A New Book About Woodrow Wilson’s Losing Campaign for the League of Nations and a New World Order
By Charles Euchner
Charles Euchner is now shopping his latest narrative work on a “hinge” moment in history: Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 effort to win ratification of the Treat of Paris ending World War I–and, with it, the creation of the League of Nations. A quick overview of the book follows.
A century ago, America faced a defining moment: whether to embrace American leadership of a new organization to prevent a future world war—or to turn inward, embrace isolationism, fall prey to xenophobia and narrow-minded Babbitry, and embrace a destructive agenda of business and Christian nationalism.
That is the standard narrative of the Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Paris and Woodrow Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations.
That narrative has some truth to it. But the fuller story is more complex—and more compelling and revealing for 21st-century Americans confronting authoritarianism, unresolved struggles over immigration and race, growing inequality, the climate crisis, and a cracking world order at a time of growing peril.
The fuller story is that Wilson’s dream of a world government faltered from the beginning. A bastard child of the Paris Peace Conference, where the victors fought over the spoils as always, the League of Nations was never more than a plan for an experiment. Because Wilson has lost so much in Paris, he desperately needed the League to be the savior of a bad peace. Because he needed it so intensely, both politically and psychologically, he refused to acknowledge its limits.
This difficult setup was only made worse by Wilson’s limited skills as a politician. As Wilson acknowledged himself, he was but half a politician. He rose and fell on his mastery of rhetoric; his abilities and desires as a political wheeler-dealer were limited. When he allowed allies to carry the ball for him—as they did in enacting a historic record of progressive reform—he succeeded. But when he refused to allow his allies to play that gain, he was hampered—and became desperate.
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In a crisp cinematic style, Anatomy of Failure tells this story.
After World War I, President Woodrow Wilson persuaded allies at the Paris Peace Conference to embrace his vision for a new global order, anchored by the League of Nations. To do so, Wilson had to surrender almost all his other goals as a peacemaker. Whatever the costs of the bargain, Wilson believed he had created the greatest political advance since the U.S. Constitution. Wilson’s delirious reception in Europe, where he was called the “savior of the world,” seemed to confirm his optimism.
But the U.S. Senate, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, a hard-edged parliamentary master, proved a more formidable challenge. Even before Wilson came home from Paris, Lodge organized a well-financed and diverse coalition to fight the treaty. After a summer of unproductive discussions with skeptical senators—in which he convinced not one skeptical senator to support his cause—he embarked on a punishing 10,000-mile “Western Tour” to arouse American public opinion. If he could arouse a popular consensus for the League of Nations, he might win the ratification of the treaty without reservations.
On the Western Tour, Wilson scored some points—but lost more. He aroused audiences at many stops, but almost never with an enduring effect. Meanwhile, Lodge corralled fence-sitting senators and sent out his own “truth squad” to trail Wilson and counter his arguments. Wilson collapsed after an emotional appeal in Pueblo, Colorado, and returned to Washington. Days later, he suffered a massive stroke that rendered him a ghostly invalid, never to speak in public again.
As he argued for the treaty, Wilson alienated his supporters as well as fence-sitters across the nation. Still, despite it all, Wilson could have won. All he had to do was accept “reservations” to the Treaty of Paris that would “clarify” American interests in the new global order. America’s allies France and Britain assured him they would accept such modifications. But Wilson’s character would not let him do it.
Anatomy of Failure offers an original, dramatic, and revealing portrait of the last great debate in American politics. As America struggles to hold together the post-World War II global order, the lessons from Wilson’s failed crusade could not be more profound.
Anatomy of Failure is a three-act drama:
- In Act I, we see Wilson return from Paris to begin his campaign to win a two-thirds majority of the Senate. We meet his allies and opponents skirmish over details of the treaty. We also see a nation and a world struggling to find true peace after the bloodiest war in history.
- In Act II, Wilson embarks on a 10,000-mile Western Tour. Traveling by rail, he spoke in 16 states to arouse the nation to rally behind his vision for a League of Nations that, he said, would prevent almost all future wars and also usher in a new age of trade, labor rights, and self-determination for all peoples. On virtually every stop, Wilson alienated an important constituency. The more he spoke, the more muddled and desperate his rhetoric became. On this tour, Wilson found a broken nation more interested in “normalcy” than global politics—and an ever more desperate president seeking to save his life’s work.
- In Act III, we see the president collapse just days before the trip was to end. After returning to the White House, he suffers a massive stroke. The most voluble president in history would never speak again. Mentally as well as physically compromised, he rejects all efforts to accept compromises needed to gain the necessary two-thirds support in the Senate. He lives his last year as president in the shadows, an invalid shaking his fist at the failure of the Senate and the American people to embrace the genius of his vision.
The argument of Lodge and his allies was simple and devastating: In the League of Nations, the U.S. would surrender its sovereignty to foreigners. The critics offered a number of “reservations” to protect U.S. interests—the same basic reservations that Wilson, in private, said he would support to win the Senate’s support. But as the rhetoric heated up, both Wilson and Lodge became more stubborn. That gave the advantage to Lodge, who only needed to convince one-third of the Senate to say no.
The American public, meanwhile, was more concerned by other issues. Historic labor strife. Resurgent racism and violence. Unemployment and inflation. Economic suffering and inequality. Xenophobia. The rise of Christian nationalism. The interruption of progressive reforms. And disruptive technologies that undermined traditional American life.
In the end, the Senate refused to take a chance on a risky new venture—and Wilson refused to reassure Americans. Rather than embracing the League as an imperfect but worthwhile experiment, Wilson insisted that it could not fail.
Amazingly, Wilson could have won this fight till the very end. Skeptical senators said they would support Wilson’s dream with some guardrails. But the more Wilson refused to back even his own reservations, the more severe those reservations became. The Senate voted twice. Both times Wilson told his supporters to reject the treaty because the Senate attached reservations to it. In the last vote, the Senate fell just seven votes shy of a two-thirds majority.
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Until now, this story has been told only in snippets. No book details Wilson’s 10,000-mile Western Tour. No book explores the twists and turns in his rhetoric. No book details Lodge’s wily strategy and steering of the issue. No book explores how the chaos and fears in postwar America shaped the League battle. And no book explores Wilson’s personality defects, which in the end led him to reject a chance to realize his own vision.
By tracking the dueling campaigns of Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Euchner creates a “Columbo” mystery for American history. We know what happens at the beginning. The question is why it happened that way and how it will be resolved. The answer is twofold: The American system and its politicians failed. Rather than seeking the best possible outcome, the two sides aimed to win at all costs—and prevent the other side from any chance at victory.
The events of 1919 and 1920 still resonate to this day. At no time since the two woprld wars have the terms of global order been more uncertain. NATO’s ups and downs in recent years, the fractured arms control agreements, the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis, and growing isolationism (a 2022 poll found that half of Republicans supported “greater isolationism”) revive the debate of a century ago.
To discover this blueprint for failure, Euchner has spent years taking deep dives in archives, the massive library on Wilson and American foreign policy, and contemporaneous accounts of the politics of the day. In the process, he has created an intimate account of one of the great “hinge” moments in American history.
Euchner, the special projects editor for New America and author of books on American politics and society, goes beyond standard treatments of Wilson, postwar America, or even presidential studies.
The result is a story that reverberates far beyond its times. Like Garry Wills on the Gettysburg Address, David Hackett Fisher on Paul Revere’s ride, or Erik Larson’s story of the World Fair, Euchner gives new life to a drama once considered settled. The result is a surprising story with profound implications for understanding American politics and the cracking global order of the 21st century.