Ultimately Wilson's offer of a fair and just peace was heard in Germany, now wavering in its loyalty to the Kaiser.  Inquiries were sent to Wilson at the beginning of October 1918 about the possibility of a cease fire.  Then when around the same time the Allied armies broke through Germany's heavily defended line of defense, the Hindenburg Line, the Germans realized that the war was finally truly over for them.  But Wilson's requirement that the Kaiser abdicate was a major sticking point.

Then, inspired by the Russian Revolution of the previous year, in late October first sailors, then soldiers, then workers joined a growing revolt and simply took command and set up Soviet-style councils in various cities across Germany. Political chaos resulted, especially when the two wings of the large Social Democratic (Marxist) Party fell into fighting over whether or not to accept Wilson's peace offering – and then move quickly to set up a Soviet style Communist government in Germany – or instead redesign Germany as a parliamentary republic.

Ultimately most of the soldiers and workers threw their support to the pro-parliament Social Democrats (led by Friedrich Ebert), who took control of Germany's government on the 9th of November after Prince Max announced the end of the German monarchy.  Realizing that he had lost all political support, the next day Kaiser Wilhelm went into exile in the neutral Netherlands.

Meanwhile Germans had taken up discussions with Wilson about an Armistice, which they were now willing to accept – on the basis of his Fourteen Points. Wilson agreed.

However, America's allies, Great Britain and France, had no intentions whatsoever of honoring Wilson's peace terms, as they sought unconditional surrender of Germany and nothing less.  They had gone along with Wilson's Fourteen Points only because they needed American aid and because they had recognized the propaganda value these had in undermining the Kaiser's political authority in Germany.

Unaware of what was actually going on politically within the camp of its adversaries, the Germans complied with Wilson's demands and declared at Weimar the creation of a German republic (thus known as the Weimar Republic) and announced their willingness to accept an Armistice based on Wilson's Fourteen Points.  Thus at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year (November 11th 1918) the guns finally fell silent in Europe for the first time in over four years.  The war was over

But tragically, reality would soon deliver a huge, disappointing blow to such hopes, and especially to the expectations of a triumphant Wilson, when all the warring parties sat down together to work out the specific terms of the peace that had looked so promising as 1918 came to a close.

Being the Idealistic Humanist that he was, Wilson failed to connect American power with American diplomacy (much less even attempt to understand the dynamics of international power), and thus the English and French took the opportunity to pounce upon the exhausted Germans to wreak an expensive revenge – despite Wilson's protests.  Probably no English or French politician who failed to bring home to his people some major exaction of retribution against the Germans would have had a political future.  But Wilson had power to use to move things more in the direction he wanted to see them go.  But caught up in his utopian world, he failed to see the diplomatic opportunities he actually possessed in order to direct negotiations along the lines he had desired.

Wilson was deeply troubled at the bullying behavior at the peace table of his democratic allies Great Britain and France – quite in violation of his much-cherished notion that democracies will automatically behave only in the most enlightened way.  His fellow democracies instead were determined to force crushing peace terms on Germany and to confiscate the Arab lands of the Ottoman Turks – very much in violation of the equitable peace terms which Wilson had announced to lure everyone to the peace table in the first place.

Then Wilson found himself shocked as he discovered that the English and French were not interested at all in assisting him in spreading his idea of the "rights of national self-determination of people everywhere."  They were not about to do that because that would have meant having to give up their own multi-ethnic or multi-national empires.

Also, to Wilson's great distress, things were not doing well in Russia – because not blissful democratic peace but instead a violent civil war had accompanied Russia's move to democracy.  And this civil war had Russia's democrats lined up on the same side with the old Russian autocrats (the Whites) in a ferocious battle against Marxist-Leninist Communist insurrectionists (the Reds).

On the other hand, Wilson was able to get his allies at least to accept the fourteenth and final point of his Fourteen Points: the idea of a world assembly (the League of Nations) where he hoped cooler heads could eventually come together once the fever of war had subsided and then reasonably right the wrongs of the abominable peace treaties foisted by the democracies on their defeated enemies.

But his plan was greatly foiled by his own United States Senate's refusal to go along with his grand international project, and more importantly, by his own personal intransigence.  The extensive commitment required of membership in the League alarmed American senators when Wilson's League of Nations idea was put before them as a treaty requiring senatorial ratification.  Senators demanded some compromises that permitted Congress to still control American foreign policy, in particular the Constitutional rule that Congress must be the one, not an international organization, to take America to war.  The Senate (whose approval was necessary for all treaties to be fully ratified) was willing to cooperate with this new international government, but with a few key reservations.

Wilson's advisors begged Wilson to accept some compromise with Congress concerning these quite reasonable demands.  But Wilson was an autocratic purist for whom compromise was an ugly and inadmissible concept.  He would have the treaty bringing America into membership in his new international organization only on his terms, and no other.  Thus the venture came to nothing in the United States when in late 1919 the Senate failed by only a few votes to ratify the treaty – even while most of the rest of the world went ahead with Wilson's project and joined the League of Nations.  Irony of ironies, America was the only nation of note not to join.

Not only was treaty ratification crippled by Wilson's intransigence, but so was his health, when during a tour of the country to gain support for ratification of the Versailles Treaty (and thus entrance into the League of Nations) Wilson suffered a crippling stroke.  The seriousness of his disability was kept from the American public, who remained unaware during his last two years in office of how feeble Wilson had become (his more ambitious wife basically took care of what little presidential business there was during this time period.)

The German sense of betrayal.  The betrayal of Wilson's promise of an equitable peace, to which the Germans thought they were agreeing when they laid down their arms, would become the source of German ideological opportunity for Hitler and his Nazis.  They skillfully exploited this sense of betrayal (Dolchstoss or Stab in the Back) by the weak new German Weimar Republic, which had agreed to the grand humiliation forced on Germany at Versailles by the so-called democracies. The Nazis played the Dolchstoss idea so effectively that they were eventually able to overthrow the Republic and institute a Neuordnung (New Order) in Germany, one built on German tribal power – not on democratic virtues such as Wilson had believed would soon save the world.  They sneered at the weakness of all such democracies and readied themselves to demonstrate exactly what the Neuordnung was to mean to the rest of the world.  In short, the peace of 1919 merely set the scene for a return engagement twenty years later of a new round of war: World War Two.

Czechoslovakia.  In those peace treaties, the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires had large slices of land taken away from them, to be awarded to the newly reconstituted Poland and the newly invented Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The latter, Czechoslovakia, was founded on an uncomfortable union between the Westward-oriented Czechs or Bohemians and the Eastward-oriented Slovaks – and contained a huge number of Germans along the Czech borders with Germany (Sudetenland).

Poland.  Poland was restored (after having disappeared previously for a century) out of the territorial loss of Russia, Germany and Austria – with no tradition of democracy to guide it into the new era of "Polish democracy."  This reconstituted Poland also contained vast numbers of ethnic Germans – which would make for a very uncomfortable situation facing the new Polish Government, leaving Poland as a vulnerable target should its neighbors recover strength enough to grab back their lost territory (which they would do in 1939 – starting another World War in Europe).

Austria-Hungary.  Austria-Hungary was split into two separate nations, losing a lot of territory in the process, and like Germany acquiring democratic governments in order to make them members in good standing of the new democratic world.

Yugoslavia.  The Serbs, who had been allies of the Big Four, were awarded the central or commanding position in the newly constituted nation of Yugoslavia (South Slavia) – also an uncomfortable union among Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Bosnians, Albanians and Macedonians.

Romania.  A large section of Hungary was awarded to another ally, Romania, a recently independent nation split off in 1877 from the Ottoman Turkish Empire; this too would make for a very uncomfortable Romanian union between ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Romanians.

Bulgaria.  Bulgaria, an Ottoman province until it achieved full independence in 1908, had been an ally of Germany and Austria and thus suffered accordingly with the loss of territory along the strategically vital coast of the Aegean Sea awarded to its newly formed or reformed democratic neighbors.

The Turks.  The autocracy to suffer undoubtedly the largest territorial and thus political loss was the Turkish Ottoman Empire.  This empire had its vast (but quite loose) Middle East Muslim holdings carved up into a number of newly independent nations – leaving the ethnic Turks themselves only a small remnant of an independent state in the center of Asia Minor.

Expansion of the English and French empires.  The English and French took for themselves big slices of the Ottoman Empire, awarding themselves control over the newly formed Arab states under the Mandate system.  The idea of the Mandate system was that these new Arab states were not ready for self-rule – and thus though independent, were to be carefully supervised by the holders of these mandates: Britain and France.  Thus it was that Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine, and Transjordan were put under the "protection" of the British, and Syria and Lebanon were placed under the French.

The Arabs.  These new states had some ancient historical claim to political existence, though hardly as true nations.  Although mostly Arab in culture, these former provinces of the Ottoman Empire were made up of a mix of various contending Muslim sub-communities and even a mix of ancient Christian communities.  They had lived side by side in some degree of peace under the enforcement of the Ottoman Turks.  But with the Turkish authority removed these new states were forced to try to find a spirit of national unity on their own – a virtually impossible task.  Western imposed democracy instead offered these many sub-communities the opportunity to revive ancient and bitter ethnic rivalries – which only strong-handed monarchies (backed by British or French power) seemed able to bring forcefully to some semblance of national peace.  Indeed as democracies, these new states were pure fictions.

Germany's loss of its colonies.  Germany suffered the loss of its African colonies (Great Britain and France held on to theirs for another forty years), these too being turned over to the English, the French and their Belgian and South African allies – also as "mandates." German colonies in the Pacific were awarded to Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand – and even Japan as mandates.

Italy.  Italy, for its pitiful contribution to the winning of the Great War for democracy, was awarded German-speaking Austrian lands on the southern side of the Alps (South Tyrol).

Russia ... lost in its own civil war.  Russia, meanwhile, was plunged into a long and bloody civil war (1918– 1923) between Lenin's Communist Reds and the coalition of Kerensky's and the Tsarists' Whites.  Ultimately, more soldiers and civilians died from this civil war than had died during their participation in the Great War.

In the end it was Lenin's Communists and the Red Army that won the day in Russia.  But interestingly, in finally achieving some degree of control, Lenin backed away from some of his original ideas about moving directly to a Communist economy and society.  Instead, with the new Russian or Soviet economy in shambles, Lenin introduced (1921) his New Economic Policy (NEP) allowing small-scale farming and light industry to operate on a moneyed or capitalist basis, which indeed soon brought some stability back to the Russian economy.

In general, the victorious democracies – America, Britain, France and Italy – were badly stung by the death and destruction that had ultimately produced no real progress in world civilization.  Consequently, the democracies suffered a deep drop in moral nerve after the war.  The aggressive instinct that marked the West's presence in the larger world before the war was largely lost, replaced among a number of the West's political leaders by a tired, timid spirit – a spirit which hoped that future conflicts could be avoided by a new attitude of mutual appeasement.