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On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany

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On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany

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 Wilson helped negotiate the Treaty of Versailles.

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 Wilson helped negotiate the Treaty of Versailles.

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Woodrow Wilson's Early Years

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia. (Because his mother said he arrived around midnight, some sources list Wilson's birthday as December 29.) His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson (1822-1903), was a Presbyterian minister, and his mother, Janet Woodrow Wilson (1826-1888), was a minister's daughter and originally from England. Tommy Wilson, as he was called growing up, spent his childhood and teen years in Augusta, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Wilson's father served as a chaplain in the Confederate army and used his church as a hospital for injured Confederate troops.

Did you know? Woodrow Wilson, who had a career as an academic and university president before entering politics, did not learn to read until he was 10, likely due to dyslexia.

Wilson graduated from Princeton University (then called the College of New Jersey) in 1879 and went on to attend law school at the University of Virginia. After briefly practicing law in Atlanta, Georgia, he received a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 1886. (Wilson remains the only U.S. president to earn a doctorate degree.) He taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan College before being hired by Princeton in 1890 as a professor of jurisprudence and politics. From 1902 to 1910, Wilson was president of Princeton, where he developed a national reputation for his educational reform policies.

During his tenure, however, he also prevented enrollment of Black students at the university. And in 1902, Wilson published a five-volume textbook, The History of the American People, which presented a romanticized view of the Confederacy and described the Ku Klux Klan, a violent terrorist group, as "roving knights-errant...an 'Invisible Empire of the South,' bound together in a loose organization to protect the Southern country of some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution."

In 1885, Wilson married Ellen Axson (1860-1914), a minister's daughter and Georgia native. The couple had three daughters before Ellen died of kidney disease in 1914, during her husband's first presidential term. The following year, Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt (1872-1961), a widow whose husband had owned a Washington, D.C., jewelry business.

Woodrow Wilson's Rise in Politics

In 1910, Woodrow Wilson was elected governor of New Jersey, where he fought machine politics and garnered national attention as a progressive reformer. In 1912, the Democrats nominated Wilson for president, selecting Thomas Marshall (1854-1925), the governor of Indiana, as his vice-presidential running mate. The Republican Party split over their choice for a presidential candidate: Conservative Republicans re-nominated President William Taft (1857-1930), while the progressive wing broke off to form the Progressive (or Bull Moose) Party and nominated Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), who had served as president from 1901 to 1909.

With the Republicans divided, Wilson, who campaigned on a platform of liberal reform, won 435 electoral votes, compared to 88 for Roosevelt and eight for Taft. He garnered nearly 42 percent of the popular vote; Roosevelt came in second place with more than 27 percent of the popular vote.

Woodrow Wilson's First Administration

At the age of 56, Woodrow Wilson was sworn into office in March 1913. He was the last American president to travel to his inauguration ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage. Once in the White House, Wilson achieved significant progressive reform. Congress passed the Underwood-Simmons Act, which reduced the tariff on imports and imposed a new federal income tax. It also passed legislation establishing the Federal Reserve (which provides a system for regulating the nation's banks, credit and money supply) and the Federal Trade Commission (which investigates and prohibits unfair business practices). Other accomplishments included child labor laws, an eight-hour day for railroad workers and government loans to farmers. Additionally, Wilson nominated the first Jewish person to the U.S. Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), who was confirmed by the Senate in 1916.

Wilson's progressive agenda did not apply to all Americans, however. During his first term, he oversaw the re-segregation of many branches of the federal workforce, including the Treasury, the Post Office, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Navy, the Interior, the Marine Hospital, the War Department and the Government Printing Office. The action reversed hard-fought economic progress made by Black Americans since Reconstruction.

When World War I broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914, Wilson was determined to keep the United States out of the conflict. On May 7, 1915, a German submarine torpedoed and sank the British ocean liner Lusitania, killing more than 1,100 people (including 128 Americans). Wilson continued to maintain U.S. neutrality but warned Germany that any future sinkings would be viewed by America as "deliberately unfriendly."

In 1916, Wilson and Vice President Marshall were re-nominated by the Democrats. The Republicans chose Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) as their presidential candidate and Charles Fairbanks (1852-1918), the U.S. vice president under Theodore Roosevelt, as his running mate. Wilson, who campaigned on the slogan "He kept us out of war," won with a narrow electoral margin of 277-254 and a little more than 49 percent of the popular vote.

Woodrow Wilson's Second Administration: World War I

Woodrow Wilson's second term in office was dominated by World War I. Although the president had advocated for peace during the initial years of the war, in early 1917 German submarines launched unrestricted submarine attacks against U.S. merchant ships. Around the same time, the United States learned about the Zimmerman Telegram, in which Germany tried to persuade Mexico to enter into an alliance against America. On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, stating, "The world must be made safe for democracy."

America's participation helped bring about victory for the Allies, and on November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed by the Germans. At the Paris Peace Conference, which opened in January 1919 and included the heads of the British, French and Italian governments, Wilson helped negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. The agreement included the charter for the League of Nations, an organization intended to arbitrate international disputes and prevent future wars. Wilson had initially advanced the idea for the League in a January 1918 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he outlined his " Fourteen Points " for a postwar peace settlement.

When Wilson returned from Europe in the summer of 1919, he encountered opposition to the Versailles treaty from isolationist Republicans in Congress who feared the League could limit America's autonomy and draw the country into another war. In September of that year, the president embarked on a cross-country speaking tour to promote his ideas for the League directly to the American people.

On the night of September 25, on a train bound for Wichita, Kansas, Wilson collapsed from mental and physical stress, and the rest of his tour was canceled. On October 2, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Wilson's condition was kept largely hidden from the public, and his wife worked behind the scenes to fulfill a number of his administrative duties.

The Senate voted on the Treaty of Versailles first in November 1919 and again in March 1920. Both times it failed to gain the two-thirds vote required for ratification. The treaty's defeat was partly blamed on Wilson's refusal to compromise with the Republicans. The League of Nations held its first meeting in January 1920; the United States never joined the organization. However, in December 1920, Wilson received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to include the Covenant of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles.

Woodrow Wilson's Second Administration: Domestic Issues

Woodrow Wilson's second administration saw the passage of two significant constitutional amendments. The era of Prohibition was ushered in on January 17, 1920, when the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol, went into effect following its ratification one year earlier. In 1919, Wilson vetoed the National Prohibition Act (or Volstead Act), designed to enforce the 18th Amendment; however, his veto was overridden by Congress. Prohibition lasted until 1933, when it was repealed by the 21st Amendment.

Also in 1920, American women gained the right to vote when the 19th Amendment became law that August; Wilson had pushed Congress to pass the amendment. That year's presidential election-the first in which women from every state were allowed to vote-resulted in a victory for Republican Warren Harding (1865-1923), a congressman from Ohio who opposed the League of Nations and campaigned for a "return to normalcy" after Wilson's tenure in the White House.

Woodrow Wilson's Final Years

After leaving office in March 1921, Woodrow Wilson resided in Washington, D.C. He and a partner established a law firm, but poor health prevented the president from ever doing any serious work. Wilson died at his home on February 3, 1924, at age 67. He was buried in the Washington National Cathedral, the only president to be interred in the nation's capital.

Fact Check

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Woodrow Wilson - Presidency, Facts & Foreign Policy

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Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), the 28th U.S. president, served in office from 1913 to 1921 and led America through World War I (1914-1918). Wilson was the creator of the League of Nations and, during his second term, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, securing women's right to vote.

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Princip was the best shot of the three and showed leadership qualities.

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Princip was the best shot of the three and showed leadership qualities.

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 Police rescued Princip from the mob, many of whom wanted to kill him.

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 Police rescued Princip from the mob, many of whom wanted to kill him.

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Gavrilo Princip was born the fourth of nine children (six died in infancy). His father worked as a postman. Gavrilo, never in robust health, attended high school in Sarajevo and Tuzla, but in 1912 traveled to Belgrade for a more Serb-nationalist education. There he became an active propagandist for the Greater Serbian cause.

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March 1917, after soldiers in Petrograd joined striking workers in protest against Nicholas’ rule, the czar was forced to abdicate.

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March 1917, after soldiers in Petrograd joined striking workers in protest against Nicholas’ rule, the czar was forced to abdicate.

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He and his family were herded into a cellar by Bolshevik revolutionaries and shot and stabbed to death, ending the Romanov dynasty’s three centuries of rule

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He and his family were herded into a cellar by Bolshevik revolutionaries and shot and stabbed to death, ending the Romanov dynasty’s three centuries of rule

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How World War I Fueled the Russian Revolution

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Czar Nicholas’ ineffective leadership and weak infrastructure during the war led to the demise of the Romanov dynasty.

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Austrian archduke whose assassination (1914) was the immediate cause of World War I.

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Austrian archduke whose assassination (1914) was the immediate cause of World War I.

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The royal couple was travelling in a motorcade through Sarajevo in an open-topped car, ignorant of the fact that several would-be assassins awaited along the route of their preannounced stops.

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The royal couple was travelling in a motorcade through Sarajevo in an open-topped car, ignorant of the fact that several would-be assassins awaited along the route of their preannounced stops.

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Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of the archduke Charles Louis, who was the brother of the emperor Franz Joseph.

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Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of the archduke Charles Louis, who was the brother of the emperor Franz Joseph.

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Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Este (born December 18, 1863, Graz, Austria-died June 28, 1914, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary [now in Bosnia and Herzogovina]) was the archduke of Austria-Este. His assassination in 1914 was the immediate cause of World War I.

Life until 1914

Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of the archduke Charles Louis, who was the brother of the emperor Franz Joseph. The death of the heir apparent, Archduke Rudolf, in 1889 made Franz Ferdinand next in succession to the Austro-Hungarian throne after his father, who died in 1896. But because of Franz Ferdinand's ill health in the 1890s, his younger brother Otto was regarded as more likely to succeed, a possibility that deeply embittered Franz Ferdinand. His desire to marry Sophie, countess of Chotek, a lady-in-waiting, brought him into sharp conflict with the emperor and the court. Only after renouncing his future children's rights to the throne was the morganatic marriage allowed in 1900.

In foreign affairs he tried to restore Austro-Russian understanding without endangering the alliance with Germany. At home he thought of political reforms that would have strengthened the position of the crown and weakened that of the Magyars against the other nationalities in Hungary. His plans were based on the realization that any nationalistic policy pursued by one section of the population would endanger the multinational Habsburg empire. His relationship with Franz Joseph was exacerbated by his continuous pressure on the emperor, who in his later years left affairs to take care of themselves but sharply resented any interference with his prerogative. From 1906 onward Franz Ferdinand's influence in military matters grew, and in 1913 he became inspector general of the army.

Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand was in the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina accompanied by his wife, Sophie. He was there as inspector general of the imperial army. The visit was not a popular one. Balkan politics were turbulent, and the neighbouring Kingdom of Serbia coveted Bosnia. Moreover, the date chosen for this imperial visit and Hapsburg show of force was June 28, a black date in Serbian history: it was the anniversary of the Turkish victory over Serbia at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. This fanned the flames of dissent among Serbian nationalists even further.

The royal couple was travelling in a motorcade through Sarajevo in an open-topped car, ignorant of the fact that several would-be assassins awaited along the route of their preannounced stops. Shortly after 10 am, amid cheering crowds lining the wide avenue called Appel Quay, one of the attackers, Nedjelko Cabrinovic, threw a grenade at the royal couple's car. The bomb bounced off the back of the vehicle and exploded behind them, injuring members of the entourage who were in the next car and peppering bystanders with shrapnel.

After completing the planned reception at City Hall, the shaken royal couple insisted on changing their schedule and visiting the hospital to check on one of the officers injured in the morning attack. Confusion among the drivers in the motorcade followed, with the drivers starting off in the wrong direction, down the very avenue where the conspirators were still present. When the royal motorcade entered a side street and stopped to turn around, a compatriot of Cabrinovic, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, seized his opportunity. Approaching the royal couple's open car, he shot both Franz Ferdinand and Sophie with a Browning pistol. The driver of the couple's car then sped off for medical help. Sophie died en route and Franz Ferdinand died shortly after. Princip tried to shoot himself but was apprehended by bystanders. All of the conspirators were eventually found and arrested. Exempted from the death penalty because of his young age, Princip was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died from tuberculosis in 1918.

Anti-Serb protests and riots followed throughout Austria-Hungary in the wake of the assassination. One month later, on July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on the country seemingly behind the murders, Serbia. This set the Triple Alliance (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy) against Serbia's allies in the Triple Entente ( Russia, France, and Britain). Momentum became unstoppable, sparking one of the deadliest conflicts in history- World War I.
Fid Backhouse and others The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Este | Biography, Assassination, Facts, & World War I

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Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Este, Austrian archduke whose assassination was the immediate cause of World War I. He and his wife, Sophie, were murdered by the Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and a month later Austria declared war on Serbia.

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Wilhelm damaged his political position in a number of ways. He meddled in German foreign policy on the basis of his emotions, resulting in incoherence and inconsistency in German relations with other nations

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Wilhelm damaged his political position in a number of ways. He meddled in German foreign policy on the basis of his emotions, resulting in incoherence and inconsistency in German relations with other nations

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The kaiser had already been hurt politically in 1907 by the Eulenburg-Harden affair, in which members of his circle of friends were accused of being homosexuals. Although there is no evidence that Wilhelm was gay–in addition to his seven children with his first wife, he was rumored to have several illegitimate offspring–the scandal was used by his political opponents to weaken his influence.

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The kaiser had already been hurt politically in 1907 by the Eulenburg-Harden affair, in which members of his circle of friends were accused of being homosexuals. Although there is no evidence that Wilhelm was gay–in addition to his seven children with his first wife, he was rumored to have several illegitimate offspring–the scandal was used by his political opponents to weaken his influence.

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With World War I under way, the kaiser, as commander in chief of the German armed forces, retained the power to make upper-level changes in military command.

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With World War I under way, the kaiser, as commander in chief of the German armed forces, retained the power to make upper-level changes in military command.

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Table of Contents

1. Kaiser Wilhelm II's Early Years

2. Emperor and King: 1888

3. Kaiser Wilhelm II and World War I

4. Kaiser Wilhelm II's Years of Exile

Wilhelm II (1859-1941), the German kaiser (emperor) and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, was one of the most recognizable public figures of World War I (1914-18). He gained a reputation as a swaggering militarist through his speeches and ill-advised newspaper interviews. While Wilhelm did not actively seek war, and tried to hold back his generals from mobilizing the German army in the summer of 1914, his verbal outbursts and his open enjoyment of the title of Supreme War Lord helped bolster the case of those who blamed him for the conflict. His role in the conduct of the war as well as his responsibility for its outbreak is still controversial.

Some historians maintain that Wilhelm was controlled by his generals, while others argue that he retained considerable political power. In late 1918, he was forced to abdicate. He spent the rest of his life in exile in the Netherlands, where he died at age 82.

Kaiser Wilhelm II's Early Years

Kaiser Wilhelm II was born in Potsdam, Germany, on January 27, 1859, the son of Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia (1831-88) and Princess Victoria (1840-1901), the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria (1819-1901). The future monarch was the queen's firstborn grandchild and was genuinely fond of her; in fact, he was holding her in his arms when she died. His ties to Britain through its royal family would play an important part in his later political maneuvering.

Did you know? Kaiser Wilhelm II was reportedly amused when he heard his cousin King George V (1865-1936) had changed the name of the British royal family from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917 as a result of anti-German sentiment in Britain during World War I.

Wilhelm's childhood was shaped by two events, one medical and one political. His birth had been traumatic; in the course of a complicated delivery, the doctor permanently damaged Wilhelm's left arm. In addition to its smaller size, the arm was useless for such ordinary tasks as cutting certain foods with a knife at mealtime.

The political event that shaped Wilhelm was the formation of the German Empire under the leadership of Prussia in 1871. Wilhelm was now second in line after his father to become an emperor as well as king of Prussia. Twelve years old at the time, Wilhelm was filled with nationalistic enthusiasm. His later determination to win a "place in the sun" for Germany had its roots in his childhood.

An intelligent young man who possessed a lifelong interest in science and technology, Wilhelm was educated at the University of Bonn. His quick mind, however, was combined with an even quicker temper and an impulsive, high-strung personality. He had dysfunctional relationships with both parents, particularly his English mother. Historians still debate the effects of the kaiser's complicated psychological makeup on his political decisions.

In 1881, Wilhelm married Princess Augusta Victoria (1858-1921) of Schleswig-Holstein. The couple would go on to have seven children.

Emperor and King: 1888

Wilhelm's father became Kaiser Frederick III of Germany in March 1888. Already ill with terminal throat cancer, he died after a reign of only several months. Wilhelm succeeded his father on June 15, 1888, at the age of 29. Within two years of his coronation, Wilhelm broke with Otto von Bismarck (1815-98), the "Iron Chancellor" who had dominated German politics since the 1860s. The kaiser embarked on his so-called New Course, a period of personal rule in which he appointed chancellors who were upper-level civil servants rather than statesmen. Bismarck bitterly predicted that Wilhelm would lead Germany to ruin.

Wilhelm damaged his political position in a number of ways. He meddled in German foreign policy on the basis of his emotions, resulting in incoherence and inconsistency in German relations with other nations. He also made a number of public blunders, the worst of which was The Daily Telegraph affair of 1908. Wilhelm gave an interview to the London-based newspaper in which he offended the British by saying such things as: "You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares." The kaiser had already been hurt politically in 1907 by the Eulenburg-Harden affair, in which members of his circle of friends were accused of being homosexuals. Although there is no evidence that Wilhelm was gay-in addition to his seven children with his first wife, he was rumored to have several illegitimate offspring-the scandal was used by his political opponents to weaken his influence.

Wilhelm's most important contribution to Germany's prewar military expansion was his commitment to creating a navy to rival Britain's. His childhood visits to his British cousins had given him a love for the sea-sailing was one of his favorite recreations-and his envy of the power of the British navy convinced him that Germany must build a large fleet of its own in order to fulfill its destiny. The kaiser supported the plans of Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930), his chief admiral, who maintained that Germany could gain diplomatic power over Britain by stationing a fleet of warships in the North Sea. By 1914, however, the naval buildup had caused severe financial problems for Wilhelm's government.

Kaiser Wilhelm II and World War I

Wilhelm's behavior during the crisis that led to war in August 1914 is still controversial. There is little doubt that he had been broken psychologically by the criticism that followed the Eulenburg-Harden and Daily Telegraph scandals; he suffered an episode of depression in 1908. In addition, the kaiser was out of touch with the realities of international politics in 1914; he thought that his blood relationships to other European monarchs were sufficient to manage the crisis that followed the June 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Although Wilhelm signed the order for German mobilization following pressure from his generals-Germany declared war against Russia and France during the first week of August 1914- he is reported to have said, "You will regret this, gentlemen."

With World War I under way, the kaiser, as commander in chief of the German armed forces, retained the power to make upper-level changes in military command. Nonetheless, he was largely a shadow monarch during the war, useful to his generals as a public-relations figure who toured the front lines and handed out medals. After 1916, Germany was, in effect, a military dictatorship dominated by two generals, Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) and Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937).

Kaiser Wilhelm II's Years of Exile

In late 1918, popular unrest in Germany (which had suffered greatly during the war) combined with a naval mutiny convinced civilian political leaders that the kaiser had to abdicate to preserve order. In fact, Wilhelm's abdication was announced on November 9, 1918, before he had actually consented to it. He agreed to leave when the leaders of the army told him he had lost their support as well. On November 10, the former emperor took a train across the border into the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war. He eventually bought a manor house in the town of Doorn, and remained there for the remainder of his life.

Although the Allies wanted to punish Wilhelm as a war criminal, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1880-1962) refused to extradite him. His last years were darkened by the death of his first wife and the suicide of his youngest son in 1920. He did, however, make a happy second marriage in 1922. His new wife, Hermine Reuss (1887-1947), actively petitioned German leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in the early 1930s to restore the monarchy, but nothing ever came of her negotiations. Hitler despised the man he held responsible for Germany's defeat in World War I, and Wilhelm was shocked by the Nazis' thuggish tactics. In 1938, Wilhelm remarked that for the first time he was ashamed to be a German. After two decades in exile, he died in the Netherlands on June 4, 1941, at the age of 82.

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Kaiser Wilhelm II - WWI, Abdication & Death

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Wilhelm II (1859-1941) was the last German kaiser (emperor) and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, and one of the most recognizable public figures of World War I (1914-18). He gained a reputation as a swaggering militarist through his speeches and ill-advised newspaper interviews.