The Vote That Made World War II Possible - March 19, 1920

On March 19, 1920, the United States Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles by a seven-vote margin. Seven votes that helped set the stage for Adolf Hitler, World War II, and fifty million dead. But this isn't a simple story of heroes and villains,   it never is. A president so consumed by pride that he ordered his own supporters to kill his greatest achievement. A Senate leader with legitimate constitutional concerns but a personal vendetta that clouded his judgment. Idealists who were right about the treaty's flaws but wrong about the consequences of staying out. And a crippled, stroke-ravaged president whose wife may have been quietly running the presidency from behind closed doors. When Woodrow Wilson took his dream of a League of Nations to the American people on a grueling 10,000-mile speaking tour, it nearly killed him   , and ultimately, it didn't save his vision. General Ferdinand Foch looked at the final result and said, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years." He was off by three months. This is the story of the day America abandoned the peace  , and the world paid the price.