Since the late eighteenth century, Poland had been divided between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Its location in the borderlands of these three empires meant that much fighting during World War I occurred there. Both sides promised the Poles greater autonomy, and the allegiances of the Polish people were split. In 1916 the German and Austrian empires announced the creation of the Kingdom of Poland, a client state. In 1918, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk assigned all Polish territory formerly belonging to Russia to the Central Powers. Also in 1918, Woodrow Wilson elucidated America's war aims in his "Fourteen Points" speech, the thirteenth of which was that Poland was to be given its independence. In the fall of 1918, as Germany and Austria began to fall apart, Poland began to assert its independence. Poland's independence was confirmemd by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and it managed to hold on to its territory and acquire new territory in a war with Russia from 1919 to 1921.