Wilson

There's an intense sequence in the middle around the entry of the US into the war. In the actual events, late on January 31, 1917, Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff notified the US State Department that Germany would resume submarine warfare against neutral (i.e., US) vessels in blockade areas (a policy, by the way, that Bernstorff himself had lobbied against vigorously with his government). This and subsequent events are compressed into a vivid sequence where Bernstorff presents the news late at night to Wilson. The President (the former professor) then gives the envoy the lecture of his life on Imperial German aggression, arrogance, and racism; orders Bernstorff deported; and in the next scene, summons Congress, requests and receives a declaration of war. (So there!) The live Wilson was much less decisive (evidently obsessed with remaining neutral and mediating, a role he pressed in modified form after the war), but no doubt the dramatized stand against Germany played well to US movie audiences in 1944. Another memorable scene soon after concerns civilian volunteers serving refreshments to US soldiers.

The interested reader can find fascinating details in any number of histories and biographies of the era, such as Tuchman's _Zimmerman Telegram_ (ISBN 0345324250 in paperback), which addresses events around the US entry into the war. Tuchman depicts the labyrinthine intrigues in the US during the neutrality. Thus, senior German agents in New York were so diligently trailed by multiple sets of secret police (from the US and other countries) that crowds of them would collect in hotel lobbies (nonchalantly, of course), watching their common subject and casually reading newspapers. The interested reader, for that matter, will enjoy all of Tuchman's books, about various times and places, because she is such an outstanding writer. For further insight into the old aristocratic European order that the Great War undid, see _Grand Illusion,_ 1937 (the movie, not the reviews about it). For more on the human side of the war, see the timeless classic _All Quiet on the Western Front_ (1931, US Best-Picture Oscar).

Some people today might forget that the First World War ended 11/11/1918 not in any sort of victory but rather in a negotiated cease-fire acknowledging stalemate. At the time of the cease-fire, Germany occupied vast territories beyond her prewar borders. 103 years earlier, after the Napoleonic wars, a peace conference (the "Congress of Vienna") opportunistically divided war-torn Europe and "gave" some smaller countries to larger countries, occupants of the smaller countries having limited voice in the matter. The resulting resentment and underground nationalism fostered terrorist acts including those that ignited the First World War. After that war, a peace conference at Versailles forced, at French insistence, Germany (economically blockaded and starving) to accept humiliating terms and pay ruinous reparations. The resulting resentment and nationalism in Germany fostered the rise of Nazism and the eventual Second World War, in which France was conquered in 1940. Whatever the merit of what-if games, evidently the French statesmen at the Versailles peace conference had failed to learn an important lesson.


LONG Bio Of American President   November 17, 2001
James L. (Toronto, Canada)
4 out of 7 found this review helpful

Alexander Knox stars as Woodrow Wilson, beginning at his time at Princeton, moving on to his time as Governor of New Jersey, and of course, concluding with his important years as President. I can't say that Wilson was the most compelling man, although his dry wit is fun, but he was around during WWI and the creation of the League of Nations, so he was important and those events help to keep the film interesting. Knox is very good as Wilson, and he is surrounded by a large supporting cast that does well. A lot of money was obviously put into this production, from sets to costumes. But the film really seems quite long and a little too reverential. Maybe the scope was too great, although I think a little trimming would not have hurt the film either. There are obviously moments included to help bolster the American war effort during WWII, since this film was made in 1944. In any case, although there is much to admire here and it is interesting history, do be prepared to sit for a while.