War Without End 4: The Vindictive Struggle

Herbert Hoover realised that vindictive human nature played into the hands of his Secret Elite masters in Europe [1] but dared not cross the line of open criticism. To assure his  backers that matters in Germany were critical, he requested a detailed breakdown of food production and health statistics from the Ebert government in Berlin. As head of the Belgian Relief Fund, he had previously had reason to doubt the veracity of official German statements. Indeed he had frequently used them to his own advantage. Who better than Hoover could manipulate exaggerated crises to force governments to rush to action which suited his intentions? Who better to frame stories for the press so that funds flowed into his so-called relief administration? The narrative of his behaviour in Belgium has already been covered by previous blogs. [2] Sufficient to relate here that Herbert Hoover understood how to manipulate governments, but he had to be certain of the facts when dealing with the agents of the Secret Elite in Britain; men whose agenda was at that time, at odds with Woodrow Wilson. Consequently, in December 1918, Hoover sent his own experienced officials to check the impact of the strict blockade on the German public. According to their findings, which were subsequently relayed to Washington, the truth was appalling. Absolutely shocking.

Vernon Kellogg [3] reported that whereas Germany’s grain production in 1913-1914 was 30,200,000 tons, in 1917-18 it had fallen to 16,600,000 tons. Bread rationing had been cut to less than 1,800 calories per day; meat and fats had fallen from 3,300,000 tons to less than 1,000,000. The health statistics described a nation in crisis. The birth rate in Berlin had decreased from 6.1 per thousand of the population to less than 1.0, while the death rate had risen from 13.5 per thousand to 19.6. Child mortality had increased by 30 per cent, whereas in Britain it actually decreased, [4] and in adults over 70 the rise was 33 per cent. One third of all children suffered from malnutrition, crime was rampant, demoralised soldiers were reported to be plundering farms, industry was virtually at a standstill and unemployment was enormous. [5] Kellogg’s report stated that starvation had beset the lower-income groups in the major cities; that there were 800 deaths each day from starvation or disease caused by starvation. Food shortage was reportedly worse than before the armistice had been signed. Hoover concluded that the continuation of the food blockade was a crime against women and children and a blot on Western civilisation. It suited him to do so. How ironic, given that Britain and the Allies had apparently gone to war to save civilisation.

Hoover’s conclusion may appear to demonstrate his supposed humanitarian instincts, but records from the United States [6] exemplify his grossly unlikeable qualities, his dishonesty, his conceit and, as in Belgium, his preoccupation with money. Hoover wanted overall control in his business dealings and spent November and December 1918 corresponding with President Wilson, his minder, Colonel Edward Mandell House and secretary of state Robert Lansing on that very issue. The British were particularly sensitive to any move which allowed America to take the lead in bringing relief to the civilian population in Europe, [7] and Hoover was frustrated in his bid to be the sole arbiter for food supply. He penned a memo for the President, which Wilson sent to the Supreme War Council, advocating that a Director General of Relief be created [8] to purchase and sell food to ‘enemy populations’. On one point Wilson was insistent. Given the political necessity of American control of American resources, the Director General had to be an American. [9] He had but one American in mind.

Herbert Hoover had alerted Washington to the need for a source of working capital and temporary advances to start initial purchases in Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Yugoslavia and Bohemia. He desperately wanted to get his hands on cash. On 1 December, Hoover telegrammed Wilson from Paris suggesting that $5,000,000 of working capital could be sourced from Wilson’s Presidential Fund and ‘I could later supplement this by dividends to you from the Sugar Equalisation Board and might avoid appropriations and consequent discussions [in Congress] altogether’. He wanted to operate a secret slush fund. Hoover’s impertinence was underlined by a final request: ‘would it be possible to settle this before your departure [to Europe]?’ [10] In response, the president, ‘very much regretted that the terms of appropriation for National Security and Defence would not justify’ such action. [11] Incredible. Hoover presumed himself so secure in his appointment that he could suggest a secret and financially inappropriate action to the President of the United States, who, in turn, merely regretted that he could not break the rules. Which was the master and which the servant?

On December 10, 1918 a Conference on European Relief was held in London. Hoover led the U.S. delegation. He spelled out the American position in a manner which brooked no dissent. Given that the world food surplus was predicated on the American peoples’ voluntary acceptance of continued rationing, they would not countenance either price control or the distribution of American foodstuffs organised by anyone other than their own government. He warned that any attempt by Allied buying agencies to interfere with direct trading between the United States and neutral governments would bring an end to co-operation. He proposed to construct a system similar to that which had been devised for Belgian Relief with separate departments for purchase, transportation, finance, statistics and other aid. [12]

What remains unacceptable is the fact that the world in general was starved of the truth about conditions in Germany. The map above which was printed by the US Food Administration in December 1918, specifically for American children, refused to identify the real food crisis in Germany. [13] Hoover and the American government knew the facts of the matter, as did the Secret Elite in London, but with a General Election pending in Britain, and Germany by no means yet crushed, the situation there was deemed ‘unclassified’. How convenient.

Behind the apparent Allied unity, old suspicions, jealousies and fears bristled with self-interest. Comrades in arms found themselves following subtly different agendas as politicians in Britain, France and the United States sought to assert their primacy on the world stage. [14] Wilson’s Fourteen Points, like the fabled siren, had attracted the Germans to the belief that the final settlement of the disastrous war would be based on the concept of a better, fairer world. What naivety. The British, French and Italian representatives, appointed to translate the armistice into a peace settlement, were preoccupied with selfish and vindictive priorities, with imperial designs which would enfeeble their once dangerous foe with revenge-laden economic burdens and financial ruin.[15]

Nor had they accepted Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Britain would never accept the second point on ‘Freedom of the Seas’. This was an outright denial of the Royal Navy’s God-given right to stop and board ships anywhere in the world. Point three called for the removal of trade barriers, an idea which would have ruined the imperial preference championed by many in Lloyd George’s coalition government. In addition, no less than seven of the Fourteen Points dealt with ‘self-determination’ and ‘autonomous development’ which flew in the face of the carve-up which was about to unfold at Versailles. Did Wilson imagine that his European allies would stand aside and deny themselves the spoils of war which they considered theirs by right of victory?

The French, on whose land the most ferocious battles had been fought, focused on redrawing the boundaries of Germany without regard to nationality or historic allegiance. So much for the fabled Fourteen Points. They were also fixated on reparations, financial compensation for the physical damage which had ruined more than a quarter of France’s productive capacity and 40,000 square miles of devastated cities, towns, villages and farmland. [16] It was presented as justified payback, even though it was the Allies who had forced Germany into war. Time and again, the French minister of finance, Louis-Lucien Klotz, refused to contemplate an end to the blockade until the money, credits and gold which remained inside the German treasury were handed over to the Allies. They would not allow the Germans to spend their money on food. Klotz repeatedly justified his stance by asking why Germany should be allowed to use her gold and assets to pay for food in preference to other debts. [17] Keynes described Klotz in particularly cruel terms as ‘a short, plump, heavy-moustached Jew … with unsteady roving eye … who tried to hold up food shipments to a starving Germany’. [18] He was the butt of many a deprecating joke. Woodrow Wilson wrote of ‘Klotz on the brain’. [19] For as long as it suited, the Secret Elite cast France, its president Clemenceau and Klotz, the minister of finance, as villains of the piece. The impression given was that the French were to blame for starving Germany, not Britain.

The U.S. State Department knew otherwise. Even before the details of the armistice were made public, Secretary Lansing was in possession of an assessment of the Allied objectives which showed considerable prescience. The Americans anticipated that the U.S. and Britain would become ‘logical and vigorous’ competitors for the world’s colonial and Far Eastern trades [20] while France would remain comparatively dependent on American imports. They correctly forecast that the blockade would continue for an indefinite period because the Allies wanted to be in a position to limit German supplies to the minimum of self-sufficiency, and crucially, to delay for as long as possible the re-establishment of Germany’s export trade. Their assessment was that peace negotiations would also be prolonged so that the British could re-establish their domestic and foreign trade well in advance of Germany and neutral countries alike. [21] They were correct on all counts.

Here, in a nutshell, was one of the Secret Elite’s other objectives. Domination of world trade. They were prepared to buy the time for the recovery of their dislocated industries and reassert their pre-war primacy in international trade at the cost of the prolonged agony of the German people. Every move made to provide food to Europe had to wait until one committee or another granted its approval. What mattered was the agenda set by the Secret Elite and the old world order still considered itself superior to the brash, overbearing Americans whose colossal power had been demonstrated to the whole world. But change was in the air.

[1] Herbert Hoover, An American Epic 2, p. 318.
[2] Commission for Relief in Belgium, in particular, blogs posted from 18 September, 2015 to 25 November, 2015.
[3] Kellogg spent two years (1915 -1916) in Brussels as director of Hoover’s Commission for the Relief of Belgium. He was a loyal servant to Herbert Hoover.
[4] http://www.bclm.co.uk/ww1/childhood-in-ww1/49.htm
[5] Herbert Hoover, An American Epic 2, p. 320.
[6] FRUS vol. 2. Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference 1919.
[7] Ibid., pp. 636-7, House to Lansing, 27 November 1918.
[8] Ibid., House to Wilson, 28 Nov. 1918.
[9] Ibid., p.639.
[10] Ibid., Hoover to Wilson, 1 December 1918, p. 645.
[11] Ibid., Wilson to Hoover, 5 December 1918, p. 648.
[12] FRUS vol. 2. Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference 1919, pp. 649-653.
[13] Map taken from the digital ecology collection, University of Wisconsin Digital collection. see, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/07/31/history_of_famine_in_europe_after_wwi_a_hunger_map_of_europe_for_american_kids.html
[14] Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, pp. 60-61.
[15] Roy Hattersley, David Lloyd George, The Great Outsider, p. 490.
[16] Ibid., pp. 492-3.
[17] Hoover, An American Epic vol.2. pp. 323-4.
[18] J.M. Keynes, Dr. Melchior, Two Memoirs, p. 61.
[19] FRUS, vol 13, p. 205.
[20] FRUS, U.S. Department of State/Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1919, Paris Peace Conference – The Blockade and regulation of Trade, p. 729.
[21] Ibid., p. 731.

War Without End 3: Let Germany Starve

Words like hunger and starvation found no place in the vocabulary of the British press when Lloyd George decided to cut and run for re-election in December 1918. The supreme political predator wasted no time in calling a general election to offer the British people a ‘democratic’ choice between his coalition partners who had latterly run the war, and either the rump of the old Liberals led by Herbert Asquith or the emerging Labour Party under Ramsay MacDonald. After all he was the man who had won the war, was he not? Lloyd George was determined to pre-empt his loss of personal power which would inevitably be threatened by the social and economic problems attendant on demobilisation and the difficult reversion of British industry from war to peace. There was also the possibility of very awkward questions being asked about the war’s causes, prolongation and mismanagement. True to Lloyd George, this was an act of political immorality totally devoid of justice. His prime interest was himself.

Very few in Britain knew the true origins of the war or of Germany’s innocence, and bitterness towards the Germans knew no bounds. George Barnes, the Labour member of the War Cabinet shouted from a political platform, ‘I am for hanging the Kaiser’. [1] Conservative Sir Eric Geddes promised to squeeze Germany ‘until you can hear the pips squeak’. [2] The Secret Elite had always demanded that Germany be crushed. That, after all, was the raison d’etre of the war. The three week election campaign fuelled by greed, prejudice and deception ended with the prime minister declaring Britain’s absolute right to an indemnity which covered the whole cost of the war. His supporters claimed that a vote for a Coalition candidate meant the crucifixion of the new Antichrist [3] (the Kaiser’s Germany) at the ultimate behest of the real Antichrist … the Secret Elite. Do not underestimate their capacity to ensure their priorities held sway.

The General election was held on Saturday 14 December 1918 and resulted in a landslide victory for the coalition of David Lloyd George’s Liberal supporters and the Conservatives who propped up his government. There were others whose election victory in 1918 had not been anticipated by the Secret Elite. The Labour Party emerged with 57 MPs, and in Ireland, the traditional Irish Parliamentary Party was virtually wiped out by the Sinn Féin Republicans.

Ironically, Sinn Féin had no connection with the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, but the consequent executions, murders and imprisonment of Republican Irishmen changed the political landscape. In treating Ireland with contempt, linking the long promised Home Rule Act to conscription to the British Army, and repeatedly delaying the political change which the vast majority in the south of Ireland sought, a ‘great disillusionment’, as the Irish historian Dr. Pat Walsh termed it, set in. Sinn Féin won 73 seats but every elected member refused to take their place in Westminster. The ‘civilisation’ and ‘self-determination’ for which thousands of Irishmen died in the war, remained an illusion whose realisation the Secret Elite resisted. When the votes across Britain were counted, Lloyd George reigned supreme, and Germany was to be starved.

Lack of food was indeed the weapon of war which had ultimately brought Germany to her knees. The naval blockade, which had latterly been applied with ruthless efficiency, destroyed any prospect of a dignified recovery. But Britain could hardly provide sufficient food for her own people in 1918. All Europe faced a range of hardships from bare sufficiency to utter desperation. The controller-general was America; American surpluses; American largesse. The old world powers were wounded, but not yet prepared to give way to the new power across the Atlantic. They were hyper-sensitive to, as they saw it, the American presumption that they could dictate Europe’s economic survival without consultation and joint decision-making. [4] But America had food and food was power.

With the authority granted to him by Congress on August 10, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had created the U.S. Food Administration. [5] He also established two subsidiaries, the U.S. Grain Corporation and the U.S. Sugar Equalization Board. The man placed in control was the same trusted agent whom the Secret Elite had charged with running the Belgian Relief scandal. [6] Herbert Hoover lobbied for, and was given, the job of head of the U.S. Food Administration. His candidature was backed by the bankers and financiers, the J.P. Morgan Empire and the British political elite who had facilitated the sham Belgian Relief organisation in order to feed the German army. According to the Congressional Archives, Hoover made it clear that a single, authoritative administrator should head the organisation, not a board of directors. Just as in Belgium, he demanded and was given full control.

As head of the U.S. Food Administration, Hoover became the food dictator. [7] The presidential powers which Wilson had been given by Congress to regulate the distribution, export, import, purchase, and storage of food were vested in Herbert Hoover. He oversaw federal corporations and national trade associations; he demanded the cooperation of local buyers and sellers. He called for patriotism and sacrifices across every state that would increase production and decrease food consumption. Above all he controlled the prices, the supply, and for as long as he could, tried to moderate the demand for food in America. Hoover was, de facto, chief-executive of the world’s first multi-national food corporation.

Herbert Hoover was an astute communicator, able to call on his many friends and colleagues in the American press. Under his direction, the Food Administration, in league with the Council of Defence in the United States, urged all homeowners to sign pledge cards that testified to their efforts to conserve food. Coercion plus voluntary self-discipline produced results. By 1918 the United States was exporting three times as much breadstuff, meat, and sugar as it had prior to the war. And Herbert Hoover controlled it all.

Before he left America to take charge of the food programme in war-strewn Europe, Hoover announced to the press that the watertight blockade had to be abandoned and Germany stabilised, otherwise he reckoned that there would be no-one left with whom to make peace. He ended with the warning; ‘Famine is the mother of Anarchy.’ [8] Arriving in London on November 21, 1918 to supervise and control the food provision in Europe, Hoover was given instructions from his British counter-part, Sir John Beale. As director of the Midland Bank, with wide political, financial and manufacturing connections, Beale had been put in charge of Britain’s Food Ministry. [9] Hoover’s version of events claimed: ‘Sir John Beale of the British Food Ministry called on me the day after I arrived and urged that I did not discuss the food blockade on Germany publicly any more as they were opposed to relaxing it “until” the Germans learn a few things.’ [10] Hoover may have thought he would be in charge, but the agents of the Secret Elite asserted their authority. The food blockade would continue until Germany had been suitably punished. The chosen instrument of ‘correction’ was starvation. That would crush Germany. Starvation.

Having conjured the monster they called ‘the Hun’, falsely blamed its leaders for causing the war, sacrificed an entire generation for an absurd lie, accrued vast debts to enrich themselves and continued to embellish their own propaganda into received history, sympathy for a starving people was not part of the Secret Elite agenda. Old friends played their part.

Arthur Winnington-Ingram, the war-mongering Bishop of London, reminded his congregation at Westminster Abbey on December 1, 1918 that it was essential that the Germans be punished. He invoked the propaganda surrounding Edith Cavell’s execution, [11] the tragic memory of the 10,000 gallant men of the merchant marine lost at sea, of hospital ships sunk, of women and children drowned and prisoners of war who had survived in half-starving conditions. His message was far from subtle. Punishment, he ranted, was warranted ‘for the greatest crime committed for a 1,000 years’. Indeed. His bitter logic warned that should the German culprits be let off, the moral standard of the world would sink. In triumphant conclusion the good Bishop pronounced, ‘God expects us to exact punishment’. [12] His blatant, vulgar lies were unchristian, but at least consistent with the bitter sermons he had preached since the war began. [13]

And the poisonous propaganda of the war years hardened hearts and made the final act of malice much easier for the agents of the Secret Elite. After the Daily News carried a report from a Swedish correspondent in late November which showed that as many as 95 per cent of the population in some parts of Germany had been living in approximate starvation for a least two years, [14] the cry of ‘Hun-trickery’ found popular voice. [15] Take, for example, Millicent Fawcett, trade union leader, suffragette and outspoken feminist.

She made public an appeal she received from the President of German Women’s Suffrage Society imploring her to use her influence to stop the blockade ‘because millions of German women and children will starve.’ Unmoved, she dismissed the request as typical of German propaganda, blaming the shortages on German submarines whose ‘dastardly actions had never been criticised by any German, man or woman’. Fawcett quoted a claim by Herbert Hoover, ‘the American food expert’, that ‘Germany still had a large proportion of this year’s harvest available’, and consequently, there was no likelihood of starvation for any part of the population for many months to come.[16]

Such stories abounded. It was claimed that Berlin’s bread ration had been increased and ‘is better than in Holland.’ [17] The Northcliffe press railed against ‘impenitent’ Germany and in an attempt to damn the country to further deprivations, The Times correspondent in Cologne described his view of the German mentality so perfectly that he unwittingly captured the truth. According to his report the Germans believed: Germany is beaten, but so would England have been beaten if the whole world had combined against her. The German nation from the first had been fighting in self defence, otherwise it could never have held out so long. Both France and England would have given in long ago if they had such privations to bear as the Germans have endured. We firmly believe this war has been a war of aggression against us by Russia, a force to whom England joined herself seeking an opportunity to destroy a formidable rival. [18]

Pause for a second, please. This short paragraph encapsulated the central truth. Germany had been fighting for its survival in self defence; Britain had been fighting to crush ‘a formidable rival’; it had been a ‘war of aggression’ against Germany.[19] The British journalist was annoyed that he did not find ‘intelligent, influential Germans’ disillusioned or repentant. His message was unequivocal. The German spirit remained untamed. The Northcliffe press spun the lie that that the German people expected the Allies to forgive-and-forget and would ‘wipe the slate clean’ of all that happened during the war. This rival, they contended, had to be crushed by fair means or foul … and all is fair to the victors of war. Let Germany starve.

1. The Times, 2 December 1918, p. 9.
2. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 68.
3. Ibid., p. 69.
4. C Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, pp. 77-8.
5. Woodrow Wilson, Executive Order 2679-A http://www.conservativeusa.net/eo/wilson.htm
6. See Chapter 15.
7. Lawrence E Gelfand, Herbert Hoover, The Great War and its Aftermath, 1914-1923, p. 48.
8. Christian Science Monitor, November 18, 1918.
9. Kathleen Burk, War and the State, p. 139.
10. Herbert Hoover, American Epic 2, p. 319.
11. See blogs Edith Cavell 1-7, posted between 23/9/2015 and 28/10/ 2015. The myth of Edith’s innocence was routinely abused by the British propagandists.
12. The Times, 2 December 1918, p. 5.
13. Hailed by the military and the war office, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, the war-mongering Bishop of London, was a jingoists xenophobic who was influential in recruitment drives. Awarded as a Knight of the Royal Victorian Order by King George VI and the Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer (Greece) and the Order of St. Sava, 1st Class (Serbia).
14. The Daily News, 22 November 1918.
15. Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, p. 79.
16. The Times, 2 December 1918, p. 9.
17. The Times, 10 December 1918, p. 7.
18. The Times, 30 December 1918, p. 7.
19. Indeed this quotation could sit at the heart of Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War.

War Without End 2: The Deadly Armistice

It is often forgotten that Germany’s signature to the truce in 1918 was conditional. On 12 October the Kaiser’s government confirmed that it wished to enter into more detailed discussions on an armistice on the understanding that it was predicated upon a joint agreement on the practical details of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. [1] Unfortunately, the Allies had no intention of acceding to any assumptions about Wilson’s proposals as the basis for an Armistice, no matter what he said. But reality provided a worst-case scenario which the German government had never suspected. No-one realised that the construction of the final demands would be left to allied military advisors who were ordered to ensure there was no possibility of Germany’s resumption of hostilities. Indeed, the Allied commanders were ordered to resume hostilities immediately if Germany failed to concede any of their outrageous demands.

Britain and France had spurned numerous German approaches to hold peace negotiations from as early as 1915, but the Kaiser’s government believed that Woodrow Wilson was a man of honour. They knew that Europe was bankrupt; dependent on the United States for food supplies and financial support to stave off starvation and collapse. Negotiations in a crisis of mutual survival required cool heads and experienced decision-makers. They trusted the President of the United States.

Woodrow Wilson was influenced by his Secret Elite minders in America and completely out of his depth in the political potholes of a ruined continent. Sir Arthur Willert, the British diplomat, likened President Wilson’s arrival on the Parisian stage weeks after the Armistice to ‘a debutante entranced by the prospect of her first ball’. [2] A bitterly devastated Europe offered no shelter for the starry-eyed. If he was hardly a match for cultured statesmen like Clemenceau or Balfour, Wilson was positively an innocent abroad when faced with David Lloyd George. The British economist, John Maynard Keynes, labeled Wilson a ‘slow-minded incompetent’ [3] and wondered whether the terms of the Armistice to which he gave his approval were the product of deception or hypocrisy. [4] Either matched the Secret Elite’s intention to crush Germany.

Unbeknown to the German delegates, the British, French and Italian governments had agreed on specific armistice conditions which had not been previously outlined. The Fourteen Points were little more than live bait set to catch out the unsuspecting Germans. The Kaiser like the proverbial salmon tried to leap over the allied impasse and seek the sanctuary of a calmer pool. It proved a false hope. Perhaps the most important question in all that followed is why the Germans tholed the Allied rejection of Wilson’s so-called ‘terms’, though having been landed on a friendless shore, they had little option.

Lloyd George continued the blockade of Germany, and France was intent on imposing swingeing reparations upon the ‘beaten’ foe. [5] A major potential stumbling block to peace might have been Wilson’s insistence on the abdication of the Kaiser during the pre-Armistice discussions in October, but the German Emperor stood down under protest. [6] As the German delegation ‘for the conclusion of the armistice and to begin peace negotiations’ left Berlin, [7] they anticipated that tough decisions lay ahead, but nothing had prepared them for the shock of hearing the outrageous conditions read aloud to them in the presence of of the French commander, Marshal Foch.

The terms of the armistice required the Germans to evacuate the Western Front within two weeks.  That was no surprise, but Allied forces were to occupy large portions of Germany on the left bank of the Rhine within a month and a neutral zone established on the right bank. These parts of Germany were to be controlled by an American and Allied army of occupation. All German-occupied territories were to be abandoned and the treaties already negotiated with Russia and Romania, officially annulled. Under the terms of the armistice the Germans had to hand over 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machine guns and 1,700 aircraft. Its entire submarine fleet was to be confiscated and battleships and cruisers interned at Scapa Flow in Scotland. [8]

Take a moment to contemplate how much at variance these terms were from the ‘just peace’ which Lord Kitchener would have championed. Three or four days before his death, Kitchener had stated that ‘one country’s territory should not be taken away and given to another… if you take Alsace and Lorraine away from Germany and give them to France, there will be a war of revenge.’ He would also have left Germany with her colonies as a ‘safety valve’. [9] But Kitchener had been murdered. His wisdom and good counsel, silenced.

To the victors go the spoils; it has always been so, but the Germany army had not been defeated and her leaders came willingly to the peace table on the basis of Woodrow Wilson’s apparent good faith. The Secret Elite, who had caused the war, were determined to humiliate Germany; strip her bare. Within the 35 articles which comprised the armistice, one in particular drew gasps of astonishment from the German delegation. Article 26 originally stated that: ‘The existing blockade conditions set up by the Allied and Associated Powers are to remain unchanged. German merchant ships found at sea remaining liable to capture.’ [10]

At the first meeting on 8 November, the German representatives, including Matthias Erzberger, State Secretary and President of the German delegation, were stunned. [11] None had anticipated such a monstrous condition. U-Boats were returning to their bases, and the Allied fleets reigned supreme on the high seas, yet the naval blockade was to continue. The initial sham blockade had played an important role in enabling the Secret Elite’s war to continue beyond 1915 by supplying Germany. The absolute blockade imposed over the last year of the war had effectively led to Germany’s ultimate defeat. To continue that policy following the armistice was akin to deliberate genocide.

Matters were made worse through the imposition of Article 7 which demanded that Germany surrender 5,000 railway locomotives and 150,000 wagons in good working order. [12] Consider the dual impact of these ‘conditions’ for peace. Taken together they would destroy Germany’s capacity to relieve starvation in a country teetering on the edge of revolution and anarchy. How could they feed a shattered and dislocated population with hundreds of thousands of disillusioned soldiers returning from the Western Front, if they were denied food imports and had no means of transporting what little home-grown food they could still produce at home? Malnutrition had already reared the ugly spectre of disintegration in public health. It was inhumane.

The German delegates initially refused to sign the death sentence on their own people. Erzberger sent an urgent telegram to his superiors, but the reply from the new Chancellor, Friedrich Ebert, authorised its acceptance.26 Field Marshal von Hindenburg, aware as he was of the hopeless military situation, added his weight to Germany’s formal approval.

Still Matthias Erzberger protested. He asked Chancellor Ebert to seek an intervention from President Wilson to avoid the inevitable widespread famine. When the delegates reassembled in the early hours of 11 November, Erzberger continued his protest based on the argument that since the blockade had been an essential act of war, its continuation was in fact as much part of the fighting as any action on the front line. An end to the blockade would be an act of good faith by the Allies and an incentive to work together for a meaningful peace. Erzberger’s dogged determination appeared to bear fruit when an addendum to article [13] was included in the final armistice agreement. It read: ‘The Allies and the United States contemplate the provisioning of Germany during the armistice as shall be found necessary’. [14] In Lloyd George’s memoirs, the British prime minister altered the wording of the last-minute modification to read: ‘The Allies will endeavour to assist, as far as possible with supplies of food.’ [15] As a sound-bite it was kinder than the word ‘contemplate,’ but in reality it changed nothing. That was the word on which a nation’s future hung. The Allies would only contemplate supplying Germany with the bare necessities for survival. The German delegation had been given a mere four days to accept the Allied conditions for an armistice that bore no relation to the Fourteen Points. They had been royally duped.

Exhausted both physically and emotionally, Erzberger sincerely believed that the rewritten article was a serious promise.[16] Even after he was obliged to sign the armistice at 5 am on 11 November, the German State Secretary specifically warned that article 26 would result in famine and anarchy. He was right. It proved a death sentence, not just for the starving and the vulnerable. Erzberger became a target of hate in Germany.

On 26 August 1921 he was murdered in the Black Forest by two former marine officers, members of a secret right wing radical group. [17] Though we would not portray him as a martyr, Matthias Erzberger hardly deserved the disparaging comments from The Times in London which scorned his ‘pretentious conflicts with Marshal Foch … his tergiversations (change of heart) … culminating in his advice to sign the Peace Treaty.’ [18] The Northcliffe press dismissed him as ‘an opportunist’ who had initially supported the war before committing himself to surrender ‘when he saw Germany was powerless’. [19] His warnings on the consequences of famine and starvation were not mentioned.

But what followed is still rarely mentioned. At a conference in Brussels in November 2014, [20] under the banner of a ‘historic dialogue’, the German ambassador to Belgium clearly did not understand our question about the continuation of the blockade after the Armistice had been signed. Professor Gerd Krumeich (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf) had a quiet word in his ear, but added nothing to the enquiry. Worse still was the admission from Professor Laurence Van Ypersele (UCL) the Chairperson, that the history of the First World War was not included in the curriculum in Belgian schools. How better might you sweep away the inconvenience of historical fact other than sweeping it metaphorically under the classroom carpet? Truth to tell, the immediate consequences for the German people in 1918 were disastrous.

1. J.M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 27.
2. Arthur Willert, The Road to Safety: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, p. 166.
3. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace pp. 20-1.
4. Ibid., p. 29.
5. http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/armistice.htm
6. Ex-Kaiser William II, My Memoirs: 1878-1918, pp. 280–84.
7. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs Vol. 2, Appendix, pp 2044-2050.
8. Ibid., p. 2045.
9. Randolph S Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, p. 210.
10. National Archives, ADM 1/88542/290.
11. C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, p. 67.
12. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 50.
13. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 1983-4.
14. Herbert Hoover, An American Epic 2, p. 319.
15. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 1985.
16. Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, p. 70.
17. http://www.todayinhistory.de/index.php?what=thmanu&manu_id=1561&tag=26&monat=8&year=2016&dayisset=1&lang=en  The murderers fled abroad after the assassination but returned after the National Socialists granted an amnesty for all crimes committed ‘in the fight for national uprising’.
18. The Times, 27 August, 1921, p. 7.
19. The Times, 29 August, 1921, p. 9.
20. The Brussels meeting in November 2014 was entitled «Expériences et représentations de la pénurie alimentaire durant la Guerre 14-18. Allemagne-Belgique, 6 November 2014»

War Without End 1: The Illusion Of An Equitable Peace

Like magicians, Secret Elite historians created the illusion of war’s end in November 1918. It was over, that war to end all wars. Or so they would have us believe. Consequently, one hundred years later we have been successfully drawn into the myth that the First World War was fought between August 1914 and November 1918. Students are still taught that the First World War came to an end when an Armistice was signed in Marshal Foch’s railway carriage in the forest of Compiegne in Northern France on 11 November, 1918. Though the guns fell silent at 11 a.m. that day, and the historical strap-line that the First World War raged between 1914-1918 remains carved in stone, war against Germany continued well beyond that date. The brutal war to destroy her absolutely had been deliberately started in 1914 and unnecessarily prolonged beyond 1915 by the hidden powers in Britain backed by their American allies. Consequently, they had no moral qualms about continuing the disintegration of German society after the armistice had been signed. The instrument through which they acted was, ironically, the continuation of the tightly controlled blockade on German imports of food and other supplies essential to the civilian population. The very act that would have ended the war in 1915 was ruthlessly applied after the armistice had been signed and caused widespread starvation and death in Germany and Austria throughout 1919 and beyond. It might be some consolation if the establishment’s denial of this historical fact embraced a sense of guilt or embarrassment which clashed with the myth that the Allies continued the war to save civilisation. Not so. Such sentiments never found sway with Imperial Britain’s ruling class. Their tactic is not to apologise, but to ignore.

In Britain, 11 November 1918 is still celebrated as if it brought closure to the horrors of world war. The theatre of commemoration has marked the Armistice for its annual service of remembrance for those sacrificed in the First World War. In the summer of 1919, Prime Minister, Lloyd George, gave Sir Edwin Lutyens, who was already working with the Imperial War Graves Commission, two weeks to design a temporary memorial to serve as a ‘saluting base’ for the Peace Day Parade in London on 19 July. Lutyens’ simple design of an empty coffin on a high column surmounted by a laurel wreath was constructed in timber and plaster. But ordinary people grasped the appropriateness of the monument and on that day its base was covered in flowers brought by the mourning general public. For weeks after, there were enormous queues waiting to place their wreaths alongside all of the others, in salute to the men whose lives had been forfeited and would never come home. [1]

If the people grasped the appropriateness, politicians like Lloyd George grasped the opportunity to focus public attention on a memorial and deflect scrutiny from the truth about the war. On 11^th November 1920, King George V unveiled a permanent  stone memorial in Whitehall. Lutyens called it a “Cenotaph”, which broadly translated from ancient Greek as an “empty tomb”, built at the centre of government administration to honour those buried elsewhere. It was a masterstroke of lasting propaganda.

Remembrance Day services continue to be observed annually at war memorials in every village, town and city in Britain on the Sunday closest to that date. Remembrance is more than important. It is vital. But we must clarify what should be remembered. The great lie of November 11 is matched by the lies on those war memorials that Britain and her Empire fought in a bitter struggle to save the world from evil Germans; by the lies that millions of young men willingly laid down their lives or were horribly maimed for the greater ‘Glory of God’ and to secure and protect ‘freedom’ and ‘civilisation’. In reality, they were sacrificed; they were the unwitting victims who died for the benefit of the bankers and financiers, the secret cabals and power-mongers on both sides of the Atlantic. Remembrance is sullied by the triumphant militarism which attends these services led still by royalty, religious leaders and the political class. The subliminal message mocks Wilfred Owen’s anti-war poem, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. [2] The great lie is perpetuated; violence is seen as a means of resolving disputes while the horrors, realities and true causes of war remain buried deep.

Be assured, no matter the hypocrisy that surrounds Remembrance Day, war did not end with the Armistice. That is merely one of the many lies about WW1 which are still peddled as fact. Though fighting on the Western Front came to a standstill, the assault on German men, women and children continued unabated. Indeed, it became ever more extreme through a ruthless and cynical continuation of the blockade on all food supplies to Germany.

Hostilities on the Eastern Front between Germany and Bolshevik Russia had terminated unofficially in October 1917, and officially in March 1918 with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By the latter months of 1918, the Allies had made some gains but the underlying stalemate on the Western Front continued its weary, debilitating waste. The Imperial War Cabinet in London, [3] critical of the recent performance of senior British commanders like General Haig, was still planning advances in 1919 and 1920. [4] They saw no immediate end to the struggle. Some thought a seven year war possible, but Germany had no reserves with which to continue. In the light of a growing number of exhausted and disgruntled troops and the fear of revolution in Germany, perhaps even the spread of Bolshevism, the Kaiser instructed Field Marshal Von Hindenburg to withdraw to a defensible line between Antwerp and the river Meuse. [5] Indeed, being fully aware of Woodrow Wilson’s address to Congress on 8 January 1918, [6] the German government believed that the American president would guarantee an honourable outcome. Wilson had stated: ‘It is our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandisement is gone by … What we demand in this war … is that the world be made fit and safe … for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression.’ [7]

What followed were the famous Fourteen Points by which President Wilson defined the new world into which all would be peacefully transformed. These included an end to secret treaties, the absolute freedom of navigation on the high seas, free trade and the removal of economic barriers and absolute guarantees that nations would reduce their armaments to the bare necessities of self defence. The sovereignty of small nations and subservient colonies was to be determined through a balance of rightful claims and self-determination. Sympathy and support for Russia’s political development was expressed in a plea that she be welcomed into the ‘society of free nations’ and that Russia be given every assistance in determining her own future.

Belgium merited special consideration. Her sovereignty as a free nation was to be clearly asserted and Germany had to withdraw from Belgian territory to restore confidence in justice and international law. Alsace and Lorraine, former provinces of France which had been ceded to Germany after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, were to be ‘freed’ and the invaded portions restored to France. Detailed readjustments to Italy’s borders, safeguards for the peoples of Austria-Hungary, territorial agreements for the Balkan states and the ‘Turkish portion of the Ottoman Empire’ and an independent Poland were all included in Wilson’s grand statement. Words like assurance, integrity, guarantees, autonomous development and rightful claims gave the Fourteen Points an implied sense of natural justice as did the final ambition of a ‘general association’ of nations for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike’. [8] The President appeared to have conjured a solution to the world’s problems. It was a mirage, not a miracle.

Based on the apparent altruism of Wilson’s statement to Congress nine months earlier, the recently appointed German chancellor, Prince Max von Baden sought an armistice. Baden had been selected by the Kaiser on September 30, 1918 in anticipation of agreeing an equitable peace. He had previously spoken out against the unrestricted use of submarine warfare and had a reputation for moderation, [9] which lent hope to the view that his appeal to President Wilson would carry some weight. Von Baden wrote directly to Woodrow Wilson accepting the programme set forth ‘in his message to Congress of January 8th as a basis for peace negotiations’, and requested an immediate armistice. [10]

Max von Baden’s telegraphed message was forwarded to the U.S. President on 5 October 1918, [11] as was a similar peace overture from Austria-Hungary, [12] but Wilson said he would not negotiate as long as the German army remained on foreign soil. [13] He stated that the good faith of any discussions would depend on the willingness of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) to withdraw their forces everywhere from invaded territory, though the President did not stipulate a deadline. [14] What followed was totally devoid of good faith.

1. Ellen Leslie MA GradDipCons (AA) in blog: BUILDING STOREYS, posted on Sunday 11 November 2012.
2. Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est, is the best known English anti-war poem from the First World War. It essentially attacks the old lie that it is a great and glorious thing to die for one’s country. http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
3. The Imperial War Cabinet comprised the prime ministers of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa, represented by Jan Smutts.
4. Minutes of the Imperial War Cabinet, 32B, August 16 1918, CAB 23/44A/13.
5. Ex-Kaiser William II, My Memoirs: 1878-1918, pp. 268-9.
6. President Wilson’s Message to Congress, January 8, 1918; Records of the United States Senate; Record Group 46; Records of the United States Senate; National Archives.
7. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=62&page=transcript
8. There are many sources for the exact wording. The Yale Law School site at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp can be accessed at this address.
9. http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/maxvonbaden.htm
10. Erste deutsche Note an Wilson – Friedensersuchen (The First German Note to Wilson – Request for Peace), in Erich Ludendorff, ed., Urkunden der Obersten Herresleitung über ihre Tätigkeit 1916/8 (Records of the Supreme Army Command on its Activities, 1916/18). Berlin: E.S. Mittler und Sohn, 1920, p. 535.)
11. C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, p. 61.
12. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 1934.
13. The Times, 10 October 1918, p. 7.
14. Robert Lansing to Swiss Charge d’Affaires at Washington 8 October 1918.