The Balfour Declaration 12: The Hand of The Rothschilds

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Nathaniel 'Natty' Rothschild, Nathaniel Roschild, Rothschilds

Before 2 November 1917 no public position had been taken on the future of Palestine by any government. Thereafter there was a proposal from Lloyd George’s British government, approved by President Wilson in America,  to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland under certain conditions. But the future of Palestine had been included in three radically different commitments secretly made by the British government to the French, the Arabs and the Jews. The French could be bought-off with Syria. The Arabs, well they were considered a lesser race by the Secret Elite and, it was presumed, could be led down a different path. The Jews, by that time described as Zionists, offered a very interesting opportunity. Key inner-circle members of the Secret Elite believed that the Empire’s strategic security would be greatly enhanced by a Jewish Palestine which owed its existence to Britain. These Zionists could be useful.

Behind the political enthusiasm for a Jewish homeland displayed so publicly by the War Cabinet in 1917 lay this question: who was influencing them? Which of the small number of Zionist enthusiasts penetrated their inner circle and found favour with the Secret Elite? The primary answer was the House of Rothschild. Not every Rothschild, no, but over the span of 1914-1917 significant Rothschilds championed the Zionist cause and were seen by the public, especially the Jewish public, as its real leaders. Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris was the first of the nineteenth-century Rothschilds to help Russian victims of the vile pogroms to emigrate to Palestine between 1881-2. Throughout the pre-war years, he acquired and supported several communities in Palestine. By 1903 nineteen out of twenty-eight Jewish settlements in Palestine were subsidised partly or wholly by him. It was claimed that Edmond’s commitment was not aimed at the creation of a Jewish state. [1] That is convenient, for once the First World War was underway, it was he who urged Weizmann to seize the opportunity to establish a Jewish Palestine. [2]

In London, under the patronage of Lord Nathaniel, the Rothschilds had originally expressed no particularly strong enthusiasm for Palestine. They were considered to be disinterested, until Natty died in 1915. Described at his funeral as the ‘leader of his far-flung brothers … the Prince of the Diasporas of Israel’ [3] by the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, the great ‘Natty’ held a ‘quasimonarchial status within British Jewry’.[4] Yet again mythistory gave rise to extravagant titles. Suddenly, Natty Rothschild was transformed into a mythological prince of a mythological diaspora.

If Nathaniel was King, Walter was his heir. It was to Walter Rothschild that Balfour sent the Declaration  because, for much of the preceding year, Walter had been actively promoting Zionism in company with Chaim Weizmann. Walter has long been described first and foremost as a zoologist who collected exotic birds and animals; a reluctant banker; a very shy man with a speech impediment. [5] The evidence from which we have analysed the Balfour Declaration stands testament to a different truth. It was Walter Rothschild who allegedly drafted and redrafted letters to foreign secretary Balfour in 1917. [6] Be mindful that the Declaration passed through at least 5 drafts. At the very least, if  say, Weizmann drafted these letters in Walter’s name, it had the Rothschild signature.  Walter opposed the idea that power in Palestine might be shared between Britain and France and, Weizmann claimed, believed that Palestine must become a British Protectorate. [7]

Later, Jacob, the 4th Lord Rothschild described his grandfather Walter as a deeply eccentric ornithologist who, for example, did not open any mail over a two year period because he didn’t want to communicate with the rest of the world. [8]  Well, he clearly opened Balfour’s letter. Walter did not flinch when confronted by Jewish opponents to political Zionism. He tackled them head-on. He wrote to The Times on several occasions to condemn leading Jewish opponents. When the presidents of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association published what he deemed to be a manifesto against Zionism, both he and Weizmann wrote stinging letters of condemnation. Walter Rothschild then had the authors of the letter censured at the next meeting of the Board of Deputies and used his father’s name to justify his position. Whether he was a led in such matters by Weizmann or not, changes nothing.

It was generally believed that Natty Rothschild held little time for Zionists but Walter insisted that ‘during the latter years of his life, [his father] had frequently told him that in principle he was in favour of the establishment of a Jewish National homeland in Palestine, but not so long as Palestine was in Turkish hands’ [9] The dead cannot easily contradict the living. Walter Rothschild pressed both Lloyd George and Balfour to make a clear statement in favour of a Jewish homeland, and accompanied Chaim Weizmann when the Zionist leader in Britain went to persuade Balfour that a Jewish homeland had to have an expression of support before the war ended. [10] Walter presided over the mass meeting of triumph after the Declaration at the London Opera House on 2 December and spoke eloquently. Walter Rothschild was intimately involved in the successful delivery of the Balfour Declaration and fronted much of the political pressure which the Zionists exerted.

So too was the French-born James de Rothschild, Edmond’s son. He abandoned France after the anti-Jewish Dreyfus affair at the turn of the century [11] and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. James shared his father’s enthusiasm for Jewish communities in Palestine. Chaim Weismann corresponded with him, [12] and visited his wife, Dorothy Pinto [13] while James was serving in France. The Rothschild Archives at Waddesdon Manor retains a priceless collection of documents, including the original Balfour letter itself, but the correspondence from Dorothy de Rothschild clearly proves that Weizmann’s success within British society was neither opportunism nor good fortune. Dorothy had married James when she was seventeen years of age and her commitment to the Zionist cause never wavered. She wrote frequently to Chaim Weizmann and helped him to become integrated into  British Society, and most importantly, the Secret Elite. According to Lord Jacob, Dorothy devoted herself to Israel. If, as he claimed, Chaim Weizmann miraculously seduced Lloyd George, Balfour and the Secret Elite into accepting the Zionist ambitions, [14] it was a miracle facilitated by and through the Rothschild family.

James de Rothschild had attended a special meeting on 17 February 1917, with Weizmann, Walter Rothschild, Herbert Samuel and Sir Mark Sykes to establish a  pressure group specifically created to urge the British government to make a positive statement confirming Palestine’s future. [15] James, distrustful of French politicians, warned that if British Jews approached the French government for support, the French would would use their own Rabbis to press for a French mandate for Palestine. He became involved in  day-today Zionist politics and in April and May, 1917, he played an integral part in the Brandeis- Weizmann telegram exchanges which we have already examined. [16]  He too spoke at the great rally of 2 December and, quoting his father Edmond’s unerring commitment to Palestine, claimed that ‘Jewish ideals up to this time had been met at the gate, but could not get through. With one stroke of the pen the English government had flung open these gates.’ According to the Rothschild historian, Niall Ferguson, the meeting at Covent Garden was held to underline the Rothchilds’ contributions to the historic breakthrough from which the state of Israel could be traced.[17]

What’s more, the English Zionists Federation soon re-interpreted the original letter so that it was entitled ‘The Charter of Zionism’. But this letter of support was not a charter. It was not a Magna Carta.  This ‘breakthrough’, this ‘Jewish Charter’  [18]  contained a delicate and labyrinthine conundrum. How could any Power which claimed to have gone to war to protect the rights of small self-determining nations bring a non-existent ‘country’ to an international conference and claim it had greater rights to recognition than others? The first step was the British government’s Declaration of intent to support the establishment of a ‘homeland’. An outburst of international and orchestrated approval certainly helped. But there had to be a more tangible basis; proof positive that there was a just cause. This was the reason behind the Zionist Commission sent to the ‘Holy Land’ in 1918 to reassure the Arabs that no-one intended them harm. It aimed to lend credibility to the Zionist claims; give Zionists some right to be heard when the world was redivided at the end of the war. And all of this timely enterprise was orchestrated through the Rothschild influence.

In addition, membership of the Secret Elite began to change in a subtle manner to which Carroll Quigley made no overt reference. Perhaps a better word might be partnership. As economic power increasingly flowed through the Morgan – Rothschild – Rockefeller – Kuhn Lowe axis in the United States, political alliances began to firm around key issues … like Palestine, but why did they go to such extraordinary lengths to realise a mythistory? The Brandeis – Weizmann connection was reflected in the Balfour-Lansing understandings. In other words, the Zionist aims metamorphosed into British and American foreign policy. The Anglo-American Establishment began to slowly readjust its position. In a sense, the drive for one world government moved towards a shared trans-Atlantic agenda that would become clearer in the coming decades. In the new order that lay ahead, would it still be the British elite who were in charge? If so, for how long could that continue?

1. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 280.

2. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 189.

3. Memorial Sermon given by The Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz, 19 April, 1915, https://archive.org/stream/rthonlordrothsch00hert#page/n3/mode/2up

4. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 450.

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rothschild,_2nd_Baron_Rothschild

6.  National Archives GT 1803 and CAB 24/24/4.

7. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 450.

8.Interview with Lord Jacob Rothschild on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCioKnpHdY

9. The Times 18 June 1917.

10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 256.

11. In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was wrongly convicted by the army of spying for the Germans. His conviction was ridiculous and became a celebrated cause of establishment -based anti-semitism. The scandal split France and made many Jews very angry and uncomfortable with the anti-semitic attitude of their government. After great public protest, Dreyfus was exonerated in 1908. Recommend Ruth Harris, The Man On Devil’s Island.

12. Ibid., p. 201.

13. Ibid., p. 206.

14. Interview with Lord Jacob Rothschild on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCioKnpHdY

14. Ibid., p. 238.

15. Interview with Lord Jacob Rothschild on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCioKnpHdY

16. The Balfour Declaration 7: posted on 1st August 2017.

17. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 452.

18. The title ‘Charter’ appears to have been invented by the English Zionist Federation, whose pamphlet, Great Britain, Palestine and the Jews: Jewry’s Celebration of its National Charter, published anonymously after December 1917 repeats the concept of a ‘Charter’ almost as if it was the Magna Carta, talking of ‘ a National Charter’, ‘The Charter of Zionism’ and the ‘British Charter of Zionism’

The Balfour Declaration 7: Clandestine Plots Scupper A Peace Initiative

Conscious that the final resolution to the war would be critical to the Zionist claims on Palestine, their British and American leaders became increasingly involved in a secretive network aimed at influencing government policy. The three month period between April and June 1917 was peppered with urgent cables between Louis Brandeis in Washington and, Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild in London, updating each other about privileged meetings, current opinions and actions to be taken to advance the Zionist plan.[1] Unknown to elected politicians and cabinet members in both countries, these men operated a clandestine cell of Zionist interest whose specific purpose was to normalise, validate and protect the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Their targets were A J Balfour in Britain and President Woodrow Wilson in the United States. The British foreign secretary was known to be sympathetic; the American president had yet to indicate his approval.

Even before America had formally declared war on Germany (6 April, 1917), the London cabal insisted that increased pressure be brought on the President to support the Zionist cause. Every opportunity which presented itself had to be taken. Urged by the American Ambassador at London, Walter Page, the British Government decided to send a distinguished commission to the United States on the day before America declared war on Germany. [2] America’s entry profoundly altered the ground rules because neutrality was no longer an issue for the Atlantic powers, but did not change the ultimate aim to crush Germany. Lloyd George chose the near seventy-year old Arthur Balfour, former prime minister and current foreign secretary, to lead the charm offensive to Washington.

A J Balfour’s mission to the United States in 1917 proved a crucial turning point. The foreign secretary had been primed by Weizmann to speak with Brandeis when he was in Washington. The two men were introduced at a reception in the White House on 23 April and Balfour was reported to have greeted the Judge with ‘ You are one of the Americans I had wanted to meet.’ [3] Why, other than to gauge the strength of American-Jewish support for a homeland in Palestine? They met several times, but not in the White House. Over the following days and unknown to the President, his Supreme Court Judge and the visiting British foreign secretary had their first private breakfast together. [4] What was a on the menu for discussion was kept secret.

Balfour was in Washington to bolster the Allied cause and he and the President’s main advisor, Mandell House, specifically discussed the terms which might be imposed on Germany once it had been destroyed. On 28 April, Balfour produced a map of Europe and Asia Minor (one of the terms used to cover the Middle Eastern states largely within the Ottoman Empire) on which was traced the results of the secret treaties and agreements with Britain and France which will be examined in a later blog. They had, in Houses’ words, ‘divided up the bear-skin before the bear was dead.’ [5] Interestingly, Constantinople no longer featured as a probable Russian possession [6] but there was no indication of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. None.

One he was informed of this, Brandeis felt obliged to intervene. He had a forty-five minute meeting with Wilson on 6 May to assure him that the establishment of a Jewish Palestine was completely in line with the President’s concept of a just settlement. The British Zionists wanted assurance that their American compatriots approved the general plan for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and would publicise their support. Pressure had to be applied on both sides of the Atlantic. On 9 May, Brandeis sent a cable to James Rothschild in which he announced the American Zionist approval for the British programme. [7]  This was followed by another secret morning discussion with Balfour and on 15 May, Brandeis reported back to Weizmann and Rothschild that their objective had been successful. The precise wording in his cable demonstrated the extent to which the leading Zionists on both sides of the Atlantic were actively influencing their respective governments. Brandeis’s cable read: ‘Interviews both with President and Balfour were eminently satisfactory confirming our previous impressions as to reliable support in both directions. Presented views in line with your program [but] was assured that present circumstances did not make Government utterances desirable.’ [8] Private conversations between the President and the visiting foreign secretary were secretly passed across the Atlantic without compunction in contravention of a variety of secrecy acts. Whose national interest was being served?

Louis Brandeis continued to press Wilson for a public commitment to a Jewish homeland, but caution was advised. His cable to James Rothschild on 23 May stated that Balfour told him: ‘if we exercised patience and allowed events to take their natural course, we would obtain more’. According to Brandeis, President Wilson was reluctant to make a public declaration because the United States was not at war with Turkey. So much for the notion that Judge Brandeis limited his activities to matters of law. His secret collusion with British Zionists should have raised concerns about a conflict of interest but that paled into insignificance when compared with his involvement in destroying a clandestine American peace-mission to Turkey.

In early June 1917 an extremely concerned Louis Brandeis made an urgent call to London. The Zionist plans were suddenly threatened by an unexpected and unwelcome intervention about which none of them had the slightest warning. Brandeis discovered that a secret American delegation, headed by the former United States Ambassador at Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, was on its way to Switzerland. Its purpose was to convince Turkey to break away from the German-Austrian alliance, an action which would have radically altered the geo-political situation when the war ended. Indeed, if successful, it would have shortened the war.

Former ambassador Morgenthau believed that a combination of German domination and war famine was making life unbearable in Turkey. Even the Young Turks had become ‘heartily sick of their German masters’ [9] Henry Morgenthau thought that he understood the Turkish mind. His plan was to go to Switzerland to meet former members of the Ottoman cabinet and offer generous peace terms and ‘any other means’ (by that he meant bribes) to encourage them to abandon their allies. Initially Robert Lansing the US secretary of state, talked over the proposal with Arthur Balfour. The British foreign secretary suggested that since Switzerland was ridden with spies, Morgenthau should use Egypt as a base… as if Egypt wasn’t riddled with spies? It afforded the very plausible excuse that the American delegation was concerned with the condition of Jews in Palestine. Lansing agreed and an American Zionist, Felix Frankfurter, was added to the official delegation. One flaw surfaced almost immediately after Morgenthau set off for Europe. The mission had been sanctioned without due consideration to its possible consequences for Zionism.

Judge Louis Brandeis learned about the venture after the Americans had departed for a rendezvous with their Allied compatriots in Europe. [10] He immediately understood the mortal danger which any such rapprochement with the Turks would bring to the Zionist ambitions. Brandeis alerted Chaim Weizmann. They both realised that these negotiations could completely undermine their carefully constructed plans. In June 1917 there was no Jewish homeland. The very concept was at best paper-talk and had yet to be formally accepted by any of the major powers. A generous settlement for the Turks which might have left Palestine and Arabia intact, would have destroyed the Zionist ambitions before the world war had ended.

In London, Weizmann’s contacts at the foreign office confirmed Brandeis’s anxiety. He learned that the proposed British contingent which was scheduled to join Morgenthau contained envoys whom he did not consider as ‘proper persons’ for such a mission. [11] Since when did unelected observers make decisions on who was or was not a ‘proper person’ to undertake a foreign office assignment? Weizmann turned to C P Scott his Manchester journalist friend, and within a matter of days was invited to speak behind closed doors with foreign secretary Balfour, recently returned from Washington.

What emerged was an astonishing acknowledgement of Zionist complicity in scuttling the American mission. In complete secrecy, Balfour appointed Chaim Weizmann as the British representative to meet Morgenthau. Not a career diplomat. Not a Jewish member of the House of Lords or Commons. He gave the task to a ‘proper person’. The leader of the Zionist movement in Britain, Chaim Weizmann, was formally appointed by the foreign office as Britain’s representative to a secret mission which, had it been allowed to progress unmolested, could radically have shortened the war. Weizmann was given a formidable set of credentials, his own intelligence officer and the responsibility to stop Henry Morgenthau in his tracks.[12]

Chaim Weizmann grasped the opportunity. The Secret Elite chose to use him for their own ends. Their ultimate plan not only for Palestine, but the entire Middle East, would have been seriously compromised had Morgenthau successfully disengaged Turkey from the war. For the Zionists it was imperative that their ambition for a homeland in Palestine was approved by one of the great Powers before the fighting ceased. Chaim Weizmann, accompanied by Sir Ronald Graham [13] and Lord Walter Rothschild met Balfour again. They put one condition on the table. The time had come for a definitive declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This had to be acknowledged – urgently, incase an unexpected peace closed down the opportunity. Balfour agreed. In fact he did more than agree. He asked Chaim Weizmann to submit a form of words that would satisfy the Zionist aspiration, and promised to take it to Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.[14] Here was the golden chance which could not be missed. This was the starting point for the formal declaration which would be endorsed by the war cabinet and called The Balfour Declaration.

Behind the scenes in America, Louis Brandeis succeeded in completely overturning the original position held by Robert Lansing at the Department of State. The plan which had been given official sanction had to be scuppered. On 25 June, while Morgenthau was en-route across the Atlantic on the SS Buenos Aires, an urgent telegram was sent from Washington to Balfour alerting the British to Morgenthau’s arrival in Europe. Lansing specifically stated that ‘it is considerably important that ‘Chaim Weizmann meet Mr Morgenthau at Gibraltar’. [15] How extraordinary. Secretary Lansing requested that his own former ambassador should meet Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the British Zionists before proceeding further. On the same day he instructed the American Ambassador (Willard) at Madrid to ensure that, as soon as he landed, Morgenthau fully understood that he was ordered to go to Gibraltar to meet Weizmann. This instruction was to be sent by ‘special red code strictly confidential’ [16] Who was in charge of American foreign policy, Lansing or Brandeis? No matter. They certainly meant to stop Morganthau.

While the choice of Weizmann as the main British negotiator was inspired, it was little wonder that his involvement, and indeed the whole mission, was a closely guarded secret. The Americans were halted in Gibraltar, ostensibly to agree how the Turks might be approached. With all the weight and authority of his Zionist credentials, Chaim Weizmann pressed Morgenthau on his intentions. Why did he imagine that the Zionist organisations on either side of the Atlantic supported his actions? Did he realise that his proposals would compromise everything that Jewish organisations had been working towards? Realising what he was up against, Morganthau abandoned the mission within two days of Weizmann’s onslaught. He back-tracked to the comfort of Biarritz and left France on 12 July without informing Ambassador Willard of his future plans. [17]

His ego seriously dented, Morgenthau dispatched his own heart-felt complaint to Washington. Given the ease with which diplomatic telegrams could be intercepted, the Americans were appalled. He received a stinging rebuke from Lansing’s office which was as much for international consumption as it was for Morgenthau’s. The telegram read: ‘Department surprised and disturbed that your text seems to indicate you have been authorised to enter into negotiations which would lead to a separate peace with Turkey… Final instructions were to deal solely with the conditions of Jews in Palestine…under no circumstances confer, discuss or carry messages about internal situation in Turkey or a separate peace.’ [18] The aims of the Secret Elite and the political Zionist organisation began to move in tandem. Consider carefully what had happened.

Brandeis had interfered directly with the US State Department policy. Furthermore, he did not hesitate to pass secret information to Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild in London so that Morgenthau’s plans would be thwarted, nominally by the British government. Weizmann, in turn, was ushered in as the foreign office solution. Though by 1917 he was a naturalised British citizen, Chaim Weizmann was no diplomat or civil servant. He was a Zealot for an unbending cause. By pitting a most able and skilled Jewish negotiator against a moderate (at best) American-Jewish diplomat, the Secret Elite approved an inspired appointment. Weizmann crushed Morgenthau with deep-felt passion. At an even deeper level of conspiracy Brandeis had nailed his colours, not to Old Glory, but to the Zionist flag borne by Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild.

Weizmann the zealot lived for one purpose in 1917. His determination was absolute. He wrote to Philip Kerr, a Milner protege and one of Lloyd George’s ‘secretaries’: ‘Some Jews and non-Jews do not seem to realise one fundamental fact, that whatever happens we will get to Palestine.’ [19] And what of Louis Brandeis? He chose to promote and protect the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in favour of an action which could well have ended the war before American troops landed in Europe. American lives or a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Did Louis Brandeis ever consider that thought?

Long after these events, in September 1922, President Warren G Harding affirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine against the advice of his officials in the state department. [20] One of but a few who spoke out against a well-organised Jewish lobby was Professor E.B. Reed of Yale who had served as a Red Cross worker in Palestine for three and a half months in 1919. He testified that the Zionist programme would bring oppression to the Arab majority in Palestine, that it was illegal and violated Arab rights. [21] In his memoirs, Chaim Weizmann recalled, incorrectly, that Professor Reed was a Senator. What annoyed him was Reed’s accusation that the leaders of the Zionist movement were unworthy men, and that he (Weizmann) had prolonged the war by two years by undermining the Morgenthau mission. [22] Strange that Weizmann remained in such stubborn denial. Truly, he and his associates, had prolonged that damned war.

1.https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/XXII_THE_BALFOUR_MISSION_TO_THE_UNITED_STATES
2. Blanche E C Dugdale, Arthur J Balfour, Vol II, p. 231.
3. Richard Neb Lebow, Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40. No. 4 (Dec 1968) p. 507 footnote 22.
4. Charles Seymour, Mandell House vol.II pp. 42-3.
5. What an enlightening insight. The Tzar having been deposed, all promises to Russia could be abandoned with all haste.
6. Richard Neb Lebow, Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40. No. 4 (Dec 1968) p. 508 footnote 26.
7. Ibid.
8. Nevzat Uyanik, Dismantling the Ottoman Empire: Britain, America and the Armenian Question, pp. 62-63.
9. Memorandum of Henry Morgenthau’s Secret Mission, 10 June 1917, Robert Lansing Papers, Box 7, Folder 2. Quoted in Uyanik, Dismantling the Ottoman Empire, p. 63.
10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 246.
11. Ibid., p. 247.
12. The British chief of staff in Egypt responsible for the safety of the Suez Canal. Married to daughter of Viscount Milner’s great friend, Lord Midleton. [I. S. Munro, ‘Graham, Sir Ronald William (1870–1949)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33505]
13. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 256.
14. United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1917, (FRUS) Supplement 2, The World War (1917) p. 109.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 127.
17. Ibid., p. 129.
18. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 227.
19. S.J. Res. 191, 67th Congress, 2 Session, Congressional Record, Vol. LX11, part 5, p.5376.
20. The Lodge-Fish Resolution, Herbert Parzen, American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60. no. 1 Zionism in America, (September 1970, p. 71.
21. Irwin Oder, American Zionism and the Congressional Resolution of 1922 on Palestine, Publications of the American-Jewish Historical Society, Vol. 45, No.1 (September 1955.) p. 44.
22. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 251.

The Balfour Declaration 6: Embraced by the Secret Elite.

Chaim Weizmann had a valuable friend, the journalist and editor, C P Scott. Later the proprietor of the Manchester Guardian, Scott was an Oxford-educated man of staunch Liberal leanings. He spent ten years as member of parliament for Leigh in Lancashire (1895-1905) and welcomed Lloyd George’s courage in opposing the Boer War. [1] Their friendship endured through tumultuous times and Lloyd George trusted C P Scott’s views. [2] The newspaper owner had befriended Chaim Weizmann when he was teaching at Manchester University and proved to be, in Weizmann’s words, ‘of incalculable value’. He pointed the Zionist leader towards the one Jewish member of Asquith’s government, Herbert Samuel, whom he believed, could be of great assistance.[3] Samuel was not a practising Jew and before the war had never spoken about Zionism. Despite this apparent lack of interest he proposed in November 1914, that Britain sponsor the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine after the war. [4] Was it co-incidence that on both sides of the Atlantic, influential Jewish financiers and politicians, Rothschild, Brandeis, Weizmann and Herbert Samuel looked ahead to the end of the war and appreciated the opportunity it would bring? Note the coincidence of both Brandeis and Samuel’s proposals in November 1914. According to his memoirs Samuel was inspired by being the first Jew ever to sit in the British cabinet and claimed that he turned to Chaim Weizmann for advice. [5] Consequently, he spoke to Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, about the future of Palestine. Samuel expressed his alarm at the prospect of this part of the world falling into the hands of any of the Continental Powers (including France) and stressed the strategic importance of that region to the British Empire. He professed his enthusiasm for a Jewish State in Palestine which would be ‘a centre of a new culture … a fountain of enlightenment’.[6]

What followed was a very curious breakfast-meeting of a pro-Zionist group, including Lloyd George, on 3 December 1914. The most intriguing part of the meeting, which Weizmann described in great detail in his autobiography, [7] was that Lloyd George apparently forgot all about it. In his own self-aggrandising memoirs the Welshman explicitly dated his first meeting with Chaim Weizmann from 1916 when the Manchester chemist, by that time a Professor at the university, worked for the ministry of munitions. Indeed the impression which Lloyd George deliberately tried to infer was that the later Balfour Declaration was a reward for Weizmann’s services to the British nation for his development of acetone as a source to enhance munitions. [8] What rubbish. [9] Why did he feel it necessary to falsify his own record? Lloyd George had been introduced to Chaim Weizmann on 3 December 1914 in the company of Herbert Samuel, C P Scott and Joshiah Wedgwood, and the sole topic of conversation, had been Palestine. [10] The then chancellor of the exchequer’s account is so ridiculous that we have to ask, what was he trying to hide? Did later developments in Palestine embarrass Lloyd George politically? Were there other secret influences from whom he had to deflect enquiry?

Herbert Samuel proved to be an important advocate for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He promoted the idea both informally with fellow ministers and in January 1915 wrote a draft memorandum for the Cabinet in which he concluded that Palestine’s annexation to the British Empire, together with an active colonisation of Jewish settlers, was the best solution for Britain. [11] Prime Minister Asquith was not impressed. [12] When in March 1915 Samuel circulated his revised memorandum to all members of the Cabinet, Asquith was scathing in his dismissal, describing the proposals as ‘dithyrambic’, an educated put-down implying a wild, over-the-top, possibly wine-fuelled raving. He went further with a racist swipe which emphasised his disapproval of the very idea that ‘we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews c[oul]d swarm back from all quarters of the globe, and in due course claim Home Rule.’ [13] Insects swarm; not people. Asquith also ridiculed the notion that Lloyd George cared a whit about the future of Palestine, adding: ‘ Lloyd George … does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it would be an outrage to let the christian holy places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of Agnostic Atheistic France!’ [14] Why did Asquith find Lloyd George’s stance ‘curious’? Before taking office in 1906, Lloyd George’s legal firm had represented Theodore Herzl in his negotiations with the over the the Uganda proposal. It was he who submitted Herzl’s views on the offer to the British Government. [15] His association with Zionism was long-standing.

Other important politicians and cabinet ministers who responded positively to Herbert Samuel’s memorandum included Sir Edward Grey, Rufus Isaacs, Lord Chief Justice of England from 1913, Richard Haldane, who at that time was Lord Chancellor, Lord James Bryce, former Ambassador to the United States and Arthur J Balfour, [16] who was to become foreign secretary when Grey was replaced in 1916.

Alfred Milner was positively predisposed towards what he himself termed, the Jewish Race. In 1902 he wrote to the President of the Zionist Federation of South Africa: ‘I have known the Jews as excellent colonists at the Cape – industrious, law-abiding and thoroughly loyal’. [17] Herzl had written to Milner in 1903 putting forward his arguments for a Jewish National Home in Palestine and praised the bond which he believed ‘united us [Jews] all closely to your nation.’ [18] Weizmann valued the strength of Milner’s support. He believed that Milner profoundly understood that the Jews alone were capable of rebuilding Palestine, and of giving it a place in the modern family of nations. [19] Such nonsense should have been summarily dismissed but Milner had more immediate concerns, amongst which the strategic defence of the Empire was a powerful motivator. The Secret Elite understood the natural advantage to be gained from a pliant Jewish-Palestine which would protect the western side of the Suez canal and all of the concomitant interests in Persia.

Weizmann held individual discussions with a stream of Secret Elite politicians and agents. Naturally he endowed each with qualities and perceptions which supported Zionism. [20] He specifically targeted Lloyd George’s minders in the Downing Street Garden suburb, [21] His subliminal message was hardly difficult to understand; Britain should trust in a Jewish homeland in Palestine to protect the Suez Canal and the gateway to Persia and India. Weizmann had a further advantage. He understood the matriarchal power inside the Jewish household and sought to use it to his advantage. For example, when James de Rothschild was serving in the British army, Weizmann befriended his wife Dorothy Pinto and ‘won her over’ to Zionism. Jessica Rothschild, wife of Nathan’s second son, Charles, also proved to be a valuable asset and willingly helped the Zionist leader to widen his contacts inside London Society.

And it came to pass that the people of influence, mostly powerfully rich Jews, adopted Chaim Weizmann. The English Zionist Federation office in Fulbourne Street in the East End of London had become too small to meet the demands placed on it by 1917. Weizmann would have us believe that ‘after much consideration and heart-searching we decided to open an office at 175 Piccadilly’. So innocuously put; so entirely misleading. From the East End to Piccadilly was a massive step on its own, but to 175 Piccadilly? To become near neighbours of their friends in ‘Rothschild Row’? [22] How wonderful. Yet that was not the important point. What mattered was that the English Zionist Federation was absorbed into Empire House, the home of Milner’s Round Table Quarterly Review, [23] at the heart of the very court of influence which dominated British political thinking. Weizmann and his organisation were literally embraced by the Secret Elite’s inner-most think-tank. 175 Piccadilly became the hub ‘towards which generated everything in Zionist life’. [24] Incredible. One building, two organs of political influence and a shared interest. 175 Piccadilly was a very significant address. Its importance was kept well away from public scrutiny.

Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann were intimately involved in promoting Zionist intentions behind the backs of their political allies. But they hid it well. Louis Brandeis’s biographer, Alphas Thomas Mason was authorised and approved by the Supreme Court Judge himself and given full access to all his public papers, notebooks, diaries, memoranda, archived letters and personal correspondence. [25] Yet in his 240,000-word scholarly work, only two small paragraphs, ten lines in total, cover Brandeis’s feverish activities between April and June 1917. [26] The truth, to which we now turn, is far more revealing.

1. Trevor Wilson, Scott, Charles Prestwich (1846–1932)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
2. They did fall out for a year in1920-21 over Ireland.
3 Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 190.
4. Bernard Wasserstein, ‘Samuel, Herbert Louis, first Viscount Samuel (1870–1963)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
5. Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, p. 139.
6. Ibid., pp. 140-142.
7. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 191.
8. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 348-9.
9. Oscar K Rabinowicz, Fifty Years of Zionism, p. 69.
10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 192.
11 Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, p.142.
12. Micheal and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley. p. 406.
13. Ibid., p. 477.
14. Ibid.
15. http://www.jta.org/1931/01/15/archive/mr-lloyd-george-was-legal-adviser-to-dr-herzl-on-uganda-project-and-submitted-dr-herzls-views-to
16. Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, pp.143-4.
17. Vladimir Halpern, Lord Milner and the Empire, p. 169.
18. Ibid., p. 170.
19. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 226.
20. Ibid., p. 241.
21 J A Turner, The Historical Journal vol.20, No 1 (March 1977) p. 165-184.
22. Fredric Bedoire and Robert Tanner, The Jewish Contribution to Modern Architrecture, 1830-1930, p. 131.
23. Walter Nimmocks, Milner’s Young Men, p.166.
24. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 232.
25. Mason, Brandeis – A Free Man’s Life, p. vii.
26. Ibid., p. 452-3.

The Balfour Declaration 4: Early Zionist Roots in Britain.

The term Zionism was coined in the late nineteenth century to represent the movement for the return of the Jewish people to their so-called ‘historic homeland’ in Palestine, though from the start the term was interpreted in different ways by different Jewish and non-Jewish communities. It grew from small beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century,  but had sufficient numbers in the last years of that millennium to contemplate an international congress.

The First Zionist Congress was held in Basle between the 29th and 31st of August, 1897, and was can be gleaned by the photograph above, these delegates were drawn mainly from middle-class European jews. Its aim was to have a recognised ‘and legally secured’ home in Palestine.[1] Chaired by Theodore Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist and keen Jewish activist, the meeting of around 200 participants created the World Zionist Organisation. Who could have known that from such small beginnings a new State would eventually emerge? Small in number, these Zionists were dedicated zealots. Their stance was absolute. They accepted no criticism. They belittled as enemies those many Jews who believed in assimilation into the countries in which they lived and who questioned Zionism’s political aims. Yet there was no popular, widespread enthusiasm for the ‘homeland’ proposal.

At the Second Basle Congress one year later it was clear that very few Jews were interested in the political aims. There was no clamour for radical change. Consequently, the Zionist emphasis was altered. Herzl recognised the need to galvanise Jewish communities, most of whom remained ignorant of, or completely disinterested in, or positively against, the idea of Zionism.

In December 1901 a Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in Britain to acquire land in Palestine as the ‘inalienable estate of the Jewish people’.[2] It is entirely dubious whether any international law validated such an ‘inalienable’ right, but what is important is that the JNF was part of the slow and barely successful process of encouraging Jewish settlers to go to Palestine. Yet the focus on Palestine was one from which Zionists were not to be turned. We should not forget that the suffering and desperation of many Jews, especially in Russia, whose anti-Jewish pogroms were a barbarous indictment of the Romanov Empire, pressed heavily on the evolving Zionist movement. From their vantage point it was a refugee crisis which no-one else was minded to solve.

Of the major world Powers, Britain was the most progressively liberal in its attitude towards Jewish assimilation. Wealthy Jews in banking, finance and business were increasingly included in what was known as ‘society’. There were Jewish Members of Parliament; Jews ennobled and given membership of the House of Lords. Jewish refugees from the Russian pogroms settled in the slums in the East End of London and other major cities. Life was far from easy for the masses of impoverished immigrants, but Britain was a comparative safe haven and more welcoming than France. The nascent cries for a ‘homeland’ did not come from the ordinary Jewish refugee, but from the Zionist lobby which had begun to assert itself at the turn of the century. And there was sympathy for the Zionist desire for a national homeland inside the corridors of power in London. The problem was that the solution which was offered was not the one that Zionists wanted.

A British offer of an autonomous homeland for Jewish settlers in East Africa [3]  was considered at the Sixth Congress in 1903 and the Zionists reluctantly agreed to send a delegation to examine the practicalities of a Jewish settlement in Uganda. They turned it down. Unsuitable. The Zionists had no intention of resettling in Uganda. Ever. It was not the ‘promised land’. Another approach to the British government about the possible colonisation of a strip of territory on the southern boundary of Palestine and Egypt called El Arish had been secretly conducted by Theodore Herzl, but was also found to be impractical.[4] What mattered was that some British politicians appeared sympathetic to the aspirations of political Zionists.

Herzl died in 1904, and after a considerable struggle, Chaim Weizmann emerged as a charismatic and persuasive Zionist leader. He dominated the Eighth Congress in 1907 and managed to fuse together its political and the practical divisions into what was termed ‘Synthetic Zionism’, a hybrid between political zionism and more practical approaches. Weizmann built on common links between a variety of Zionist groups. Progress was slow. Numbers remained comparatively small, but Palestine was always the ultimate target for a ‘national homeland’. [5]

It seems strange that in his seminal work The Anglo-American Establishment, Professor Carroll Quigley made no mention of Chaim Weizmann’s activities in Britain before or during the First World War. This is all the more puzzling when we unpick Weizmann’s many and frequent associations with the key political forces inside the elite British establishment. He penetrated the hidden web of political influence as no other previously had. Every possible door was opened to him and anything that might prove incriminating, that smelled of collusion, removed from the historic record. [6]  Weizmann operated as the Zionist leader in Britain from 1904-5 onwards, meeting political sympathisers, using his contacts and building up a network of relationships which proved vital to his cause.

Chaim Weizmann initially met Arthur Balfour, formerly Conservative leader during the general election of 1906, [7] at a time when Lord Nathaniel Rothschild worked closely with his Secret Elite colleague. [8] Balfour wanted to know why the Zionists had turned down the British government’s practical solution of a settlement in Uganda? Weizmann spelled out his philosophy with absolute clarity. He dwelt on the spiritual side of Zionism and his ‘deeply religious conviction’ that only Palestine would do. In his eyes, any deflection from Palestine, was ‘a form of idolatry,’  [9] an interesting form of words, rooted in religious abhorrence. He professed that Palestine had a magic and romantic appeal for the Jews; that no other homeland could energise the Jewish people to build up and make habitable, what he deemed, a wasteland. Palestine was not a wasteland nor was it uninhabited. In peddling this misconception, Weizmann was very persuasive. His was not the policy advocated by the wealthy Jews who had made such important strides in British society. This was not an Englishman, proud to be English … and a Jew. Weizmann was not a privileged Rothschild or one of the many other rich upper-middle class Englishmen of Jewish faith who had been completely assimilated into British society. Weizmann was a Zionist zealot. Lord Nathaniel Rothschild was, apparently not.

Chaim Weizmann had one particularly influential mentor who knew precisely the names of the prime decision-makers in Britain. He was a Rothschild – Baron Edmond de Rothschild, head of the French branch of the banking dynasty. Edmond de Rothschild also believed passionately in Palestine. He had funded the establishment of Jewish settlements between 1880-95 and was later hailed as the father of Jewish colonisation.[10] Although the initial months of the war looked bleak for France and her allies, Edmond de Rothschild was convinced of ultimate victory, even in 1914. His advice to Weizmann, whom he considered a capable leader, reflected the forward nature of Zionist thinking. He could see that this was the opportunity. That moment, in the first months of a murderous world war, was the time to act so ‘we might not be forgotten in the general settlement’ . [11] Consider that advice. Edmund de Rothschild forewarned Weizmann that war would ultimately end in a settlement of conflicting claims, and the Zionists had to act immediately to ensure that theirs was included. Chaim Weizmann’s task was to influence British statesmen and politicians to support the Zionist cause in Palestine. It is inconceivable that Rothschild would have failed to identify the key personnel, the trusted agents and members of the Secret Elite whose support was vital to the Zionist ambition. When we analyse the list of men and women whom Weizmann targeted for support, there can be no other explanation, for they formed the core of the secret society that was revealed by Professor Quigley. [12] Weizmann may not have been fully aware of their one-world agenda but these were the people who could approve the transformation of Palestine from the unrequited holy grail to a Jewish state. They became his immediate targets.

British Zionism had a champion. His network of influence was firmly based on his Rothschild connections, and he knew whom he must influence to bring about the radical changes he vigorously pursued. As the pieces in this jigsaw begin to take shape, pay special attention to the clandestine involvement of our Secret Elite agents.

1. Jessie Ethel Sampter, A Guide to Zionism, p. 59.
2. Ibid., p. 64.
3. letter from Sir Clement Hill, chief of Protectorate Department, Foreign Office to Mr. L J Greenberg, 14 August 1903.
4. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, pp. 120-1.
5. Ibid., p. 121.
6. for example, no mention is made of Weizmann in Hankey’s Diaries. GBR/0014/HNKY or in Roskill’s masterly volume on Hankey up to 1918.
7. The 1906 election produced a landslide victory for Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal party and expelled A J Balfour from office until 1915.
8. Niall Ferguson,The House of Rothschild, The World’s Banker, 1849-1999, pp. 417-8.
9. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 143.
10. http://www.jta.org/1931/08/20/archive/baron-edmond-de-rothschild-86
11. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 189.
12. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 311-5.

The Balfour Declaration 3. Peeling the Onion: Secret Collusions.

The November 1917 Balfour Declaration was the final product of many interested parties with whom the Secret Elite was intimately involved. For over a century historians and journalists have focussed attention on the final outcome, the Balfour Declaration itself, but the process through which that brief letter of support was constructed clearly demonstrated the collusion of governments and lobbyists which spells out a conspiracy which has been ignored or airbrushed from the received history of the time. Take for example the role of Alfred Lord Milner, the central influence inside the Secret Elite and unelected member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.  At a previous Cabinet meeting on 4 October 1917, participants had considered a draft declaration written by Milner himself and influenced by his Round Table acolytes.

His draft specifically supported the view that the government should ‘favour the establishment of a National Home for the Jewish Race’.[1] The capitalisation of the term National Home was later altered, as was the very Milnerite phrase, ‘Jewish Race’. Lord Milner was a very precise thinker. While the words National Home implied that the Jewish people throughout the world should have a defined area to call their own, his version favoured ‘the establishment’ of such a place. It did not imply a return to a land over which they had assumed rights. Secondly, Alfred Milner held Race in great esteem. He defined himself with pride as a British ‘Race Patriot’.[2] His wording was a mark of respect. Others feared that it was a dangerous phrase which might be interpreted aggressively. It clashed with the concept of Jewish assimilation, like Jewish – Americans, and hinted that as a faith group, Jews belonged to a specific race of peoples. Consequently, his version was toned down.

Secretly, the War Cabinet decided to seek the opinion on the final wording of the declaration from both representative Zionists ( their phrase ) and those of the Jewish faith opposed to the idea of a national homeland. It is crucial to clearly understand that inside the international Jewish community there was a considerable difference of opinion in favour of, and against this idea of a Jewish ‘homeland’. That these groups were apparently given equal standing suggested that the Jewish community in Britain was equally split on the issue. They were not. The number of active Zionists was relatively small, but very influential.

Furthermore, the War Cabinet sought the American President’s opinion on the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine.[3] The minutes of the 245th meeting of the War Cabinet in London revealed that Woodrow Wilson was directly involved in the final draft of the Declaration. So too was his minder, Colonel Edward Mandell House [4] and America’s only Jewish Chief Justice, Louis Brandeis, [5]  both of whom telegrammed different views to the British government. [6] On 10 September, Mandell House indicated that the President advised caution before proceeding with a statement on a future Jewish homeland; on 27 September, Judge Brandeis cabled that the President was in entire sympathy with the declaration. Much can change in politics inside two and a half weeks.

As each layer of the onion is slowly peeled away from the hidden inner core of the eponymous Declaration, it becomes apparent that the given story has glossed over key figures and critical issues. There are hidden depths to this episode that mainstream historians have kept from public view and participants have deliberately misrepresented or omitted from their memoirs.

The previous minutes of the War Cabinet Committee held on 3 September 1917, showed that the earlier meeting had also been crammed with Secret Elite members and associates including Leo Amery, formerly Milner’s acolyte in South Africa. [7] Item two on the agenda revealed that ‘considerable correspondence… has been passed between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (A.J.Balfour) and Lord Walter Rothschild…on the question of the policy to be adopted towards the Zionist movement.’ [8] What? ‘Considerable correspondence’ had been exchanged between Lord Rothschild and the Foreign Office; not a letter or enquiry, but considerable correspondence. A copy of one of these letters sent from the Rothschild mansion at 148 Piccadilly on 18 July 1917 has survived in the War Cabinet minutes. What it reveals shatters the illusion that the British government’s promise of support for a Jewish national home in Palestine stemmed exclusively from the foreign office under the pen of Arthur Balfour. Lord Rothschild’s letter began:

‘Dear Mr. Balfour,
At last I am able to send you the formula you asked me for. If his Majesty’s Government will send me a message on the lines of this formula, if they and you approve of it, I will hand it on to Zionist Federations and also announce it at a meeting called for that purpose…’ [9]

He enclosed his (Rothchild’s) recommendation for a draft declaration. It comprised two sentences: (1) His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people. (2) His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organisations.’ [10]

Balfour’s reply ‘accepted the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted…and [we] will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them.’ What? How do you ‘reconstitute’ a country? It might be interesting to consider the precedent that was being set. Could this mean that one day America might be reconstituted as a series of native Indian reserves or parts of England as Viking territory? Astonishingly, the Zionist movement was invited to dictate its designs for British foreign policy in Palestine. [11] This was not some form of loose involvement. It was complicity. Lloyd George’s government, through the war cabinet, colluded with the Zionist Federation to concoct a statement of intent that met their (Zionist) approval. Furthermore, it was agreed that such an important issue, namely the future of Palestine, should be discussed with Britain’s allies, and ‘more particularly with the United States’. [12] This action had all the hallmarks of an international conspiracy.

How many lies have been woven around the design and origins of the Balfour Declaration? Lord Walter Rothschild was the chief intermediary between the British government and the Zionist Federation. In this capacity he had been involved in the process of creating and formulating a new and explosive British commitment to the foundation of a Jewish home in Palestine. More than that, Rothschild and his associates sought to control ‘the methods and means’ by which it would be created. This mindset never wavered in the years that followed.

What influences had been activated to bring Lloyd George, in conjunction with Woodrow Wilson, to such a position by November 1917? Behind the scenes, who was pulling the strings? Who were these Zionists, and why were they given such immense support from the Secret Elite and, in particular, their British political agents? How could a minority group, suddenly command such power on both sides of the Atlantic? An exceedingly small minority group of no previous political or religious influence, whose ideology had been dismissed by many leading Rabbis as contrary to true Jewish belief, emerged as if from nowhere to strut the world stage. This did not happen by chance.

It happened by design. This we will demonstrate over the next few blogs.

1. National Archives: CAB 23/4/19 WC 245, p. 6.
2. A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 401.
3. National Archives: CAB 23/4/19 WC 245, p. 6.
4. National Archives:GT – 2015.
5. National Archives:GT – 2158.
6. National Archives:CAB 23/4/19 p. 5.
7. National Archives:CAB 23/4/1. WC. 227, p. 1.
8. National Archives:GT-1803 – The Zionist Movement.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. National Archives:CAB 24/24/4.
12. National Archives:CAB 23/4/1. WC 227, p. 2.

Balfour Declaration 2: The Fateful Letter.

LETTER FROM ARTHUR BALFOUR TO LORD WALTER ROTHSCHILD

Foreign Office
November 2 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the following Declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which have been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

(signed) ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR’ [1]

The above letter was released by the Foreign Office and printed in The Times on 9 November, 1917.

Why at this critical juncture did the British War Cabinet decide publicly to favour Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people? Our instinct is to redefine that question to ask: where did this fit into the Secret Elite’s strategy to crush Germany and advance its globalist ambition? How were these linked? How had it come about that a homeland for one specific religious group appeared on the post-war agenda as if it was a solution to an unspoken problem? Even if anyone believed the lie that the Allies were fighting for the rights of smaller nations, why had religious identity suddenly become an issue of nationhood? Had anyone considered giving Catholics such rights in Ireland or Muslims or Hindus such status in India? Was the world to be divided into exclusive religious territories? Of course not. To complicate matters further, one nation (Britain) solemnly promised a national home to what would become in time a second nation (the Jewish State of Israel) on the land which belonged to another people (Palestinian Arabs) while it was still an integral part of a fourth (the Ottoman /Turkish Empire). [2] In pandering to a relatively small group of Zionists, the Balfour Declaration was bizarre, deceitful and a deliberate betrayal of the loyal Arabs fighting in the desert war against the Turks. Perfidious Albion had rarely plumbed such duplicitous depths. What power did these Zionists hold over the British government to ensure their unquestioned co-operation in the first steps towards a Zionist state at the expense of the rightful owners of Palestine?

The absolute destruction of Germany and her Ottoman allies promised to pave the way for a re-drawing of maps and spheres of influence which would advance the Secret Elite’s overall strategy; namely the control of the English speaking elect over the world. The strategic sands of Arabia and the oil-rich lands of Persia, Syria and Mesopotamia had long been prime targets. These were the first in a number of prerequisites which would shape the Middle-East after 1919 to the advantage of Britain in particular. Critically, as a neutral, America had to be very careful about open intervention even after she had entered the war and to an extent Britain acted as her proxy in putting markers down for a new world order. It is important to remember that when early discussions about the future of a Jewish homeland in Palestine were in progress, little mention was made of American involvement. The truth is otherwise. America was deeply involved in secret intrigues both directly and indirectly.

So too were a small but influential groups of politicians and businessmen, English, American, French, Russian, men and women of the Jewish faith spread literally across the world, who supported a growing movement to establish a permanent homeland in Palestine. They were called Zionists. Take care with this term. Initially it included a range of Jewish groups which held different views and aspirations. Some saw Zionism as a purely religious manifestation of ‘Jewishness’; a small but intensely vocal group fostered political ambitions. This latter form of Zionism included those determined to ‘reconstitute’ a national home for their co-religionists.

In the words of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon ‘a national home for the Jewish race or people’ implied a place where the Jews could be reassembled as a nation, and where ‘they [would] enjoy the privileges of an independent national existence’. [3] How do you reconstitute a nation? In truth, if the Ashkenaiz Jews were to be ‘reassembled’ it should have been along the Volga River in the true Khazarian ‘homeland’, not along the Jordan river in Palestine.

There were a small number of suggested sites for the proposed new homeland, including one in Uganda, but in the first years of the twentieth century a more determined Zionist element began to focus their attention on the former land of Judea in the Middle East. They spoke of the creation in Palestine of an autonomous Jewish State, a political entity composed of Jews, governed by Jews and administered mainly in their interests. In other words, the recreation of a mythical Jewish State as was claimed before the days of the so called ‘diaspora’.[4] Few voices were raised to ask what that meant, on what evidence it was predicated or how it might be justified? It was an assumed biblical truth. Not every Jew was a Zionist; far from it, and that is an important factor to which we will in due course return.

Frequently historians write versions of history which imply that an event ‘just happened’. In other words they begin at a point which creates the impression that there was no essential preamble, no other influence which underwrote the central action. One example is the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. For generations, school pupils have been taught that this murder caused the First World War. Such nonsense helped deflect attention away from the true culprits. Another example can be found in the usual interpretation of the Balfour Declaration which has been described as the British Government’s note of approval for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, as if it turned up one day on the Foreign Secretary’s desk and was signed like the other items in his out-tray. It has been downplayed; granted but a minor mention in the memoirs and diaries of the politicians who carefully orchestrated its single sentence. The Balfour Declaration was much more than a vague promise made by British politicians under the pressure of war’s contingency. Such a simple interpretation has conveniently masked the international pressures which the hidden powers on both sides of the Atlantic asserted in favour of a monumental policy decision which opened the door to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.

At the 261st meeting of the British War Cabinet on 31 October, 1917, with prime minister Lloyd George in the Chair, the membership comprised Lord Curzon, Lord Milner, Andrew Bonar Law,(Conservative leader) Sir Edward Carson, G N Barnes (Labour Party), the South African General Jan Smuts and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. This was the inner-circle formed mainly from the Secret Elite’s political agents to run the war. [5] They remained behind the closed doors of 10 Downing Street after other war business had been completed. The military and naval representatives were dismissed before the War Cabinet’s inner cabal proceeded to discuss the on-going issue of ‘The Zionist Movement’. As always, Lloyd George’s War Cabinet secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, recorded the minutes. This coterie of British imperialists and Secret Elite members and associates, agreed unanimously that ‘from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.’ [6] To that end a carefully constructed form of words was tabled and the War Cabinet authorised foreign secretary Balfour ‘to take a suitable opportunity of making the following declaration of sympathy with the Zionist aspiration’. It was no co-incidence that some five days previously the editor of The Times had urged them to make this statement. [7] The precise wording was as recorded at the beginning of this chapter [8] and unanimously approved by the War Cabinet.

While the seventy-eight words which comprise the core of Balfour Declaration have had an explosive impact on the history of the world right up to the present day, in our timeframe we must concentrate on the period between 1917 and the end of the war. Who was actually involved in the secret machinations, how did they manipulate opportunities to their own advantage and who financed and promoted the idea from its early origins to eventual realisation?

Two days after the War Cabinet’s decision a letter was sent from the Foreign Office to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild (2nd Baron Rothschild) in London asking that he ‘bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.’ It was signed Arthur James Balfour, and henceforth was known as The Balfour Declaration, though it was the product of many more minds than solely that of the British foreign secretary. [9] Its precise wording was publicised across the Jewish communities who hailed the letter as the beginning of a new epoch in their history. Despite the apparent care with which the War Cabinet attempted to lay down conditions to protect non-Jewish communities, in particular the rights of the Palestinian Arabs to whom the country belonged, the event was celebrated by Zionists across the world as a National Charter for a Jewish homeland.[10] The genie was out of the bottle.

In truth, the letter was the product of years of careful lobbying in both Britain and America. It was neither a beginning nor an end-point. Though the communication was essentially between the British government and the Zionist Federation in Britain, it had an almost casual feel to it as if it was simply a letter between two members of the English gentry, Balfour and Rothschild. The Declaration was far from casual and much more contrived than a gentleman’s agreement.

By all known processes of law and morality it was ridiculous. Consider the unprecedented nature of the proposal. Britain held no sovereign right whatsoever over Palestine or authority to dispose of the land.[11] As if this would not cause sufficient confusion, the British Foreign Office had already promised parts of Palestine to the French, to the Arabs who already owned the land, and finally, to the international Jewish community. Was there ever a better example of the wanton arrogance of the British imperialist ruling class? The very wording of the Balfour Declaration was ambiguous; the conditions set were impossible. What was meant by the phrase, ’a national home’? It had no clearly defined meaning in international law. How could a foreign government promise to achieve world-wide approval for a national home for Jews in an Arab country without automatically prejudicing the rights of the Arabs whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years? [12] Its very vagueness gave rise to interpretations and expectations which were certain to cause bitter dispute. What was going on?

The answer can be found by examining earlier versions of this controversial document and the extent to which Zionists on both sides of the Atlantic strove to nurture and protect it.Far from any notion of their sudden conversion to Zionism, the political drive to establish a Jewish homeland in the sands of the desert, British politicians had been engaged in such discussions for several years. This fact had been conveniently omitted from official histories, memoirs and government statements.
1. CAB 23/4 WC 261, p. 6
2. The original quotation from which this observation is taken was made by Arthur Koestler, in Promise and Fulfilment, Palestine 1917- 1949, p. 4.
3. National Archives, War Cabinet Memorandum GT 2406.
4. CAB 24/30 ; GT 2406, p.1.
5. See blog: The Great British Coup, 1916: The End Of Democracy.
6. CAB 23/4, WC 261 p. 5.
7. The Times 26 October 1917, p.7.
8. CAB 23/4 WC 261, p. 6.
9. Letter from A J Balfour to Lord Rothschild, 2 November 1917.
10. Great Britain, Palestine and the Jews. Jewry’s Celebration Of Its National Charter – Anonymous pamphlet, 1917.
11. Sol M. Linowitz, Analysis of a Tinderbox: The Legal Basis for the State of Israel, American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 43, 1957, p. 523.
12. Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfilment, Palestine 1917- 1949, p. 4.

America 1917: 4. Morgan / Rothschild, Wall Street Goes To War.

If the Zimmermann telegram was an absurd intrusion and diplomatic own-goal, it was not in itself, cause for war. If the German decision to revert to all-out submarine warfare in the Atlantic was unquestionably aggressive, it had hardly dented the overwhelming power of the American merchant marine’s massed fleets before President Wilson made his decisive move. Both actions, take together, certainly edged the United States towards the precipice because these issues were whipped up into a frenzy by a highly controlled and organised pro-British press. What matters here is; who was pulling the proverbial strings?

American newspaper editors and owners played a critical role in fomenting public opinion for war in 1917, similar to that of Lord Northcliffe in pre-war Britain. Indeed control of the press in the United States was even more calculated and orchestrated than its British equivalent. Congressman Oscar Calloway of Texas exposed the machinations of the money power as it expanded its influence over the fourth estate in order to swing public opinion towards a ‘necessary’ war. On 9 February 1917 he placed the following statement on the Congressional Record:

‘In March 1915 J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding and powder interests and their subsidiary organisations got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapermen in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States’ [1]

Congressman Calloway revealed that Morgan’s twelve chosen men assessed the worth of over 170 newspapers across America and came to the conclusion that by purchasing twenty-five of the most famous titles, they could literally control the policies and direction of public opinion. An agreement was quietly reached through which monthly payments were paid to them through the House of Morgan. A compliant editor was placed in each paper to supervise and edit the ‘news’. Questions of American preparedness for war were raised in the context of alleged German aggression and Mexican duplicity. The governments’s financial policy came under fire as did ‘other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.’ [2] Be certain; J.P. Morgan and his associates sat in the driving seat and carried American public opinion towards the slaughterhouse of a world war … in order to protect their obscene profiteering and future intentions. Taking America to war was not a forgone conclusion even although the Germans had given up any hope of equal-handed neutrality. The people had to be manipulated.

The crucial factor lay at the heart of Wall Street where the money power decided that the time to abandon the illusion of neutrality had come. America had to go to war or their combined losses would have broken the back of the economy. Though fact, it has been vehemently denied ever since. Typical of this attitude is the claim from the American historian Charles Tansill: [3]

‘There is not the slightest evidence that during the hundred days that preceded America’s entry to the World War the President gave any heed to the demands from ‘big business’ that America intervene in order to save investments that were threatened by possible Allied defeat.’ [4]

What nonsense. America’s economy was inextricably linked to an Allied victory. Had the British and French been forced to come to terms with Germany after 1917, potential losses would have been catastrophic. And in April 1917, Wall Street was aware that the balance of forces in Europe had suddenly swung in favour of the Kaiser when his cousin the Czar, was deposed.

Thomas W Lamont, of Morgan Bank, estimated that half a million Americans, many from the wealthy and influential east coast establishment, had invested in loans to the Allies.[5] Consider these words;  half a million wealthy influential people had a vested interest in an Allied victory. Do you imagine that they sat quietly waiting to see how their investment fared as Britain and France haemorrhaged their youth in the slaughter-filled stalemate on the Western Front which could only get worse after the Czar had been deposed and Russia opted out of a hopeless war? This was but the tip of the iceberg of vested interest.

Allegedly, Woodrow Wilson tried to the last to bring about peace, but failed. But how genuine were his intentions?

If President Wilson had hoped to convince the banks that they should stop extending credit to the warring nations to give him time to coax them towards peace, he was deluded. Too many financial opportunities presented themselves which allowed New York to corner the market while competitors were crippled by war. [6] American banks had been building great stores of foreign securities as well as lending directly to London and Paris. National banks in America held around $15.6 million dollars of foreign securities in 1914. Within two years that sum had multiplied tenfold to $158.5. By September 1916 the total amount of foreign securities stood at almost $240 million which naturally thrust Wall Street into a pre-eminent global position from where it could fund the massive increase in its domestic war industries. [7] With such a formidable war-chest to hand, could the money-power really have contemplated anything other than a victorious war? No.

One immediate consequence of the German decision to embark on its unrestricted U-Boat campaign in 1917 was the immediate panic it caused to traders along the busy eastern seaboard. American shipowners refused to send their vessels into the Atlantic war zone and goods purchased in the United States by the Morgan banks sat idle on the wharves. Profit was threatened; the American economy, intimidated. Morgan asserted his influence with the White House. Jack Morgan was shameless. On 4 April 1917 he wrote a letter to the President pledging his support and reminding Wilson of his connections:

‘We are most heartily in accord with you as to the necessity of the United States assisting the allies in the matter of supplies of materials and of credits. To these matters we have been devoting our whole time and thought for the past two years. I write to assure you again that the knowledge we have gained in those two years of close association with the allies in these matters are entirely at the disposal of the United States government at any time…’[8]

What he omitted to say was that he had devoted his ‘time and thought’ over the last two years to making a fortune from the war. His position of sole supplier and agent for the British government brought him immense wealth and prestige. This reminder could hardly have been better timed. It was almost as if he was saying to the President, you know I can handle the money supply…just get on with the war. Two days later when war was declared, the House of Morgan held the reins of real monetary power in the United States. Through his connections with ‘Colonel’ Mandell House and President Wilson, J P Morgan took effective control of the major international loans emanating from the USA once all previous restrictions had been removed.

On 24 April 1917, President Wilson signed a war finance bill which opened the Federal Reserve’s floodgates and removed any possible liability from Morgan’s banks. Every which way was profit on the Midas scale. $200 million was loaned to Britain immediately. All formal banking technicalities were removed. The New York Times reported that in order to speed matters up the American Treasury would not even wait until British bonds arrived in New York. Subscribers were given four months to pay in instalments as ‘had been suggested by banking interests and others to Treasury Secretary McAdoo with strong endorsement’. Of course they gave Secretary McAdoo their full endorsement. It was their idea; Christmas and Thanksgiving rolled into one. What joy. As the New York Times added, ‘ Little if any of the sum would be spent abroad. Virtually the entire loan to the Allies will be spent in this country for foodstuffs, munitions and supplies.’ [9] Subscriptions from American banks exceeded the initial sum of $200 million by 10.AM on the day of issue, and Secretary McAdoo increased the first limit to $250 million.

Consider what had happened. J.P. Morgan spent the first two years of the war using his banking and financial associates to sell British securities on the American market and spend the money on the weapons of war and all its accessories in America. His agents controlled the orders for steel and armaments, for cotton, wheat and meat, for the transportation of these goods across the Americas and the maritime fleets that crossed the oceans. A single example of what this actually meant can be gleaned from the post-war investigation set up under Congressional Investigation into the munitions industry in 1934. The Du Pont company admitted that J P Morgan & Co. acted as agents, under sales contracts aggregating $351,259, 813 . 28, which accounted for almost 72% of the total military business carried out for the British and French governments during the war. At a mere 1% commission, Morgan made a profit of $3,512,598, from that alone. [10]

Once America abandoned its sham neutrality, Morgan became the prime agent for Wilson’s government at war. Loans which he had issued and underwritten on behalf of the Allies were guaranteed by the State. It was impossible for his banks to lose money. The American economy continued to flourish. The British and French tax-payer would eventually be required to repay their debts. It was as if he was a Rothschild. Indeed. The reader might well ask: where were the Rothschilds?

Let the record show that the Rothschilds remained where they always were; at the centre of the money-power, though not necessarily under their own name. J.P. Morgan’s personal affiliation with the House of Rothschild dated back to 1899, from which point he represented Rothschild interests in the United States. [11] The first telegrams of the war sent to Morgan & Co. in New York, were from Rothschild Freres in Paris as early as 3 August 1914. That is before Britain had even declared war on Germany. The French government, anticipating some of the problems ahead, had approached both Rothschild and Morgan, Harjes & Co. (their French bank) for a loan of $10,000,000, but initially the Americans could not circumvent their own government’s insistence that such a loan was ‘inconsistent with the true spirit of neutrality.’ [12]  It was Lord Nathaniel Rothschild in London who personally advised Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer [13] before J.P. Morgan was chosen as the sole purchasing agent for Britain.

While the financial autocrats pulled the strings behind the scenes, Woodrow Wilson was also driven by personal ambition. As America’s president, his place on the world stage had an immediacy which demanded he exercise power before his time had passed. He looked to the future in the belief that victory would place America at the centre of a new world order and boost his chance of a third term in office. His pronouncements had a touch of papal authority, or might have had, if his new allies accepted his naive declarations. But we will come to the Fourteen Points in due course and wonder at their meaning.

The final word on the impact of the financial – industrial – munitions lobby which unquestionably pushed America into war should come from President Wilson’s close friend and biographer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, Ray Standard Baker. He believed that the die was cast from the outset, observing;  ‘…by the end of 1914 the traffic in war materiel with the Allies had become deeply entrenched in America’s economic organisation and the possibility of keeping out of the war by the diplomacy of neutrality no matter how skilfully conducted, had reached vanishing point. By October, possibly earlier, our case was lost.’ [14] It was only a matter of time, of when America would go to war, not whether America would become actively involved. The occasion of war might well have been unrestricted submarine warfare but the cause was lay in Wall Street. The American economy faced wipe-out if the Allies failed to win the terrible war of attrition. Neither could be allowed.

1. Congressional Record, 64th Congress of the United States, February 9 1917, p. 2947. Reported in the New York Times on 14 February 1917.
2. Ibid.
3. Charles Tansill was Professor of History at the American University. He prepared the official volume on World War I responsibility for Congress and in 1927 edited another volume for the Library of Congress entitled “Documents on the Formation of the American Union.” His America Goes to War was considered the officially accepted view.
4. Charles Cannon Tansill, America Goes to War, p. 657.
5. Bailey, A Diplomatic History, p. 644.
6. Nomi Prins, All The President’s Bankers, p. 47.
7. Ibid.
8. letter from JP Morgan to President Wilson April 4, 1917, Wilson Papers vol. 41.
9. New York Times, 25 April 1917.
10. Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, US Senate S.Res. 206.
11. W. G. Carr, Pawns in the Game, p. 60.
12. Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, US Senate S.Res. 206. exhibit 2040, p. 7505.
13. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 70.
14. Ray Standard Baker, The Life & Letters of Woodrow Wilson, p.181. This was cited in evidence against J P Morgan in Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, US Senate S.Res. 206, p. 7566.

The Oil Story 4: British Interest Takes Shape

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Marcus Samuel

One essential point has to be reinforced. The Secret Elite ensured that plans had long been in place for war. Any other claim was a lie. The elites had worked assiduously to ensure that the conflict they instigated would appear to be caused by Germany, and written up as such by their pliant historians and journalists. [1]

The absolute advantage rested with the powers behind the scenes in Britain who controlled, among much else, the Foreign Office and Cabinet. They knew that the Empire was going to war – they had planned it after all – and they knew that a prolonged war was necessary to crush Germany economically, commercially and industrially. A short military conflict that was over by Christmas would not have achieved that. Germany, forced to fight for her survival on two fronts, encircled as she was by the proverbial ring of steel, had the most compelling reason for staking its survival on a short war. Theoretically, Germany was cut off from food imports, materials essential for armaments production and oil but, as we have seen in previous blogs, [2] the London elites took steps to facilitate a long struggle by enabling her access to them.

Britain herself had no indigenous oil and in the late nineteenth century had been reliant on America, Russia or Mexico for supplies. This dependency on foreign companies was a cause for concern in times of peace but was completely unacceptable in the event of war. [3] The Secret Elite had to ensure that British companies rectified this deficiency before unleashing the dogs of war.

It should be appreciated that the starting point was not 1914. Long before that date, the strategic importance and economic necessity of securing oil supplies preoccupied minds inside the Secret Elite. We are told that the most outspoken and influential champions of oil, and indeed the development of an oil policy, were Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, and Admiral Jackie Fisher, who chaired the Government’s Royal Commission into Oil Fuels in 1912. [4] Unquestionably they were important figure-heads. Churchill was a personal friend of Nathaniel Rothschild, whose advice he cherished. Churchill and Fisher were strongly supported by men with global ambitions for Britain, and ever protective of its Empire. Thus political, financial, commercial, strategic and imperial interests were all interlocked in the drive to secure oil; a drive which was well underway, but given little publicity, in the first decade of the twentieth century.

British interests in Romanian oilfields included the Royal Dutch/Shell Company, an amalgamation in 1907 of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and the Shell Transport and Trading company, which in turn had close links to the Rothschilds. As companies began to grapple with the detailed requirements and long term financial commitment that was a prerequisite for successful development, mergers and amalgamations became the order of the day to cut costs and increase profits.  Extracting oil from often remote sources was dangerous, and required complex and technically advanced transport arrangements for the refined, highly volatile petroleum.

Marcus Samuel, founder of the Shell Transport and Trading Company, understood the need for purpose built tankers that could be loaded, moved and unloaded in complete safety. He began by converting merchant ships to tankers that carried oil from Rothschild fields in Russia. [5]

In 1906 fields were acquired in Romania, and by way of further preparation in 1908, two new companies were created; Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij in Holland and the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company in London. Shell Transport and Trading placed all its assets in these companies which also held the assets of Royal Dutch/Shell. [6] Every possible competitor was bought up or absorbed. Between 1910–1914 fields were acquired in Russia (1910), Egypt (1911), Venezuela (1913) and Trinidad (1914). Henry Deterding, chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell, [7] later claimed that the group carefully cut the ground away from Germany’s feet. This was achieved partly by getting into oil-fields in which Germany hoped to establish herself, and partly by extending Royal Dutch/Shell influence in the German market, and in effect over German internal affairs’. [8]

In Persia and the Arabian Gulf, geologists had determined that the region was a prime candidate for oil exploitation. There were, however, a small but important number of immediate problems. The land technically belonged to the Ottoman Turks and the Persian rulers. To further complicate matters, Russia had long held designs on the same piece of territory in order to establish a warm water port. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Conservative Foreign Secretary, Lord Landsdowne, and his successor in the Liberal government, Sir Edward Grey, maintained identical policies approved by the Secret Elite. Quietly, and with no mention of the word oil, they extended British interests in the region and kept warships in the Gulf.

The Secret Elite, the Foreign Office and the Admiralty were, as always, inextricably linked with forward planning to meet the Empire’s needs. Concessions were bought, officials were bribed, explorations were started and treaties established. It took more than two decades of painstaking preparation, but when everything was in place, a local champion had to be found to promote the purchase of a company that both offered reliable quantities of oil and necessitated a British presence on the direct route to India. They approached a number of chosen individuals in the early 1900s and encouraged them to turn their attention to the possibility of making a fortune by investing in the future of Persian oil. William Knox D’Arcy, a wealthy gold mine director, became the front-man for British investment in Persian oil. Ultimately, however, the real power behind it was the unspoken ambitions of both the Admiralty and the Foreign Office, and the men behind them. They created a company which was ‘little known but intimately tied to the British foreign office and the secret intelligence services worldwide in the quest for control of future oil discoveries. The company was called the D’Arcy Exploitation Company.’ [9]

The Royal Dutch/Shell view of D’Arcy was disdainfully suspicious, and raised the spectre of Secret Elite involvement. [10] ’The only point that is still not clear is whether he [D’Arcy] undertook this extremely important affair entirely on his own initiative and at his own expense, or from the very outset, as a confidential agent of political circles representing British Imperialism. [11] The official History of the British Petroleum Company took a different view. D’Arcy’s action ‘was simply a personal initiative for profit’ and it dismissed as nonsense the ‘most Machiavellian of motives presumed to account for his investment’. [12] Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

Of course he was being used, and willingly so, for oil in Persia was supposed to make him an even greater fortune, and it brought him a credibility within the Secret Elite. In 1901 the Shah of Persia, in exchange for a bribe of $20,000, awarded D’Arcy a ‘firman’, or royal concession with the rights to drill for oil for a period of sixty years provided the Shah received 16 per cent of the profits from whatever oil was discovered. [13] It was a transaction of historic importance, and the Shah’s wasteful, extravagant lifestyle heralded the era of oil in the Middle East with a bribe. It would not be the last.

D’Arcy’s venture in Persia was no instant success. By 1903, only a few traces of oil had been found, and he wanted out. Behind the scenes in London a frantic search was underway to find the right sort of dependable man to ensure that the concession was not abandoned. A British oil company which had been set up in Burmah by a Scottish  investment group was lured towards the Persian concession. Burmah Oil was entirely British in ownership and it amalgamated with D’Arcy and Royal Dutch/Shell in 1908. It was a combine that required the word ‘British’ stamped all over it to send out messages both to investors and to the international community. D’Arcy asked Lord Alfred Milner, leader of the Secret Elite, to take the post of Chairman of this new company, but Milner was the puppet-master, not a marionette, and declined the offer. [14]

The published prospectus for the new company caused apoplexy in the corridors of power. There in black and white it stated that it was the Admiralty that had suggested developing Persia. [15] The company was immediately informed that if this became a matter of public comment, the Admiralty would deny the statement. What an amazing faux-pas. The carefully constructed secret plan for Persia, masked by commercial company investment, was laid bare. And what is more revealing, the company was immediately warned that the government would not hesitate to lie about it if the story became public. They had, after all, ‘fought like a tiger’ to take control of Persia’s oil resources. [16]

The pre-war activity of the British oil industry was far more extensive than is generally acknowledged. Indeed, few official historians give space to the unprecedented lengths to which the British government went to discover and protect supplies. Certain individuals inside or closely related to the Secret Elite played crucial roles. The Rothschilds, in addition to supplying Germany, invested in oil fields across the world which would be invaluable to the Allies. Others such as Marcus Samuel and Lord Cowdray, with oil interests that ranged from Romania and Russia to Mexico and the Far East, were likewise linked to the Secret Elite and the British government. ‘New’ men, loyal and dependable servants of the British Empire whose fortunes were based on success in Canada and Australia, were also encouraged to underwrite and champion the search for ‘British’ oil. [17] Essentially, British interests grabbed control of as much of the world’s oil as possible in the run up to war. At every turn they were aided and abetted by the Foreign Office and the Admiralty for military and strategic reasons that were kept closely under wraps.

[1] John Buchan, for example was a member of the Secret Elite. He wrote Episodes Of The Great War (Thomas Nelson and Sons), Nelsons History of the War in twenty-four instalments and amongst his other duties served as The Times Correspondent in 1915.
[2] firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com Blockade in 10 blogs, Wednesday 10 December 2014 – Wednesday 4 February 2015.
[3] William Engdahl, A Century of War, p. 20.
[4] In 1912, retired Admiral Jacquie Fisher was appointed chairman of the royal Commission to enquire into Liquid Fuel, with a view to converting the entire fleet to oil. Classified ‘Secret’, Fisher’s Commission reported on 27 November 1912, with two following reports on 27 February 1913 and 10 February 1914. See National Archives.
[5] F C Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, Vol. 1, p.214.
[6] The Times, 1 July 1908. Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, Vol. 2, pp. 197-8.
[7] F C Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, Vol. 2, p. 303.
8] Glyn Roberts, The Most Powerful Man in the World, The Life of Sir Henri Deterring, p. 106.
[9] Engdahl, A Century of War, p. 63.
[10] Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, vol III, p. 228.
[11] Ibid.
[12] R W Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, p. 5.
[13] Engdahl, A Century of War, p 20.
[14] Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, p. 97.
[15] Ibid., p. 105.
[16] Engdahl, A Century of War, p 93.
[17] Chief amongst these was Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona a Scottish-born Canadian businessman, financier and philanthropist. Donna McDonald, Lord Strathcona, p. 467.

The Oil Story 3: The Hidden Power Of Rothschild

In the previous blog we briefly discussed the Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Romanian oil. It throws an interesting light on just how complex the matrix of oil ownership was. When a consortium lead by Deutsche purchased the Steaua Romana Petroleum Company in Romanian in 1903, its major market lay in Germany. Steaua had access to substantial oil deposits lying south of the Carpathian Mountains, and owned barges on the Danube to transport it on to Germany from holding tanks at Regensburg in Austria.

It was alleged by those historians who saw imperialist ambitions as the driving force inside the Kaiser’s empire that Deutsche Bank yielded to pressure from the German government to take over Steaua. Not so. The impulse sprang from national economy, not national politics, though the two were often interwoven. [1] By 1914 Steaua had become the largest and most productive plant in Romania [2] and would play a significant role in supplying Germany during the war. Steaua’s success, however, had only been achieved through sourcing vast sums of money, and much of that investment came from the Rothschilds.

In due course, Deutsche Bank appointed a friend and colleague of the Rothschilds, Emil von Stauss, to manage the Steaua Romana company. He was Managing Director of the Rothschild/ Nobel/ Deutsche Bank oil consortium, the Europaische Petroleum Union (EPU), which had originally been set up to counter the ever ambitious Standard Oil. [3] Thus, in the pre-war years, a strategy emerged to guarantee Germany’s future oil supplies under the benign direction of the Rothschilds. With this vital link secured, the German Government was confident that economic growth would continue unabated, but in reality what they had was a source of oil that was far from exclusively German. The Rothschilds, who were among the very first to invest in the European oil markets, had their own agenda and no intention of sharing control with the German or any other government. They put in place a hugely profitable framework for the production of Romanian oil, and its distribution from Romania to Germany, but ensured that its control remained in their gift. In essence, while the major German bank, Deutsche Bank, played a significant role in Romanian oil, the Rothschilds played a significant part in Deutsche Bank. It was never exclusively ‘German’ oil.

In addition, important Rothschild banks involved in the European oil industry, including Romania, were the Disconto Gesellschaft bank and its associated Bleichroder Bank. Established in 1851, the Disconto Bank grew steadily in size and importance through a series of amalgamations to become a leading player in German finance. As revealed in oil blog 2, it was generally considered to be a Rothschild front. In 1901 Disconto officially acquired the Rothschild Bank in Frankfurt, original seat of the Dynasty. The bank was allegedly sold on for two reasons; there was no male Rothschild heir in Frankfurt and it was deemed to be unprofitable. All staff members at the Rothschild Bank were transferred to Disconto and the Rothschild name was withdrawn. [4]

What conceivable reason would they have for doing this? Germany at that time was experiencing massive economic, industrial and technological growth. It was the emerging power-house of manufacturing in Europe. [5] Indeed from the viewpoint of the British Secret Elite, Germany was the most dangerous threat to their wider ambitions [6] Banks were booming. Selling an important asset, especially one in Frankfurt with sentimental attachments in the heart of the original Rothschild family base, sits at complete odds with the Rothschild modus operandi of the previous two centuries. They were in the business of amassing assets, not liquidating them. The sale was undoubtedly a sham. Little had changed other than the bank’s name. Disconto was nothing more than a front. The assets and the staff were simply transferred while the Rothschilds kept control behind the scenes.

In fact the Rothschilds retained their dominant position in German banking. The New York Times, reporting on the German Stock Market in 1902 identified ‘Disconto Gesellschaft and other concerns in the Rothschild Group’ as the agents behind a massive one million crown loan adjustment to the Hungarian Government. [7] In 1909, Senator Nelson Aldrich presented a joint report to Congress in conjunction with Professor Reisser from the University of Berlin on the condition of European banks. [8] It concluded that ‘Disconto Gesellschaft, as a member of the Rothschild syndicate, participated in large numbers of Austro-Hungarian state, railroad and other transactions’ [9] Clearly the Americans knew that Disconto was a Rothschild organisation despite protestations that it had become an independent German entity. It was simply the way Rothschilds worked. They minimised public awareness of their role in the hundreds of banking, oil and industrial concerns they controlled, but maximised the impact they could wield on governments no matter which side those governments fought on in any given war.

The Bleichroder Bank was yet another Rothschild front. [10] ‘It maintained close contacts with the Rothschild Dynasty; the banking house of Gerson Bleichroder acted as a branch office of the Rothschild Bank in Berlin’. [11] Bleichroder was known as Bismarck’s banker. Thus, despite the Rothschilds removing their name from the front office of German banking, they retained all of their influence and control through the ‘back office’ of their Disconto and Bleichroder banks, and their placements and stock interest in Deutsche Bank. And the most crucial product over which that control extended, was oil. The Rothschilds controlled Germany’s oil supply from Europe through these companies. They were to be found in every aspect of European oil, quietly amassing a monopoly. In 1904 they bought up Deutsche Petroleum AG as well as refineries in Galicia and elsewhere, and consolidated them into a company called OLEX. [12] One year later they also bought up and amalgamated a small but significant number of Romanian oil producers to form Allgeneine Petroleum Industrie (APAIG). Aware that a major global war was looming, it was very sound business. [13]

The Rothschild holdings diversified throughout Germany, reaping great reward at every stage from the rapid economic expansion. It was Germany, not Britain that was surging ahead in economic growth in the first decades of the twentieth century. The new scientific and technological developments in Germany were feeding an emerging colossus, and success bred ambition to develop its industries further. [14] The Rothschilds, behind a myriad of different company titles, constructed oil tank wagons for the railways, storage depots and refineries for the production of petrol and kerosene, and bartered with Government departments over concessions and favourable rail cargo fares. OLEX centralised its management at its Berlin subsidiary, OLEX – Petroleum – Gesellschaft, and thus identified itself as a German based company operating from the heart of the capital, close to the political and military decision-makers. With OLEX secure in Berlin, another Rothschild concern, Deutsche Erdol Aktiengesellschaft (DEA) was created by Disconto. It took over APAIG in Romania and gained control of more north German refineries. Disconto, as DEA’s major stockholder, directly administered the finances of these newly integrated oil enterprises. [15]

Behind this bewildering flurry of name changes, of company amalgamations, of buy-outs and stockholdings, of new flotations and aggressive take-overs, the Rothschild Dynasty had control of supplies, distribution and storage of Romanian oil throughout much of Germany. They produced much of the oil, transported it through railroad systems and oil wagons across Austro-Hungaria and then Germany itself. They stored the oil in great purpose-built depots. They refined it into its marketable end products. In essence, they ensured that Germany and the Central Powers would have the supply of oil and infrastructure crucial for the long war planned by the British Secret Elites. And it all looked like normal business.

In most of their business organisation, they operated a complex and sophisticated network of interlocking front companies and trusts which concealed not just the true extent of their ownership of key industries, but their unrivalled power over nations.  They had the finance; they ran the merchant banks that mattered; they controlled politicians and sometimes, governments. Most importantly, the Rothschilds had knowledge. [16] They had a first-rate intelligence gathering service stretching across the business and political world that enabled them to double and then redouble their capital with swift market operations that caught rivals off balance. They had more information at their finger tips than any secret service. They knew what was happening. Everywhere. More importantly, they knew what was going to happen. Their links to numerous governments were legendary, and they ensured that all within the dynasty shared crucial knowledge. Their agents knew more about local business developments, trade agreements, industrial unrest, treaties and concessions than any individual Ministry or Foreign Office. They knew exactly what they were building up and facilitating in Central Europe. One cannot overestimate the power and spread of influence that the House of Rothschild vested in Germany.

Through its Deutsche Bank involvement the dynasty supplied oil for Germany’s war needs, and did likewise through their Disconto and Bleichroder banks. At no point was the Rothschild name directly attached to these German companies. Knowing that war with Germany was imminent they had to make it appear as if they had abandoned their financial, industrial and commercial interests there. Reality could not have been more different.

[1] F.C. Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, Vol III, pp. 80-81.
[2] Ibid., p. 123.
[3] Daniel Yergin, The Prize, The Epic Quest For Oil, Money and Power, p. 116.
[4] Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. 242.
[5] David S Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, p. 290.
[6] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 14.
[7] New York Times, 10 February, 1902.
[8] 61st Congress, 2nd session, Senate Document 593, National Monetary Commission, the Economic Development of Germany by Dr J Reisser.
[9] Ibid., p. 412.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire, pp. 9-11.
[12] F C Gerretson, History of the Royal Dutch, Vol. III, p. 119.
[13] Ibid., p. 82.
[14] Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, pp. 235-7.
[15] Alfred Dupont Chandler, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, p. 438.
[16] Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, p. xxvii.