1918

In January, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, delivered his famous Fourteen Points speech, in which he laid out principles for a sustained world peace in the aftermath of the Great War. While the actual peace terms offered by the Allied Powers were quite different from what Wilson presented in his Points, Wilson still advocated for peace terms that he thought would make this war the “War to End All Wars.”

Also in the United States, in a major event regarding civil liberties, the U.S. Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918. This law stated that Americans would not be permitted to criticize the government, nor would they be permitted to speak out against the war (WWI).

In Russia, in an event that would shape events for at least a century, the Imperial family, the Romanovs, were murdered in July by order of the Bolshevik Party. This truly marked the end of the era of rule by Russian nobility and ushered in the Communist era, which would last until the end of the century.

World War One was formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It should be noted, though, that Treaty brought an end to hostilities between the Allied Powers and Germany. The other Central Powers made peace with the Allies in separate treaties. It is also worth noting that the war’s end brought with it an end to a few empires. The Russian Empire, German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire all disintegrated and out of the ashes were formed new states, if not nation-states.

Indeed, the war’s conclusion marked the beginning of the end of aristocratic rule in the Western world. On a final note, it is well known that Germany in particular was given hard peace terms, so much so that the resentment in Germany helped fuel the rise of National Socialism, and ultimately the rise of the infamous Third Reich.