Then what? No Hitler, no Nazis, no WW II. Wilson's decision to enter Europe was the biggest mistake of the 20th Century.

Woodrow Wilson is remembered for leading the U.S. to victory in World War I, his Fourteen Points of Light, and for championing the League of Nations – a precursor to the United Nations. Not commonly known, however, are his antidemocratic policies and his deeply held racist beliefs.

Though no one can question the accomplishments of the 28th president of the United States, the ever present and long standing practice of glossing over any short-comings or simply blotting out ideological faults, makes our leaders super humans of sorts. The implied perfection makes untouchable, unreachable heroes out of flawed, ordinary men though they may have accomplished extraordinary things.

Woodrow Wilson attended Princeton University and served as its president for eight years followed by a stint as Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. Virginia born Wilson was the first southerner elected to the White House since the 1844 election of James Polk, and was only the second Democrat to take the White House since Reconstruction—Grover Cleveland being the other.

Wilson and the Question of Race

Wilson took his southern outlooks and feelings towards race with him to the White House. Almost upon taking office, he fired most of the African Americans who held posts within the federal government, and segregated the Navy, which until then had been desegregated. Many of the newly segregated parts of Wilson’s federal government would remain so, clear into the 1950s.

In an article that appeared in the 1999 Canadian Review of American Studies entitled “Race and the Southern Imagination: Woodrow Wilson Reconsidered”, Michael Dennis explores Wilson’s racism and gives some insight to why such feelings might not have been viewed as severe as they actually were. Dennis states that during this time in history when crowds would gather from all around “to watch Henry Smith lynched, his feet seared with a red-hot iron, the word \Justice\ emblazoned on the scaffold, his grisly demise captured in souvenir photographs, whites who promoted segregation seemed comparatively mild.”

Dennis goes on to write that due to historians’ desire of an example of a southern silent liberal, many have “held up Wilson as an example of racial enlightenment” and have even called him “benevolent towards blacks”. Given that Wilson was not an advocate of violence in dealing with what he called the “race question”, his desire to simply keep blacks and whites separate seemed almost genteel. Yet, when one looks at the terrible long term effects that Wilson’s policies had, it is anything but. When it came to his attitudes and treatment towards African Americans, Wilson was neither enlightened nor benevolent.

Wilson's Racism Eternally Endures in his Writings

Wilson’s two-volume book, “A History of the American People”, was so racially biased that D.W. Griffith quoted the sitting president’s writings in his 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” Not only did Wilson proudly stand by those words, but he also had a private showing of the movie at the White House. In the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me”, Professor James W. Loewen quotes the president’s words after seeing The Birth of a Nation, “It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so true.”

Loewen states that a new incarnation of the KKK is directly attributed to the great success of Griffith’s film. The Klan soared in popularity thanks in part to support stemming from the highest office in the land.

Woodrow Wilson took advantage of his presidency to help correct many of what he considered to be the wrongs of the Reconstruction. Wilson believed white southerners to be the only real citizens and feared what might arise from a south “ruled by an ignorant and inferior race.”

Wilson remains a controversial historical figure—with both his supporters and detractors. He is viewed a scholar and a man of peace. He is also regarded as a white supremacist. There is an abundance of historical documentation to support all aspects of his professional and personal life. Wilson’s accomplishments over his two terms as president should be praised, but his shortcomings as a person, shouldn’t be ignored. The only way to learn from history is to examine it all. Not just the pleasant parts.

Sources:

Dennis, Michael. Canadian Review of American Studies, “Race and the Southern

Imagination: Woodrow Wilson Reconsidered”1999, Vol. 29 Issue 3, p109

Freund, Charles Paul. Reason; “Dixiecrats Triumphant” Mar2003, Vol. 34 Issue 10, p16

Funk and Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia 2002

Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me.Touchtone. New York. 1995

African Americans in Politics

1836
Alexander Twilight becomes the first African American elected to public office when he wins a seat on the Vermont legislature; in 1845, William Leidesdorff becomes the second when he is named sub-consul to Yerba Buena, part of the Mexican territory that would later become San Francisco

1866
Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell become the first blacks elected to a U.S. state legislature (Massachusetts House of Representatives)

1868
John Willis Menard of Louisiana is the first African American to be elected to Congress, but Congressman James A. Garfield contests the election by claiming it is “too early to admit a Negro to the U.S. Congress”; the following year, Menard pleads his own case but is denied his elected position

1869
Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett becomes the first official African American diplomat when President Grant names him minister of Haiti

1870
Mississippi legislature elects Hiram Rhoades Revels to be the first African American U.S. Senator, filling Jefferson Davis’s unexpired term

1872
Black delegates Robert B. Elliott, Joseph H. Rainey, and John R. Lynch deliver addresses at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia

John R. Lynch wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives (R-Mississippi)

1874
Blanche K. Bruce becomes the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate (R-Mississippi) and serves as a chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate the Freeman’s Savings and Trust Company

1877
Under President Hayes, Frederick Douglass serves as the first African American U.S. Marshal of Washington, D.C.

1938
Crystal Bird Fauset becomes the first African American woman to be elected to a state legislature (Pennsylvania House of Representatives)

As for your assertion that "at the time, Conservative Republicans were actually more race tolerant" (than they are now, I assume you mean), I'd like to see some evidence of that. It is inconceivable that a Republican president — or any other president — in 1912 would appoint a black Secretary of State (sch as Condi Rice) or a black Secretary of Defense (such as Colin Powell) or a black Supreme Court Justice (such as Clarence Thomas)

Stalin feared Japan since it had been in constant conflict with it since the early 1900s. Therefore, he needed to entangle Japan in conflict with the U.S. while he settle the score with Germany. As a consequence, Stalin got his high-level agents secretly embedded in our government to work towards that end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan

http://www.conservapedia.com/Harry_Dexter_White

See "The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors," by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel.

Excerpt from FDR wikipedia:

In March 1917, after Germany initiated its submarine warfare campaign, Roosevelt asked Wilson for permission, which was denied, to fit the naval fleet out for war.[54] He became an enthusiastic advocate of the submarine and of means to combat the German submarine menace to Allied shipping: he proposed building a mine barrier across the North Sea from Norway to Scotland.[55] In 1918, he visited Britain and France to inspect American naval facilities.[56] Roosevelt wanted to provide arms to the merchant marine; knowing that a sale of arms was prohibited, he asked Wilson for approval to lease the arms to the mariners. Wilson ultimately approved this by executive order, and a precedent was set for this action in 1940.

http://rense.com/general19/flame.htm

Some think it was the onerous & unrealistic Treaty of Versailles that spawned WWII.