The Rape Of Russia 7: Moving Towards The New World Order

Rothschild biographers record that men of influence and statesmen in almost every country of the world were in their pay, [1] and that most of the royalty of Europe was under their influence. [2] The Rothschilds as a collective dynasty in Germany, Austria, Britain, France and Italy, had amassed such wealth by the mid nineteenth century that nothing or no one was immune to the purchasing power of their coin. Though they kept tight control of their dynastic affairs through intermarriage within the family, they offered a facility for other men to pursue great political ambition and profit. Chosen men. They influenced appointments to high office, had almost daily communication with the great decision makers, [3] and through them, controlled politics from behind the curtain. The Rothschilds valued their anonymity and since they generally operated their businesses behind the scenes, their affairs have been heavily veiled in secrecy through the years. [4] Their traditional system of employing semi-autonomous agents across the world was unsurpassed, [5] but it was their power over banks, investment and finance which was truly was colossal. Their modus operandi was to rescue ailing banks or failing industrial conglomerates with large injections of cash, and thereafter use them as fronts for their own ends. Every banker identified in this chapter who undermined Czarist rule and financed and aided the Bolsheviks, can be closely linked to the Rothschilds: The Warburg and Disconto-Gesselschaft banks in Germany; Olof Aschberg and Nya Banken in Sweden, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., J.P. Morgan bank and Guaranty Trust on Wall Street, Morgan Grenfell in London. They were all complicit.

When the Warburg bank in Hamburg was about to collapse in 1857, the Rothschilds injected vast amounts of money into it. [6] From that point in time M.M. Warburg Bank and its partners operated effectively as Rothschild fronts. Their enormous financial clout enabled the bank to grow from a tiny concern with a single office and a handful of staff into one of the largest and most important banks in Germany. The Warburg brothers, who have featured heavily in every aspect of war loans and financing, acted as covert agents of Rothschild. Max, who was their leading banker in Germany, and reputedly head of the German espionage system during the war, [7] also played a major role in financing both Lenin and Trotsky and enabling the ‘sealed train’ journey across Germany. Fritz Warburg was in Stockholm during the war as coordinator of major financial transactions between Germany and the Bolsheviks, and according to British intelligence reports he also had close contact with the notorious Parvus. [8]

Paul Warburg in New York was the leading agent who fronted the drive to establish the Federal Reserve System for the Secret Elite. Paul was senior partner with Jacob Schiff in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Bank which was effectively a Rothschild front. The Schiff and Rothschild forebears had actually lived in houses in the same building they shared in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt am Main, and Jacob Schiff was yet another Rothschild agent. The American authorities clearly believed that he and his powerful banking associates were  deeply implicated in the Russian revolution.

  

A file in the U.S. State Department, ‘Bolshevism and Judaism’, dated November 13, 1918, asserted that there could be no doubt that the ‘Jewish Firm’ Kuhn, Loeb & Company and its partners ‘started and engineered’ the revolution in Russia. The report added that Max Warburg had also financed Trotsky, and that Olof Aschberg and Nya Banken were involved. [9] These were key players whose detailed involvement we have already covered in previous blogs. [10]

Jacob Schiff, who had been promoting anti-Czarist activities in Russia since the Russo-Japanese War more than a decade earlier, paid for a large proportion of the pro-Bolshevik propaganda and bribes for the workers and soldiers in the Petrograd garrison in the run up to both the February and October, 1917, revolutions. Professor Antony Sutton believed that it was a mistake to call the Bolshevik Revolution a Jewish plot because gentiles like J.P. Morgan and William Boyce Thompson were also involved, [11] but Thompson was a loyal Morgan man and J.P. Morgan and the entire Morgan Empire were very firmly connected to Rothschild influence. [12]

Writing in 1974, Professor Sutton was clearly unaware that virtually the entire international banking cabal was linked through a complex chain that led back to the Rothschilds in London and Paris. For example, Olof Aschberg and his Nya Banken in Stockholm were directly linked to the Guaranty Trust in the United States. Guaranty Trust was closely associated with the J.P. Morgan circle, and that, in turn, was covertly under the influence of the Rothschild Empire. Aschberg and Nya Banken fed money to the Bolsheviks from these banks, and from the Warburg Bank in Germany which was likewise under Rothschild control. Mainstream historians relate that ‘Germany’ financed and facilitated Lenin’s takeover in 1917, but it was not the German government, it was German banking institutions which were ultimately controlled by the Rothschild dynasty.

Jacob Schiff, the Warburgs, the Rothschilds and other predominantly Jewish international bankers, undoubtedly harboured considerable hatred for the Czarist regime in Russia because of the persecution of their co-religionists, and justifiably so, but their reasons for bringing about the Bolshevik Revolution ran much deeper than religious persuasion. This was not about love for the Bolsheviks, nor concern for the victims of Czarism or the ordinary downtrodden Russian Jews. This was about business and future plans for control of the world. However it would be simplistic to label the revolution entirely as a Jewish plot. As we have clearly shown, the Secret Elite in the person of its most influential leader, Lord Alfred Milner, was complicit in supporting the Bolshevik uprising.

Before the new world order could be created, destruction of the old order was essential. They aimed to topple the Czarist Empire and bleed it dry. At the same time their friends and co-conspirators in Britain concentrated on demolishing the old order in Europe; the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, above all, the German Empire. Theirs was not a Christian, Church of England or Jewish plot; their religion was control and what had begun in Oxford as a mightily influential group of imperialists, determined to control a world built on their values, found it necessary to expand their power base.

The Secret Elites including the New York money power promoted revolution and communism for their own ends just as they promoted political Zionism for their own ends. They were but building blocks towards their globalist dream. In the same month as the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the Balfour Declaration was signed in London. Co-incidence? A chance happening that no-one had foreseen? If you wonder why this fact has not been widely considered in history, ask yourself: who owns history? Answer: the Secret Elite; the men of immense power and wealth who have sponsored and published the versions of history of which they approve.

Louis Marshall, a leading American Zionist and legal representative of Kuhn, Loeb bank wrote in 1917 that ‘The Balfour Declaration, with its acceptance by the Powers, is an act of the highest diplomacy. It means both more and less than appears on the surface. Zionism is ‘but an incident of a far-reaching plan: it is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon.’  [13]

Professor Carroll Quigley was likewise very clear about this: ‘The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. [14]

Bolshevism and Zionism were funded and supported by the Secret Elite as they embarked on their ‘far reaching plan’, their nightmare vision of a New World Order. And times were changing as 1917 became 1918. The downfall of Imperial European Empires was no mistake. It was the end product of the wasteful and debilitating world war which, most did not realise, had just months, not years to run. For sure, it had to be prolonged until Germany was crushed, exhausted, removed from the pinnacle of world trade and influence. That had always been the bottom line for the British elite. That was why they engineered the First World War. [15]

What has been uncovered is the early development of another alliance on a completely different sphere to international diplomacy as was understood by most politicians and the general public. The switch in accumulations of wealth predicated on the world war drained the prosperity of Europe and reallocated a great deal of international financial power in Wall Street. London was by no means finished, but as providers of investment capital, the role became more evenly shared between the trans-Atlantic money-powers than ever before. The determination of the Secret Elite to create a one-world English-based order took on a transatlantic hue, an Anglo-American Establishment was finding form. Banks which may be labelled American or British or German or Belgian had common roots though they competed in the world markets. But how was that going to express itself?

How, by the end of the war, could they refocus their control of politics, the press, and the universities, the key drivers of Professor Carroll Quigley’s original thesis? To find evidence of the change in emphasis and ownership we will ultimately have to scrutinise their activities, not just in Russia, but within the background agreements which attended the Treaty of Versailles. But we are running ahead of the narrative.

1. E.C. Knuth, The Empire of the City, p. 70.
2. Griffin, Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 233.
3. Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 23-25.
4. Derek Wilson, Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty, pp. 98–9.
5. Knuth, Empire of the City, p. 68.
6. Niall Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p. 65.
7. Ron Chernow, The Warburgs, p. 12.
8. See Blog; Rape Of Russia 2: Strange Bedfellows for Socialist Revolutionaries, posted on 17/10/2012.
9. A.N. Field, All These Things, vol.1. http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/field_an/things_01.html
10. Spence, Hidden Agendas.
11. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, p. 189.
12. Ibid.
13. Louis Marshall in a letter to Max Senior, dated New York, September 26, 1917. Quoted in B. Jensen, The Palestine Plot, https://www.scribd.com/document/16563284/Jensen-The-Palestine-Plot-Quote-History-of-Zionism-1987
14. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 324.
15. See:  Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War.

The Rape Of Russia 3: Trotsky’s Secret Benefactors

When the Spanish passenger vessel Monserrat berthed in New York in January 1917, Trotsky was met on the rain-swept pier by Arthur Concors, superintendent and director of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society. Concors’s fellow board members, and luminaries of the American Jewish establishment, included its main financial backer, Jacob Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. [1] Concors acted as a translator for Trotsky during an interview that had been arranged with the New York Times. Here it was claimed that Trotsky had been expelled from Europe for preaching peace and that he was a follower of the German socialist, Karl Marx. His religious convictions were accredited by a statement that Trotsky had represented Jewish newspapers Petrograd and Kiev. [2] What has never been explained is why an impoverished ‘undesirable alien’ was welcomed to America by an official of a Jewish organisation who had close links to the highest echelons of the Zionist movement in the United States. Indeed, much has been left unexplained.

Richard Spence, professor of History at Idaho University and recognised Russian expert, briefly recounted the involvement of William Wiseman, head of British Intelligence in the U.S., in relation to Trotsky’s short stay, but unfortunately the details were sparse. Wiseman was closely linked to Woodrow Wilson’s minder, Edward Mandell House and, after the war, was rewarded with a lucrative partnership in the Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Bank on Wall Street. Jacob Schiff, has been the focus of much attention in Trotsky’s funding, but Professor Spence urged caution in connecting him with Trotsky, stating that there was ‘no demonstrable direct link’. Such ‘demonstrable’ evidence may never be found, but Professor Spence was aware that men like Schiff were adept at concealing their intrigues. Jacob Schiff was openly supportive of the Russian Revolution and in a letter published in the New York Times on 17 March, he ‘thanked the Almighty that a great and good people had been freed from their autocratic Czarist shackles’. [3] Two days later he voiced his opinion that Russia would, before long, rank financially amongst the most favoured nations in the money markets of the world. [4] Interestingly, that same issue of the New York Times reported that there had been a rise in Russian exchange transactions in London 24 hours preceding the revolution. Ah, the Rothschilds, as ever, a day ahead of the rest of the world. It was explained away as mere coincidence.

Jacob Schiff held a deep rooted hatred of Czarist Russia because of its gross and frequent ill-treatment of Jews. He had willingly financed revolutionary propaganda during the Russo-Japanese War and before and during the First World War. [5]  The Jewish Communal Register of New York City 1917-1918 stated that ‘Mr. Schiff has always used his wealth and his influence in the best interests of his people. He financed the enemies of autocratic Russia and used his influence to keep Russia from the money market of the United States’. [6] Note the reference to ‘his people’. In 1910, Schiff was one of several Americans who campaigned to revoke a commercial treaty with the Russians over their mistreatment of Russian Jews. When the Czarist regime sought him out for loans he refused, and no one else at Kuhn, Loeb was permitted to underwrite Russian requests for finance. After the Czar’s abdication, Schiff dropped his opposition to the Russian government. His views on Zionism experienced a similar volte-face. Schiff initially opposed Zionism, believing it to be a secular, nationalistic perversion of the Jewish faith and incompatible with American citizenship. He funded agricultural projects in Palestine, however, and later favoured the notion of a cultural homeland for Jews in Palestine. [7]

Schiff encouraged and financed armed revolt against the Czar. He provided financial support for Jewish self-defence groups in Russia, including Bolshevik and other socialist revolutionaries. He was set on fomenting revolution in Russia. The America author, G. Edward Griffin, pondered the question of Schiff’s involvement and unequivocally stated that Schiff ‘was one of the principle backers of the Bolshevik revolution and personally financed Trotsky’s trip from New York to Russia’. [8] Years later, Jacob Schiff’s grandson admitted that his grandfather had given about $20 million for the triumph of communism in Russia. [9]

Professor Spence agreed that Schiff ‘had a track record of financing revolutionaries’, and was ‘pro-German’. [10] This latter observation somewhat lets his thesis down. The German born Schiff was not pro-German. He and his German born Warburg partners in Kuhn, Loeb bank on Wall Street, and his good friend (and their brother) Max Warburg in Germany, together with their close Rothschild links in France and London, were not operating a nationalist agenda, whether it be German, British or American, but an internationalist agenda. And that agenda was the domination of the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. [11]

These international bankers of German-Jewish descent had little patriotic sympathy or support for Germany. They belonged to the secret cabal that deliberately caused the First World War in order to destroy Germany. The leading German financier, Max Warburg, was himself deeply implicated in that conspiracy. They were globalists, first and last, seeking control of the entire world. It is why the question of their support for political Zionism, and how that fitted into their agenda, is of critical importance when considering both the Bolshevik Revolution and the Balfour Declaration. The time-scale within which the Anglo-American global-elites power-base moved from London to New York, and the ever growing influence of political Zionism, has yet to be determined. If such issues are not to be addressed, the truth will remain buried. [12]

On 25 March, 1917, Trotsky, who had been living a very comfortable life-style with his family in New York for the previous eleven weeks, was issued with papers for his passage to Russia. The British consulate assured him that no obstacles would be placed in his way. ‘Everything was in good order’, according to Trotsky, [13] but who had the power to issue such high-level permits? The surprising answer is that it reached right to the top of government in Washington. Professor Antony Sutton revealed that ‘President Woodrow Wilson was the fairy godmother who provided Trotsky with a passport to return to Russia to carry forward the revolution’. The passport came with a Russian entry permit, a British transit visa [14] and $10,000 in cash. One first-class cabin and sixteen second class cabins were booked for Trotsky and his party of fellow revolutionaries on the S.S. Kristianiafjord, of the Norwegian-America Line. They departed New York for Oslo and the onward journey to Petrograd, but failed to anticipate trouble ahead. Everyone had. During a scheduled stop at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canadian officials removed Trotsky and his entire entourage from the ship and incarcerated them in an internment camp. The Halifax officials had not been advised of Trotsky’s mission and naturally considered the men a danger to the Allied cause. A flurry of angry telegrams eventually descended upon Nova Scotia from both sides of the Atlantic. Trotsky and the others were  released to continue their journey to Russia.

A Canadian Intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Maclean, later wrote an article entitled, Why did we let Trotsky go? How Canada lost an Opportunity to Shorten the War. According to MacLean, Trotsky was released ‘at the request of the British Embassy in Washington… acting on the request of the U.S. State Department, who were acting for someone else.’  [15] MacLean did not elaborate on who that ‘someone else’ was. The Canadian officials were instructed to inform the press that Trotsky was an American citizen travelling on an American passport, and his release was specifically requested by the state department. Clearly, Trotsky had strong support at the highest levels of power in Britain and the U.S., and orders were issued that he must be given ‘every consideration’. [16] Trotsky and his entourage were duly released and allowed to continue their journey. This is not normal procedure.

Who was that ‘someone else’ that held such power and took unprecedented steps to release Trotsky from the cells in Nova Scotia and allow him to continue his journey to Russia? Canada, as a Dominion of the British Empire, would have obediently complied with any instruction from the British foreign office, and the man in charge just happened to be Lord Arthur Balfour, member of the inner circle of the Secret Elite and the very man who would sign the Balfour Declaration on their behalf.

Trotsky claimed that Pavel Miliukoff, foreign secretary in the post-revolutionary Russian government, had initially wanted him released, but two days later ‘withdrew his request and expressed the hope that our stay in Halifax would be prolonged.’ [17] That made sense because the provisional Russian government knew that Trotsky and Lenin refused to accept their legitimacy and posed a serious threat to their government if they returned to Russian soil. Miliukoff and Alexander Kerensky were determined to keep Russia in the war; Trotsky and Lenin were equally determined to sign a peace pact with Germany and end the slaughter. The British and American authorities were fully cognisant of the fact.

In early May, Trotsky and his party arrived at Christiania (now Oslo) in Norway, and made their way by rail to Russia. On 18 May 1917, they stepped off a train at the Finland terminal in Petrograd, just as Lenin had, one month earlier. Had it not been for Trotsky’s unexpected arrest in Nova Scotia, their arrival would have been perfectly synchronised.

The Secret Elite in London and the international bankers in the United States, with the connivance of their well-controlled governments, sent back the two men whom they knew would remove Russia from the war. Matters of great significance allowed them to adopt this change in foreign policy. They were well aware that a peace agreement between Russia and Germany would eventually release upwards of a million German troops from the Eastern Front, but there was a compensatory factor. The United States had just entered the war and the loss of Russian troops was more than recompensed by the fresh faced young Americans who would be sacrificed in due course. Official reports showed that had it not been for the Russian treaty with Germany, ‘the war would have been over a year earlier’ [18] because the combined allied strength would have been overwhelming. Millions of men died needlessly or suffer terrible wounds in 1918. The Secret Elite prolonged the war, again and again. Profits multiplied.

1. Richard B. Spence, Hidden Agendas; Spies, Lies and Intrigue surrounding Trotsky’s American visit of January-April 1917.
2. New York Times, 15 January, 1917
3. New York Times, 18 March, 1917.
4. New York Times, 20 March, 1917.
5. New York Times, 24 March, 1917.
6. The Jewish Communal Register of New York City, 1917-1918, p. 1019. https://archive.org/stream/jewishcommunalr00marggoog#page/n953/mode/2up/search/money+market+of+the+
7. E. Slater and R. Slater, Great Jewish Men, pp. 274-276.
8. G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 210.
9. Cholly Knickerbocker, New York Journal American. As quoted by Griffin, p. 265.
10. Spence, Hidden Agendas.
11. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 324.
12. The Austrian philosopher, Guenter Jaschke, wrote recently to co-author Jim Macgregor, ‘How can it happen that a minority of idiots, psychopaths and madmen rule the world, while the silent majority is paralysed?
13. Trotsky, My Life, p. 279.
14. Sutton, Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution, p. 25.
15. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
16. Ibid., pp. 33-34.
17. Trotsky, My Life, p. 284.
18. Sutton, Wall Street, p. 32.

The Rape Of Russia 2: Strange Bedfellows for Socialist Revolutionaries

Isolated in Zurich, Lenin was allegedly ‘stunned’ on hearing news of the Czar’s abdication. He immediately cabled his trusted lieutenant Grigory Zinoviev, the alias of Hirsch Apfelbaum, son of a Jewish-Ukranian dairy farmer. Zinoviev joined Lenin in Zurich and helped plan their return. Desperate to seize control of the revolution from the provisional government, but isolated in central Europe, their first task was to get back to Russia. Promptly. The best option was to travel by rail to Stockholm then on to Petrograd, but Germany stood in the way. Contacts were made, options considered and a strange deal agreed with the German government. Within days, Lenin was informed that he would soon be hearing from his old associate, Helphand-Parvus. [1]

Parvus, who assisted Trotsky in his voyage to the United States, played another significant role for the Secret Elite in spiriting Lenin safely across enemy territory and into Russia. An intriguing and mysterious individual, Parvus warrants our attention. Born in Belarus in 1867, his real name was Israel Lazarevich Gelfand. When he first met Lenin in Munich in 1900 he was a brilliant young journalist and Marxist theoretician who helped by printing the early issues of Iskra. In 1905 he was imprisoned with Trotsky and sentenced to three years exile in Siberia. Parvus mentored Trotsky on the theory of Permanent Revolution before they both escaped. He made his way to Germany and changed his name from Gelfand to Helphand, but became better known simply as Parvus.

Around 1908 Parvus moved to Constantinople where he remained for five years. He was associated with the Young Turks, produced propaganda journals, set himself up as grain importer and, more importantly, an arms merchant. Parvus became extremely rich, but his years in Constantinople were shrouded in mystery. His most important contact was Basil Zaharoff, the leading armaments salesman and agent of the Rothschilds and their mighty Vickers Armaments cartel. [2] Parvus earned a fortune selling arms for Zaharoff [3] and became deeply involved in the overthrow of the Czar.

Seventeen years after first meeting Lenin, Parvus was a grossly fat, bizarre paradox. He was both a flamboyant tycoon, displaying the worst of bourgeois vulgarity, and yet had a brilliant Marxist mind. The millionaire Marxist became a cartoon caricature ‘with an enormous car, a string of blondes, thick cigars and a passion for champagne, often a whole bottle for breakfast’. [4] Parvus viewed himself as kingmaker, the power behind the throne that Lenin would occupy. The association between the millionaire and Lenin horrified many socialists and revolutionaries, but Lenin claimed that he detested Parvus. Perhaps he did, but behind closed doors, they happily colluded in the rise of the bolshevik leader.

Parvus had been warmly greeted by Lenin in Berne in 1915, where they held a private meeting. Its detail remains clouded in mystery, yet proved to be extremely important in the history of the world. Without Parvus and his organisation, through which millions of gold marks were channeled to the Bolsheviks, Lenin could never have achieved supreme power. ‘It was a strangely remote association in the sense that neither had direct contact with the other and both adamantly denied its existence…’ [5] How convenient.

Parvus had spent considerable time in Germany since the early 1900s and was considered by many, including the German authorities themselves, to be a loyal German agent. Judging by his activities from the time he moved to Constantinople in 1908, there can be little doubt that he was a double agent working for the British, or, to be more precise, the Rothschilds. Parvus was an extremely important player for them because he could operate freely in Germany and liaise with other important Rothschild agents such as Max Warburg. The fortune he made in Constantinople with Zaharoff’s help gave him access to members of the German Foreign Ministry, under- secretary, Arthur Zimmermann in particular.

Parvus suggested that the Imperial Germans and the Russian Marxists had a common interest in the destruction of the Russian autocracy, and persuaded them to provide substantial funding to topple the Czar and bring about a separate peace with the Reich. It was unquestionably an attractive proposition. The Germans obliged. They had supported the revolutionary movement since the war began by feeding money to Russia through Parvus in order to ‘create the greatest possible degree of chaos in Russia’. On one day alone, 5 April 1917, the German Treasury paid more than 5,000,000 gold marks to Parvus for political purposes in Russia. [6] Incredibly, the Allies and their German foes were playing, and paying for, the same game in Russia, but for very different reasons. The Germans thought Parvus was working to their agenda, but the Secret Elite knew he was working to theirs. While German officials believed that they were using Parvus’s network as a means of putting pressure on the Czar to plea for a peace settlement, the British, supported by Ambassador Buchanan, urged him to sabotage any move towards a separate Russian-German peace. ’The task facing Parvus was greatly facilitated by the helpless naivety of his secret contact, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, German ambassador in Copenhagen.’ [7]

The Secret Elite had decided to spirit Lenin and Trotsky into Russia as quickly as possible. This was Parvus’s masterstroke. [8] Immediately after the February Revolution he entered negotiations with the German authorities to provide a special train to transfer Lenin and his supporters safely through Germany from Switzerland. Interestingly, it was Arthur Zimmermann, by now the German Foreign Secretary, who made the initial contact by inviting Parvus to meet with him. Thereafter, Zimmermann personally supervised the arrangements. [9]

We have to question Zimmermann’s actions, both here and in later activities such as his infamous and ludicrous telegram that provided Woodrow Wilson with the perfect excuse to bring the United States into the war. Was Zimmermann, in collusion with Max Warburg and other Rothschild agents such as Zaharoff, acting in the interests of Bolshevism and Zionism rather than those of Germany? He was certainly sympathetic to the Zionist cause, protected Palestinian Jews when they were threatened by the Turkish authorities and mooted the idea of a joint Turkish-German declaration in favour of colonisation in March 1917. [10] Did he keep the Kaiser in the dark? Where did his true loyalty lie? Disagreements still rage over whether or not Zimmermann informed Wilhelm II about the arrangements for Lenin’s transfer. Author Michael Pearson claimed that the Kaiser and his Generals approved the move in advance, whereas Professor Antony Sutton maintained that they were not informed until Lenin was safely across the border into Russia. [11]

Lenin’s action could have been viewed as treason. He had, after all, accepted help from Russia’s sworn enemy who benefitted from his declared intention. On 9 April 1917, Lenin, together with Gregory Zinoviev, Karl Radek and other Bolsheviks and their wives, a party of thirty-two in total, boarded a Swiss train that took them from Berne to Zurich. On transferring to another train to carry them to the German border, they were subjected to abuse by a crowd of around 100 hostile Russians screaming “Spies” “Pigs” and “Traitors.”  [12] They then boarded a German train that was ‘sealed’ from the outside world. Over the next three days the now famous ‘sealed train’ took them via Frankfurt and Berlin to the small sea-side port of Sassnitz in North-East Germany, from where they boarded a Swedish ferry for Trelleborg. The following day they received a warm welcome on the quayside from one Jacob Furstenberg.

Furstenberg was the alias of Yakov Stanilavovich Ganetsky, an important player in Lenin’s return from exile and a key link between Parvus and Lenin in the transference of large sums of money from Germany. Furstenberg was the son of a wealthy Jewish family who owned a factory in the city, and had a range of contacts in the semi-criminal underworld. He ‘was seen even by Lenin’s close comrades as a sinister character’ [13] but considered by Lenin as a trusted friend.

Furstenberg was also Parvus’s ‘key right-hand man’, and president of a company he set up in Copenhagen during the war. The ‘company’ comprised an espionage ring and network of agents both inside and outside Russia, that sold Russian products to the Germans and vice versa. This war-profiteering comprised merchandise like chemicals, medicines, surgical instruments and much more. [14] Some of the money raised was used to finance Lenin’s propaganda from the first day of the revolution. [15] Lenin, the ‘pure socialist revolutionary’ and ‘man of the people’ was deeply involved with these despicable characters and benefited from the obscene profits made at the expense of men killed or horrendously maimed in the trenches. Furstenberg, indeed, was Lenin’s most trusted agent. [16] They formed their own personal axis of evil.

The revolutionary and the sinister war profiteer were strange bed-fellows. In theory, Furstenberg was everything that the Bolshevik leader abhorred. He prospered by dealing in basic necessities that were in short supply: medicines, drugs and dressings for the wounded; contraceptives for the troops. His blackmarket business methods were equally disreputable. Furstenberg was elegant, debonair and never without a flower in his buttonhole, a dandy for whom bolshevism seemed illogical. The two men had known each other since they met at the traumatic 1903 conference in London when Lenin split the party. [17] Furstenberg joined Lenin at Trelleborg, and he and the other Bolsheviks continued to Malmo for the night train on to Stockholm. Meanwhile, in the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, Arthur Zimmermann followed their progress ‘with close interest.’ [18]

Sweden had dominated the market in illicit trade between the Allies and Germany since the early months of the war, and at the heart of much of that business sat a Swedish banker and businessman, Olof Aschberg and his bank, Nya Banken. Furstenberg, was an associate of Aschberg’s [19] and much of the money sent from both the United States and Germany for the Bolsheviks, passed through Nya Banken. Aschberg’s London agent was the British Bank of North Commerce [20] whose chairman, Earl Grey, was linked to the inner-chambers of the Secret Elite in London. Another important Nya Banken connection was Max May, vice-president of J.P. Morgan’s Guaranty Trust of New York, also an associate of Olof Aschberg. [21] Much of the ‘German’ money transferred through Nya Banken to the Bolsheviks came via the Disconto-Gesellschaft bank in Frankfurt am Main. [22] When one realises that Disconto-Gesellschaft was part of the Rothschild Group [23] and J.P. Morgan was a front for the Rothschilds on Wall Street, the hidden hand of Rothschild becomes apparent, yet again. [24]

Max Warburg, one of the most powerful bankers in Germany, was the older brother of Paul Warburg, the major force in establishing America’s Federal Reserve System which helped Wall Street fund war in Europe. It is worth repeating that Max, himself a Rothschild agent and reputedly head of the German espionage system during the war, [25] was involved with Arthur Zimmermann in ensuring Lenin’s safe passage across Germany. Max Warburg was likewise involved in the safe passage of Trotsky to Russia. A U.S. State Department file, ‘Bolshevism and Judaism’, dated 13 November 1918, asserted that there could be no doubt that the ‘Jewish Firm’ Kuhn, Loeb & Company and its partners ‘started and engineered’ the revolution in Russia. The report added that Max Warburg had also financed Trotsky, and that Aschberg and Nya Banken were involved. [26] This tangled web makes little sense unless one understands just how closely all of these named bankers and banks were linked to each other, and to their common goal of international control.Lenin’s train arrived late on the evening of Easter Monday, 17 April 1917, at the Finland rail terminal in Petrograd. Both inside and outside the station, bands played “La Marseilles” and a large bouquet of flowers was thrust into Lenin’s hands as a guard of honour presented arms. [27] The Bolshevik leader immediately denounced members of the provisional Government, and issued a series of ten directives in what came to be known as the ‘April Theses’. He demanded the immediate withdrawal of Russia from the World War, and all political power placed in the hands of workers and soldiers’ soviets.

Vladimir Lenin undoubtedly benefitted from financial backing from Germany, mainly through the intrigues of men linked to the Rothschilds such as Parvus and Max Warburg, but what of Trotsky, so generously accommodated on his voyage from Barcelona to New York? Richard Spence, professor of history at the University of Idaho, has meticulously documented the network of connections between Trotsky and international bankers, [28] and his work is required reading for those who desire a deeper understanding of the Bolshevik Revolution. His grasp of the connections between the international bankers themselves or, their globalist aims, appears less firm. Spence quoted French Intelligence reports from Barcelona in 1917 which revealed that Trotsky’s benefactor was a Russian émigré, Ernst Bark, a resident of Madrid.

Bark masterminded Trotsky’s release from prison, his accommodation in Spanish hotels, and his first-class passage to America. He was the first cousin of Pyotor Bark, Minister of Finance in Russia from 1914. Inside these complex secret international machinations, Pyotor Bark employed Olof Aschberg as his financial agent. Having seen how Aschberg and his Nya Banken were closely linked with Parvus in facilitating Lenin’s return to Russia, it comes as no surprise that they were similarly involved in ensuring Trotsky’s return. Professor Spence concluded that Ernst Bark ‘was Parvus’s cat’s-paw in Spain’. [29] In an interesting aside, Pyotor Bark was arrested after the Bolshevik revolution but immediately released on higher orders. Thereafter he moved to England, became managing-director of the Anglo-International Bank in London and was awarded a knighthood. Here was a man whose powerful contacts included the higher echelons of British banking circles. [30]

What a strange concoction of armaments dealers, sinister profiteers and bankers whose background had nothing in common with the revolutionary forces set loose in Russia. The short lived Nya Bank (1912-1920) clearly acted as a conduit for funds from Germany to the Bolsheviks, and the convoluted connections between Nya, Morgan’s Guaranty Trust, the British Bank of North Commerce, the Rothschild-backed Disconto – Gesellchaft, Max Warburg and the Kuhn Loeb bank in New York and the Russian Minister of Finance, displayed financial interest that transcended normal politics. That Lenin and Trotsky should both owe their political re-emergence to such vested interests is, on the face of it, fundamentally wrong. These bankers and financiers were motivated by their own financial advantage, not the symbolic red flag. What was going on?

1. Pearson, The Sealed Train, p. 57.
2. See Blog, Munitions 8: The Strange and Unendearing Story of Basil Zaharoff, published originally on 22 July 2015..
3. Pearson, The Sealed Train, pp. 57- 8.
4. Ibid., pp. 58-59.
5. Ibid., p. 64.
6. Preparata, Conjuring Hitler, pp. 30-31.
7. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
8. Ibid. p. 33.
9. Pearson, The Sealed Train, p. 65.
10. Isaiah Friedman, The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914-1918, p. 145.
11. Antony Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, p. 40.
12. Pearson, The Sealed Train, p. 83.
13. Ibid., p. 49.
14. Pearson, The Sealed Train, p. 61.
15. Volkognov, Lenin, p. 115.
16. Ibid., p. 114.
17. Pearson, The Sealed Train, pp. 101-102.
18. Ibid., p. 83.
19. Sean McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist, p. 225.
20. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, p. 57.
21. Ibid., p. 67.
22. McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist, p. 59.
23. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 384.
24. The convoluted and intricate means by which the Rothschilds and their associates on Wall Street funded the Bolsheviks are beyond the scope of this chapter, and we would point interested readers to the late Antony Sutton’s powerful book, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. Professor Sutton revealed exactly how Guaranty Trust, American International Company and the Kuhn, Loeb bank of Jacob Schiff and Paul Warburg gave large sums of money not merely to Bolsheviks, but to the German espionage system.
25. A.N. Field, All These Things, vol.1. http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/field_an/things_01.htm
26. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, pp. 186 -7.
27. Pearson, Sealed Train, p. 128.
28. Richard B. Spence, Hidden Agendas; Spies, Lies and Intrigue surrounding Trotsky’s American visit of January-April 1917.
29. Ibid.
30. Obituary. Sir Peter Bark, Bernard Pares The Slavonic and East European Review Vol. 16, No. 46 (Jul., 1937).

The Oil Story 1: The Uneven Playing Field

In previous blogs we have shown how the Secret Elite intentionally prolonged the war beyond the Spring of 1915 by providing Germany with raw materials for armaments production and food for her army. There were various facets to the great deception. From the outset, Germany’s crucial source of iron ore from the Briey basin on the Franco-German border was deliberately left intact though it could readily have been destroyed. German commanders admitted that the war would have been over by the summer of 1915 had the Briey supplies been halted. [1] Britain simultaneously ran a sham naval blockade through which food, gun-cotton and desperately needed minerals, including zinc and copper, for armaments production were allowed to pour into Germany. [2] In conjunction with these inactions, a great ‘humanitarian’ deception under the guise of ‘Belgian Relief’ was used as a cover for provisioning the German army. This allowed it to keep fighting and so prolonged the war. [3] Closure of just one of these spigots would have seriously damaged Germany’s war effort. Closure of all three would, without a shadow of doubt, have ended the war by early 1915. That was never their intention.

Another deception by which the Secret Elite prolonged the war was by ensuring that Germany had sufficient oil. It was absolutely crucial to their war effort and over the next series of blogs we will reveal exactly how this was achieved. There could be no effective modern war without sufficient supplies of oil and whoever controlled these supplies, controlled the war. In 1914 contemporary commentators spoke of the revolution in military strategy and the awesome power of destruction brought about by machines. [4] The internal combustion engine changed every dimension of warfare and the mobility of forces on land and sea and in the air. The mechanical innovations included oil-fired ships and submarines, motorised divisions, airplanes and tanks. Virtually every new development depended on access to plentiful supplies of petroleum, and year by year oil increasingly lubricated the means of war. As the leading French politician Henry Berenger stated, ‘On the battlefield, on land, on the sea and in the air, a drop of petrol is equal to a drop of blood.’ [5]  Since both Britain and France on one side, and Germany on the other, had no indigenous supplies, sourcing it was critical to the ability to keep fighting.

The Secret Elite, the power base that caused the first world war [6] either controlled oil production across the globe, or was intimately linked to those who did. It included the Rothschilds in Europe, [7] and J.D. Rockefeller’s empire in America. [8] The Rothschild Dynasty operated one step removed from the public eye and the family’s massive investment in banking and oil gave it a geo-political power that few could equal. The Secret Elite knew that long-term secure supplies of oil, not just for the allies, but for Germany, would be absolutely crucial as they manoeuvred Europe into a protracted war. They ensured that the British Government, and the Foreign Office in particular, was conversant with the developing and potentially vital new oil discoveries in Burmah, Sumatra, Mexico, Mesopotamia and the Gulf. Indeed, it was no accident of history that the British Government took ownership of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company through one of the final Acts of Parliament introduced just as the war began. [9]

Aware that war was coming, the Admiralty, Foreign Office and Board of Trade signed contracts with several oil companies in advance of the hostilities – and it was claimed that Britain was ‘woefully unprepared’ for war. [10] Lord Curzon, senior member of the Secret Elite, later summed up its absolute importance when he stated in 1918: ‘The Allied cause has floated to victory upon a wave of oil’.  [11]

The German Government was no less aware of oil’s strategic and economic importance, but struggled to ensure that supplies could be freely guaranteed. Pre-war opinion in Germany that its complete dependence on a foreign trust like J.D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil  was absolutely intolerable, had crystallised into fear that in any future war,  lack of oil could do more damage than the most powerful enemy. [12] Germany had emerged by 1914 as a leader in manufacture and export growth, and that ‘stuck in John Bull’s craw’. [13] Their dynamic pre-war economy was bristling with confidence and technological innovation, but despite attempts to be masters of their own destiny, the German government was  dependent for oil on a small number of international producers, refiners and distributors. Even they were not fully aware of who actually owned these. Indeed, such was the labyrinthine nature of European banks and oil company ownership, that few individuals had any notion as to who really controlled the global oil supply.

Germany, like Britain, had plentiful supplies of coal, but no oil. With a stealth and determination that characterised much of the industry, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil had by 1912 grasped a monopoly position in the supply to Germany. Standard’s chosen technique was to acquire existing companies, but operate them under their original names in order to create the illusion that they remained German. It retained prominent German oil merchants as shareholders and this had the effect of diluting objections to its monopolistic growth. Behind the closed doors of corporate greed, such tactics shielded Standard from a public outcry against what had been described as an alien corporation. [14] Standard operated under the banner of the Deutsche Petroleum Verkaufgessellschaft which by 1912 controlled 91 per cent of all German oil sales. The Deutsche Bank was allowed to buy into the company but its stake accounted for little more than nine per cent of the total holdings. Devoid of an independent and secure source of supply, Germany had been locked tightly in the grip of Standard Oil. [15] The massive profits that accrued through this monopoly attracted European investors. It also attracted other companies to become major players capable of challenging Standard’s grip on the oil market.

Standard Oil had created the global market-game and learned to negotiate terms and reach settlements with a profusion of imperial, national, provincial and local governments. [16] But from 1910 to 1912, they found themselves  in a bitter and protracted dispute with the  Austro-Hungarian Empire in what Austria’s leading newspaper called a ‘petroleum war’. [17]  It was not Standard Oil as such that had run into trouble, but its Austrian subsidiary, Vacuum Oil Company AG, Vienna.  [18]

America remained the unrivalled global leader in oil with 60 per cent of the total world production. But thanks to its Galician oil-fields, Austria-Hungary could claim to be the third largest oil-producing country in the world behind the United States and Russia, and produced far in excess of its domestic requirements. Determined to hold on to its European monopoly,  Standard (through its Vacuum Oil subsidiary) used underhand competitive tactics to undermine Austrian producers. The ensuing row embroiled the governments of both Austro-Hungary and America. The U.S. State Department became deeply involved and created an interesting precedent for twentieth century ‘globalisation’. It demonstrated clearly that businesses, even those as powerful as Standard Oil, relied on diplomatic support from their governments. [19] It had long been so. The British East India Company thrived on the back of diplomatic and military intervention on the Indian sub-continent in the eighteenth century, while the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century were an extension of the commercial/political ambitions shared between companies and their national governments.

The relevance of this ‘petroleum war,’ a minor dispute in the history of the global oil industry, is that even in the twentieth century, internationally powerful companies looked to their home base government for protection and support. Ironically, Galician oil production had peaked in 1909, though no-one at the time realised this. Nevertheless, the United States believed it had the right to intervene in a dispute between the Austrian government and a company incorporated inside Austria but owned by American shareholders; come what may, the Vacuum Oil Company was in a meaningful sense, American [20] and how dare any foreign country in which it operated attempt to control it? Bare this in mind as we review the sources which supplied Germany during the First World War.

Theoretically, the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance faced a major obstacle in that their one indigenous oil source in Galicia lay in the hands of alien companies. By 1914 the number of large foreign joint-stock companies investing in Galician oil production, including Rockefeller’s Vacuum, had grown dramatically. The major British player which emerged after its formation in 1910 [21] was the Premier Oil and Pipe Line Company which swallowed up numerous competitors, large and small. By the beginning of the war Premier Oil was the most important foreign company in Galicia. In 1912-13 it owned around 2,752 acres and produced over 262,000 tons of crude oil – almost a quarter of all Galician production. Though its British shareholders queried the legitimacy of its actions, and the company’s relationship with German banks, [22] by the war’s end its holdings encompassed twelve Austrian subsidiaries, 21,000 acres, 110 oil wells and four large refineries. [23] The phenomenal growth of this London-based company was derived from supplying the enemy with desperately needed oil throughout the war.

According to Historian Alison Frank, the Galician wells provided approximately 60% of the Central Powers’ needs. [24] The vast bulk was used by Austria-Hungary. However, the Galician oil supplies fell into decline at the precise moment when the outbreak of war brought the huge pressure of high demand. Although ownership rested in the hands of foreign companies including British, American, French and Belgian interests, they continued to provide oil and petroleum for the Austrian enemy.

But what of Germany? Since Galicia was unable to satisfy her growing demand, from which sources could she draw her oil, surrounded as she was, by enemies?

[1] firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com Briey, Blogs 1-4, 12/11/2014 to 3/12/2014.
[2] firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com Blockade, Blogs 1-10, 10/12/2014 to 4/2/2015.
[3] firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com The Commission for Relief in Belgium, Blogs 1-13, 5/08/2015 to 25/11/2015.
[4] Hew Strachan, The Morale of the German Army, 1917-18, in, Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle, Facing Armageddon, p. 383.
[5] B.S. McBeth, British Oil Policy 1919-1939, p. 20.
[6] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 12-16.
[7] Carrol Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 311.
[8] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History p. 158 and 362.
[9] Hansard House of Lords, Anglo – Persian Oil Co. Acquisition of Capital (Bill), House of Lords, 7 August 1914, series 5, Vol 17, cc461-2.
[10] John Howard Morrow, The Great War – An Imperial History, p. 26.
[11] Keith Jeffrey, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire, p. 36.
[12] Dr F.C. Gerretson,  History of the Royal Dutch, Volume III, p. 65.
[13] David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, p. 327.
[14] William Engdahl, A Century of War, p. 25.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Alison Frank,  The Petroleum War of 1910: Standard Oil, Austria, and the Limits of the Multinational Corporation, The American Historical Review, 114 (1) pp. 16-41.
[17] Neue Freie Presse (Vienna) 24 September 1910.
[18] Frank, The Petroleum War, p. 17.
[19] Ibid., p. 28.
[20] Ibid., p. 41.
[21] The Tablet, 1 June 1912, p. 32.
[22] The Times, 14 November 1916, p. 3.
[23] Alison Frank, Oil Empire, Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia, pp. 171-173.
[24] Ibid., p. 173.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 8: Solving The Problem With Other People’s Money

In August 1914, the Banque National de Belge transferred its gold reserves and ‘a large number of State bonds’ to the Bank of England and despite protestations from the Germans that these assets should be returned, they remained safely in London vaults along with the printing blocks for official Belgian currency. [1] This arrangement had been secretly agreed in 1913, and though several members of the board of the National Bank of Belgium were sent by the Germans to London in February 1915 to ‘recover’ bonds and gold, the mission was little more than tokenism. There were no circumstances under which gold would have been returned. Which raises the question of what was it all about?  

The critical issue for bankers in early 1915 was the circulation of money which was becoming an ever increasing problem for both the CRB and the occupying forces. A solution had to be found. Without money, commerce would shudder to a halt. Herbert Hoover journeyed to Berlin in February 1915 to meet amongst others, the German Minister of Finance. [2] The Reichsbank offered to solve the impasse by raising a $50,000,000 loan in America, guaranteed by Germany, but to be repaid by Belgium. They suggested the construction of a ‘relief bank’ but the proposal had to be rejected. No matter how important he considered himself, Hoover did not have the power to impose a $50,000,000 debt on the Belgian government. [3]

Another proposition demonstrated just how much the ‘Relief’ business was worth to international bankers. According to Hoover’s memorandum of the meeting on 4 February, 1915, the Germans suggested that the CRB might use ‘ friends of the German Government in New York City’ to discount their bills of exchange through Max Warburg in Hamburg and the New York banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. International trade worked effectively through this system whereby one party, say, a German importer pays for American grain by a giving the American exporter a bill, much like a cheque, to be paid in three months time. If the exporter needs the cash early he can take the bill of exchange to a merchant bank which will discount it. That means the bank will instantly pay him a sum of cash at less than the bill’s value. The bank can afford to wait three months and take the full amount. It has always been big business. In wartime it was huge business.

The Warburg brothers, Max and Paul were key players in international finance. Max Warburg was head of the family bank, M.M. Warburg and Co. in Hamburg, and Paul Warburg was senior director at Kuhn, Loeb and Co. in New York. Like the J.P. Morgan empire, both Warburgs had strong Rothschild connections. [4] Paul had been instrumental in the creation of the Federal Reserve System in America, and basically both these men were deeply involved in the business deals which were wrapped around Belgian Relief. How convenient was this for the Secret Elite? Max Warburg offered to take over the market in discounting South American grain bills [5] which would divert the profits from London.

Later that same evening, Warburg met with Hoover at Berlin’s Adlon hotel and talked about his great success in discounting bills for cotton shipments from America to Germany through Kuhn, Loeb in New York. He believed that his firm could offer a better return for discounting the grain bills. [6] Next day, Hoover held talks with Albert Ballin, the Head of the Hamburg-America shipping line, and a frequent visitor to London before war broke out. Indeed Ballin’s connections in Britain gave him access to Secret Elite controlled politicians and, days before the final declaration of war, he went to London ‘ostensibly on business’. Here he met Sir Edward Grey, Richard Haldane and Winston Churchill but we do not know what they talked about. [7] Official histories limit the discussion to assurances given to Ballin that Britain would remain neutral, but was that all? Barely one week later, Albert Ballin and Max Warburg had been put in charge of the Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft, (ZEG) the state-owned organisation charged with purchasing food for Germany from foreign countries. [8]

The Hoover memorandum states that Ballin was keen to have his impounded Hamburg-American freight ships released for use by the CRB, [9] but Hoover knew that it would not have been acceptable to the British public for German ships to freely carry goods across the Atlantic. Having taken a cargo to Rotterdam, it would have been comparatively easy for Ballin’s freight ships to slip into German waters. It was a risk too far even for the Secret Elite. However there is another consideration. Both men were rivals for the scarce commodity, food.

Hoover had the great advantage of access to the world market, while Ballin was restricted to the Romanian grain harvest and what could be imported from America through the sham blockade. [10] Ballin would also have known about the vast quantities of CRB imports flowing through Rotterdam, and precisely how much was being diverted to Germany. Given that Albert Ballin was in charge of German food procurement, and Herbert Hoover headed the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, how likely is it that their talks were limited to shipping and finance?  Are we to believe that Hoover and Ballin failed to talk about food importation? Be mindful that Hoover’s memorandum is the only known record of their discussions.

Hoover’s visit continued with a meeting with the financial advisor to the Imperial government in the company of Max Warburg who repeated ‘two or three times’ that his brother’s influence with the Federal Reserve System would be financially beneficial to the CRB. [11] The Warburgs were desperate to muscle into the markets for discounting bills of exchange and the claim that they had influence over the Federal Reserve in New York was no mean boast. Unfortunately for them, so too did J.P. Morgan. It was a non-starter, but both sides had to find a solution to the tricky problem of money. Without money workers couldn’t be paid, pensioners would go penniless and trade would stutter to a standstill. Faced with that reality-check, both the Belgian government in exile and the German government of occupation accepted a solution which was mutually beneficial.

Emile Francqui’s Societe Generale was appointed to act as the national bank in Belgium, and was granted the exclusive right to issue bank-notes until 20 November, 1918. [12] Instructed by the German authorities, these notes did not carry any national emblem or picture of the Belgian royal family or indeed anything that symbolised patriotic loyalty. [13] By this point Emile Francqui had become the ‘national mediator’ [14] and little wonder, given the power that was devolved to his bank. Naturally, banks charged for their services, and the Societe Generale had much to gain. More pertinently, this arrangement suited all parties, belligerent and neutral, and helped prolong the war.

When Herbert Hoover negotiated the massive loans for Belgian Relief from allied governments he used the J.P. Morgan organisations in America, co-ordinated through Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York which, in turn, made the requisite transfer to Morgan Guaranty in London. Part of the ‘money’ was then transferred on paper to Banque Belge pour L’Etranger in London to pay for civil servants, pensioners, schoolteachers and many other Belgian government workers. From there, the money was transferred to the Societe Generale in Brussels.

Though this was managed on ledger accounts, like all paper currencies, if accepted in exchange, the system worked. The Societe Generale had, under German authorisation, printed acceptable banknotes estimated at 1,600,000,000 Fr which circulated through the economy and underscored trade and commerce. Franqui’s bank was permitted to issue bills to the value of three times its holdings in gold, in foreign currency, in Reichsmarks and in credits on foreign banks. [15] The Societe Generale’s role was therefore, absolute. Francqui was the bankers’ banker. At this point, with an acceptable currency in circulation and used by both the public and by international banks, the German government imposed a 40,000,000 Fr (£1,600,000) tax per month on Belgium. This equates to  £114,5000,000 per month at today’s values. There was muted outrage, but little else. The bankers protested, but paid up rather than risk their personal fortunes. The Germans had agreed an important trade off. They did not interfere with overseas investments held by Belgian Banks. Perhaps that is why their protests amounted to a mere whimper.

There was an additional problem with the lack of money in circulation  because the Belgians were by nature cautious and inclined to save any spare income. In any case there were very few luxuries available outside the American Relief shops in Brussels and Antwerp. However, in September 1916, the occupying force took stringent measures to annex the public savings accounts in both the Banque National de Belge and the Societe Generale. They demanded that the funds held in Reichsbank notes be transferred back to German control or the banks would be sequestered. Whether or not the threat was real, $120,000,000 was collected for the German treasury and transferred to Berlin. [16] Germany firstly imposed a tax and carried off about one quarter of the money which the American loans had guaranteed, and then annexed savings.  This money boosted the Reichsbank’s holdings and was used by the German government to buy foreign goods. So the war was effectively prolonged because Belgian Relief provided Germany with food to sustain her armies and funds to pay for her war effort.

The popular belief was that the funds used for Belgian relief came from public charity, mostly of American origin. Not so. Though Hoover embarked on many fund-raising initiatives and made constant appeals to individuals, national groups, even Pope Benedict XV, whose Papal message to America in early December 1916 was strategically timed to coincide with Christmas gift-giving, [17] the major source of income came from official government loans organised through J.P. Morgan’s American consortium. In early 1915, Hoover had negotiated an Anglo-French-Belgian subsidy of $5,000,000 per month and in 1916 this was increased by 50% to $7,500,000 per month. [18] In 1917, The New York Times ran an article which implied that Hoover was being ‘shamed’ by the paucity of charitable funds sent from the USA, a mere $9,000,000 (under 4%) of the total $250,000,000 spent by the end of 1916, even although ‘fat profits had been made in America from the sale of supplies for Belgium.’ [19] It was a clever ploy, targeted at the American public conscience, for Hoover did not care where his funds came from. Nor do his figures make sense. In America alone, thousands of committees were formed to collect funds.  The Literary Digest alone donated over $300,000 and numerous institutions, magazines and newspapers in America ‘ gave till it hurt’. [20] We will never know the true extent of the fraud.

Once America declared war in April 1917, Hoover was able to access even greater funds from the US government, which agreed to contribute directly.  In May 1917, $75,000,000 was appropriated for his use. And the incredible fact is that these sums were credited to the French, British and Belgian Governments, but spent, as in all cases by the CRB. The money from the American Government was to be advanced in instalments of $12,500,000 per month, of which $7,500,000 was to go to Belgium and $5,000,000 to France, whether or not the afore-mentioned had asked for it. [21] These were awesome figures and the language used signalled Hoover’s primacy in deciding how funds were to be spent. His agencies decided what would be bought from suppliers all over the globe, which shipping agencies would carry the cargoes, which distributors would be employed. Fortunes were made.

Hoover was fearless in overspending other people’s money. By mid-1916 the commission’s expenditure in Belgium exceeded its income by $2,000,000 a month, [22] but Hoover knew that he would be able to source the funding for the simple reason that all of this was planned. The political will was there; it simply had to find reason. Financial muscle was never far from his centre of power. The Morgan/Rothschild axis was wrapped around the entire project; but they were not the givers, they were not donating funds; they acted as suppliers of funds … at a price. They were bankers.

[1] The Times 22 Feb. 1915.
[2] George I. Gay and H.H. Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, pp. 245-250, Documents 135-138.
[3] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, pp. 86-7.
[4] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War. pp. 214-5.
[5] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 245, Document 135.
[6] Ibid., p. 247, document 136.
[7] Bernhard Huldermann, Albert Ballin, p. 215.
[8] Ibid., pp. 223-228. http://www.archive.org/stream/albertballin00hulduoft/albertballin00hulduoft_djvu.txt
[9] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 248, Document 137.
[10] See our blogs between December 10 and February 4, 2015.
[11] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 248, Document 138.
[12] Manfried Pohl and Sabine Freitag, Handbook on the History of European Banks.
[13] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 214.
[14] Charles D’Ydewalle, Albert King of the Belgians, p. 147.
[15] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 217.
[16] Ibid., p. 215.
[17] New York Times, 21 December 1916, p.8.
[18] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p.197.
[19] New York Times, 31 January 1917.
[20] John Hamill, The Strange Case of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, pp. 322-3.
[21] New York Times, 10 May 1917.
[22] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 196.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 2: The Anatomy of a Humanitarian Saviour

In Herbert Hoover the Secret Elite found the perfect man to lead the great Belgian ‘relief’ deception. His entire career had been built on the back of dubious mining investments and through a cruel, ruthless exploitation of the workers he made fortunes for his employers and for himself. One example of this centred on his exploitation of the Sons of Gwalia Mine in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century, where his cost-saving reduction in the number of safety props led to the injury or death of many miners. He fed the newspapers with stories that the mine was producing $140 worth of gold to the ton when in fact it barely reached $20. Consequently the company he represented, Bewick-Moreing of London, profited by over $120 million on the mine’s flotation. Such was Hoover’s constant modus operandi. [1]

The American–born mining engineer lived in London for years and was a business colleague of the Rothschilds. He was a friend of Alfred Milner, leader of the Secret Elite, and had provided the slave labour to man the Transvaals gold mines, so important to their control of South Africa at the end of the Boer War. He was a confidence trickster and crook who, in 1901, cheated the Chinese out of their rightful ownership of the massive Kaiping Coal fields and put them in the hands of British and Belgian bankers. [2] In addition to the illicit fortunes he made for himself and his backers, Hoover provided the British navy with much needed coaling facilities in the Far East and in doing so gained the trust and gratitude of the Foreign Office in London.

A deeper analysis of Hoover’s activities in defrauding the Chinese of their coal mines, reveals an association with Belgian bankers, industrialists and diplomats, including Emile Francqui, which would prove entirely pertinent to his eventual role in the Commission for Relief in Belgium some thirteen years later. In raising the necessary capital to swindle the Chinese officials out of the mines in 1901, Hoover turned to Belgian backers. They persuaded the Banque d’Outremer of Brussels to invest £100,000 in exchange for a large allocation of stock in an organisation called the Oriental Syndicate. When he returned to China to finalise the fraudulent deal, Hoover was accompanied by Chevalier Emmanuel de Wouters representing the Belgian bankers. [3] De Wouters later became a member of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the Banque Belge pour L’Etranger, to which we will return.

Accusations of malpractice and the total disregard for ‘binding agreements’ with the Chinese authorities brought matters to a head. [4]  On 18 January 1905 the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company of Tientsin, in the person of Chang Yen Moa, Director of Mines, took legal action at the High Court in London against Hoover, De Wouters and the British mining company of Bewick, Moreing and Co. Amongst an impressive array of expensive defence lawyers, Hoover and the company was defended by two powerful Liberal MPs, Rufus Isaacs and Alfred Milner’s loyal friend and Secret Elite member, Richard Haldane. Both held the senior legal post of King’s Counsel. Hoover was questioned in the witness box for two days and was obliged to admit that statements he had previously made were untrue.

Letters were produced which showed that Hoover and De Wouters had tried to take control of the mines despite the objections of the Chinese Board. On 1 March, the judge, Mr Justice Joyce came to the conclusion that the British company had acted in bad faith. Interestingly, Richard Haldane made a special plea to the court on behalf of the Foreign Office claiming that Mr Justice Joyce’s decision might have far reaching diplomatic implications. [5] In reporting the court decision next day in its Editorial, The Times hailed Chang’s success as proof of British impartiality and concluded that the court’s findings ‘will be useful to British capital and enterprise in the struggle now going on against formidable commercial rivals.’ [6] It was nothing less than a classic spin which ended by praising fair British legal practices in a world threatened by ‘formidable commercial rivals’.  In other words, Germany. Neither Herbert Hoover nor the Foreign Office was mentioned by name. Despite a court ruling to the contrary, Hoover remained on the board of the discredited British-based Chinese Engineering Mining Company until 1911, abetted in this defiance by the Foreign Office which considered coal for the navy more defensible than contempt of court.

A clearer picture begins to emerge of Herbert Hoover’s connections with the hidden power controlling British politics. He had assisted Alfred Milner in South Africa. He held shares in the Rothschilds’ Rio Tinto Company and was associated with the same all powerful Rothschild dynasty which invested in his Zinc Corporation. He had aided the South African mining millionaires Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit. All of the above operated at the innermost core of the Secret Elite. [7] He was defended in court by Richard Haldane on behalf of the Foreign Office, and was well acquainted with several high-profile members of the British cabinet. [8] We know for certain that his acquaintance with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in the pre-war days was sufficiently close for Grey to ask Hoover if he might borrow his motor-car for a Sunday afternoon drive. [9] Even now you would have to be a close friend of anyone whose car you wished to borrow for an afternoon’s drive. One hundred years ago, it surely indicated a very confident acquaintanceship. Lord Eustace Percy at the foreign office was, as will be shown, Hoover’s strong and loyal supporter, [10] as was Lord Crewe, the Leader of the House of Lords. [11] Hoover’s association with all of these important Secret Elite politicians and financiers is a matter of record. In addition, he had a close links to Belgian bankers like Emmanuel de Wouters and Emile Francqui, and institutions like the Banque d’Outremer and the Banque Belge pour l’Etranger. As the narrative unfolds, please keep all of  these connections in mind.  Herbert Hoover knew, and was known by,  all the ‘right’ people.

Hoover was a rabid opportunist. He had served the masters of international finance and spent his engineering career ruthlessly exploiting the underdeveloped resources of China, Australia, Burma, Russia and South Africa. His dealings mixed human traffic with raw materials, and ensured that he had the confidence of important Secret Elite backers who knew he was the right man to front their new enterprise in Belgium in 1914. After giving unquestioned support to Alfred Milner in South Africa by providing Chinese ‘slave’ workers for the Transvaal gold and diamond mines, Herbert Hoover gravitated to London as the centre of finance for world-wide mining. By August 1914 he had been based there for more than a decade. He held stock in zinc and gold mines in Australia, a fabulous zinc-lead-silver mine in Burma, copper mines and smelters in Russia, vast untapped mineral deposits in Siberia and the re-constituted oil fields in California. [12] Though not yet 40 when war broke out, he was very wealthy with a personal fortune estimated somewhere between three to four million dollars, lived in style in a magnificent Kensington villa, [13] and worked from prestigious offices at no.1 London Wall buildings

Hoover’s biographer would have us believe that in 1914 he experienced a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment whereby his former Quaker background [note] induced a complete change of character such that the mercenary engineer was transformed into a caring humanitarian. No matter how diligently his acolytes have striven to paint Hoover as a noble human being motivated entirely by good works for others, even the few official records made available to the public demonstrate a man who bullied, lied, cheated, manipulated and rewrote events to his own advantage. These were the qualities so admired by the Secrete Elite for they knew that he would do their bidding, protected always by their global influence.

Herbert Hoover cast aside the mantle of the pitiless profit-seeking, opportunist engineer and had himself rebranded as a humanitarian saviour just as the first wave of war refugees spilled into London in August 1914.

[1] John Hamill, The Strange Case of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, pp. 48-9.
[2] Walter W Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, pp. 68-70.
[3] The Straits Times, 3 March 1903. [http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19030303.2.3.aspx ]
[4] The Times, 19 January 1903, p. 3.
[5] Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, pp. 111-12.
[6] The Times, 2 March 1905, p. 9.
[7] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[8] George H Nash, Herbert Hoover The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p. 148.
[9] Grey to Hoover, 9 June 1914, cited in Nash, op. cit. p.148.
[10] Gay & Fisher, Public Relations of The Commission for Relief in Belgium, document 190, Dec 1914.
[11] Nash, Herbert Hoover The Humanitarian, p.127.
[12] Ibid., p. 3.
[13] http://rbkclocalstudies.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/elegy-for-the-red-house/

Munitions 2: Vickers, Rothschilds And The Death Of Patriotism

Vickers, the world renowned armaments giant, began life in 1828 as a steel foundry. It grew through a number of acquisitions into a vast concern with ordnance works in Glasgow, factories at Sheffield and Erith, and naval dockyards at Walney Island. It typified how the Secret Elite classically invested in armaments and munitions and, though their names never appeared on the register at Company House or on the factory gates, their domination represented a mosaic of amalgamations, take-overs, and buy-outs which concealed their influence and ownership.

In 1885, Vickers set up the largest forging press ever made to enable it to manufacture heavy marine work  in Sheffield, [1] and the first armour plate for warships soon followed. By 1888, the company stretched its tentacles north towards the Naval Construction and Armaments Co. of Barrow-in-Furness which had itself expanded into the construction of submarine torpedo boats under license from the Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company. [2] In that same year, Rothschild issued £1.9 million of shares to finance the merger of Nordenfelt with the Maxim Gun Company. Nathan Rothschild retained a substantial shareholding in the new Maxim-Nordenfelt combine and ‘exerted a direct influence over its management’. [3] The scene was set for Vickers to become the major British armaments giant. Guided and financed by Rothschild and another Secret Elite financier, Sir Ernest Cassel, Vickers absorbed the Naval Construction and Armaments Co., and the Maxim-Nordenfelt armaments conglomerate in 1897 to become Vickers, Sons and Maxim. The expanded company could then build and equip the largest battleships in the world. [4]

The significance of the Maxim-Nordenfeldt takeover lay in the fact that Vickers gained control of the world’s deadliest machine gun.  Highly accurate, and able to fire 600 rounds per minute, the Maxim was described as ‘the key to European hegemony.’ Vickers offered every lethal weapon in its arsenal – from machine guns to battleships – to any customer with the means to pay. It sold the 37 mm Nordenfelt-Maximm or “QF 1-pounder”, better know as the pom-pom to the Boers during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) and a variety of armaments to both sides in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5).  [5] Essentially, their salesmen and agents helped manipulate nations into wars and supplied all sides with the weapons to fight them. [6] They were indeed, Merchants of Death.

Vickers had been launched on the international road to prosperity by funding from Rothschild and Cassel, two bankers who held sway at the very heart of the Secret Elite. [7] The Rothschilds had always understood the enormous profits generated by the armaments industries, and financing wars had been their preserve for nearly a century. Bankers, industrialists and other members of the Secret Elite, the men who planned the destruction of Germany, had carefully positioned themselves to make massive profits from it. War, any war, was a means of garnering wealth. But the stealth with which they created a vast network to produce armaments beggars belief. Firms which were apparently independent were strengthened by absorption, and linked together by an intricate system of joint shareholding and common directorships.

In addition to ownership of the Naval Construction Co., of Barrow, the Maxim-Nordenfelt Co., and the Electrical Ordnance Co. Ltd., Vickers held half the shareholdings of their supposed rivals Beardmores (shipbuilding and engineering), as well as directorships in Cammell, Laird and Co., (shipbuilding), Whitehead and Co., (torpedo manufacture), the Chilworth Gunpowder Co., and the Harvey Armour-Plate Co. [8] Each of these in turn owned shares in associated subsidiary manufacturers so that the entire gamut of armaments production became an interwoven tapestry of Secret Elite vested interests. It was a massive, illegal and secret cartel which no-one dared challenge.

Their behaviour during the Russo-Japanese war provided a perfect template for future tactics. Secret Elite bankers had provided Japan with high-interest-yielding loans to build a modern navy with which to attack Russia. The greater part of that victorious Japanese navy was constructed by the British yards from which the Secret Elite made even more profits. The Japanese people were, of course, left to foot the bill. After the Russian fleet had been destroyed at Tsushima, Russia was provided with high-interest-bearing loans of £190,000,000 to rebuild her navy. Much of the construction work went to factories and shipyards owned by the Secret Elite. And so the cycle repeated itself, with the Russian people left to pay the price. [9]  It was no different in Britain where the ‘naval race’ produced millions of pounds of profits for the owners and shareholders in armaments while the cost was met by the ordinary tax-payer. Little wonder that Nathan Rothschild was an enthusiastic supporter of increased naval construction. [10] Every dreadnought built increased his income.

One of the most enduring deceptions perpetrated by the Secret Elite before the war was in regard to Italy. Although they knew otherwise, [11] it was widely propagated that as a signatory to the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy would have a dangerous naval presence in the Mediterranean when war broke out. All comparative naval statistics on the combined size of opposing fleets given in Parliament or the British press before 1914 included Italian warships [12] and torpedo-boats alongside the German and Austrian totals. By adding the Italian numbers to the total they presented a far greater naval threat than existed, and consequently promoted the need for greater warship construction in Britain and France to meet that threat. They studiously ignored the irony that it was British armaments firms who owned the very yards that were building those warships for Italy. [13] The British Armstrong-Pozzuoli Company, on the Bay of Naples, employed 4,000 men and was the chief naval supplier to Italy. The Ansaldo-Armstrong Company of Genoa, which belonged to the same British firm, built dreadnoughts and cruisers for Italy even although it was regarded as Germany’s ally. [14]

Vickers was also an important supplier to the Italian navy through combination with three Italian firms that constituted the Vickers Terni Co. In addition to being defence director of the parent company, Rear Admiral Ottley was a director of the Armstrong works at Pozzuoli. Ottley again. Surely he should have been charged with treason? Here was the former Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, the most secret of all government committees, whose duty was to advise the prime minister on sensitive matters of defence and war, accepting payment as a director of a company in a country allied to Germany. But it was precisely because Ottley had held that position that he knew Italy would not join Germany in a war against Britain. Given that he had insider information about the real alliances made by King Edward VII, Ottley was in a uniquely privileged position. How much did he share with his fellow directors at Vickers? How much was such information worth to them when Vickers invested in Pozzuoli?

 

Such corruption was bad in itself, but worse still was the fact that both Vickers and Armstrong (the other British armaments giant) held a large proportion of the shares of Whitehead & Co., the torpedo manufacturer at Fiume in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the war, Labour MP Philip Snowden angrily stated in the House of Commons: ‘Submarines and all the torpedoes used in the Austrian navy, besides several of the new seaplanes, are made by the Whitehead Torpedo works in Hungary … They are making torpedoes with British capital in Hungary in order to destroy British ships.’ [15] Between 1914-1918, those Whitehead torpedoes were also loaded into the tubes of German U-Boats and used against British shipping. Individuals in the warm comfort of Westminster or their exclusive London clubs or grand gothic cathedrals, profited from the torpedoes that sent thousands of brave British seamen to cold graves in the Atlantic. These shareholders made untold fortunes on the products of death and misery. How bitterly shocked would the widow of a seaman drowned when his merchantman was sunk in the North Atlantic have been, had she ever learned that both the British company which made the weapon, and the German company which held the license for its construction, earned dividends from its sale?

This was the modus operandi of the armaments industry universally. Patriotism was not in their vocabulary; massive profit most certainly was. In America, the Du Pont company monopolised the supply of gun-powder and fixed the price accordingly. The Schneider Company had likewise bought its way into a similar position in France to the extent that Eugene Schneider also served in the Chamber of Deputies in the French Assembly. Coal and Iron were similarly monopolised in France where the Comite des Forges was dominated by the De Wendel family. At one stage the De Wendel’s had representatives in both the French Assembly and the German Reichstag. Krupps had promoted itself as the Kaiser’s armaments maker and had doubled its profits in the immediate pre-war period, as had Skoda in Austria-Hungary. [16]

Armaments firms prostituted their services across all national boundaries, shared patents and profits, and were intrinsically linked to the Money-Power, the banking fraternity which financed wars. [17] Vickers had been financed by the Rothschilds, Du Pont by J.P. Morgan and Co., and Schneider was directly associated with Credit Lyonnais and the Banque de l’Union Parisienne, as was the Austro-Hungarian Skoda company.  Krupps had been rescued from financial disaster in the 1870s and its first public bond was issued through Deutsche Bank in 1879. [18] The symbiotic relationship between Armaments and the most powerful banks was one which closely involved Secret Elite members and associates like Rothschild, Sir Ernest Cassel and JP Morgan.

In 1921, a sub-committee of the Commission of the League of Nations concluded that armaments firms had been active in the decades before the war in fomenting war scares and in persuading their own countries to adopt warlike policies that increased their spending on armaments. They were found guilty of bribing government officials both at home and abroad, and of disseminating false reports about the military and naval programmes of various countries in order to stimulate armament expenditure. The litany of accusations further indicted them for influencing public opinion through the control of newspapers in their own and foreign countries. The ring was directly criticised for all these activities and not least for ensuring the outrageous price of armaments. [19]

Nothing of any consequence was done about it.

[1] The Times, 5 January 1885.
[2] The Morning Post, 21 February, 1888.
[3] Niall Ferguson, House of Rothschild, The World’s Bankers, 1819-1999, vol. 2. p. 413.
[4] The Times, 17 November, 1897.
[5] Engelbrecht and Hanighen, Merchants of Death , Ch 1X p. 2.
[6] Webster Tarpley, George Bush, p. 15.
[7] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins Of The First World War, p. 141.
[8] George Herbert Perris,The War Traders: An Exposure, p. 9.
[9] Walton Newbold, War Trusts Exposed, p. 7.
[10] Ferguson, House of Rothschild, vol. 2. p. 413.
[11] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History,  p. 76.
[12] Hansard House of Commons Debate 7 July 1913, vol. 55. cc10-11.
[13] Walton Newbold, How Europe Armed for War, pp.76-77.
[14] Perris, War Traders, p. 10.
[15] Hansard House of Commons Debate 5 May 1915 vol 71 c1091.
[16] T. Hunt Tooley, Merchants of Death Revisited, p. 39.
[17] Ibid., p. viii.
[18] Jeffrey Fear and Richard Kobrak, Banks on Board, German and American Corporate Governance, 1870-1914 in Business History Review 84,  pp. 703-736.
[19] The First Sub-Committee of the Temporary Mixed Commission of the League of Nations, Report A.81. 1921, p. 5.

The First Priorities (1) One Law For The Rich

The onslaught of justification for war made it increasingly difficult for members of parliament to voice dissent in the House of Commons. Yet again, they fell victim to years of Secret Elite preparations, devised through the Committee of Imperial Defence, to take control and manipulate legislation to their own advantage immediately war was declared. A raft of emergency legislation was rushed through Parliament, literally on the instant approval of both Houses, with no consideration given to discussion or dissent. As an example of how to curb a nation’s freedom without objection, 5 August 1914 stands testament to how democracy can be turned against itself in the name of ‘protecting the realm’. An unprecedented wave of spy-mania was fanned by the introduction of the Aliens Restriction Act which had been pre-drafted by the Committee of Imperial Defence in readiness for war. [1]

Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna announced in the Commons that, ‘Within the last twenty-four hours no fewer than twenty-one spies, or suspected spies, have been arrested in various places all over the country, chiefly in important military or naval centres, some of them long known to the authorities to be spies.’ [2] Rumours and spy stories were taken very seriously, and served to remind the public how important it was to curb ‘freedoms’. The government took carte blanche power to impose restrictions on those not born in Britain, though, as was explained in the House of Lords, the arrangements were fine-tuned to cause as little inconvenience to alien friends, while securing effective and, if necessary, severe control over alien enemies. [3] Alien friends and alien enemies, it sounded like H G Well’s War of the Worlds.

This was followed three days later, by the Defence of the Realm Act, which, though originally a brief bill of around 400 words, was amended and extended six times over the course of the war to give the government powers close to those enjoyed by a military court martial. [4] Ostensibly it purported to prevent spying or any action that put in jeopardy, the safety of railways docks and harbours. [5] It too was passed in minutes without discussion, and grew with each amendment to encompass a vast range of restrictions on freedoms.

At the same time, in the House of Lords, the vital interests of the Secret Elite were being presented by Lord Crewe, a man close to their inner circle, as if they were acts of noble benevolence. He announced that ‘during the last few days, the Government have been conferring at great length with the most important representatives of finance and commerce, including bankers, bill-brokers, the Stock Exchange, discount houses and with virtually every one of the great industries – textile, iron, docks and the rest [he could not for some reason bring himself to say armaments] …in the interests of the country at large’. [6] He added that it would be ‘business as usual’, and that money would be forthcoming to meet the ‘ordinary needs and concerns of life.’ Lord Crewe failed to mention that such preparations had been fully discussed at secret sub-committee meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defence since early 1912.

The dislocation to trade, industry, commerce and finance brought about by war, any war, offers an opportunity to those privileged with sufficient forewarning to make indecent profits. The disruption to banking, insurance and the process of trading through bills of exchange and clearing houses could also be severe, and a panic in the stock market or rumour that a particular bank would suffer huge losses, made the early days of war particularly susceptible to a collapse in confidence. The Secret Elite had overwhelming control of the financial sector and had been working for years to ensure that their interests were safeguarded when war was declared. Detailed advice and recommendations had been gathered by the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1911-12 to ensure that the government was ready to protect the money markets in the City of London [7] which was the inner sanctum of British banking and housed the registered offices of many Secret Elite associates.

Banks were kept shut by the convenient mechanism of extending the August Bank Holiday in 1914, so that a run on their assets could be avoided. Lord Crewe urged the ordinary citizen to keep his head and avoid panic, promising that there was no reason why any person, rich or poor, should be alarmed by the ‘momentary difficulty’ of war. [8] As far as protection of the nation was concerned, the banks came first. Lloyd George, once the champion of the people, proudly entitled one of the early chapters in his War Memoirs, ‘How We Saved The City [9] Ponder that fact for a moment. Yes, the government took great powers to itself in the name of the people, but it was the banks and the bankers who benefitted from the earliest acts of Asquith’s government at war.

Given that the business of the City was dependent on the smooth running of credit, the punctual payment of foreign debtors and bills of exchange, the sudden paralysis of the mechanisms for foreign exchange threatened a default which would have brought the banks to their knees. The solution, one very similar to the Federal Reserve System that had been adopted on America, was to announce a moratorium during which the banking, industrial and commercial interests persuaded the British government to ‘temporarily assume’ the liability for over a hundred million pounds worth of bills.In other words, to save the banking system which feared a financial crash, banks were given special protection by acting as agents for the government. Profits were not interfered with, but the government would pick up the bill for any losses, and the ordinary citizen would have to pay for it through taxation. [10] Government provision like old age pensions, insurance and other liabilities continued to be paid as before, but incredibly, housing rents were omitted from the moratorium. [11] The high-flying bankers and industrialists, the investors and the finance houses were instantly cushioned from loss while the working man and women who would have to pay for this had no automatic protection from future rent abuse. It was a charter for racketeers.

The Secret Elite knew better than any politician how to protect the wheels of commerce, and it was they, through the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, who ensured that the supply of ‘notes sufficient to meet the currency requirement’ was met by introducing £1 notes and 10 shilling notes for the first time. A Currency and Bank Notes Act was followed by the suspension of the Bank Act to allow previous restrictions on banks to be ‘temporarily’ removed [12] The gold standard of old was effectively amended, and the power to print money was unleashed to the Banks.

With a craft that was even by that time a signature mark of the Secret Elite, the Conservative Lord Lansdowne congratulated Asquith’s government on these decisions by acknowledging that the proposals, ‘have been the result of a careful consultation with the representatives of the financial, commercial, and industrial interests of this country. There can be no doubt that the Government did well … to satisfy themselves that they were in possession of the best advice which they could procure from the highest authorities in this country, and that they could count upon the support of those authorities’ [13]

And where did the best advice come from? Those who would benefit most. Lansdowne repeated the old trick of responding positively to the government’s proposals and thereby cutting down any negative reaction. He endorsed the plans of his own associates and guaranteed a united approval from both major political parties. Every action sanctioned by the government that day reeked of the self interest of the Secret Elite. They knew how wars depended on money, its supply and availability, and how important it was to be well prepared for reaping the profits of war.

Despite their every advantage, hoarding was another problem which was caused by the rich. Lloyd George spoke out against the hoarding of gold as early as 5 August, berating the ‘selfish motives of greed…or cowardice’ which was, in his eyes, comparable to assisting the enemies of his native land. Barely three days later, Mr Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, was forced to introduce a bill to stop the unreasonable hoarding of foodstuffs. Faced by evidence from many parts of the country that the greed of ‘better-to-do’ people was causing great hardship to the poorer classes, the government was forced to take prompt action to limit such outrageous misbehaviour. Runciman denounced the panic and greed of the richer community ‘who have really disgraced themselves by placing long queues of motor cars outside the stores and carrying off as much provisions as they could persuade stores to part with’. [14] What an unhappy image. The hungry poor frightened by food-price rises would suffer shortages while the rich sent their servants to buy up as much produce as could be obtained.

So much for the spirit of togetherness.

[1] Christopher Andrew, Secret Service, p. 181.
[2] House of Commons Debate 05 August 1914 vol 65 cc1986
[3] House of Lords Debate 05 August 1914 vol 17 cc384-5384.
[4] Christopher Andrew, Secret Service, p. 181
[5] HC Deb 07 August 1914 vol. 65 cc2191-3
[6] HL Deb 05 August 1914, vol. 17 cc374-84
[7] PRO CAB 16/18A p.93
[8] HL Deb 05 August 1914, vol. 17 cc374-84
[9] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 61.
[10] Ibid.
[11] David Lloyd George, HC Deb 5 August, 1914 vol.65 cc1991-2000.
[12] HC Deb 06 August 1914 vol. 65 cc2101-7
[13] HL Deb 05 August 1914, vol. 17 cc374-84 [14] HC Deb 08 August 1914, vol. 65 cc2212-22