democratization of the empire.
Foch and Clemenceau demanded unconditional surrender of the German
fleet and occupation of the Rhineland by France.
The collapse of the Central Powers accelerated. When French and British
troops moved into Bulgaria in September 1918, Bulgaria left the war, as
did Turkey the next month. British forces occupied Damascus and Con
stantinople. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire also tried to get Wilson
to negotiate an armistice based on the Fourteen Points, which trumpeted
the sanctity of the nation-state, Czechs in Prague proclaimed an indepen
dent Czechoslovakia. Croats and Slovenes announced that they would join
the Serbs in the establishment of a South Slav state of Yugoslavia. Hun
gary, too, proclaimed its independence, as if the Great War had been some
thing forced on it by the Austrians. Facing no opposition, the Italian army
finally managed to advance into Habsburg territory. Austria-Hungary signed
an armistice on November 3, 1918. German sailors mutinied in the Baltic
port of Kiel and riots rocked Berlin. An insurrection in Munich led to the
declaration of a Bavarian Republic.
On November 7, 1918, an ad hoc German Armistice Commission asked
the Allies for an end to hostilities. Two days later, a crowd proclaimed the