And now, America's number one show on pop culture and politics. This is the Michael Medved Show.

And another great day in this greatest nation on God's Green Earth, and America never look greater in comparison to the other countries on Earth, then in Christmas season of 1916.

In Europe, virtually every nation was suffering.

The French troops on the line in France in the middle of World War I

were about to mutiny.

The Germans were desperate and hungry,

suffering from the hunger blockade that the British had imposed.

Russia, already crumbling, already crumbling, and on the verge of revolution.

The Germans had largely won on the Eastern Front.

But back in the United States, peace seemed to be at hand.

Why? Well, we'll explain that and why President Wilson was so

wrong about his expectations of peace. That part of the amazing story, World War I, the Great

War or America's Greatest Mistake?

At the end of 1916, President Wilson had just won re-election.

He celebrated Christmas with his family, his daughters, and his new wife, Edith in the White House. And he also caught the Christmas spirit by sending private notes to all of the leading belligerents,

telling them that he wanted them to state their terms for peace. And he planned a new initiative for

peace. He told his confidants that war had never been further from his mind. He was more confident

than ever that peace would be at hand. And the newly reelected president, who hadn't even been inaugurated for his second term yet,

told the Senate of the United States he wanted to make a very important speech on January 22, 1917,

again, before he was even re-inoguated. He went to the Senate, and he spoke about how a lasting peace must be a peace without victory.

Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, he said, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished.

It would be accepted in humiliation under duress at an intolerable

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