WEBINAR: "The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917" with Philip Zelikow, 3/29 1pm ET

Pieter Biersteker Discussion

RSVP and streaming information: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/road-less-traveled-secret-battle-end-great-war-1916-1917

For more than five months, from August 1916 to the end of January 1917, leaders from the United States, Britain, and Germany held secret peace negotiations in an attempt to end the Great War. They did so far out of public sight—one reason why their effort, which came astonishingly close to ending the war and saving millions of lives, is little understood today. In The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917, historian and former diplomat Philip Zelikow brings this story into the light, complicating our understanding of the war and the nature of the peace that did eventually follow. Join Dr. Zelikow and moderator Trygve Throntveit as they discuss this lost opportunity and its implications, with particular emphasis on President Woodrow Wilson’s role in creating it as well as his failure to ensure its realization.  

Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, both at the University of Virginia. A former career diplomat, he was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. He worked on international policy in each of the five administrations from Reagan through Obama. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Consistent with its mission as a national memorial to the 28th U.S. president, the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program is launching “Woodrow Wilson - Then and Now," a new series of scholarly conversations exploring the significant and complicated legacies of the man and his presidency for our own day. Moderated by Trygve Throntveit, Global Fellow for History and Public Policy, the series will be a platform for an inclusive and critical discussion of Wilson’s biography, his White House tenure and his longterm impact on US foreign and domestic politics.