Fourteen Points Fourteen Points stands for the peace aims of American President Woodrow Wilson, who made them public in a speech before the United States Congress on January 8, 1918. The basic reasons for American participation in the war were already clear. To justify America’s joining the war in April 1917, Wilson stressed that the United States was not interested in realizing any narrowly defined national demands. Rather, he meant to for liberal political principles to be implemented globally, …

Hoover, Herbert Clark (August 10, 1874, West Branch IA – October 20, 1964, New York NY), American politician (1929–1933: president of the United States). In the United States, Hoover is remembered above all as the luckless president of the crisis years of 1929–1933, his presidency overshadowed by his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt. Against that background, his remarkable activities during the First World War have largely been forgotten. Hoover came from a simple Quaker family and studied mining engineering at Stanford University. His mining work took him all o…

Gaulle, Charles de (November 22, 1890, Lille – November 9, 1970, Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, Département Haute-Marne), French officer and politician. As a young officer, De Gaulle was decorated among other things, for Verdun. He fell prisoner to the Germans, and undertook several spectacular escape attempts. The World War came to have a special meaning for him, especially for his awareness of politics and history, and for his ideological formation. For De Gaulle, the Union sacrée achieved during the war became his lifelong ideal for a successful, domestic political or…