Lunch with President Wilson

How Woodrow Wilson failed to end the First World War in 1916.

By: Michael Bennett

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

On the 1st of September 1916, the German Ambassador in Washington, Count Johann von Bernstorff, delivered an extraordinary message to President Woodrow Wilson's advisor, Edward House: Berlin wanted to bring the war to an end and requested that the President issue a call for mediation.

There is nothing in Wilson’s two presidential terms that approaches the significance of the period between the delivery of that request and the decision to break off diplomatic relations with Germany, on the 1st of February 1917, during which time the opportunity for a negotiated settlement was allowed to slip away and the United States‘ intervention, in a war that Wilson had been determined to avoid, became inevitable.

Time and again the narrative leads away from consideration of the political reality facing those in Berlin, London and Washington who sought a negotiated settlement and back to Wilson's personality and dysfunctional relationship with House. This is the story of those five crucial month, at the heart of which lies, not a failure of intellect but of character, told through two fictional interviews with Wilson set in 1922.