Did Woodrow Wilson Have the Flu in Paris?

A Determined Looking Woodrow Wilson in London En Route to  Paris

By James Patton

On the night of  3 April 1919, President Woodrow Wilson began to cough. His condition quickly worsened to the point that his personal doctor, Rear Admiral Cary Grayson NC (1878–1938), thought that Wilson might have been poisoned. Grayson later described the long night spent at Wilson’s bedside as “one of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious.”

However, Wilson wasn’t poisoned; it is widely speculated that he was laid low with the “Spanish Flu” that killed about 20 million people worldwide, although the third wave of the pandemic had peaked in France two months previously. Whether influenza or not,  Wilson was left bedridden in the middle of the most important negotiations of his life, the Paris Peace Conference to end World War I.

In  January 1919  Wilson came to the Paris negotiations determined to accomplish his visionary Fourteen Points initiative, including open and transparent diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free economic exchange, disarmament, fair adjustment of colonial claims, recognition of self-determination for all Europeans and, above all, his Point XIV,  the creation of a “general association of nations”—later called  the League of Nations—to obviate future wars.

An Enthusiastic Wilson Is Greeted in Paris, 13 December 1918

Parts of Wilson’s  vision were quashed by France and the UK, who controlled the agenda. The German  colonies and vast portions of Ottoman territory were divvied up without any regard for the interests of their residents. Parts of Germany and much of the Austro- Hungarian dual monarchy were given away, even though some of these lands contained significant German or Hungarian-speaking populations. Wilson’s only success at "self-determination" was the creation of two new Slavic confederations, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both of which turned out to be bad ideas. 

The French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), openly clashed with Wilson over the economic punishment of the Germans. Clemenceau demanded billions in reparations for the loss of French lives and the massive destruction of French property, but Wilson wanted to spare the German people further suffering. He refused to assert any reparation claim on behalf of the U.S. Rather than making Germany too weak to be a threat, he wanted to focus on preventing future war by disarmament and the empowerment of his League.

At the time that Wilson fell ill, the Paris negotiations were deadlocked. No progress was made while he was bedridden for five days at the Hôtel du Prince Murat. He reportedly had a 103-degree fever and racking coughs, but Dr. Grayson told the world that it was nothing more than a bad cold.

The 1918 Spanish flu was notorious for aggressively attacking the respiratory system, often progressing to pneumonia, causing the lungs to fill with fluid, thus killing the patient quickly. Clearly, Wilson’s case didn’t progress that far. But some of those who seemed to survive the infection experienced resultant neurological symptoms.

These flu victims displayed “post-influenzal manifestations”—psychotic delusions and visions that may have resulted from damage to the nervous system, says John Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

“The most comprehensive study of the 1918 pandemic noted how common neurological disorders were,” says Barry. “They were second only to the lung. This included psychosis, which was usually temporary.”

A Sullen, Almost Angry Looking President Wilson at a Post-Illness
Meeting of the "Big Four," 27 May 1919

From several sources, evidence suggests that Wilson suffered from these effects both during and after his illness.

• “He became paranoid,” says Barry. “Wilson thought the French had spies all around him. He was bizarrely obsessed with his furniture and his automobiles, and pretty much everyone around him noted it.”

• The White House Chief Usher, Irwin “Ike” Hoover (1871–1933), wrote later that “something queer was happening in [the president’s] mind” and that “[o]ne thing is certain: he was never the same after this little spell of sickness.”

• The British prime minister, David Lloyd George (1863–1945) came to visit Wilson during his recuperation and described Wilson’s behavior as a “nervous and spiritual breakdown” under the pressure of the heated disagreements.

Although instances of “the psychoses of influenza” had been reported by physicians as early as the Russian flu outbreak of 1889, there was no prescribed treatment, and the symptoms were thought to resolve with time. One hypothesis is that this neurological disorder, apparently experienced by Wilson, was due to mild encephalitis, a known side effect of the flu.

When Wilson resumed attending the Conference, his approach scarcely resembled that of  the man who had fought so long and hard for his principles. The illness seemed to have weakened both his body and his mind, and he simply didn’t have the stamina or the will to stand his ground.

“The impact was pretty dramatic in my view,” says Barry. “Wilson had been adamant, insisting on the ‘Fourteen Points,’ ‘self-determination’, and ‘peace without victory.’ Clemenceau had even accused him of being ‘pro-German.’” All of a sudden, Wilson caved in on everything still in contention except for Point XIV (the League of Nations), and Barry claims that Wilson only got that because Clemenceau let him have it. 

Wilson and Lloyd George on the Day of the Treaty's Signing
Note the President's Emaciated Look and Forced Smile

For many on Wilson’s negotiation team, the Treaty of Versailles that was signed on 28 June 1919 was a betrayal of everything  he had stood for.

William Bullitt (1891–1967), an Assistant Secretary of State and a loyal Wilson attaché at the Paris negotiations, immediately proffered his resignation:

I was one of the millions who trusted confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed that you would take nothing less than ‘a permanent peace’ based on ‘unselfish and unbiased justice,’” wrote Bullitt. “But our government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, dismemberments—a new century of war.

Bullitt’s long career at State wasn’t over, though; he became the first U.S ambassador to the Soviet Union (1933–36)  and later the ambassador to France (1936–40).

Bullitt’s assessment was tragically prescient. Historians agree that one of the chief causes of the rise of the Nazis in Germany was the national diminution and economic desperation inflicted on the German people by the treaty. 

Did Wilson’s illness play a significant and disruptive role in the peace negotiations? Barry said it certainly had an impact.

“You can’t absolutely prove that he wouldn't have caved in on everything anyway, but if you know anything about Wilson, there’s nothing in his behavior that suggests he was a compromiser on issues like that,” says Barry. “Quite the reverse. He had been insistent that it was ‘his way or the highway’ on pretty much everything.”

Returning to the United States, things only got worse for Wilson. First, the Senate rejected American membership in the League of Nations, and then he suffered a debilitating stroke from which he never fully recovered. Dr. Grayson stayed with Wilson until the end in 1921, and in 1926 he was awarded a Navy Cross for his service as Wilson’s doctor (the Navy Cross wasn’t exclusively awarded for valor until 1942). 

Did Wilson have “post-influenzal manifestations”? Did he even have the Spanish flu? Barry thinks so. 

Sources:

Barry, John. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. Viking Press, New York, NY: 2004. Also available as an audiobook.

National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine