War Without End 8: The Old Order Changeth

The Treaty of Versailles, signed eventually on 28 June 1919, was uncompromising. Its legacy reaped a bitter harvest. Germany lost nearly one seventh of its territory and one tenth of its population. Half the iron ore and one quarter of the coal production as well as one seventh of agricultural production were taken from her. German colonies and all foreign possessions of the Reich were lost. Most of her commercial fleet had to be handed over and long-term economic discrimination endured. But on a deeper level, Germany lost more than just her wealth and her possessions. She lost a confidence in herself which created a political vacuum; a space for opportunism to grow like a cancerous tumour.

The army and navy were considerably reduced. The Rhineland was de-militarised, split in three zones and occupied by Allied forces for five to fifteen years. The Saarland was put under the mandate of the League of Nations. The coal mines went to France. Gdansk and its surrounding area was turned into a Free City of Poland with special rights. The independence of Austria, whose National Assembly had voted to accept the connection to the German Reich, was to be guaranteed in perpetuity. The amount of reparations was to be determined at a later time. That the sum to be compiled would be very high, was beyond doubt. The murdered Kitchener must have spun in his watery grave. This was not a just peace.

Before the signing of the treaty, President Wilson said that if he were a German, he would not sign it. His Foreign Minister Lansing considered the conditions imposed on Germany as unutterably hard and abasing, many of which could not possibly be met. His adviser, Mandell House wrote in his diary on 29 June that the treaty was bad and should never have been concluded; its execution would bring no end of difficulties over Europe. [1] As an understatement, Houses’s prediction stands absolutely proven.The real victors would not be swayed. The final Treaty stands testament to how little real influence Woodrow Wilson wielded in Europe.

The Versailles Peace Settlement was a stepping stone in itself to future wars. Diplomat-historian George F Kenan later wrote that the peace treaty ‘had the tragedies of the future written into it as if by the devil’s own hand.’  [2] As we have pointed out, by accepting Article 231, Germany was obliged to bear the burden of guilt for causing the war. Old Empires were dismantled and choice pickings reallocated. Gone was the German Empire and Queen Victoria’s grandson, the Kaiser. The Imperial Russian Empire was no more, its Czar Nicholas II, cousin of Britain’s King George V, executed by the very Bolsheviks whom American and British bankers had financed. The Ottoman Empire, ripped apart by the victors, offered the opportunity to redraw the Middle East with the lure of oil and prime strategic locations. The British Empire survived, but at a cost. Britain had sold off at least a quarter of its dollar investments and borrowed over £1,027,000,000 from the United States. [3] Consequently, the flow of capital from America to Europe reversed the pattern which had dominated the previous century. These immense changes represented a long-term financial realignment in favour of Wall Street.

The conclusion to First World War was not the beginning of the end but a building block towards disasters that were to come. A new Elite intended to control the peace and exert its influence through organisations which it created specifically to determine how that would be done. During the Peace Conference in Paris, Alfred Milner’s chief acolyte, Lionel Curtis, organised a joint conference of British and American ‘experts’ on foreign affairs at the Hotel Majestic. [4] The British contingent came almost exclusively from men and women identified by Professor Carroll Quigley as members of what we have termed The Secret Elite. [5] The American ‘experts’ came from banks, universities and institutions dominated by J.P. Morgan and members of the Carnegie Trust. [6] This alliance of international financial capitalism and political thinkers and manipulators began a new phase in the life of the secret cabal as they continued their drive to establish a new world order.

They took the successful Round Table Group and remodelled it into The Institute of International Affairs. Smothered in words which when decoded meant that they would work together to determine the future direction of a fast-changing world, Lionel Curtis advocated that ‘National Policy ought to be shaped by a conception of the interests of society at large.’ [7] By that he meant the interests of the Anglo-American Establishment. He talked of the settlements which had been made in Paris as a result of public opinion in various countries, and spelled out the need to differentiate between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ public opinion. With chilling certainty he announced that ‘Right public opinion was mainly produced by a small number of people in real contact with the facts who had thought out the issues involved.’139 He talked of the need to ‘to cultivate a public opinion in the various countries of the world’ and proposed the creation of a ‘strictly limited’ high-level think-tank comprising the like minded ‘experts’ from the British and American Delegations. A committee of selection, dominated entirely by Secret Elite agents was organised [8] to avoid ‘a great mass of incompetent members.’ What quintessentially British ruling-class thinking. A new Anglo-American Elite of approved membership was self-selected.

Thus the Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, was formally established in July 1920 and was granted a Royal charter in 1926. [9] Its first decision was to write a history of the Peace Conference. A committee to supervise these writings, in other words, ensure that the official history recorded only their version of events, was funded by a gift of £2,000 from Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan. Follow the money you will always trace the power behind the politicians. At the same time Institute’s sister organization, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was created with J.P. Morgan money. Acting in close cooperation and funded by similar sources, the CFR and Chatham House ensured that the Britain and the United States followed similar foreign policies.

It is important to bear in mind that Curtis and his new updated organisation invited speakers to discuss and develop the ‘right’ opinion. That would have been why the first fully recorded meeting which was published in The Round Table Journal 142 in 1921 was given by D.G. Hogarth who served on the Arab Bureau during the war. He was a friend of T.E. Lawrence and Sir Mark Sykes, the men who betrayed the Arabs. Hogarth spoke on the Arab States an indication that this was one specific area for which the ‘right’ opinion had to be endorsed. [10] In 1922, Chaim Weizmann gave an address on Zionism. [11] His must have been the ‘right’ opinion too.

1. Professor Hans Fenske, A Peace to End All Peace https://firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com//?s=Fenske&search=Go
2. Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, p. 357.
3. David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, pp. 362-3.
4. The inaugural meeting to establish the Institute took place on 30 May 1919.
5. Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, p.18.
6. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 182-183.
7. M.L. Dockrill, The Foreign Office and the ‘Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919’ International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 56, No. 4 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 667.
8. Ibid., p. 666.
9. All of the senior organisers have been identified as members of the Secret Elite many times over; Lord Robert Cecil, Valentine Chirol, foreign editor of The Times, Geoffrey Dawson, G. W. Prothero etc.
10. Dockrill, The Foreign Office and the ‘Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919’ International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 56, No. 4 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 671.
11. Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, chapter 11, pp. 153-160.
12. Both Hogarth and T.E. Lawrence were largely responsible for The Bulletin, a secret magazine of Middle East politics. Lawrence edited the first number on 6 June 1916 and thereafter sent numerous reports to it, enabling readers to follow, week by week, the Arab Revolt, which ended Ottoman domination in the Arabian peninsula. The British Foreign Office described it as: ‘A remarkable intelligence journal so strictly secret in its matter that only some thirty copies of each issue were struck off… Nor might the journal be quoted from, even in secret communications. http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/titledetails.asp?tid=7
13. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 185.

War Without End 6: Fixing The Blame

Lloyd George knew all about the deteriorating situation in Germany from War Cabinet meetings he had chaired throughout February 1919. [1] Hoover’s outburst [2], even if it was true, was not news to the British prime minister, but dislodging the French from their obstinate position proved difficult. On 8 March, at a joint meeting of the Allied leaders, discussions were heading towards the accustomed stalemate when, with a theatrical flourish which suggested a stage-managed prearrangement, [3] a sealed message was delivered to the British prime minister from the afore-mentioned General Plumer. In fact the telegram had been sent at the prime minister’s request. [4] Lloyd George read it aloud; despair had plummeted to such depths in Germany that ‘people feel that an end by bullets is preferable to death by starvation … I request that a definite date be fixed for the arrival of the first supplies …’ [5] The French finance minister, Klotz, attempted to ignore the message, but Lloyd George turned on him with unrestrained venom, pouring contempt on his miserly attitude while women and children were starving. [6] The dam broke. The French conceded that Germany’s gold could be used for food, but relief was not instant. Some further headway was made on 14 March when an agreement was reached in Brussels allowing Germany to import 370,000 tons of food and 70,000 tons of fat per month. In April all blockade restrictions were removed on European neutrals, which was expected to facilitate an increased flow of food into Germany. [7] In theory that should have happened, but in practice, every nation affected by the blockade had endured great hardship and either consumed the produce themselves or offered them for export at exorbitant prices which Germany could no longer pay. [8]

But the cruelty did not end there. For the remainder of the Armistice period the bickering between the Americans, led by Hoover, and the Allied decision-makers, continued to thwart the lifting of the entire blockade on Germany. Even when it was perfectly clear that the Weimar government would sign the Versailles treaty, the die-hards refused to move. And though the Allies agreed to lift the remainder of the blockade on European neutrals on 25 June, they remained stubbornly obtuse until they had proof that the Germans had fully ratified the Versailles Treaty on 12 July 1919. [9] It was as miserable as it was petty.

The formal process of agreeing a peace treaty, predicated on the bitter Armistice, began in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles on 18 January 1919. From January to June, 1919, Paris was the capital of the world. [10] Complex discussions on how to punish the defeated nations involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities, but behind the scenes the true manipulators of power influenced the key decisions which determined a chain of events which go well beyond our time-scale.

History records the major outcomes from Versailles as the creation of the League of Nations; the five peace treaties with the defeated states, [11] the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as ‘mandates’, chiefly to Britain and France; reparations imposed on Germany, and the drawing of new national boundaries. Critically, section 231 of the Versailles Treaty, stated that the first world War had been caused ‘by the aggression of Germany and her allies.’ [12] Blaming Germany and Austria was a political necessity; an absolute requirement for the Secret Elite and the establishment in Britain and America in particular. If the blame had not be squarely laid at the door of the Kaiser and his associates, the populous would have quickly turned on the politicians close to home who had lied so vehemently, had insisted that the war would save civilisation, had repeated the lie that the inhuman sacrifice was both worthy and necessary. Evidence had to be manufactured.

A Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of War was tasked with the official investigation on behalf of the victors and its conclusions were exactly as required by the allied governments. [13] Essentially its findings declared that war had been premeditated by the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and their allies, Turkey and Bulgaria, and was the result of actions deliberately committed to make war unavoidable. There is now a large body of evidence to the contrary, championed firstly by Harry Elmer Barnes, the renowned Professor of Historical Sociology at Smith College and teacher of history at Columbia University from 1918-29. The Commission of course, ignored the multitude of false claims and dates made by French President, Poincare, of complete misrepresentations made to the British parliament by foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey and the lies reported to Czar Nicholas by his equivalent counsellor, Sazonov. But why should you be surprised. Did you imagine that false news is a twenty-first century phenomenon?

Perhaps the most disgraceful falsification was made by the American duo who nominally headed the Commission, Secretary of State, Robert Lansing and U.S. Lawyer J.B. Scott. Secretary Lansing’s impartiality ought to have been absolute, but he and J.B. Scott stand accused of concocting a claim that the Austrians knew of Serbia’s ‘utter innocence’ of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in July 1914. They chose to focus on an early brief telegram to the Austrian foreign minister which was quickly corrected by its author, the Austrian investigator, Dr. von Wiesner as more evidence became available. As Professor Barnes put it, the brief passage from the Wiesner report ‘was torn from the context by James Brown Scott and Robert Lansing and gives the impression that Wiesner believed Serbia utterly innocent in 1914.’ [14] It was an atrocious lie. We know this now, but it was used to great effect to damn Germany and Austria, by the very people who ought to have been the guardians of truth and impartiality.

Some historians and commentators have simply accepted that Germany caused the war, and the proof was self-evident. The German government accepted Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty. Think hard. What else could Germany have done under the circumstances? Barnes famously described it in the following terms:

Germany occupied the situation of a prisoner at the bar, where the prosecuting attorney was given full leeway as to the time and presentation of evidence, while the defendant was denied counsel or the opportunity to produce either evidence or witnesses. Germany was confronted with the alternative of signing the confession at once or having her territory invaded and occupied, with every probability that such an admission would ultimately be extorted in any event. [15]

By the time they imposed Article 231, Germany was no longer in any position to resist. Her weapons and navy had been surrendered as per the Peace Treaty conditions. Do not forget that the blockade continued until the Germans signed the document which blamed them for causing the world war. Starve or sign a false testament. That was a the option Germany faced. It was a travesty of truth; a cancerous lie which would reap an awful vengeance within twenty years.

The ‘Big Four’ politicians who strutted this stage were the Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France; David Lloyd George, the British prime minister; the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, and the prime minister of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met together informally 145 times, fought for their own agendas and agreed all the major decisions which Germany had to accept in 1919. Paris became the corporate headquarters of international decision-makers, the wheelers and dealers who acted as judge and jury in a kangaroo court through which new countries were created and a new order established.

The British economist John Maynard Keynes, himself present at the Versailles Peace Conference, watched the malevolent manipulators with angry contempt. The blame-shapers who knew that both the neutral countries and the German people had been shamefully damaged, pointed damning accusations at the French, at Marshal Foch for his hard-line armistice conditions, at President Clemenceau for demanding unmanageable German reparations, at finance minister Klotz for his insistence that German gold reserves could not be used to buy food, at their delaying tactics, their constant referrals to dubious committees and their unwillingness to end the hunger. Keynes was not fooled. He moved in circles whose prime motivation was to crush Germany; crush the German economy; restore British predominance in trade and industry and promote the Rhodes/Milner ideals. Unaware of the depth of their complicity, he personally blamed the intransigence of the admiralty in Whitehall, sarcastically implying that since they had just perfected the blockade system which had taken four years to create, they did not want to dismantle it. [16] Keynes called the British admiralty representative, Admiral Browning, ‘an ignorant sea-dog … with no idea in his head but the extirpation and further humiliation of a despised and defeated enemy.’ [17]

Keynes had considerable sympathy for the Germans. His intimate friendship during the peace talks [18] with the German financial advisor, Carl Melchior, helped find solutions to the many obstacles which blocked food for Germany. Melchior had since 1900, been senior counsel to, and later a partner in, the Warburg Bank in Hamburg. He became Germany’s representative on the Reparations Committee as was described as the country’s financial director. [19] Carl Melchior was the only non-Parliamentary member of the main German Peace Delegation. His role in the Bank of International Settlements and his later chairmanship of the Financial Committee on the League of Nations is highly significant. [20] Keynes dined with Melchior and Paul Warburg, whom he described as ‘a German-American Jew, but one of the leading financiers of the United States, and formerly chief spirit of the Federal Reserve Board.’ [21] Given the bond between Melchior, the Warburgs and the Kuhn Loeb bank in New York, we need hardly ask why he was in Paris. Indeed, why were so many important bankers from the United States who were intimately linked to the Rothschilds and the Secret Elite, hovering like vultures above a stricken Europe?

1. http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/large/cab-23-9.pdf
2. See previous blog
3. C. Paul Vincent, Politics of Hunger, p. 122, note 121.
4. John Maynard Keynes, Dr. Melchior, Two Memoirs, p. 59.
5. Bane and Lutz, Blockade of Germany After the Armistice, p. 214.
6. Keynes, Dr. Melchior, Two Memoirs, pp. 60-61.
7. Eric W. Osborne, Britain’s Economic Blockade of Germany, 1914-1919, p.188.
8. Bane and Lutz, The Blockade of Germany after the Armistice, pp. 549-50.
9. Ibid., pp. 558-9.
10. Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers, Six Months That Changed The World, p. 1
11. These were:  the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919 with Germany; the Treaty of Saint-Germain, 10 September 1919 with Austria; the Treaty of Neuilly, 27 November 1919 with Bulgaria; the Treaty of Trianon, 4 June 1920 with Hungary; the Treaty of Sèvres, 10 August 1920, later revised by the Treaty of Lausanne, 24 July 1923 with Turkey.
12. http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/versa7.html
13. Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties Source: The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Jan. – Apr., 1920), pp. 95-154.
14. Current History, July 1928, p. 622. Article by Harry Elmer Barnes. 15. Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War, pp. 34-35.
16. Keynes, Dr. Melchior, p. 24.
17. Ibid., p. 13.
18. Ibid., pp. 49-50.
19. A.N. Field, The Truth About the Slump, p.35.
20. Ibid., p. 57.
21. Keynes, Dr. Melchior, p. 70.

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»

War Without End 1: The Illusion Of An Equitable Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rape Of Russia 2: Strange Bedfellows for Socialist Revolutionaries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America 1917, 3: Why Did Wilson Go To War?

If on 4 March 1917, President Woodrow Wilson believed his own rhetoric when he proclaimed that America stood ‘firm in armed neutrality’ why was it necessary some twenty-nine days later, to advise a joint Session of Congress that they would have to go to war to defend and protect democracy? On April 6, 1917, America duly declared that war [1] after the Senate approved the action by 82-6 and the House of Representatives by 373-50.

In the Senate, a few voices were raised hopelessly against what they deemed ‘a great blunder’. Opposition inside the House of Representatives pointed out that no invasion was threatened, no territory at risk, no sovereignty questioned, no national policy contested nor honour sacrificed. [2] Be assured of one important fact. There was no outcry for war amongst ordinary American citizens. No excited crowds took to the streets. At Wellington House in London, the nerve-centre of British propaganda, the manipulators of truth were concerned that the American Press carried ‘no indications of enthusiasm except in a few Eastern papers’. [3] In the United States, citizens were genuinely unsure why the nation was at war, but loyalty to the flag has always carried great weight. Enlistment statistics threw an interesting light on American society. Before 1917, the Eastern seaboard editors, lawyers, bankers and financiers, teachers and preachers, leaders of ‘society’ in New York and Washington alike, had berated the Western states for their alleged unpatriotic attitude towards war. In the event, recruiting figures showed that the response from the western states was greater than their compatriots along the eastern seaboard. [4] How often do the movers and shakers turn into moaners and shirkers and fail to step up to the mark?

There was no instant Kitchener-effect in America. British propagandists watched this lack of enthusiasm with real concern. Woodrow Wilson set up the Committee on Public Information on 14 April to rouse the public to ‘righteous wrath’. [5] Two and a half year’s worth of Wellington House propaganda was at hand for regurgitation and dissemination. Even so, from 1 April until 16 May, total enlistment was a mere 73,000 men. [6] By June 117,974 men had joined the regular army, but the rate was falling. In July only 34,962 joined the ranks; in August it was 28,155; in September, 10,557. [7] This simply could not continue. A conscript army was required.

On 18 May, 1917, the sixty-fifth Congress passed a Military Act to enable the President to temporarily increase the strength of the army, and the ‘draft’ became law. [8] For all his talk of brokering peace between the warring factions in Europe, and many reported attempts at reconciliation, President Wilson led his country into war, provided the manpower to be sacrificed and stirred the hatred and propaganda necessary to popularise the slaughter on the western front. Why? Why within months of his re-election on the proud boast that he had kept America out of the war, was everything reversed; every assumed position revoked; every implied promise, broken? Some historians insist that Germany forced President Wilson into a declaration of war through two acts of blundering stupidity. Emphasis on such a focus has successfully deflected attention away from much more powerful interests which Wilson could not ignore.

On 17 January 1917, British code-breakers partially deciphered an astonishing message from the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann to his Ambassador in Washington. Though the analysts in Room 40 at the admiralty in London could decipher some of the essential message, the new code which had been delivered to the German Embassy in Washington by the cargo U-boat Deutschland in November 1916, had not been fully broken. Senior British cryptographs were trying to reconstruct this particular code but had made only sufficient progress to form an incomplete text. [9] From their initial reconstruction it appeared that Zimmermann had requested the German ambassador to the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to contact President Carranza of Mexico through the German embassy in Mexico City and offer him a lucrative alliance. ‘Blinker’ Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence, took personal control. His grasp of effective propaganda was second to none. Hall knew that once the full text was available it had to be carefully handled both to protect the anonymity of Room 40 and convince the Americans of its authenticity.

Room 40 focused on the ambassadorial messages between Berlin and the American continent and on 19 February the full text of Zimmermann’s instructions to his Mexican ambassador was traced. It had been sent to Washington by a wireless channel which Wilson and House had previously allowed Germany to use for secret discussions on a possible peace initiative. This effrontery added insult to injury. Once Admiral ‘Blinker’ Hall held the decoded and translated text in his hands, he knew that he had unearthed a propaganda coup of enormous importance. Zimmermann’s telegram read as follows:

‘Washington to Mexico 19 January 1917.

We intend to begin on 1 February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavour in spite of this to keep the USA neutral. In the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following terms:-
Make war together
Make peace together
Generous financial support and an undertaking on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you.
You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the USA is certain, and add the suggestion that he should on his own initiative invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.
Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace. (signed) Zimmermann.’ [10]

After ensuring that they could conceal how they had obtained the telegram, the British Foreign Office released it to Walter Paget, the American ambassador in London, who promptly sent it to the State Department in Washington. Woodrow Wilson received the transcript on 24 February 1917. He was stunned to discover that the Germans had abused the cable line which he had insisted they be allowed to access for peace negotiations. [11] It took President Wilson four days to release the telegram to the Associated Press and following expressions of disbelief, he authorised Senator Swann of Virginia to announce in the Senate on 1 March 1917, that the Zimmermann note to Mexico was textually correct. Robert Lansing made a similar pronouncement from the State Department. Clearly the American public was not easily convinced. Even in 1917, they were suspicious of government pronouncements.

If the reader scans the infamous Zimmermann line by line, it quickly becomes apparent that its ludicrous nature verges on lunacy. Alliances are not forged by telegram. Vague promises of generous financial support, of a detailed settlement being left in the hands of the Mexican government and the subsequent ‘reconquering’ of vast tracts of America, did not make sense. Though the Mexicans gave no immediate response, the Japanese Ambassador authoritatively dismissed the proposition. They had no intention of being suckered by a spurious telegram. And why did Zimmermann describe Germany’s submarine tactics as ‘ruthless’? The whole incident seemed contrived.

One major American newspaper-owner firmly rejected the Zimmermann story. William Randolph Hearst had kept his stable independent of the British censor. Just as he had refused to swallow wholesale war guilt, atrocity or war aims propaganda, Hearst cabled his editors that ‘in all probability’ the Zimmermann note was an ‘absolute fake and forgery.’ He believed that the object was to frighten Congress into giving the President the powers he demanded. Hearst’s anxiety was that ‘the whole people of this country, 90 percent of whom do not want war, may be projected into war because of these misrepresentations.’ [12] He also accused the president’s advisor, ‘Colonel’ House of being a corporation lobbyist. Hearst was at Palm Beach in the weeks before America entered the war and his private telegrams to his editors and those of other newspapers, were later made public in an attempt to discredit him. [13]

Though publication of the telegram aroused some anger in the West and mid-West states, American newspapers generally chose to omit any reference to the fact that the proposed alliance would only take place after America had declared war against Germany. [14] The original note had been passed to the American embassy in London in such secrecy that the State Department could not reveal its origins to enquiring journalists. [15] Indeed the propaganda value was diluted by a suspicion that it was a forgery, as Hearst and his newspapers insisted until, to the immense relief of British and American war-mongers, the naive Zimmermann acknowledged that he was the author. At a press conference on 2 March, Zimmermann was invited by the Hearst correspondent in Berlin, W.B. Hale, to deny the story.

He chose instead to confirm that it was true. [16] In modern parlance, it was a spectacular own goal. Some have said that the Zimmermann telegram incident was the “overt act” that brought the United States into the war. It was not. Woodrow Wilson did not ask Congress to declare war until 3 April 1917, fully six weeks after the British delivered the telegram to him.

So why did Woodrow Wilson take the irredeemable step to war? Sympathetic historians were very clear as to the cause. German militarism. The diplomatic record left no room for doubt. ‘It was the German submarine warfare and nothing else that forced him [Wilson] to lead America into war.’ [17] Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War came to the same conclusion, but wrapped it carefully inside a moment of caution. He wrote that ‘the occasion’ of America entering the war was the resumption of submarine warfare. [18] Don’t confuse the words ‘cause’ and ‘occasion’. Indeed, consider that sentence again, but replace ‘occasion’ with ‘excuse’.

The German government had announced an unrestricted submarine campaign on 31 January, 1917. From that date U-boat commanders were ordered to sink all ships, neutral and belligerent, passenger or merchant inside a delineated Atlantic and North Sea zone. Despite perfunctory American protests, the British blockade had begun to take its toll in Germany from late 1916. Hunger was to be a weapon of war which both sides could use to advantage. German strategists were aware that such a tactic was likely to bring America into the war, but had concluded that Britain could be starved out before America had time to raise an effective fighting force and bring it into the European theatre. As it stood, America could hardly offer the Allies much more assistance as a belligerent than it currently did as a neutral, [19] but one unforeseen consequence hit home quickly. American shipping was temporarily paralysed. [20] Great quantities of wheat and cotton began to pile up in warehouses. The American economy faced dangerous dislocation. American merchant shipping clung to the safety of their shoreline and trade stood still.

Look carefully at the twin ‘causes’ of America Declaration of War, the Zimmermann telegram and Germany’s unrestricted submarine campaign and you will find flaws. The first was not a ‘casus belli’. It was a propaganda coup to soften the American public’s attitude to war, to stir indignation into resentment and stir the fear factor. No matter how ridiculous the notion that Mexican troops could invade Texas, New Mexico or Arizona, the very suggestion of an alliance through which three huge American states might be ceded to Mexico, placed Germany in a particularly bad light. Zimmermann admitted he was the author, but the clandestine nature by which the British secret service ensured that the information was passed to Washington, and the extent to which the Americans covered all traces of British involvement, leaves questions hanging in the air. Did Zimmermann have a cerebral meltdown? Was he secretly trying to prepare for any eventuality? No matter, it was not the cause of war.

Greater weight may be placed on the general insistence that unrestricted submarine warfare brought about Wilson’s fateful decision. Historians have thrown a vast array of statistics into the equation to prove the importance of this single factor. In the first month of the unrestricted warfare at sea 781,500 tons of merchant shipping was lost. [21] While it is true that after Woodrow Wilson’s warning in February, ten American freighters, schooners or tankers were sunk, nine by submarines and one by a mine (laid originally by the Royal Navy), loss of American lives totalled 24 seamen. In total, 38,534 gross U.S. tonnage was sunk. [22] Was this sufficient to be a cause of war? The pro-war newspapers gave vent to their outrage when it was reported that three American ships, Vigilancia, City of Memphis and Illinois had been sunk on 18 March. The New York World screamed that ‘without a declaration of war, Germany is making war on America.’ The New York Tribune claimed that Germany was acting on the theory that already war existed; The Philadelphia Public Ledger demanded that Wilson’s administration take immediate action insisting was its duty to respond, while the St Louis Republic was confident that the President and his advisors would act with wisdom. [23]

What wisdom? Certainly a very small number of American lives had been lost at sea. Unarguably the Zimmermann telegram was a piece of effrontery … but was it sufficient reason to put the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans at risk? Or were there darker influences?

1. Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Presidential Proclamation 1364 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/woodrow_wilson.php
2. H.C. Peterson, Propaganda for War, pp. 321-2.
3. American Press Resume (A.P.R.) issued by the War Office and Foreign Office. “For Use of the Cabinet”, 18 April, 1917.
4. A.P.R. 30 May, 1917.
5. Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 325.
6. A.P.R. 6 June, 1917.
7. Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 324. footnote.
8. 65th Congress, Session 1, CH. 15 1917. H.R. 3545.
9. Patrick Beesly, Room 40, pp. 207-8.
10. http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/zimmermann.htm
11. Rodney Carlisle, The Attacks on US Shipping that Precipitated American Entry into World War 1. http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol17/tnm_17_3_41-66.pdf
12. Telegram to SS Carvalho, 2 March 1917.
13. New York Times 11 December 1918.
14. Peterson, Propaganda, p. 314.
15. Bailey, A Diplomatic History, p. 643, note 28.
16. Beesly, Room 40, p. 223.
17. Charles Seymour, American Diplomacy During the World War, p. 210.
18. Paul Birdsall, Neutrality and Economic Pressures 1914-1917, Science and Society vol. 3, No. 2. (Spring 1939) p. 217.
19. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, p. 641.
20. Millis, Road to War, p. 400.
21. Peterson, Propaganda, p. 318.
22. Carlisle, Attacks on American Shipping that Precipitated the War, The Northern Mariner, XVII, no. 3, p. 61. http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol17/tnm_17_3_41-66.pdf
23. New York Times, 19 March 1917.

The Oil Story 1: The Uneven Playing Field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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