Prolonging The Agony 1

We are lied to. We know that more than ever today, but the lies and misrepresentations about the first World War have been accepted as truth. Arm yourself with the awful facts.

Part Two in the Hidden History series by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor.

At last, having spent ten years working together on the origins and management of the First World War, our second book, Prolonging the Agony, How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WW1 by Three-and-a Half Years, has been published, and is available to our readers from TrineDay in the U.S. and Amazon and other book sellers across the world.

It had never been our intention to divide the history into two parts, but our original publisher, Mainstream of Edinburgh, convinced us that it was the best way forward. Mainstream was sold to Random House shortly after Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War was published, and this proved problematic for us. Random House declined to either promote the book or take up the option for our second book. However sales remained strong and Hidden History was translated and published in both German and French. A Swedish edition is also currently being considered. To our delight TrineDay in Oregon offered to publish Prolonging the Agony and we are indebted to Kris Milligan and his team for encouraging and supporting us. It is heartening that within weeks of the book’s release, both the German and French publishers have indicated that they will also be publishing it.

So what is it about?

Prolonging the Agony lays before the reader a vast amount of evidence which reveals how enormously rich and powerful men in Britain and the U.S. deliberately prolonged WW1 while reaping even greater fortunes from it. It retraces the major lies and malevolent propaganda generated in Britain and America to justify war against Germany, and the reason it was prolonged beyond the spring of 1915 in order to crush her. The Secret Elite, the cabal which worked endlessly to bring war to Europe with a view to creating a new world order, was responsible. To cover their tracks, the elites and their agents ensured that a false history was created to justify all that happened. Prolonging the Agony deconstructs that false history page by page.

It examines in detail how the British government borrowed on an unprecedented scale from Wall Street bankers to fund the munitions of death. The links between leading players – such as the Rothschild banking family and their JP Morgan banking associates on Wall Street – were formalised to a point where the British economy was literally handed to this money-power cabal. We demonstrate the extent of the anti-German lies and propaganda emanating from Oxford University, the academic home of the Secret Elite in Britain, and how it lead to millions of young British men enlisting to fight under totally false pretences . Winning the hearts and minds of the American public, so that they aligned with the financiers, proved a more difficult task, but the fact that the United States would enter the war was guaranteed from the outset by their place-man in the White House, President Woodrow Wilson and his minder, Edward Mandel House.

Lies concocted in 1914 to blacken Germany in every way are still circulated today as fact. This False History lives on through the British Court Historians who repeat the nonsense. We prove absolutely that while Nurse Edith Cavell – the great British heroine of the war who was executed by a German firing squad in Belgium in 1915 – was indeed a brave patriot, she was secretly and intimately associated with a Belgian spy ring linked to the British Secret Service. Edith Cavell and her Belgian associates helped repatriate hundreds of British and French soldiers who were stranded behind enemy lines in the first months of the war. They also passed vital information about German deployment to the  War Office in London. But Edith threatened to endanger the secret agreements about food supply by revealing the scandal through he connections with the Times. For generations that fact was buried so that her execution would look like an act of brutality by the German commanders against an innocent, humanitarian nurse. The truth is otherwise.

In a similar vein, lies and propaganda were circulated about the sinking in 1915 of the ocean liner Lusitania by a German U-boat. Received history turned this act into German malevolence in order to cause outrage in America and swing public opinion there towards the Allies. 1,195 lives were lost including 140 Americans. Only now, after sustained detective work by Mitch Peeke and his Liverpool team in tracking down the cargo manifest of the Lusitania, are the authorities in both Britain and the U.S. obliged to admit their complicity in creating and maintaining false accounts of the sinking. The recently uncovered manifest proves that the ‘passenger liner’ was secretly carrying many thousands of rounds of ammunition and tons of U.S. explosives to Britain. It also proves that the German authorities were right. Britain and America were flouting the clear-cut regulations about neutrality. Their well-publicised advice to passengers to avoid the Lusitania was both justified and ignored. Shockingly, elements within the British Admiralty knew full well that the German U-boat was waiting in the exact path of the Lusitania as she passed the southern coast of Ireland, yet withdrew her naval escorts and failed to warn her captain. Why? We believe they were complicit in the sinking for their own purposes.

Bad as this was, our sustained research through documents, records, and published books and texts which were dismissed in the post-war years, turned our dismay to utter disgust. Again and again we found secret agreements, understandings, practices and deliberate actions taken in order to prolong the war and prolong the agony. And it is this fact, which was repeatedly stated from many quarters during the conflict, which hit us hardest.

We have amassed proof of the unprecedented scale on which the war was unnecessarily prolonged. It could have been drawn to a conclusion by December 1915 and millions of victims would have been spared the misery of mutilation or horrendous death. But the war was prolonged mercilessly so that profits would surpass the dreams of Midas and Germany crushed as a rival.

Amongst many disturbing examples, Prolonging the Agony examines the scandal of the French Briey Basin iron and steel mines and forges which the French army could either have occupied on the first day of the war or destroyed, in order to stop them falling into German hands. Despite repeated calls for the French army to destroy the forges, the French authorities would not allow it. An expedition to bomb the forges was slapped down by the French High Command. Who gave the orders? Who made the profits? To whose instructions was the French government answerable? It was a scandal which has been swept under the carpet to avoid accountability. Had Briey been destroyed, Germany would not have had the raw materials and munitions to fight beyond 1915.

What is the truth of the so-called blockade of the North Sea passages which allegedly starved Germany of its resources? A truly brave and remarkable small fleet comprising very old vessels, none of which was built for the high seas task, sat out in the unforgiving Atlantic and North Sea to stop all contraband getting into Germany from August 1914 onwards. What happened? Virtually every ship they brought into port under escort was allowed to continue its journey by order of the Admiralty in London. Yet the public and parliament believed that Germany was being starved of its war necessities. They believed the lie because Winston Churchill said a full blockade was in place and that Germany would surrender in nine months.

The inner-elite of the British cabinet had no intention of ending the war until Germany was crushed … not just beaten. The facts presented are drawn from archived evidence and Admiralty papers. Our thesis endorses and builds on the outrage expressed by the Admiralty’s representative in Scandinavia during WW1, Naval Attaché Rear-Admiral Consett. He detailed how the Allies were secretly supplying Germany through Scandinavian ports and prolonging the conflict. Had a blockade been properly undertaken the war would have ended by 1915. What was a going on? Prolonging the Agony explains precisely that.

We also raise the issue which is omitted from mainstream analysis: where was Germany procuring her vital oil supplies? She had no natural reserves herself, and her access to oil could easily have been stopped. Our book investigates the multiple abuses in oil provision and traces the ownership of these oil fields. The compliance of the owners and shareholders, British and American, demonstrated the importance of war profits at any cost.

To hell with your countrymen who had to be sacrificed.

In our next blog we will outline the impact of other major influences and agencies who had a vested interest in Prolonging the Agony

War Without End 5: Remorseless Misery

The acute misery which had been deliberately visited on Germany, Austria and Hungary was remorseless. British, French and Italian obstruction to all U.S. proposals which would have alleviated the crises in Berlin and Vienna appeared to be absolute. A breakthrough was apparently agreed on Christmas Eve, 1918, when the Americans thought that they had persuaded their Allies to relax the food blockade on the neutral and liberated countries. Furthermore the Inter-Allied Trade Council proposed to allow neutral countries to trade food to Germany in exchange for commodities which did not compete with Allied exports. On Christmas Day, Hoover announced to the world press that ‘it is our first move towards feeding Germany.’ He notified all of the nations involved and announced that the British blockade authorities had confirmed the decision. [1]  Unbeknown to him, or any of the American delegation in Europe, his breakthrough was blown apart by a consortium of Allied councils and executives which met in London some six days later on December 31. They reversed the original decision and re-imposed the full blockade. Hoover described it sarcastically as ‘a sudden joint meeting … to which no Americans were invited’. In fact they had not even been notified.

It was a stinging slap on the face for Hoover and another body-blow for the starving Germans. Not only had the London conspirators undermined his strategy, they had not even sufficient courage to tell him in person. Hoover’s first concern was the financial impact this would have. Money always was his first interest. The British were leading an economic revolt which would have caused an disastrous crash in the U.S. farming industries. The Grain Corporation alone had borrowed over $300,000,000 in the expectation of vast profits from sales to Europe. Hoover estimated that he had 700,000 tons of food en route to famine areas in Europe. Cold storage for perishable foodstuffs was already at bursting point.

At every opportunity Herbert Hoover used President Wilson to add covering letters to his dispatches, appeals and veiled threats to the allied food agencies. [2] The Americans were justifiably aggrieved. They had taken steps to increase agricultural production on a large scale, with guaranteed prices for their farmers in order to make vast post-war profits from all and sundry, including Germany. Such guarantees extended to the 1919 crop, which meant that the U.S. producers had to be protected from deliberate price-undercuts from the southern hemisphere. At one point over 1.2 billion pounds of fats and 100 million bushels of wheat were locked down in European storage. [3] Of even greater concern were perishable foods like dairy products and pork, and the tragic fact was that vast quantities of these foodstuffs were held up in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp while millions of Germans starved. [4]

Yet the British press were relentless in their denial of starvation in Germany. On 3 January 1919, a leading article in The Times dismissed the ‘German Hunger Bogy’ as spurious. What were people to think when the trusted Times reported, ‘You don’t see so many people with rolls of fat on them as you did five years ago, but you also see a healthier, harder and generally more fit population’. Such twisted, pathetic logic.

Even when, by mid-January 1919, it appeared that ‘the Big Four’ (Britain, France the United States and Italy) had agreed that Germany should be supplied with food and ‘if nothing else could be done’ pay in gold and export a limited amount of commodities,[5] the blockade remained in place. The Allied Blockade Committee refused to issue the necessary orders and the British navy stubbornly resisted any attempt by Hoover’s ships to enter German waters. The role of the admiralty in maintaining and enforcing the vicious throttling of a defeated Germany has been clearly understated. It wasn’t just that a watertight blockade was maintained; it was extended and remorselessly enforced. The admiralty ordered the cessation of all German fishing rights in the Baltic … an act of war, clothed in the name of the armistice. The German people were forbidden to even fish for their own food. The Berliner Tageblatt could not fathom why there were steamers from Scandinavia intended for Germany loaded with fish which perished in their holds ‘because the English had extended their hunger blockade’. [6] As we have shown time and again, had such a blockade been enforced in 1915 the war would have been over three years earlier.

Bitter voices were raised in the House of Commons demanding retribution at all costs. Commander Sir Edward Nicholl M.P., threw vastly inflated data into the equation, claiming that 23,737,080 tons of shipping had been sunk by German submarines, [7] and seventeen thousand men of the Mercantile Marine murdered ‘by order of Count Luxembourg’, with instructions to leave no trace behind! Nicholl claimed that the Merchant Seamen’s League had sworn that they would not trade with Germany or … sail with a German until reparation is made and compensation paid to those who have been left behind. [8] Exaggerations apart (Harold Temperley then a British official, estimated the total tonnage sunk at over 15,000,000 tons. Lloyd’s Register put the number at 13,233,672 tons), the hurt of war-loss reduced sensitivity towards the losers. While that is understandable, it is no reason to deny that the starving of Germany was deliberately maintained for ulterior motives.

The notion that the Armistice was signed and sealed in November 1918 is misleading. There were a number of armistice extensions because the process of prolonging the misery for Germany required an extensive period of implementation. The first armistice of 11 November was renewed on 13 December 1918, 16 January 1919 and on 16 February 1919, with Article 26 on the blockade of Germany still in force, it was renewed indefinitely. There was in fact no agreed peace, though the fighting had ended and Germany had surrendered her naval power.

While the blockade allowed the navy to distance itself from its consequences, the British army had to deal with the reality of hunger, starvation, poverty and misery on the streets of major German cities. The war office in London received reports from officers in Hamburg and Hanover [9] which described the physical deterioration of the population with alarming clarity. Shamefully, milk supplies around Hanover had dried up for children over six. [10] War continued to be waged against the innocent.

Even with his landslide election victory behind him, Lloyd George took no action to intervene until five months of misery had reduced the immune system of the German people to desperately low levels. Economic despair brought about political unrest, riots, protests and the rise of a new threat, Bolshevism. [11] Hunger and malnutrition were indeed breeding revolt. The risks to European stability merited a change of policy. The warnings sent to the war office began to underline a growing concern about the worth of the blockade. A report from fourteen ranking army officers, mainly captains with legal, business or financial backgrounds, detailed their conclusions on the critical state of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg and Cassel. They stated that a disaster was imminent and ‘the policy of starvation (note the terminology … the policy of starvation) was not only senseless but harmful to ourselves…. and it would be folly to suppose that the ensuing disaster would be confined to Germany.’ [12]  Never mind the emaciated children, the fear of hunger, the sick and the dying … starvation had become a threat to stability across Europe. It was spreading disease and a new threat called Bolshevism had begun to seep out of a dysfunctional Russia. They had no notion that Bolshevism was being funded by the great international banks in Wall Street.

The War Cabinet was issued with a memorandum on these findings in February 1919 [13] by the recently appointed secretary of state for war, Winston Churchill. [14] The picture it painted was stark. Unemployment in Germany was rising at alarming rates, the cost of living had grown to dangerous levels and industry could not find a foothold because it was starved of raw materials. Malnutrition caused physical and mental inertia, with disease adding to the misery of the people. The concluding message could not have been clearer, ‘Revictualling Germany is really urgent because either famine or Bolshevism, or both will ensue before the next harvest.’ [15]

Though Britain had been struggling to import sufficient food for its population earlier in the year, by late 1918 Hoover’s fleet provided a steady inflow from America to Britain. Yet the onward distribution remained completely blocked. The War Cabinet meeting of 12 February 1919 noted that British ports were stocked ‘to their utmost capacity’, storage facilities taxed to their limit and meat supplies so strong that the civilian ration should be increased’. [16] Although consideration was given to British exports to neutral countries, the government was advised that the blockade be maintained. There was to be no swift relaxation…until, well, Herbert Hoover, the super-hero of his own legend, burst the bubble. Safe in the knowledge that he could not be contradicted, Herbert Hoover later awarded himself the pivotal role in ending the food blockade. The following story was penned by Hoover in his autobiographic American Epic 2 written in 1959.

On the evening of 7 March 1919, Herbert Hoover was summoned into Lloyd George’s presence in Paris where he found a distraught General Plumer, Commander of the British Army of Occupation in Germany. Plumer insisted that the rank and file of his men could no longer cope with the sight ‘of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal from British cantonments’. He claimed that his soldiers were actually depriving themselves to feed these children and wanted to go home, adding that the country ‘was going Bolshevist.’ When asked by Lloyd George why he had not sent food to Germany, Hoover, in his own words, exploded in anger and detailed the obstructions put in his way. He ranted about ‘the three hundred million pounds of perishables, which would spoil in a few weeks, in continental ports or Belgium. He pointed to the vicious and senseless admiralty policy which prevented the Germans fishing in the Baltic, and the inhumane tactic of starving women and children after Germany had surrendered. Hoover apparently closed this rant with the warning that ‘the Allies would be reduced to nothing better with which to make peace with Germany than the Germans had had with Communist Russia.’ [17] Truth or romanticised self-indulgence? Who can say?

1. Hoover, American Epic 2, pp. 303-4.
2. FRUS vol 2. Papers Relating etc pp. 695-7.
3. Hoover, Memoirs, Vol 1. pp. 332.
4. Ibid., p. 333.
5. Ibid., p. 339.
6. Berliner Tageblatt, 13 December 1918, p. 2.
7. House of Commons Debate 02 April 1919 vol 114 cc1304-49.
8. Ibid., cc1311.
9. Reports by British Officers on the Economic Conditions Prevailing in Germany, December 1918-March 1919 , Cmd.52, HMSO 1919. ( Period 12 January-12 February 1919, in CAB/ 24/ 76)
10. Ibid., pp. 57-8.
11. Hoover, Memoirs, Vol. 1, pp. 340-1.
12. Reports by British Officers, Cmd.52, HMSO 1919. p. 84.
13. CAB/ 24/76/22
14. Winston Churchill was returned to high office on 9 January 1919 as Secretary of State for War.
15. CAB/ 24/76/22.
16. War Cabinet 531, p. 2. War Cabinet Minutes 12 February 1919. CAB /23/ 9/18.
17. Herbert Hoover, American Epic 2, pp. 337-8.

War Without End 4: The Vindictive Struggle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War Without End 3: Let Germany Starve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War Without End 2: The Deadly Armistice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Coup of 1916, 1: Democracy – Roots of Poison

The Secret Elite scorn democracy. They always have. The following series of blogs trace the activities through which they eventually replaced a democratically elected government with one in which they themselves took complete control of the British  government from 1916. 

In the first years of the twentieth century, their most important influence, Alfred Milner, the passionate promoter of British Imperialism, [1] and favoured heir of Cecil Rhodes’s ideals, [2] held an absolute contempt for the British Parliamentary system [3] which he condemned as an ‘absurd waste of power’. [4] His acolyte, Philip Kerr, later lord Lothian, described his mentor’s attitude to democratic government thus:

‘In every fibre of his being he loathed the slipshod compromises, the optimistic “slogans”, the vote-catching half-truths with which democracy seemed to compromise the majestic governing art …’ [5]

Before he returned to Britain in 1905, Milner, a copious letter-writer, wrote to his future wife, then Lady Violet Cecil, that the system was hopeless. With a prescience which might make the reader today shudder, he predicted that, ‘Perhaps the great charlatan – political scallywag, buffoon, liar … and in other respects popular favourite – may someday arise, who is nevertheless a statesman … and who, having gained power by popular art, may use it for the nations ends. It is an off chance …’ [6]

(Ponder these prophetic words. Though expressed in a different era, you might be forgiven for thinking that Milner’s description fitted Tony Blair or David Lloyd George. Both were loyal servants of the Secret Elite in their day, posed as a socialist, or Liberal in Lloyd George’s case, misrepresented the reasons for promoting war, popular when first in office, considered by some to be statesmen – but not buffoons or political scallywags. No. Such words are utterly inadequate to catch their devious characters.)

Milner never accepted democratic government. He was convinced that a dedicated, hand-picked and trained elite was better-equipped to run Britain’s affairs. [7] He was an unreformed disciple of the Oxford philosopher, John Ruskin, who advocated that the control of the state should be restricted to a small ruling elite. Social order was to be built on the authority of superiors who would impose on their inferiors an absolute unquestioning obedience. [8]

With that mind-set and a determination to manipulate the political system, the highest echelons inside Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government had been successfully infiltrated before he became prime minister in 1908. [9] Sir Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary from 1905-16), Richard Haldane (War Minister from 1906-10) and Asquith himself, all Secret Elite place-men, formed the triumvirate which steadfastly steered the British Empire into a predetermined war to crush Germany in 1914. [10] In this they were abetted by Winston Churchill and eventually David Lloyd George. [11] It would be ridiculous to imply that five mediocre British politicians were solely responsible for bringing about the world war.

They did not represent democracy in any shape or form. These men refused to be answerable to parliament or the people. They were, like many who have held top political positions in Britain over the century since, mere instruments of the power behind the scenes – the all-powerful, wealthy secret cabal whom we call the Secret Elite. This sham democracy was aided and abetted by the awesome power of the popular press, much of which was owned and controlled by the same men who wielded real power.

Few knew that a powerful group of newspaper editors and owners were closely associated with Milner and the Secret Elite. His personal network of journalists included George Buckle and later Geoffrey Dawson at the Times, Edmund Garrett at the Westminster Gazette, and ET Cook at the Daily News and Daily Chronicle. All were members of the Secret Elite. [12] Their greatest ally was Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, whom the Secret Elite approved as owner of the Times in 1908 after he had been closely vetted on their behalf by Lord Esher. [13] As owner of the Daily Mail (1896) the Daily Mirror (1903) the Observer (1905) and the Sunday Times, amongst other publications, Northcliffe’s role in the immediate pre-war years was to stir the populace against Germany. His biographers have translated this into an apparently less threatening response to the calls of Lord Milner and Lord Roberts [14] to ‘champion the cause of national defence on land, at sea and in the air.’ [15] He was the scaremonger chosen to undermine public confidence by constantly accusing Germany and the Kaiser of ill-intentions towards Britain and her Empire.

Northcliffe unleashed a torrent of fear deliberately aimed to prepare the nation for war against Germany. The Daily Mail carried concocted half-truths and downright lies to unnerve a people who had previously considered Germany no more than a friendly rival. The unrelenting propaganda spun its rabid negativity into the fabric of the nation in similar vein to the years of fear-inducing hostile headlines which led the British working classes to believe that the Brexit option in 2016 would stop the ill-perceived ‘menace’ of immigration. Falsehood became truth; reason was poisoned. Ludicrous stories filled the pages of the popular press. Little changes. [16]

Spy mania added to the sense of paranoia so cleverly promoted by Northcliffe’s stables. Ludicrous claims were made about German intentions and by default, German residents in Britain. Typical of unfounded scaremongering was Lord Roberts’s calculation that there were ‘80,000 Germans in the United Kingdom, almost all of them trained soldiers. They work many of the hotels at some of the chief railway stations, and if a German force once got into this country it would have the advantage of help and reinforcement such as no other army on foreign soil has ever before enjoyed’. [17] It was of course, nonsense, but how often has the true charlatan abused fear of immigrants to gather public support?

Milner and his associates also had backing from finance and business. He had access to Rhodes’s money and the fortunes of his South African backers, Alfred Beit and Abe Bailey. [18] Having earned the gratitude of the Rothschild family by instigating war against the Boers in order to seize their gold mines, his standing with the armaments and shipbuilding moguls could not have been higher. As increasing numbers of financiers from both sides of the Atlantic joined in associated exclusive clubs like the Pilgrims of the United States and the Pilgrims of Great Britain, [19] Milner’s influence, and consequent power, spread.

As has been fully detailed in both our Hidden History, the Secret Origins of the First World War and over several blogs, [20] this combination of political power, media exploitation and financial backing bounced the British Empire into war with Germany in August 1914 in order to create the Anglo-American supremacy in a new world order.

Consider the awful failing of assumed democracy. Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August on the basis of a package of outrageous lies, vile deception and gross exaggeration just as she did in Iraq almost a century later. Despite the presumed responsibility of government to serve the needs of its citizens and stand accountable for its actions, every check which might have stopped the war was circumvented or ignored. War with Germany was visited upon the British people and the British Empire without consent. The people were not consulted. Ironically, the Liberal government which had been elected in 1906 won a landslide victory based on ‘peace, retrenchment and reform’. [21] Further elections in 1910 returned a government whose foreign policy had not changed; officially.

Parliament was not consulted about a declaration of war in 1914, despite several reassurances from Sir Edward Grey that it would be. Asquith did not move for a vote in cabinet because he knew that the cabinet was weighed against any decision to go to war. While the Secret Elite marshalled its forces in the press, the Church of England and the hallowed halls of Oxford, opponents were caught flat-footed, disbarred from criticism as the newspapers joined ranks to exclude their views. In Parliament the substantial anti-war lobby was practically silenced when an open debate was denied them by prime minister Asquith himself. [22] Those who thought that they could turn to Lloyd George to stand firm against the war and lead a popular opposition to it were sorely disabused of the notion. Like many since, he lead the dissenters into a cul-de-sac and left them there. The Welsh firebrand welched.

Britain was railroaded into war by a government which was neither capable of running it nor elected to do so. The belief that her naval and economic power was sufficient to defeat the Germans was one of the fundamental premises which underpinned the widely held assumption in Britain that it would be ‘business as usual’. [23] Amongst a range of disinformation put about to assuage a gullible public was that the navy would protect Britain from invasion, strangle the German economy and win a low-cost war, safe behind a decade of naval investment. There was no invasion. Never at any stage in the proceedings did Germany plan for an invasion. A much vaunted blockade [24] was secretly reduced to tokenism. It would not be ‘business as usual’. Be of no doubt, and we have repeatedly made this point in our blogs, the war could have been over by the Spring/Summer of 1915 had that been the prime objective. It was not due to incompetence, though the government merited that tag, or miscalculation, that the war was outwardly mismanaged, but by very carefully executed strategies to supply the enemy and prolong the war. [25]

In fact, the Secret Elite’s men in government did a very capable job in prolonging the war. Asquith’s dithering indecision, his failure to change the nature of decision-making in cabinet proved to be a stranglehold on progress. Lloyd George acted under the supervision of the banking and financial sectors on both sides of the Atlantic and used their backing to obtain loans and munitions through the exclusive J.P. Morgan/Rothschild portal. [26] Sir Edward Grey’s men in the Foreign Office bent double to accommodate the American interests and completely nullify the brave and tireless efforts of the navy to run an effective blockade. They also rubber-stamped the secretive and illusionary ‘Belgian Relief’ programme which was run by Herbert Hoover to supply Germany with much needed food. [27] Churchill ran amok like a headless chicken frequently abandoning his duties at the Admiralty in favour of self-serving publicity.

Victory in the field was not the objective unless it was predicated upon the complete destruction of Germany as an economic rival, and that would take time and absolute commitment. Two very different approaches were underway. Most of the liberal cabinet set out on a loosely sketched journey believing that a short war would be won at sea, and a small army would suffice for the continental struggle; the Secret Elite’s men embarked on a long debilitating war which protected their interests, guaranteed great profits, and was backed by vast resources from the United States.

Even although the Liberal majority in Asquith’s cabinet were reluctant to abandon their laissez-faire principles, Lloyd George, recognised that control of the railway network and guarantees for the shipping insurance business were absolutely necessary to the survival of social order. [28] In other words, government in times of modern warfare required direct intervention. Tellingly, Lloyd George’s first actions were to protect the banks, the money markets and the business of war. He took credit for saving the city after embracing advice from Nathaniel Rothschild and ‘a section of the business and financial world’. [29] Of course he did. He was their man.

Liberal ideology, long mocked by Milner and his followers, proved ineffectual. Do not include Asquith, Grey and Lloyd George as ‘ liberals’. The first two had long sold their souls to the imperialist race patriots; Lloyd George had simply sold his soul. They were not proponents of a political theory or party, but obedient servants of an apolitical, (in the Party sense) anti-democratic, power-obsessed oligarchy. These political place-men of the Secret Elite (then as now) were labeled liberal for public consumption. In reality they were not what the people, and even fellow members of their own party, imagined.

Prolonging the war was of course very profitable, but winning the war was everything. By 1915, the Secret Elite realised that Asquith’s approach to war-management was failing. He and his ministers were no longer dealing with the political issues for which they had been elected and could not be trusted with the unequivocal drive to crush Germany. The Secret Elite required a government focussed on the destruction of Germany and these men were not up to it.

Hundreds of thousands of young men had already been killed. Prolonging the war required men with cold, hard hearts devoid of compassion, committed to the Secret Elite’s cause. How had Milner expressed the steel required to see war through to the ultimate destruction of the enemy? His chilling advice to Richard Haldane during the Boer War was to ‘disregard the screamers’. [30] It takes a special kind of ‘strength’ to ignore humanitarian issues, ignore the utter chaos caused by the sacrifice of so many and yet be willing to sacrifice many more. Milner had such cold steel in his core.

To the Secret Elite, Milner’s deep-rooted fears were completely vindicated. Democratic liberalism, watered down as it had been since the death of Campbell-Bannerman, [31] denied Britain a co-ordinated agency to direct the war effort. In Asquith’s cabinet, only Lloyd George, increasingly the sole candidate for Secret Elite support, grasped the need to shake up the traditional approach to government. Even a pretence of democracy would not deliver ultimate victory. It was poisoning their cause.

But how could they remove the prime minister who had done their bidding?

[1] Viscount Alfred Milner was from 1902-1925 leader of the Secret Society funded and promoted originally by Cecil Rhodes. Although he spurned elected position and championed preparations for war against Germany, once the war was underway , he and his associates wanted control of the government in wartime to control the post-war settlement was they envisaged it. See Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp 4-14 and p.140.
[2] He envisaged his great purpose in life to expand the English-speaking sphere of influence until it was so powerful that no nation could challenge it. see Robin Brown, The Secret Society, p. 18.
[3] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden history, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 55.
[4] Thomas Packenham, The Boer War, p. 551.
[5] The Nation & Athenaeum, 23 May 1925.
[6] Milner to Lady Cecil as quoted in A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 46.
[7] Robin Brown, The Secret Society, p. 253.
[8] J.A. Hobson, John Ruskin: Social Reformer, p. 187.
[9] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 101-2.
[11] Winston Churchill, World Crisis Vol 1, pp. 38-9.
[12] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 311-2.
[13] Lord Reginald Esher was one of the original members of Rhodes’s Secret Society. He was the confidante of Kings Edward VII and George V. His full role in vetting and approving Northcliffe’s acquisition of The Times see, J Lee Thompson, Northcliffe, Press Baron in Politics, 1865-1922, pp. 151-3.
[14] Lord Fredrick Roberts had formerly been Commander-in-Chief of The Forces before his retiral. A close associate ofViscount Milner, with whom he shared many a platform, he avidly supported compulsory conscription to the armed forces.
[15] J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 159.
[16] The worst of his kind was William Le Queux, a Walter Mitty character, his ridiculous anti-German propaganda was supported by Northcliffe’s Daily Mail. see Christopher Andrews, Secret Service, pp. 37-48.
[17] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 23 November 1908 vol 196, cc1691.
[18] Brown, The Secret Society, p. 253.
[19] The Pilgrims Society was the embodiment of the ‘special relationship’ between the United States and Great Britain. [Its centennial history was written by Anne Pimlott Baker.] Exclusive to all but the anglo-saxon elite on both sides of the Atlantic, the Pilgrims of the United States included the most pro- British and influential bankers and financiers.
[20] In particular see Blog of 17 June 2014, Secret Elite 3: Building the Network.
[21] The great Liberal philosophy which was trumpeted by their parliamentary leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who fought and won the landslide Liberal victory of 1906.
[22] Hansard, House of Commons Debate 03 August 1914 vol 65 cc1831-2.
[23] David French, The Rise and Fall of Business as Usual’, in Kathleen Burk, War and the State, The Transformation of the British Government, 1914-1919, p.10.
[24] see Blogs on the sham of blockade, posted from 10 December 2014 to February 2015. Also E. Keble Chatterton, The Big Blockade.
[25] Perhaps the most interesting and puzzling scandal of the First World War was Herbert Hoover’s Commission for Relief in Belgium which ensured that war was prolonged by providing supplies, especially foodstuffs, to Germany from 1914-1917.
[26] Kathleen Burk, War and the State, The Transformation of British Government 1914-18, p. 90.
[27] Michael Amara et Hubert Roland, Gouverner En Belgique Ocuppee, p. 99 and p. 214.
[28] David French, The Rise and Fall of Business as Usual’, in Kathleen Burk, War and the State, The Transformation of the British Government, 1914-1919, p. 7.
[29] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 70.
[30] J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 483.
[31] Henry Campbell-Bannerman died in 10 Downing Street on 22 April 1908 from a heart attack.

The Oil Story 6: Hypocrisy and a Biblical Blind Eye

Perhaps the most searching question is why, on the outbreak of war, the British government did not force home-based multi-national oil companies, such as those owned by the Rothschilds or Marcus Samuel, to use their influence to stop supplying Germany. There can be no excuse that the government did not realise what was happening. Its close scrutiny of the oil industry in the run up to the war meant that the Foreign Office, the Exchequer, the Board of Trade, the Admiralty, and key members of the Cabinet understood the precise nature and structure of the global oil industry. [1]

Churchill defined the prevailing situation to Parliament one year before war broke out:
‘Our power to obtain additional supplies of oil fuel in time of war depends on our command of the sea’, and spoke of ‘Two gigantic corporations….In the New World there is Standard Oil; In the Old World the great combination of Shell and Royal Dutch with all their subsidiary and ancillary branches has practically covered the whole ground and has even reached out into the New World’. [2] The British government had analysed and itemised the world supply of oil in fine detail in order to assure itself of reliable supplies. It knew exactly where the oil was, who owned it and precisely how Germany obtained her oil.

On the outbreak of war, Germany should have been unable to source oil supplies directly from America. However, oil was not initially included in the definition of contraband, and as a result she could still legally import oil from the USA and other neutral countries. [3] That situation was supposed to have been changed in November 1914 when the House of Commons was informed: ‘His Majesty’s Government have reliable information that in the present circumstances any oil, copper, and certain other substances that may be imported into Germany or Austria will certainly be used exclusively for warlike purposes, and His Majesty’s Government have for this reason felt justified in adding those items to the list of absolute contraband. Every possible care is being taken to ensure that oil and copper intended for neutral countries should not be interfered with.’ [4]

Examine Prime Minister Asquith’s words. His government acknowledged that any oil allowed into Germany ‘would be used exclusively for warlike purposes’. Despite this, parliament was informed that oil intended for neutral countries should not be interfered with. It was classic double-speak. The government was well aware that much of the oil and other goods allowed through the naval blockade to neutral Scandinavian countries was being transferred on to Germany. Placing oil on the absolute contraband list was a sham. It changed nothing. Germany was still allowed to purchase oil from her neighbours in vast quantities.

Enticements were breathtaking. Rear-Admiral Consett, the British Naval Attache in Scandinavia revealed that in 1915 Germany was offering 1,8000 marks (£90) per barrel of oil whose market value in neighbouring Denmark was 125 kroner (about £7) Lubricants were always in short supply in Germany, but most especially in 1915 and 1916 [6] By December 1915 the American Ambassador in Berlin (Gerrard] recorded in his war diary that ‘probably the greatest need of Germany is lubricating oil for machines’. [7]

General Ludendorff, Deputy Chief of Staff, wrote later in his Memoirs ‘As Austria could not supply us with oil, and as all of our efforts to increase production were unavailing, Romanian oil was of decisive importance to us. But even with deliveries of Romanian oil, the question of oil supplies still remained very serious, and caused us great difficulty, not only for the conduct of the war, but for the life of the country.’ [8] Two points should be considered here. Yet again, the German High Command acknowledged that without oil the war could not have continued. He also considered Romanian oil crucial. Who owned the ‘decisively important’ Romanian oil fields? International conglomerates closely linked to the Secret Elite.

German imports of American oil through Scandinavia were well known to the British authorities from an early stage in the war. Rear-Admiral Consett repeatedly sent detailed and urgent alerts about this from his office in Copenhagen to the Admiralty, but nothing was done. Such large-scale abuse of the contraband restrictions became a scandal. In Copenhagen, German ships were openly berthing alongside tankers from America, transferring the oil, and trans-shipping every drop to Germany. Likewise in Sweden, virtually every consignment of oil imported through Stockholm was re-exported to Germany. [9] Profits for the Americans and the Scandinavians were enormous, but what did it profit the British government to turn such a biblical blind eye?

Their empty promises to prevent oil reaching Germany made a mockery of the valiant efforts of the Royal Navy in the dangerous, storm tossed waters of the North Sea. [10] The naval historian Keble Chatterton, likewise exposed the charade. He later wrote about Admiral de Chair, commander of the navy’s blockading fleet, complaining bitterly that the work of his brave sailors was deliberately undermined:

‘Those British authorities who sat in their office chairs on shore went on blundering. With some difficulty and trouble the American SS Llama [Standard Oil] carrying a large cargo of oil, had been chased by vessels of 10th Squadron and finally captured.

An armed guard had run the prevailing risks of submarines and taken her into Kirkwall, [Orkney Islands] yet by a mysterious mentality, someone in authority had ordered her release and allowed her to proceed on her way to Germany. She duly arrived at Swinemunde, where her most welcome cargo fetched a high price. It seems incredible that after a year’s war experience, we should deliberately allow such supplies to reach the enemy after the carrying ship had been intercepted.’ [11]

It did, of course, run much deeper than the ‘blundering’ of office bound officials as expressed by Admiral de Chair. It is inconceivable  that the oil tanker was released and allowed to continue its journey to Germany unless someone at the highest level of the British government had approved it. American vessels, including the Lusitania with the loss of 128 American lives, had been sunk by German U-boats. Outrage was being expressed by the American government, [12] yet American companies were providing the oil which fuelled those very U-Boats. It was not all they were providing.

On 9 July 1916 the large German merchant submarine Deutschland sailed into Baltimore harbour after a 16 day journey from Bremerhaven. She was welcomed with siren blasts from American and other vessels, and an official dinner was given by the Mayor of Baltimore. [13] Her cargo of chemical dyes, gemstones and medicinal products was unloaded and when she left for Germany on 2 August she carried 341 tons of nickel, a mineral essential for hardening steel for weapons production, 93 tons of tin and 348 tons of rubber.

On a second journey in November 1916 to New London, Connecticut she returned with a full cargo which included 6.5 tons of silver bullion. [14] America not only provided Germany with oil and the means to produce heavy weapons, she also helped fund her war effort. The hypocrisy was breathtaking. While the U S President apparently urged peace on Europe, American money enabled both sides to continue the war.

The hypocrisy was by no means confined to America. In exactly the same manner as raw materials such as silver, nickel, tin and rubber, and essential supplies of foodstuffs were deliberately allowed through the British naval blockade, critical supplies of oil poured into Germany from British -owned companies in the first two years of the war. In the House of Commons in July 1916, Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade was asked: ‘Whether he can ascertain what sales and deliveries, if any, of petrol, benzine, kerosene or other petroleum products have been made to enemy countries during the period of the war and which of the companies under the control of the Shell Trading and Transport Company, or any of their associated companies, have done this, other than the Astra Romana Company?’ Runciman did not reply in person, but sent his deputy, Lewis Harcourt, a long-time associate of the Secret Elite [15] to provide a typically cryptic non-answer: ‘I have no reason to think that any such sales or deliveries of petroleum products have been made, and the Shell Transport and Trading company inform me that they have not.’ [16]

The MP who put forward the question, Major Rowland Hunt, was well aware that the British company’s field at Astra Romana was selling to Germany. In effect he was not wanting to know if they were supplying oil to it, but how much. The answer was stunning in its conceit. Harcourt, as the government’s spokesman ‘had no reason to think that any sales or deliveries’ had been made. Shell said they had not, so that was the end of the matter. No further discussion, no independent investigation was required on this crucial matter. The Government appeared to accept without question the word of a multinational company that multiplied its profits by supplying the enemy.

It was, however, not a matter of naivety that shaped the official answer. It was a cover up. The war was deliberately being prolonged by oil companies partly owned by British shareholders supplying the enemy, and the top echelons of power in Britain colluded with them.

[1] F.C. Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, vol 4, p. 282.
[2] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 17 July 1913, vol 55 cc1465-583.
[3] Blockade 2: Britannia Waives the Rules, Wednesday 7 December 2014. http://www.firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com
[4] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 17 November 1914. vol 68 cc314-7.
[6] Rear-Admiral M.W.W.P. Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces p.180. Consett’s book is so important that our readers might want to peruse it. https://ia801403.us.archive.org/27/items/unarmedforces00consuoft/unarmedforces00consuoft.pdf
[7] Ibid.
[8] Pierre de la Tramerye, The World Struggle for Oil p. 103.
[9] Consett, The Triumph, pp. 180-189.
[10] E. Keble Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 73.
[11] Ibid., pp. 213-214.
[12] The United States and War: President Wilson’s Notes on the Lusitania and Germany’s reply, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, vol. XXX (1915) p. 47.
[13] Paul Konig, Voyage of the Deutschland, The First Merchant Submarine, p. 19. Konig was the Captain of the Deutschland.
[14] Dwight Messimer, The Baltimore Sabotage Cell, German Agents, American Traitors and the U-boat Deutschland During World War 1, p. 139.
[15] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 38.
[16] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 31 July 1916 vol 84 cc 2044-6.

Lusitania 3: A Statement Of Intent

In the first six months of the war the German submarine fleet was mainly used on reconnaissance missions and attacks on warships; in total, the U-boat fleet sank only ten British merchant ships. The first was the steamer Glitra on 20 October 1914 off the Norwegian coast. Having been ordered to heave-to, the ship’s company was given time to lower their life-boats and no lives were lost. [1] According to the recognised practice of international law, a submarine commander had to ascertain the identity of the target and make adequate provisions for the safety of crew and passengers before attacking an enemy merchant or passenger ship. Since it was impossible for the cramped submarines to take on board the the numbers present on large ships, the best they could do was stop the ship and give passengers and crew a chance to take to the lifeboats. [3] This was initially common practice. By early 1915 British merchant shipping still operated on a virtual peacetime basis without any reliance on a convoy system. Admiralty  Intelligence assessed that the German Imperial Fleet had no more than 25 submarines capable of blockading the British Isles, and since these could only operate in three reliefs, no more than eight were likely to be active simultaneously. [2]

Although international law was generally recognised by U-boat captains in the first months of the war, changes in British anti-submarine tactics led them to re-asses the risks they faced when surfacing near merchant vessels to give the crew the opportunity to abandon ship. At the outbreak of war, thirty-nine large British merchantmen had been fitted with 4.7-inch deck guns and increasingly more were armed with such weapons. Whereas ships could generally afford to survive several hits, a submarine which had surfaced was very vulnerable to attack and a single hit might make it impossible for her to dive. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill took an aggressive stance against submarine warfare by ordering merchant ships to attempt to ram U-boats on the surface.

In addition, the introduction of armed decoy tramp steamers (later named Q ships) greatly increased the risk to submarines operating from a surface position. With guns carefully concealed as deck-structure, the decoy would suddenly drop the disguised or camouflaged boards which concealed their weapons and then open fire.  This tactic was immediately successful but caused U-boat captains to rethink their strategy. The rules of engagement had been torn up and U-boats remained submerged for their own safety. There would be no warning. The first and only indication a merchant crew might get was a fast, steady stream of tell-tale bubbles heading towards them. Submarine warfare entered a new phase of silent approach and unheralded torpedo attack. In the bitterness of war the struggle for command of the seas brought ever increasing danger to maritime traffic.

On 1 February 1915 the German Chancellor approved a submarine campaign against sea-borne commerce in retaliation for the British blockade of Germany and the illegal tactics used by British merchant ships flying false ‘neutral’ flags. [4] The objective, to cut Britain’s sea communications and starve her into submission, was totally unrealistic given the paucity of U-boats and the volume of international trade.

Three days later the Kaiser approved the action and proclaimed a designated war zone around the coast of Britain and out into the Atlantic. Germany claimed the right to dispense with the customary preliminaries of visit and search before taking action against merchant vessels. They warned that belligerent merchantmen were to be sunk and it was no longer possible to avoid the danger to crews and passengers. Neutral shipping was advised to stay out of the zone from 18 February onwards or face similar consequences. There was an immediate outcry. The Times portrayed the German tactic as a war on neutrals and dismissed the Kaiser’s proclamation as a ‘new piracy’. [5]

Initially the American press dismissed the declaration as ‘bluff’. The Philadelphia Ledger dismissed it as  an ‘intimidation calculated to raise insurance rates and instil fear in shipping circles’ [6] On the other hand, international lawyer Frederic Coudert fumed that it was an ‘absolutely unprecedented stroke of barbarism’ that was ‘not in any way justified by law or morality’. In reality, analysis of the German War Zone decree showed it to be very similar to the earlier British ‘blockade’ on Germany, and government officials in the American State Department realised that the Germans  had executed a clever counter diplomatic stroke. [7] Winston Churchill remained adamant that, ‘no appreciable effect would in fact be produced upon our trade, provided always that our ships continued boldly to put to sea. On the other hand, we were sure that the German declaration and the inevitable accidents to neutrals arising out of it would offend and perhaps embroil the United States.’ [8]

Despite the initial hysteria, the German blockade of the British Isles began as promised on 18 February. That same day a British merchant ship was torpedoed in the Channel and by the end of the first week, eleven British ships had been attacked, of which seven were sunk. But put this into perspective. In the same period no less than 1,381 merchant vessels had safely arrived in, or sailed from, British ports. Trade continued unabated. In April 1915, only twenty-three ships were sunk out of over six thousand arrivals and departures. Six of these were neutrals. At least four U-boats were destroyed in the same period. [9] This was not Armageddon.

Given that the total number of U-boats operating around British shores at any given time was strictly limited, the secret codebreakers in Room 40 had, by February 1915, the capacity to track their wireless messages and follow their general direction as they moved from area to area. Though not yet an exact science, the information was priceless. On 15 February 1915, three days before the German War Zone around Britain took effect, Churchill wrote a top secret memo to the President of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman,  outlining an opportunity which the German tactic presented. It was the kernel of an idea which appealed to both him and the inner-core agents of the Secret Elite;

‘It is of the utmost importance to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope of especially embroiling the U.S. with Germany. The German formal announcement of indiscriminate submarining has been made to the United States to produce a deterrent effect on traffic. For our part, we want the traffic — the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still’ [10]

While the Mediterranean fleet headed towards the Dardanelles, where within four days they would begin a bombardment of the Turkish forts, the Secret Elite in London were plotting to use the German submarine campaign to provide their American counterparts with a reason to entice the United States into the war. Since so very few people knew about its existence inside the Admiralty, Room 40 became a secret weapon on its own with Churchill, a key Secret Elite operative, as its master and commander.

He did not supervise the day to day operations, that was the duty of Captain ‘Blinker Hall’, but all were answerable to him. Arguments have been constructed around the climate of absolute secrecy inside the Admiralty which insist that Churchill did not know all the circumstances surrounding the Lusitania’s voyage. What nonsense. He was obsessed by control; obsessed by his own image; obsessed by the public perception that he was the Admiralty. Of course he knew.

Consider the knowledge and information available to Churchill. In Room 40 the cryptographers knew precisely which U-boats were at sea and actively hunting down merchant shipping. They could follow radio messages from area to area and plot their location. The Admiralty Intelligence Division knew how the German submarines operated and the conditions they required for a successful hit. They were aware of almost every German vessel’s position. The Admiralty Trade Division knew which merchant ships and passenger liners were approaching British waters and which were scheduled to leave. No-one had instant access to these departments, save Churchill, the First Sea Lord, Jackie Fisher and  Admiral Henry Oliver, Chief of Admiralty War Staff.

To have such detailed information to hand put Churchill in a position few leaders have ever enjoyed. He had quickly determined that the information could be used to ‘embroil the U.S. with Germany’. How had he expressed it to Runciman? The greater the traffic, the greater the opportunity for German U-Boats to sink a neutral ship, and ‘better still’ if some American traffic got ‘into trouble’. This wasn’t a chance remark. It was a statement of intent.

And through Churchill’s department, the Secret Elite intended to engineer a crisis that would swing public opinion in the United States towards war. The plan which took shape was not discussed in Cabinet, nor recorded in official papers, but Churchill’s letter demonstrated clearly that the idea of an American ship getting ‘into trouble’ was  considered secretly at the highest level. We will provide evidence that the impact of a U-Boat torpedoing a Trans-Atlantic Liner carrying American passengers was not only  discussed with the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey and even the King, but the means of enabling such a traumatic incident had been agreed. The Secret Elite intended to facilitate an international incident to Britain’s advantage using  German submarines to their own end. Had it not been the Lusitania, another such ship would have served the same purpose, but the Lusitania was the perfect target. She regularly transported the richest of Americans across the Atlantic. The endangering of a hundred migrants or working class souls has long been of less concern that an international millionaire banker or icon from high society. If only they could isolate a target, channel it towards a prowling U-boat and leave the rest to the fates …

[1] Arthur J Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol 11, pp. 342-3.
[2] Winston S Churchill, The World Crisis 1915, p. 283.
[3] Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol 11, pp. 342-3
[4] The Times, February 16, 1915, p.8.
[5] The Times, 19 February, 1915, p. 9.
[6] From the Times Washington correspondent, The Times, 6 February 1915, p. 9.
[7] Walter Millis, Road To War – America, 1914-1917, pp. 134-5.
[8] Winston S Churchill, The World Crisis 1915, p. 284.
[9] Ibid., pp. 291-2.
[10] Martin Gilbert, Churchill on America, p. 57.

Blockade 10: The Worm Turns

By 1916 a sea change had taken place in Britain. Early public expectation of a quick decisive victory predicated on naval supremacy and a successful blockade had been shattered by its abject failure. Profound disappointment, indeed a sense of disenchantment, followed. The pliant and supportive British press of 1914 began by 1916 to look for reasons why victory seemed as far away as ever. Their focus turned to the naval blockade. Stories which abounded of vessels being released to neutral nations with cargoes of cotton, oil, ores, fish, meat, flour, lard and much more, drew an angry response. The Daily Mail campaigned against the ‘Sham Blockade’ and the Morning Post criticised the ‘Make Believe Blockade’ They carried rumours that Cabinet Ministers would be impeached and Sir Edward Grey was forced to deny the accusations in Parliament. [1]

For as long as the instigators of war held office, they continually lied to parliament about the blockade, its apparent limitations and its effectiveness. Churchill began the era of the First Blockade with his definitive and much publicised speech at the Guildhall on 9 November 1914, where he assured the nation that a naval blockade was in operation and promised that;

‘The economic stringency resulting from a naval blockade requires time to reach its full effectiveness…But wait a bit….and you will begin to see the results – results which will be gradually achieved and silently achieved, but which will spell the doom of Germany as surely as the approaching winter strikes the leaves from the trees.’ [2]

Winston Churchill set the level of expectation. He proclaimed that Germany would be doomed within a year; that the blockade would absolutely bring Germany to her knees. He lied. He lied too in Cabinet on 3 March 1915, claiming that the blockade was ‘in every sense effective: no instance is known to the Admiralty of any vessel, the stopping of which has been authorised by the Foreign Office, passing them unchallenged. It is not a case of a paper blockade, but of a blockade as real and as effective as any that has ever been established’ [3] False but clever semantics. Any vessel stopped by order of the Foreign Office would certainly have been impounded, but not the vast majority that were challenged on the high seas. Churchill deliberately failed to mention what had actually transpired.

The first blockade degenerated into a farce which was described by Sir Henry Dalziel, member of parliament for Kirkcaldy, on 27 March 1917. in the following terms;

‘For the first eighteen month of the war, the Admiralty were in a state of despair with regard to the actions of the Foreign Office. They were bringing in, day after day, ships which were admittedly carrying cargo to the benefit of the enemy. What happened? A telegram was sent to London to the Foreign Office, and in reply, often in the course of a fews hours, a telegram came informing them that they ought to let the ships go through, for some reasons that were no doubt considered satisfactory by the Foreign Office, but which tended to make our sailors absolutely depressed and in despair. It is a fact that for months at a time the officers themselves absolutely refused to take ships into port. They used to send junior officers and midshipmen, who took the ships into harbour, and, treating the matter jocularly, told the Harbour Master to let the ships away in a few hours to Germany. The whole thing was treated as a farce, though ship after ship, to the knowledge of the officers, carried goods for Germany.’ [4]

The first blockade which lasted for two years was a farce, during which Britain was effectively feeding and supplying Germany; effectively prolonging the war. Heads should have rolled. Guilty men ought to have been mercilessly exposed.

Several strong-minded members of parliament pursued that issue relentlessly, even when threats were made to silence them. [5]  On 12 July 1915, Sir Henry Dalziel raised the question of cotton supplies to Germany despite being ‘threatened if I raised the question tonight that I would be counted out, and I understand that great efforts have been made …to secure that object.’ Dalziel would not be silenced: ‘After nearly a year of war we are permitting, practically with our connivance, the most essential factor in the making of high explosives to go to our enemy, and we are assisting them to make munitions that kill our soldiers. … Without the cotton which we are supplying… Germany would have been practically unable to continue the war up to the present time.’ [6]

In the Upper House, Lord Sydenham continued to berate the government’s inaction over the blockade stating bluntly in December 1915 that ‘had Germany not received indispensable commodities of many kinds the war would have been over before this’. [7] Consider the accusations by these eminent men. The First World War could have ended before the winter of 1915. Both are absolutely clear about that. Turning on the stupidity of the agreement made that year between the British government and some Danish importers, Sydenham went further. He berated them for ‘enabling the enemy to prolong the war’ and added that ‘your new Agreement (with Denmark) will help much more than ever for Germany to be fed, the war prolonged, and your blockade made a joke. [8]

In February 1916, when the failure of an effective blockade was lambasted by an outraged Press, Lord Beresford, a former First Sea Lord and highly respected Admiral, stood in the House of Lords and laid bare the fact that had a full blockade of trade with Germany been put in place, rather than the ambiguous and colander like Treaty of London, ‘the war would now have been over’. [9]

The bitter anger against those responsible for the sham blockade became very personal. At the end of the war Brigadier-General Croft, MP for Christchurch, who fought at the Somme and was twice mentioned in dispatches, accused government ministers of lying about ‘the indefensible export of essential and vital foodstuffs during 1915 and the first half of 1916’. [10] Having witnessed the selflessness and bravery of men at the front, he became intolerant of the  opportunism of politicians at home whom he held responsible. [11] Croft wanted blood. He wanted names. He wanted the public to know who had made these decisions. The answer he was given was that no minister was responsible. Incredulously, Croft responded with warranted sarcasm, ‘We fed Germans because no minister was responsible.’ His patience snapped. ‘No minister was responsible during this time, and yet we find millions of tons of produce and raw materials left this country – ore for shells to blow our men to bits with in the trenches, cotton to provide explosives for these shells, and food to feed the Germans who fired those shells.’’ [12] Read these words aloud and feel the anger. Croft accused the government of ‘actually feeding the Germans and helping them to sustain the war at that time.’ The Brigadier-General suggested that Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman be impeached. One can only imagine the consternation amongst the Secret Elite and their agents. Naturally nothing of any consequence followed. As ever they deflected accusations, camouflaged the guilty and ignored the question.

Without a doubt, the most important, detailed and accurate information about the failures of the blockade that had been meticulously recorded and forwarded to the government came from the British naval attache in Scandinavia, Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Montegu Consett. His evidence has been amply discussed in previous blogs. Consett had famously said that, ‘Nothing would have hastened the end of the war more effectively than the sinking of ships trading in ore between Sweden and Germany, or by economic pressure brought to bear on the Swedish ore industry’. [13]  Consett’s damning expose, “The Triumph of Unarmed Forces” proved page by page, statistical column by statistical column, that the blockade between 1914-1916 had been a charade; that Britain had effectively allowed Germany to be fed though Denmark, Sweden and Norway and in so doing, had prolonged the war. The Foreign Office sent their chosen man, Sir Arthur Henderson over to Scandinavia in 1915 to evaluate the situation. His subsequent report, which they refused to publish at the time, refuted Consett’s evidence and claimed that, in Sir Edward Grey’s own words, the amount of leakage in the trade was ‘much less than might have been supposed’. Henderson was immediately rewarded with a peerage as Lord Faringdon. [14]

In a dismissive and patronising speech in the House of Commons on 26 January 1916, Sir Edward Grey criticised ‘reckless statements’ and claimed, ‘we are stopping the trade coming out, and we are also stopping the imports; more than that you cannot do. You cannot do more than stop all imports into the enemy country and all exports coming out.’ [15]  He was, yet again, painting an entirely false picture. What nailed the lie was a military analysis prepared in 1916 for the senior staff conference between the British and French commanders.

Their top-secret ‘Note on the Blockade of the North Sea’ was sent to the Committee of Imperial Defence in March 1916. [16] It plainly demonstrated how inept the blockade had been.

‘Germany has been able to continue to export merchandise and securities, and thus obtain money and credits from neutrals. She has even been able to import, at a high price it is true, the provisions and goods of which she stood most urgently in need…the economic struggle has not yet been undertaken; it is of urgent importance, however, that the Governments concerned should adopt the necessary measures without delay’. The adoption of these measures… ‘would certainly have the effect of diminishing the enemy’s power of resistance, and therefore of shortening the war.’ [17]

So there it was, twenty months into the war and still the blockade was not effective. Indeed the allied military staff went so far as to say that the economic measures which would have shortened the war had ‘not yet been undertaken’. Their assessment stood in stark contrast to the lies which were routinely spouted by Grey and other government ministers. The secret Note advised the government to take a harder line on the export of British coal and to extend the list of contraband to all goods and supplies. In fact they wanted to do away with the whole concept of conditional contraband and absorb everything into one prohibited list.

The facts spoke for themselves. The real blockade had yet to be put in place. The outcry became unstoppable. Time and again contemporary writers, members of parliament, top army and naval officers repeated the mantra that war could have been won within eighteen months had there been a real blockade. George Bowles, Conservative M.P. and Admiralty Lawyer, claimed that the conflict would have been over within four and a half months. [18] Others like Lords Sydenham and Beresford estimated that war would have been over in the last months of 1915. But the war was prolonged. Millions of men were sacrificed. Profits grew ever higher. The anguished voices of reason were eventually carried by the Press and forced change. From 1917 until 1919 a very different blockade came into effect, one which we will return to at an appropriate time.

So how did the Secret Elite reconcile history once the war was ended? How did they justify the sham of the blockade? Their normal tactic was to ignore criticism and remove it from official records. Pretend it never happened. Keep it from the public eye and deny it. Most of the official records of the Admiralty, Foreign Office and Board of Trade were removed, presumed destroyed. Some, a century later, might still be locked away in the secret archives at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire. [19] Interestingly, even in 2005, The Imperial War Museum’s Book of The War At Sea, 1914-1918, makes no reference whatsoever to the Blockade. [20] Apparently the heroics of 10th Cruiser Squadron out on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, their hardships and sacrifice, their honourable and magnificent contribution, had no part to play in the history of the war at sea. Incredible. Unjustifiable, even if the truth has to be whitewashed.

Those who sought to deny the scandal of the first blockade were, however, thwarted by the publication of Rear-Admiral Consett’s damning book “The Triumph of Unarmed Forces”, published in 1923 and subject to the most extraordinary debate in the House of Lords. [21]  Sir Edward Grey, rewarded in 1916 as Viscount Fallodon, the man at the very heart of the sham blockade, attended the debate. He claimed to know nothing about the details revealed in the book save what he had heard that day, but proceeded to argue that the zealous man on the spot knew only one part of a whole picture, while at the centre ‘some mind which can take in much more’ knew all the consequences. Grey went on to state that if the government had taken the action advocated at that time by Admiral Consett, ‘we should certainly have lost the war.’ [22]

This was an utterly incredible statement and without doubt an act of deliberate obfuscation. His defence was that had a blockade been fully implemented in the early stages of the war, ‘Britain would have had such trouble with the United States that it would have been futile to the future of the Allies’. He reiterated the old canard that, had we upset America in the early years of the war, ‘it would have been absolutely fatal’. [23] Fatal to whom? This is nonsense. There were no conditions under which America would have stopped trading with Britain, or taken sides against her. It might have caused some localised trading difficulty in 1914 but a strict blockade would have ended the war very quickly. Had he forgotten too about the Lusitania, sunk in May 1915 by a U-Boat? What chance then of America siding with Germany? None.

But the charade went on. It prolonged the war and extended the profits. When fully implemented in its second phase from 1917-18, it was much more effective in ensuring that Germany was beaten. Unnecessarily and deliberately extended beyond the signing of the Armistice in 1918, it ensured that she was crushed. Not just beaten, crushed. A million more men women and children were to die of starvation in Germany before the blockade was finally lifted. That was an even more shameful episode to which we will return.

[1] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 26 January, 1916.
[2] The Times, 10 November, 1914.
[3] Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1915, p. 295.
[4] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 27 March 1917 vol. 92. cc226-80.
[5] Hansard House of Commons Debate 22 June 1915 vol. 72 cc1094-1131.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 December 1915.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Hansard House of Lords Debate, 22 February 1916 vol 21 cc72-128.
[10] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 21 March 1918 vol. 104 cc1231-57.
[11] Andrew S. Thompson, ‘Croft, Henry Page, first Baron Croft (1881–1947)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32633]
[12] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 21 March 1918 vol. 104 cc1231-57.
[13] M.W.W.P. Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces (1914-1918), p. 80.
[14]http://archive.org/stream/greatbritainsmea00greyuoft/greatbritainsmea00greyuoft_djvu.txt
[15] Ibid.
[16] Foreign Office 21 March, 1916.  Secret Note on the Blockade of the North Sea, Printed for the Committee of Imperial Defence. G-67.
[17] Ibid.
[18] George W Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 173.
[19] Ian Cobain, The Guardian, 18 October 2013.
[20] Julian Thompson, The Imperial War Museum, Book of The War At Sea, 1914-1918.
[21] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 27 June 1923 vol 54 cc647-54.
[22] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 27 June 1923 vol 54 cc653-54.
[23] Ibid.

Blockade 9: Sustaining The Enemy – Tea, Coffee And Plenty Denials

From 18 February 1915, Germany began a blockade of the British Isles. They considered it an act of retaliation. Foodstuffs and fodder had been added by the British government to the list of conditional contraband on 29 October 1914 as a reaction to the German decision to assume national control for all grain and flour in the country. The argument ran that no distinction could be placed between the military and civilian population, so all imports of foodstuffs had to be considered contraband. [1] The German Admiralty had been angered by the British decision that the whole North Sea be treated as a military area since November 1914, and interpreted the embargo on foodstuffs as a declaration of unlimited economic war. [2]

Admiral Hugo von Pohl duly warned neutrals that their merchant ships would be targeted if they tried to break the blockade. Almost immediately her U-boats struck with punishing precision. An average of two British-bound cargo ships were sunk each day and many brave merchant seamen lost their lives in the cold Atlantic or North Sea approaches, in the Irish Sea and Bay of Biscay, but the size of the British merchant fleet, and the sheer scale of the imports it carried from across the world, ensured that the German blockade had little immediate effect on life on the home front. But Germany continued to import ever increasing volumes of food. Had the British naval blockade been properly enforced at the start of the war, Germany would have been brought to her knees by the end of 1915, but her trade not only continued, it grew in enormous quantities mainly through the Scandinavian life-line. [3]

The Foreign Office in London controlled the complicated and interrelated committees concerned with the regulation of war trade through a Foreign Trade Department, a Contraband Department, a Ministry of Blockade, a Licensing Committee and Contraband Committee. [4] This was a nest of Secret Elite members and agents who devised a concept of neutrality which enabled Germany to import her much needed essential supplies through Scandinavia. As we detailed in previous blogs, Denmark and Holland became Germany’s principal and essential sea-supplied larders while Sweden was her sea-supplied workshop. Conservative M.P. and Admiralty lawyer, George Bowles, accused the Foreign Office of ‘connivance’, and he was right. He explained how,

‘ … Goods were allowed to pour into their ports by licence of the English Foreign Office from all parts of the earth … even in vast quantities from England herself … The agriculture of Denmark and Holland could not be maintained for six months without unceasing supplies of overseas food-stuffs and fertilisers, the industries of Sweden depended absolutely upon steady supplies of coal. Fertilisers, food-stuffs and coal were thus essential to Scandinavia. All three poured in. Even British steam-coal was lavished freely upon the Scandinavia workshops and railways … and the fleets of steamers transporting ore into Germany.’ [5]

This was the backdrop to Germany’s survival. An army marches on its stomach; a nation has to eat to survive, and the collapse of agriculture and food production in Germany meant that her capacity to fight beyond 1915 was critically threatened, not by guns and bullets, but by the lack of bread and potatoes. The einkreisung (encirclement) of Germany by Britain, France and Russia had given the Allies a distinct advantage in starving Germany into submission but they did not take it. The opportunity to enforce a short sharp economic war was deliberately thrown away. Surrender was not what the Foreign Office intended. The outcome that the Secret Elite had always demanded was that Germany be crushed.

Rear-Admiral Consett’s book, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, [6] written in 1923, detailed the facts, figures and information which proved beyond doubt that the Foreign Office enabled the German army to be fed and provisioned through Scandinavia for over three years. Denmark’s home-grown supplies of food, if properly rationed, were sufficient for its own population, and an effective blockade, in combination with an embargo on British exports to Denmark in 1915, would have brought about Germany’s collapse. But no. British coal and British agricultural machinery was being sent to Denmark and in some cases was unloaded from the merchantman’s hold straight into railway trucks for transit to Germany. [7] ‘It was well known to Britain’s Allies and to the Americans in Scandinavia that Britain was actually competing with neutrals in supplying the enemy. Had the supplies been withheld it would have sounded Germany’s death knell at an early date.’ [8]

The facts are overwhelming. In 1913 Britain exported 370 tons of tea to Denmark, but by 1915 it had risen to 4,528 tons. Denmark was, in turn, exporting very substantial quantities of this tea to Germany. In March 1916, Consett found the Copenhagen wharves choked with cases of tea, ‘a large part of which was from our colonies en route to Germany.’ Coffee was likewise re-exported to Germany. In 1913 Britain exported 1,493 tons to Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and this fully met their demands. In 1915, however, British exports of coffee to Scandinavia had risen dramatically by 500 per cent to 7,315 tons. In 1913 Denmark exported 81 tons of coffee to Germany, but by 1915 this had risen by almost 3000 per cent to 2,339 tons. [9] In addition, oil cake and vegetable and animal oils and fats poured into Germany from Britain via Scandinavia. Used normally for food, soap, candles, lubricants and fuels, in wartime the glycerine was extracted for explosives. Consett explained that, ‘the importance of these raw materials was based on their suitability for meeting the ultimate requirements of Germany for explosives. For three years Germany and her neutral neighbours succeeded in realising their wishes. Denmark was supplied with oils and fats and oil cake from the British Empire far in excess of the quantities she had obtained from us in peace time.’ [10]

What a chilling observation. British merchants were actively competing to supply the enemy with much needed produce and material, while their own young men were being slaughtered in Flanders. The home comforts of tea and more particularly coffee, gave succour and sustenance to the German army, and the profits flowed back to Britain and the Empire.

Lord Sydenham, a former British army officer and Colonial administrator, fiercely attacked the government’s decision to sign a trade agreement with Denmark which many considered to be a worthless sham. He berated them in the House of Lords on 20 December 1915;

‘There is no doubt whatever that Denmark has been doing an enormous trade with Germany and Austria during the last seventeen months, and the prosperity of all here is too apparent, and that Denmark has received far far more of everything than was necessary for her own use. You [the government] have helped in this, and your new Agreement will help much more than ever for Germany to be fed, the war prolonged, and your blockade made a joke. This Agreement is very wrong and should be cancelled, and you should wake up and stir up your officials or dismiss them.’ [11]

Strong language indeed. He lashed out at the blockade as a ‘joke’. And here again, as many before and after claimed, was the stark accusation that the British government was prolonging the war. Sydenham exposed where the intransigence, as he saw it, lay. Unfortunately, his exhortation that the government should ‘stir up’ or indeed dismiss the officials in charge, missed the crucial point. Foreign Office committees were stacked with the chosen appointees who were prepared to do the bidding of the Elite.

Fish, beef, pork, fats, butter and other dairy produce had been flooding into Germany from Denmark since August 1914 despite the indisputable fact that Britain could easily have stopped it. Trade Agreements with neutral countries like Denmark were sound in principle but weak in practice and the foodstuffs flowed through Scandinavia in ever greater quantities such that Germany was able to stem the tide of starvation in difficult years. The Scandinavian farming and fishing industries sustained Germany, but those industries were themselves supported by imports of fuel and fertilisers often directly from Britain. During the last six months of 1914, Denmark sold 68,000 horses to Germany and thousands of live cattle were exported every week. These animals provided more than just meat. Britain allowed Denmark to import raw hides, boots and shoes through the blockade, thus enabling her to export the horses and cattle which would otherwise have been required for her own leather industry. [12] Did no-one see the connection?

Danish farmers were selling to Germany at huge profit. In the first seven months of 1916 agricultural exports amounted to 117,000 tons. The meat export alone during this period was 62,561 tons, sufficient to provide a million meat rations per day for the German army. Britain’s supplies of animal feedstuffs, fertilisers, and coal to operate Denmark’s agricultural industry increased markedly from pre-war levels yet Danish meat and dairy produce exports to Britain dropped by 25 per cent. [13] Britain was providing the basic fodder and fertilisers to boost Denmark’s agricultural output, and the vast bulk of the produce was sold to feed the German people and their army.

Danish and Swedish fish exports to Germany also continued on an enormous scale, rising from 55,819 tons in 1913 to 157,000 tons in 1916. Over the same period their fish exports to Britain fell from 8,677 tons to 1,902 tons. Despite this, in addition to supplying all of the petrol for the fishing fleets, Britain was selling these countries practically all of their fishing nets, yarn and rope. Special fish trains were running so frequently to Germany that at times the railways could scarcely meet the demands of the fish traffic. As we have seen, the trains were running on British coal.

Germany was also supplied with a large tonnage of fish from Norway. Prior to the war (1913) Norwegian fish exports to Germany were 78,771 tons. This rose to 194,167 tons in 1916. Consett pointed out that ‘during 1916 the fish rations to the German Army had been gradually increased.’ [p. 292] During the first two years of the war, not only was the fish feeding the German army, but provided much needed glycerine for explosives production. Like the Danish and Swedish, the Norwegian fishing industry depended not merely upon petrol supplies from Britain, but many other vital imports including fishing gear. Montagu Consett exposed how the Norwegian fishing industry, by far the largest and most important in Northern Europe, depended upon British or British controlled supplies. He believed that ‘the moment and circumstances immediately following the outbreak of war could not have been more favourable for Britain purchasing the Norwegian catch in return for a guaranteed supply of all fishing accessories.’ The opportunity was ignored by the Government.

From his offices in Christiana (Oslo), Britain’s naval attache Captain Montagu Consett watched in horror as mountains of exports were piled onto the quayside in Scandinavian ports and re-routed to Germany in plain daylight. This was not a secret operation. Open trade was being conducted in contempt of whatever loose agreements Scandinavian merchants had signed with Britain to keep their ships off an official black list. Consett was adamant that ‘in 1914, the blockade could have been enforced and sure ruin brought to Germany, [but] open trade was conducted through Scandinavia. … Britain was reaping what it sowed in 1915 and 1916 when it was building up great food industries and establishing them at the gates of Germany.’ [14]

The magnitude of the traffic going to Germany was scandalous. To his great credit, Consett reported every detail of these infringements and blatant abuses. He sent indignant reports and letters to the Foreign Office, the Admiralty and eventually, tired of being ignored, to anyone in Britain he thought might listen. With questions being raised in Parliament and critical newspaper articles, something had to be done to nullify his scathing expose.

In late 1915, the Foreign Office sent Sir Alexander Henderson to visit Scandinavia and Holland in order to make ‘independent’ inquiries. Henderson was a member of parliament and deputy chairman of the Shipping Control Committee, [15] linked through financial interests to members of the Secret Elite like Ernest Cassel and Lord Revelstoke. He was in insider and was tasked to investigate the allegations that foodstuffs and vital supplies were haemorrhaging through Scandinavia to Germany. Consett was ‘exhilarated’. At last a member of government had the opportunity to see for himself the extent of the Scandinavian trade. He fully expected immediate action. The result was a secret report that the government refused to release. Sir Edward Grey called it ‘very satisfactory,’ in that it showed that ‘the amount of leakage in the trade passing from overseas through these neutral countries to the enemy is…much less than might have been supposed.’ To emphasise that all was well with the blockade, Grey claimed that ‘the general tendency of the report is to show that the maximum which can be done is being done.’ [16] This was no investigation; it was a whitewash.

As before, Grey reprimanded parliament for forgetting the rights of neutrals to supplies for their own consumption. ‘You have no right to make neutrals suffer’ was one admonition, and he maintained that ‘no ships are going through to German ports at all.’ Fair enough, if you constrain the analysis to German ports. The Foreign Secretary’s claim concluded that ‘we are stopping the trade coming out, and we are also stopping the imports; more than that you cannot do.’ [17] But Grey was deliberately dealing in semantics. It was not Germany that Faringdon had visited; it was Scandinavia.

Sir Edward Grey chose not to differentiate between direct trade (through German ports) and indirect trade (through Scandinavia) where a veritable armada of merchant shipping, coal transporters, oil tankers, fishing boats, coastal traders and the like, was transporting the life-blood for German’s survival as a fighting nation.

Sceptical MPs like Sir Henry Dalziel asked to see the report. Sir Edward Grey said ‘No’. And that was that. Not for the first time, nor the last, Edward Grey lied to parliament. When asked how long Lord Faringdon had spent in Copenhagen and which other Danish ports he had visited, Grey did not ‘consider such answers (to be) necessary’ and stressed that Lord Faringdon was ‘quite capable of judging the value or amount of information at his disposal.’ [18] Such a patronising performance was worthy of a Secret Elite agent. Lesser mortals had no need to know what was going on, or why.

Consett was bitterly disillusioned. He knew exactly what Faringdon had witnessed and could scarcely contain his anger at the deception. He bluntly countered that the report.

‘on which the future and especially 1916 so much hinged, did not represent the facts as reported to Lord Faringdon by myself, or as reported by me officially through the British legation to the Foreign Office; or as disclosed by official statistics published after the war: all of which showed that the Scandinavian trade with Germany at the time of Lord Faringdon’s visit was on an unprecedented scale.’ [19]

So, was Faringdon’s report a lie, or did he bring back the truth and collude in a whitewash? Consett noted scathingly that, ‘Sir Alexander Henderson came, saw and reported, and became Lord Faringdon.’ [20] And he was right. Immediately on his return, Alexander Henderson was raised to peerage as Baron Faringdon of Buscot Park, his 3,500 acre estate. Was this the ‘just’ reward for a monumental cover-up? Faringdon’s fawning claim was that ‘the government were to be congratulated on the way they had dealt with many difficulties, and they deserved encouraging support.’ Enough said.

It was a cover-up of the first order, and the Secret Elite’s politicians who had been lying throughout simply continued in the same vein. Despite the literal slap on the face from London, Consett kept up a barrage of complaints. He was a relentless. In the summer of 1916, Commander Leverton Harris, Director of the Restriction of Enemy Supplies Department at the Foreign Office, and later Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Blockade, was sent to Scandinavia to investigate the situation once more. Leverton Harris, was the right-hand man of Lord Robert Cecil, the Secret Elite member and Blockade Minister. Consett warned him about two burning issues; the huge tonnage of fish going to Germany and the need to stop supplies of petrol to the Scandinavian fishing fleets. He explained.

‘The Danes themselves recognised that the United Kingdom would be justified in safeguarding her own interests by preventing fish from reaching Germany. Truth is certainly stranger than fiction. That we should be supplying the Danish fishermen with all necessities; that the fishermen should be sending practically the whole of their catch to Germany; that the Danes themselves could not obtain one of the principle articles of their diet; that the fishermen should be able to obtain unlimited quantities of petrol without hindrance from the British authorities who could kill the industry if they felt so disposed; that all this should be taking place without any serious effort to stop it was both strange and true.’ [21]

His claim was indisputable, but nothing was done until later in the war. In 1916 there was just sufficient food and munitions for Germany to continue the struggle, but there was no margin, even although she had a further source from Belgium. [22] An effective blockade in combination with an embargo on British exports to Scandinavia in 1915 and 1916 would have brought about Germany’s collapse. But the war was prolonged.

[1] Daily News, 1 January 1915.
[2] C Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, The Allied Blockade of Germany 1915-1919, p. 40.
[3] see blogs
[4] Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, p. 35.
[5] George F S Bowles, The Strength of England, pp. 193-4.
[6] https://archive.org/details/unarmedforces00consuoft
[7] M W W P Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, pp. 268-293.
[8] Ibid., p. 288.
[9] Ibid., pp. 210-217.
[10] Ibid., p. 168.
[11] Hansard House of Lords Debate 20 December 1915 vol. 20 cc696-744.
[12] Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, pp. 134-136.
[13] Ibid., pp. 140-2.
[14] Source
[15] Martin Daunton, ‘Henderson, Alexander, first Baron Faringdon (1850–1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47784
[16] Hansard House of Commons, Speech by Sir Edward Grey, 26 January, 1916 in a pamphlet entitled, Great Britain’s Measures Against German Trade, published by Hodder and Stoughton.
[17] http://archive.org/stream/greatbritainsmea00greyuoft/greatbritainsmea00greyuoft_djvu.txt
[18] Hansard, House of Commons Debate 24 February, 1916, vol. 80. c783.
[19] Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, p. 254.
[20] Ibid., p. 253.
[21] Ibid., p. 163.
[22] The history of the Belgian Relief Commission will be fully examined in later blogs. This in itself was one of the war’s major scandals successfully hidden from the public. Suffice for the moment to say that between 1915-17, huge quantities of foodstuffs were being redirected from Belgium to Germany.