Who Was President During WW1

Short answer

• Woodrow Wilson was president during World War I. He was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921, so his presidency covered the whole war period from 1914 to 1918 and the peace settlement that followed.
• The United States was not at war for the whole period. Wilson kept it neutral after 1914 and won re-election in 1916 on keeping it out of war.
• The United States entered the war in April 1917, after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and after the Zimmermann Telegram proposed a German alliance with Mexico against the United States. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany on April 2, 1917, and Congress declared war on April 6, 1917.
• Wilson set out the Fourteen Points in January 1918, went to Paris after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, and championed the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919.
• The Senate refused to ratify the treaty, so the United States never joined the League of Nations. Wilson's speaking tour for the League was halted after his Pueblo speech on September 25, 1919; he suffered a stroke on October 2, 1919, never recovered his former health or power, and left office in March 1921, succeeded by Warren G. Harding.
• The mix-ups are easy to clear up. Theodore Roosevelt served from 1901 to 1909, before the war. Franklin D. Roosevelt served during World War II. Warren G. Harding took office only after Wilson left, in 1921.

The question sounds simple, and the first part of the answer is simple too. But the full answer is more interesting than a single name, because the president in question changed his mind in public, led a country from neutrality into a world war, and then lost the peace fight at home. This article gives the name first, then explains how one man held the office through every phase of American involvement.

The One Name Answer, And Why Neighboring Presidents Confuse It

Search results often show a quiz style list of names, and the wrong answers are chosen for a reason. Each one is a real president, close enough in time to feel plausible.

William Howard Taft was Wilson’s immediate predecessor. Wilson succeeded him in 1913, more than a year before war broke out in Europe in 1914. Taft therefore never faced the World War I decisions at all. Warren G. Harding was Wilson’s immediate successor, taking office in March 1921, after the Armistice, after Versailles, and after the Senate votes on the treaty. Harding inherited the aftermath, not the war itself.

Theodore Roosevelt causes the most confusion, because he was a loud public voice during the war years and had been president not long before. But his presidency ended in 1909, so during World War I he was a former president and a critic, not the man in the White House. Franklin D. Roosevelt causes a different confusion, because his famous wartime presidency belongs to World War II, which began for the United States in 1941.

From Professor To President

Wilson did not arrive at the presidency through a military career or a long spell in Congress. He arrived through the classroom, and that background shaped his strengths and weaknesses as a wartime leader.

He was born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia, the son of a Presbyterian minister who was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, during the Civil War and a professor in Columbia, South Carolina, during Reconstruction.

After graduating from Princeton, then called the College of New Jersey, and from the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered academic life. He became president of Princeton in 1902, then won the governorship of New Jersey in 1910 on a progressive platform that broke with the conservative machine that had nominated him.

In 1912 he won the Democratic nomination for president and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states’ rights. In a three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote, according to the White House biography. The split in the opposition helped him, but the result still put a former professor, not a general or a party boss, in charge of the country that would soon face the largest war the world had yet seen.

The Pre War Presidency

Wilson’s first years in office matter to the war story because they show what kind of president he already was before 1914. He was a legislative president, confident that a clear program, argued in public and pressed through Congress, could reshape the country.

The White House biography lists three major pieces of legislation from his early presidency. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act, with a graduated federal income tax attached to it. The second was the Federal Reserve Act, which gave the nation a more elastic money supply. In 1914, antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices. Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor, and another limited railroad workers to an eight hour day.

These domestic reforms trained Wilson in a method he later carried into foreign policy: state principles clearly, argue them in public, and build institutions to carry them out. That belief explains both the Fourteen Points and the League of Nations, and it also explains why he struggled when leaders in Paris and in the Senate did not share his principles or his faith in new institutions.

Neutrality: A Policy, Not Indifference

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Wilson’s first instinct was to keep the United States out of it, and his government acted on that instinct at once. The Imperial War Museums record that the United States declared its neutrality on August 19, 1914. Neutrality in this sense did not mean that Americans had no opinions about the war. It meant that the government did not take a side as a belligerent, and that American ships and trade were supposed to be treated as neutral under the rules of war at sea.

Wilson also tried to do more than stand aside. The Imperial War Museums note that he was personally appalled by war, that his faith in international justice committed him to an active role as mediator, and that his personal emissary, Colonel House, undertook a series of diplomatic missions to the belligerents between 1914 and 1916 in an attempt to seek a negotiated settlement. All of those missions failed, primarily because the warring nations were unwilling to compromise on war aims that contradicted each other.

That failure matters for understanding Wilson fairly. Neutrality was not simply waiting until the United States was attacked. Wilson spent more than two years trying to find a settlement both sides could accept, and he was frustrated by both sides in different ways. He was exasperated with Britain over the Royal Navy searching neutral vessels, but that grievance was overshadowed, in the Imperial War Museums account, by Germany’s unrestricted submarine war against neutral shipping.

Trade pulled neutrality in two directions at once. The United States economy benefited hugely from supplying munitions and foodstuffs to the warring nations, as the Imperial War Museums put it, but American ships then became casualties of the war at sea. With every sinking, the question changed from whether the United States could stay out to how long it could stay out without accepting that its own citizens and ships were being treated as fair targets.

The Road To War: Lusitania, The Sussex Pledge, Submarines, And The Zimmermann Telegram

No single event took the United States into World War I. The road to war was a sequence, and each step narrowed Wilson’s choices until neutrality looked less like prudence and more like surrender of American rights at sea. The first great shock came in May 1915, when a German submarine sank the British passenger ship Lusitania.

The United States Army’s Military Review account of the Zimmermann Telegram records that the attack left 128 Americans dead and began to move American sentiment away from neutrality and against Germany. Wilson protested, but he did not go to war. He still believed that a negotiated settlement was possible and that American entry would make the war larger rather than shorter.

A second crisis followed in March 1916, when an unarmed French boat, the Sussex, was sunk in the English Channel. The State Department account records that Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations unless Germany refrained from attacking passenger ships and allowed crews of enemy merchant vessels to abandon ship before any attack. On May 4, 1916, Germany accepted those terms in what became known as the Sussex pledge, and for a time the pledge held the line.

That hope collapsed in January 1917. At a wartime conference that month, German Navy representatives convinced the military leadership and Kaiser Wilhelm II that resuming unrestricted submarine warfare could defeat Great Britain within five months, according to the State Department account. On January 31, 1917, the German ambassador presented a note declaring Germany’s intention to restart unrestricted submarine warfare the following day. Wilson went before Congress on February 3 to announce that diplomatic relations had been severed, but he still refrained from asking for war, doubting the public would support him without ample proof that Germany intended to attack American ships without warning.

The proof, and the political shock, arrived together in February and March 1917. On January 19, 1917, British naval intelligence had intercepted a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador in Mexico City. The State Department account records that the telegram promised Mexico German help to recover territory ceded to the United States after the Mexican-American War, in return for Mexican support in the war. The British forwarded it to Wilson on February 24, and the American press carried the story the following week. The Army’s Military Review account quotes the offer bluntly: Mexico was to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, with generous German financial support, and to make war together and make peace together with Germany. At the same time, German submarines were sinking American ships, five of them in March 1917 in the Military Review account. Mexico declined the alliance, but the telegram and the sinkings drove American opinion toward war. The State Department account adds that historians still debate the precise reasons for Wilson’s decision, especially in light of his efforts to avoid war in 1915.

On April 2, 1917, Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. The State Department account records that he cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare and Germany’s attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States. The Senate voted in support on April 4, the House concurred two days later, and the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. The White House biography preserves Wilson’s framing of that moment: in 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into the war a crusade to make the world safe for democracy. Later that year, on December 7, 1917, the United States also declared war on Germany’s ally Austria-Hungary.

Wartime President: Fighting, Mobilizing, And Dissent

Once the United States was at war, Wilson’s job changed completely. He was no longer a mediator between other people’s armies. He was commander in chief of a country that had to raise, equip, transport, and supply an army in France, while managing an economy and a public at home that had not expected war a year earlier.

The White House biography sums up the military result in one sentence: massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Behind that sentence lies the work of raising, equipping, transporting, and supplying an army in France, shipped across an ocean threatened by submarines. Fresh American troops arriving in large numbers during 1918 are part of why Wilson is remembered, in the Imperial War Museums phrase, as a decisive wartime leader rather than as a president who merely declared war and watched.

The home front was harder and more divisive. War brought an expansion of federal power, and with it a sharp argument about free speech. In June 1917 Congress passed the Espionage Act, and in May 1918 it added amendments collectively known as the Sedition Act. The Sedition Act text, preserved in the World War I Document Archive, made it a crime, when the United States was at war, to utter, print, write, or publish disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government, the Constitution, or the military forces of the United States, punishable by a fine of not more than 10,000 dollars or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.

This is one of the clearest places where praise and criticism of Wilson must sit side by side. Supporters argue that wartime governments in every belligerent country restricted dissent, and that Wilson believed the war was a fight for democratic values. Critics argue that a war fought in the name of democracy should not have criminalized criticism of the government at home.

The Fourteen Points: Wilson’s Plan For Peace

In January 1918, while the fighting was still going on, Wilson went before Congress to set out American war aims. The White House biography records that he enunciated the Fourteen Points in January 1918, the last of which would establish a general association of nations affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. The full text, delivered in joint session on January 8, 1918, and preserved in the World War I Document Archive, is more detailed than most summaries suggest, and it is worth reading in outline because later arguments about Versailles turn on how much of it survived.

The first points were principles. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, with no private international understandings. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and equality of trade conditions. Armaments reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. A free, open minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of colonial claims, with the interests of the populations concerned given equal weight with the claims of the government whose title was to be determined.

The middle points applied those principles to particular places. Russian territory was to be evacuated, with Russia given an unhampered opportunity to determine its own political development. Belgium was to be evacuated and restored, French territory freed, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 over Alsace-Lorraine righted. Italy’s frontiers were to follow lines of nationality, the peoples of Austria-Hungary were to have the freest opportunity for autonomous development, Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro were to be evacuated with Serbia given access to the sea, and an independent Polish state was to be erected with access to the sea. The Turkish portion of the Ottoman Empire was to keep a secure sovereignty, while other nationalities under Turkish rule were to have an unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles were to stay open as a free passage under international guarantees.

The fourteenth point was the one Wilson cared about most: a general association of nations, the League of Nations, to guarantee political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. Wilson presented the Fourteen Points as the only possible program for a just and lasting peace.

Armistice, Paris, And Versailles

On November 11, 1918, the fighting stopped. The House of Representatives History, Art and Archives account records that on that date Wilson dramatically announced to a joint session of Congress that the war thus comes to an end, and then explained the armistice terms imposed on Imperial Germany, which had capitulated to the Allied forces that morning. An armistice is a cessation of fighting, not a peace treaty. The war had ended as a military event, but the political settlement still had to be negotiated, and Wilson decided to go to Paris himself to negotiate it.

That decision was unusual. Wilson believed only his presence could keep the Fourteen Points at the center of the talks and secure the League of Nations as part of the settlement. The White House biography records that after the Armistice he went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace, and later presented the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, to the Senate.

The treaty was signed at Versailles on June 28, 1919. Wilson’s own statement on the signature, preserved by the State Department, called it severe in the duties and penalties imposed upon Germany, but severe only because great wrongs were to be righted and repaired. He insisted it was much more than a peace with Germany, because it liberated great peoples and associated free governments in a permanent league pledged to maintain peace by maintaining right and justice.

The Nobel Prize organization, which later awarded Wilson the Peace Prize for 1919, gives a blunter summary of the Paris result: the negotiations were a disappointment to Wilson, Britain and France insisted Germany must pay an enormous indemnity and accept blame for the war, and the Senate subsequently refused American membership of the League. Wilson secured the League, but by accepting a treaty that fell far short of the Fourteen Points on reparations, blame, and several territorial questions. Supporters say the League was worth the compromise, because it could correct the treaty over time. Critics say Wilson gave away too much in Paris and then refused to compromise at home, so he lost both the ideal peace and the League. That argument is still live among historians, and this article does not pretend to settle it.

The League Fight, The Stroke, And Defeat At Home

Wilson refused reservations he believed would cut the heart out of the Covenant and took his case to the country instead. The National Park Service records a grueling speaking tour to arouse popular support and pressure the reluctant Republican controlled Senate. Starting in Columbus, Ohio, he reached the West Coast before his doctor ordered him to stop after his speech in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25, 1919.

A week later, on October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side, according to the National Park Service. The aborted tour, though well received, did not change one vote in the Senate, in the Park Service’s words. It refused to ratify either the treaty or membership in the League. In the final Senate vote on March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles fell seven votes short of the two-thirds needed for ratification (State Department, Paris Peace Conference account).

Wilson never recovered his former health or his former power. The National Park Service records that failing health and an increasingly hostile political environment kept him from seeking a third presidential term in 1920, and that when Warren G. Harding took the oath of office in March 1921, Wilson left the White House. He lived until February 3, 1924, according to the Nobel Prize organization, which also records that he received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919, awarded in 1920, for his role as founder of the League of Nations. The irony was complete and painful: the founder of the League received the world’s most famous peace prize, while his own country stayed outside the League he had founded.

How Historians Judge Wilson Now: A Record With Contradictions

On race, Princeton University’s own account of its contested Wilson legacy states the point plainly. Under his watch, Princeton remained a bastion of white Anglo Saxon Protestantism, and under his term as president, the federal civil service was segregated, closing one of the few paths to African American advancement. Princeton’s president, writing in 2020, put it more bluntly: Wilson segregated the previously integrated federal civil service. This was contested in Wilson’s own time, and it is now part of the standard record.

On the League, the dispute is about judgment rather than character. One school of historians argues that Wilson’s refusal to accept Senate reservations was principled, because reservations on Article X would have made the League meaningless, and that the Senate’s rejection was a failure of American leadership. Another school argues that his refusal was a political failure, because a League with reservations would have been better than no League at all. The State Department account supports the view that Article X was the core of the dispute, not a minor detail, and this article attributes both judgments to historians rather than presenting either as settled fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was president during WW1?

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was president when war broke out in Europe in 1914, when the United States stayed neutral, when it entered the war in April 1917, when the Armistice ended the fighting in November 1918, and when Versailles was signed in June 1919.

Was Woodrow Wilson president for the whole of World War I?

Yes. The war in Europe ran from 1914 to 1918, and Wilson was in office for all of those years. The United States, however, was a belligerent only from April 1917 to November 1918. Before that, under Wilson, it was neutral. So Wilson was president throughout the war, but America was at war for only part of it.

Who was president before and after Wilson?

William Howard Taft was president immediately before Wilson, and Warren G. Harding immediately after him, taking office in March 1921. Neither was president during the war years. Theodore Roosevelt was president from 1901 to 1909, before the war, while Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II.

Why did the United States enter World War I under Wilson?

Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917, the sinking of American ships in February and March 1917, and the Zimmermann Telegram, proposing a German alliance with Mexico against the United States, together pushed opinion and Congress toward war. Wilson cited the broken Sussex pledge and the Mexico proposal when he asked Congress for war on April 2, 1917. Historians still debate the weight of each cause.

What were Wilson’s Fourteen Points?

The Fourteen Points were Wilson’s statement of American war aims, delivered to Congress on January 8, 1918. They called for open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free trade, reduced armaments, impartial adjustment of colonial claims, self determination for several peoples, the restoration of Belgium and France, an independent Poland, and, as the fourteenth point, a League of Nations to guarantee political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Why did the United States not join the League of Nations?

The Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which contained the Covenant of the League of Nations. The central objection was Article X, committing members to defend each other against attack. Opponents argued this would limit Congress’s control over war and peace. Wilson refused reservations he believed would weaken the Covenant, suffered a stroke in October 1919, and the Senate rejected the treaty in November 1919 and again in March 1920.

Did Wilson win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Yes. Wilson received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919, awarded in 1920, for his role as founder of the League of Nations. He was not present at the ceremony on December 10, 1920, and it was accepted on his behalf, even though the United States itself had not joined the League.

Sources & references

• The White House (White House Historical Association biography). Woodrow Wilson, 28th president, 1913 to 1921; neutrality, New Freedom legislation, war request of April 2, 1917, Fourteen Points of January 1918, Paris and Versailles, final Senate vote on March 19, 1920, falling seven votes short of ratification, stroke. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/woodrow-wilson/
• United States Department of State, Office of the Historian. Milestones: 1914 to 1920, World War One and Wilsonian Diplomacy; League of Nations and Article X. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/foreword
• United States Department of State, Office of the Historian. U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917; Sussex pledge, unrestricted submarine warfare, Zimmermann Telegram, April 1917 declarations, Austria-Hungary declaration of December 7, 1917. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/wwi
• Imperial War Museums. Who Was Woodrow Wilson? Neutrality of August 19, 1914, Colonel House missions, unrestricted submarine war, declaration of war on April 6, 1917, wartime leadership, Congress rejection of the treaty and League membership. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/first-world-war/usa/woodrow-wilson
• United States Army, Military Review. The Zimmermann Telegram; Lusitania in May 1915, five American ships sunk in March 1917, declaration of war on April 6, 1917, telegram text and Mexico's refusal. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/March-April-2017/ART-017/
• United States House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives. President Woodrow Wilson's Joint Session Address Regarding the World War I Armistice, November 11, 1918. https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/35581
• World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University Library. President Wilson's Fourteen Points, delivered in joint session, January 8, 1918, full text. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/President_Wilson%27s_Fourteen_Points
• World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University Library. Sedition Act, May 16, 1918, amendment to the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917, penalties. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php?title=Sedition_Act&redirect=no
• United States Department of State, Office of the Historian. Statement Issued by President Wilson on the Signature of the Treaty With Germany, June 28, 1919. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv11/d272
• United States National Park Service. Woodrow Wilson: Prophet of Peace; speaking tour, Pueblo speech of September 25, 1919, stroke of October 2, 1919, Senate refusal, Harding taking office in March 1921. https://www.nps.gov/articles/woodrow-wilson-prophet-of-peace-teaching-with-historic-places.htm
• Nobel Prize organization. Woodrow Wilson, Facts: Nobel Peace Prize 1919, born December 28, 1856, Staunton, died February 3, 1924, prize received in 1920, motivation for his role as founder of the League of Nations. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1919/wilson/facts/
• Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs. Princeton Exhibit Examines Contested Legacy of Woodrow Wilson; federal civil service segregated under Wilson. https://spia.princeton.edu/events/princeton-exhibit-examines-contested-legacy-woodrow-wilson
• Princeton University, Office of the President. I opposed taking Woodrow Wilson's name off our school, 2020; segregation of the previously integrated federal civil service under Wilson. https://president.princeton.edu/blogs/i-opposed-taking-woodrow-wilsons-name-our-school-heres-why-i-changed-my-mind
• The National Archives, United Kingdom. The Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28, 1919, Paris Peace Conference, League of Nations as a condition of the treaty. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/the-treaty-of-versailles/