Russia In Revolution 5: Sealing The Czar’s Fate

In a sense it was Gallipoli all over again. Hold the Russians fast to the war without allowing them to gain anything from their mammoth contribution. Until the United States entered the war and her troops were on the ground in Europe, Russian troops were valuable, but Russia could not be allowed to share the spoils when the ultimate victory had been secured. It was absolutely essential that the Czar be prevented from mounting a successful offensive in 1917. An Allied conference in St. Petersburg was hastily arranged, theoretically to discuss the proposed offensive, reach an agreement to supply vital armaments and boost local morale. Step forward Alfred Milner, undisputed master of the Secret Elite, to lead the British delegation. According to Cabinet papers, Milner was ‘authorised to give assurances on supplies to Russia if in his estimation the Russians could make good use of them’. [1] What power. Armament supplies to Russia were crucial to the proposed offensive, yet Milner was given personal authority to decide whether or not Britain would supply them. In his hands alone lay the power to determine whether the war would end in the summer/autumn of 1917 or continue beyond. If artillery was not provided, Russia’s summer offensive and consequent victory was a lost cause and the Czar’s fate sealed.

Alfred Milner and the British delegation sailed from Oban in Scotland on January 20, 1917. According to Bruce Lockhart, British Consul in Moscow, ‘Rarely in the history of great wars can so many important ministers and generals have left their respective countries on so useless an errand’. The British Mission was the largest with Lord Milner, his political advisers Lord Revelstoke (a banker) and George Clerk, together with his military advisers Sir Henry Wilson and five other generals. [2] The French sent one politician and two generals, the Italians a politician and a general. Why was there such a ridiculously heavy presence of generals in the British delegation? The role of General Sir Henry Wilson, who was closely linked to the secret cabal, was to give military approval to the final decision. Wilson hung on Milner’s every word and would never have contradicted him. In turn, few if any British generals would have dared contradict General Wilson. They had discussions with senior members of the Russian armed forces, but the Generals were said to be decidedly under-impressed. It was, apparently, ‘a useless errand’ just as the British consul had said, but in reality the real mission to block any Russian chance of gaining Constantinople worked perfectly.

Milner undertook the long, dangerous journey (Lord Kitchener had been killed on a similar voyage from Scotland to Russia in 1916) despite being advised not to go by a fellow member of the Secret Elite, Lord Esher. [3] On the day he arrived in Petrograd, and before he had even met or discussed the armaments proposal with the Russians, Milner made no attempt to conceal his doubt. From the very start he used ‘the inefficiency of the Russians’ as an excuse to turn down their request for artillery. [4] He held several meetings with the Czar, and held nothing back. Lord Milner warned Nicholas II that if Britain was to hand over her vital heavy guns, it was necessary for Russia to prove that her own supplies were exhausted and be absolutely assured that Russia could defeat Germany in the proposed military operations. Milner added bluntly that it had come to his notice from many independent, ‘well-informed sources’ that Russia had failed to fully exploit her manpower and her own vast resources.

Milner promised Nicholas II nothing. On 3 March 1917, he arrived back in London and informed the government of his decision: No guns for Russia. Three days later his formal report to the War Cabinet about the events that took place at the Allied Conference in Russia was dismissive. He felt that too many unnecessary people had attended, ironic, considering the size of the party which accompanied him, and too many personal and distracting agendas had been aired. In-fighting amongst the Russian military leaders was seriously debilitating. Milner claimed to have been shocked by the lack of training in modern weaponry which Russian soldiers had been given. Organisation, he deemed, ’chaotic’. He stated that the Russian government under the Czar was ‘hopeless’ and improvement unlikely, but in his view there was ‘a great deal of exaggeration about the talk of revolution’. [5] He specifically denied that an impending revolution was likely. Such an astonishing assertion requires further examination. Why, if the armed forces were in chaos, did he think that a revolution was unlikely?

Milner made a verbal report to a War Cabinet which included the prime ministers of Canada and New Zealand. All the Secret Elite political agents were present. No minute was taken [6] (a very unusual but convenient occurrence) and whatever was said, we will never know. His written memorandum for Cabinet (dated 13 March) that there would be no revolution, was signed 5 days after the uprising started. To imagine that the foreign office did not know this, or even that Milner could not have altered the wording of his report, is ridiculous. It was a calculated comment; one meant to deflect attention from his unreported discussions with other parties. Lord Alfred Milner knew exactly what was about to happen in Petrograd at that precise moment in time because the Secret Elite was instrumental in facilitating it.

Bruce Lockhart, the British Consul in Moscow, was shocked when told of Lord Milner’s conclusion that there would be no revolution. He suspected that the foreign office had prepared a false report, insisting that there was nothing in Milner’s attitude or discussions during his visit to indicate that he had any confidence in the Czar. [7] Nothing. Milner’s report had been concocted in conjunction with the Foreign Office to delude his contemporaries, and doubtless later historical researchers. In his War Memoirs, Prime Minister Lloyd George bemoaned the fact Milner and his entourage had not apparently grasped the immediate seriousness of the situation: ‘Having regard to the warnings which were blaring at them in every direction, it is incomprehensible that they should have been so deaf and blind.’ [8] Milner was neither blind nor deaf. As ever, he lived with the criticism which covered his actual purpose. He had always disregarded the screamers.

During his sojourn, Alfred Milner held a meeting with prince Lvov, a member of the Duma, at which the possibility of revolution ‘within three weeks’ was specifically discussed. [9] Lloyd George spouted what appeared to be criticism of Milner, but it was part and parcel of the ploy to conceal historical truth. Lloyd George was a political puppet of the Secret Elite, party to its agenda and a willing player. He had sold his soul to the international bankers for power and material riches many years before. [10] Almost three weeks to the day after Milner’s private discussions with Prince Lyoy, the so-called ‘spontaneous revolution’ took place in Petrograd. Czar Nicholas subsequently abdicated, and Lvov was installed as prime minister. Yet Milner apparently knew nothing?

Untangling the Secret Elite’s web of intrigue during the Russian mission is no simple matter. But be certain of one thing. Alfred Milner was not a man to waste his time, let alone risk U-Boat infested seas to journey to Russia in the depth of winter, unless it was a matter of the gravest importance. It was no coincidence that he was in Petrograd less than three weeks before the revolution exploded. He saw what was happening and he knew what was about to happen. The question of supplying Russia with artillery was most definitely not the reason for the visit. His presence at what was termed an Allied Conference was the perfect cover, for Milner had far more important business. Crucially, at that very time, Secret Elite agents were supplying monetary bribes to workers’ leaders at the giant Putilov factory and to soldiers of the local garrisons. The ground-work for imminent revolution was in motion while Milner was in Petrograd.

We know that he had private talks with the Czar, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Milner warned Nicholas II that British Intelligence had sound evidence that serious disorder was about to erupt in the capital; disorder which would present an immense threat to the Czar’s personal safety and that of his beloved children. The key objective of this Secret Elite exercise was to manipulate their own agents into power in Russia. Nicholas had served his purpose. Did Milner urge Nicholas to consider abdication with promises that he and his family would find a safe refuge in Britain? The speed with which the Czar abdicated and his lack of fight surprised many.

Milner’s involvement is not some far-fetched theory. He was accused in Parliament of making speeches in Russia which went unreported in Britain because of press censorship. The Irish Nationalist leader, John Dillon berated Milner for apparently supporting the Czar’s regime and spouting nonsense in Moscow denying the state of popular agitation in Russia. [11] When he returned to London, Milner was reported in The Times as saying that ‘it was quite wrong to suppose that there is in Russia any controversy about the waging of the war.’ [12] It was of course, nonsense, but such claims served to deflect attention from what was actually happening.

Two days later, the revolution began. In reply to questions in Parliament on 3 April 1917, Andrew Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and an associate of the secret cabal, stated: ‘I have seen statements emanating from our enemies that it was owing to Lord Milner that the Czar was overthrown.’ [13] What? Milner clearly made unreported speeches and met unreported persons. But what more did the Germans know? Where is the proof that Milner caused the overthrow of the Czar? Yet again we reach an impasse on Milner’s activities. Reports and records were afterwards removed, correspondence burned on his orders and any evidence of his detailed machinations destroyed. Whatever else, Alfred Milner was no innocent aboard. He knew what was going on because, like his Rothschild/Secret Elite friends, he had his finger on the pulse before the heart could beat.

If the received history of the First World War was true, why would he turn down the chance to offer Russia materiel support for its massive summer offensive; an offensive that would most likely have shattered the enemy forces on the Eastern Front and brought the war to successful conclusion? Why turn down lucrative bank loans to Russia for weapons, and the substantial profits for British armaments companies which manufactured those weapons? The answer was, as always, Constantinople. The Russians could never be allowed to take possession of Constantinople.

While the Czarist authorities there were doing their utmost to dampen the revolutionary flames, the Secret Elite were fanning them. In an article in the New York Times, the explorer, journalist and Russian expert, George Kennan, revealed that in early 1917 Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb Bank on Wall Street financed Russian revolutionaries through an organisation, the Society of the Friends of Russian Freedom. [14]  Indeed, Schiff had financed Russian revolutionaries from at least 1905.

The Czar had conferred with George Buchanan, British Ambassador in Petrograd, informing him that if the planned offensive could not proceed through lack of artillery supplies from Britain, he intended to sue for peace with Germany. Nicholas II had no inkling of the extent to which Britain was determined to prevent any dialogue between Russia and Germany. The British Ambassador in Russia himself was at the centre of a scheme to overthrow the Czar if he lost his stomach for war. To that end he had gathered ‘a coterie of wealthy bankers, liberal capitalists, conservative politicians, and disgruntled aristocrats.’ [15]

Empty threat or not, the Czar had discussed signing a peace treaty with Germany, and it was patently clear to the Secret Elite that he would have to go. During and immediately after Milner’s mission to Russia, many local observers, visitors and newsmen reported that British and American agents were everywhere, especially in Petrograd, providing money for insurrection. British agents were seen handing over 25-rouble notes to soldiers in the Pavloski regiment just a few hours before they mutinied against their officers and sided with the revolutionaries. [16] Subsequent publication of various memoirs and documents made it clear that this funding was provided by Milner and channelled through Sir George Buchanan. It was a repeat of the ploy that had worked so well for the cabal many times in the past. Round Table members [17] were once again operating on both sides of the conflict to weaken and topple a target-government. Czar Nicholas had every reason to believe that, since the British were Russia’s trusted allies, their officials would be the last on earth to conspire against him. Yet, the British Ambassador himself represented the hidden cabal which was financing the regime’s downfall. [18]

1. National Archives CAB 23/1 War Cabinet 37, 18 January 1917. P.3.
2. R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, p. 162.
3. J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 335.
4. R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, p. 163.
5. CAB/ 24/3/36 Lord Milner’s Memorandum of 13 March, 1917 (G – 131).
6. CAB 23/2 War Cabinet 88.
7. R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, pp. 168-169.
8. Lloyd George, War Memoirs vol 1., p. 943.
9. R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, pp. 164.
10. Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 161-163.
11. House of Commons Debate 27 March 1917 vol 92 cc295-318.
12. The Times, 6 March 1917, p. 6.
<13. House of Commons Debate 03 April 1917 vol 92 c1120.
14 New York Times, March 24, 1917.
15. Preparata, Conjuring Hitler, pp 28-29.
16. G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 274.
17. The Round Table was an influential think-tank pressure group which was built around Alfred Milner and his acolytes. Its prime aim was to spread his ideas of expanding the Empire to encompass the entire world.
18. G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 274.

Russia In Revolution 3: 1904-1914 Repression, Revolt and False Promises

While the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks wrestled with each other for control of a revolution in Russian society, events intervened. In February 1904, just six months after the Brussels/London RSDLP conference ended in the infamous Bolshevik v Menshevik split, Russia was inveigled into a disastrous war with Japan in the Far East. Its roots are to be found in the Machiavellian machinations of the British foreign office, the Secret Elite, including King Edward VII, Sir Ernest Cassel, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb bank on Wall Street. [1] Outraged by the horrendous anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia, Schiff made it a point of honour to help finance Japan in its war against Russia.

To the surprise and delight of the Imperial Japanese government, he volunteered to underwrite half of the ten million pound loan they raised in New York and London. He knew that the Japanese fleet had been built in British shipyards and their latest naval technology outgunned and outpaced the antiquated Czarist navy. Victory was not in doubt. This first of five major Kuhn, Loeb loans to Japan was approved by the Secret Elite’s main agent, King Edward VII at a luncheon with Schiff and Sir Ernest Cassel. In Germany, under-secretary of State Arthur Zimmermann endorsed the move and authorised Max Warburg to negotiate with Japan. [2] The Rothschilds had to tread carefully. While an international consortium of largely British-owned banking houses ensured that around half of Japan’s war debt was financed through bonds sold in London and New York, the Rothschild held massive investments in Russia, not lest in the Baku oilfields. Manipulators at the heart of the Secret Elite, like Lord Esher, facilitated meetings held on the Rothschild premises to enable the Japanese financial envoy, Takahashi Korekiyo, raise their war chest. [3]

As the Russo-Japanese War lurched from one disaster to another, political unrest in Russia deepened. In the infamous ‘Bloody Sunday’ atrocity of 22 January 1905, troops fired on a huge, but orderly, crowd of workers marching to the Winter Palace behind the charismatic Russian priest Father Georgii Gapon. Their intention was to present a petition to the Czar calling for universal suffrage. Around 1,000 peaceful marchers and onlookers were killed. Nicholas II had left the city the night before and did not give the order to fire personally, but he lost the respect of many Russians. 1905 was disrupted with direct action from workers’ demonstrations, strikes and rebellion by sections of the army and navy. The crew of the battleship Potemkin mutinied, killing the captain and several officers.

Striking workers formed ‘Soviets’, councils of delegates from workers committees, who could coordinate action. They sprang up in major towns and cities, including St Petersburg, where Trotsky, then twenty-three-years-old, played a major role. He had returned illegally from the safety of Finland under a false name and in the guise of a successful entrepreneur. Trotsky immediately wrote proclamations for distribution in factories and posted these throughout the city. In October 1905 a local strike by print workers flared into a national protest. Gangs of armed right-wing extremists were encouraged by the police to hold counter-demonstrations under the banners of ‘Holy Russia’ and ‘God save the Czar’. In response to the violence, the factory workers armed themselves. A showdown was inevitable.

In December, the Izmailovsky Regiment in St Petersburg was ordered to arrest the entire executive committee of the Soviet in the capital. In sympathy, the Moscow Soviet declared a strike and thousands of Muscovites took to the streets in protest. Cossacks sent to break up the Moscow demonstrations, twice refused orders to charge, and sympathised with the strikers. The crack Semenovsky Guards were less sympathetic, cornering protestors in Presnya, a workers’ district in the city, before shelling the area for three days. Many hundreds were killed including eighty-six children. [4] 1905 had started with the Bloody Sunday massacre and ended with the Presnya massacre. Czarist forces, including the secret and much feared Okhrana secret police, prevailed. Later that year, Trotsky and 13 other members of the St Petersburg Soviet were arrested for political scheming and spent thirteen months as prisoners in the city gaol awaiting trial. In January 1907 each was given a life sentence of exile in a small Siberian village above the Arctic Circle, 600 miles from the nearest railway station. Trotsky escaped on his journey into exile and trekked for hundreds of miles through the Urals before making his way to Finland from where, after an extremely frosty meeting with Lenin, he went on to Stockholm and then Vienna.

Nicholas II ruthlessly persecuted the insurrectionists yet introduced measures of reform, including some basic civil liberties and the creation of a State Assembly, the Duma. It was similar to a parliamentary-type elected body but, much like the British parliament in the early nineteenth century, only male property owners and taxpayers were represented. The Czar retained power over State Ministers, who answered to him, not the Duma. If he was dissatisfied with the representative body not could be dissolved at will and fresh elections held.

Unrest continued. Prime Minister and committed monarchist, Pytor Stolypin, survived an attempt on his life in August 1906 when a bomb ripped his dacha (villa) apart while he was hosting a party. Twenty-eight of his guests were killed and many injured, including his two children. In June 1907, Stolypin dissolved the Second Duma, and restricted the franchise by sacking a number of liberals and replacing them with more conservatives and monarchists. In a further attempt to counter the revolutionaries, he enforced a police crackdown on public demonstrations. On a more liberal note, Stolypin introduced agrarian reforms which helped provide opportunities for many peasants desperate for land. Once noticeable consequence was a huge year-on-year increases in food production. Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador at St Petersburg, noted that though he failed to destroy the seeds of unrest which continued to germinate underground, Stolypin rescued Russia from anarchy and chaos. His agrarian policy surpassed all expectations, and at the time of his death nearly 19,000,000 acres of farmland had been allotted to individual peasant proprietors, by the land committees. [5]

Peasant emancipation and the consequent increase in food production were abhorrent to the Bolsheviks. They intended to bring all land under state control and implement cooperative food production. Trotsky had called the peasantry ‘a vast reservoir of potential revolutionaries’, and ‘accepted the indispensable importance of a peasant rising as an auxiliary to the main task of the proletariat’. [6] The goal was revolution and government controlled by the proletariat, that is, the working class who sold their labour for a wage, but did not own the means of production.

Peasant farmers had to be brought on-board if the revolution was to succeed, but that prospect receded as ever greater numbers were enabled to own their farms. It was clear to both the Czarist regime and the Bolsheviks that the peasantry would not support a political system that would deny them ownership of their land. Stolypin’s success threatened the revolution; his agrarian reforms had to be terminated. On 14 September 1911, while attending a performance at the Kiev Opera House in the presence of Czar Nicholas II, the prime minister was shot dead by a Jewish revolutionary, Mordekhai Gershkovich. Trotsky later commented: ‘Stolypin’s constitution … had every chance of surviving’. [7] Exactly so. Stolypin was assassinated by the revolutionaries not because he failed to improve the lot of the peasant, but because he was so successful in winning them over.

Nine months later, in April 1912, miners in the Lena goldfields in north-east Siberia went on strike. The mines produced large profits for their London registered company, but workers were paid a pittance for 16 hours per day under atrocious conditions. The strike was savagely crushed. In what proved to be the worst massacre since Bloody Sunday, troops fired on striking workers leaving more than 500 casualties. [8] The slaughter heralded a further wave of industrial unrest, agitation and mounting tension throughout the country. Two weeks after the massacre, the Bolsheviks founded a new newspaper, Pravda.

Despite these tragic events, preparations for the First World War gathered pace. After the humbling defeat to Japan in 1905, Russian industry recovered spectacularly thanks to the Rothschilds and other international bankers who continued to pour massive loans into the country. The Russian economy grew at an average rate of 8.8 per cent and by 1914 there were almost a thousand factories in Petrograd alone, many devoted to producing armaments. The expansion of Russia’s war industry, along with her rail network into Poland, deeply worried war planners in Berlin. But it came at a cost. ‘The pre-war Russian boom was thus highly leveraged, [and] dependent on a constant influx of foreign capital, which if it ever dried up, would leave Russia’s entire economy vulnerable.’ [9]

Shipbuilding, railroad construction and armaments and munitions production significantly expanded. The international bankers earned large profits from substantial interest rates on their loans, and at the same time, enabled Russia to conduct a major rearmament programme in readiness for the Secret Elite’s coming war with Germany. Given that Britain had no land army on European soil, Russian manpower was absolutely critical to an attack on Germany. Bullets and artillery shells were produced by the millions. A powerful new fleet of battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines began rising on the stocks in shipyards across the empire. Conditions attached to large railway loans insisted that these had to be used purely for the construction of new railroads which ran towards Germany’s borders. Why was this particular stipulation given priority? Mobilising an army of millions had never been easy. It required efficient planning and careful logistical organisation. A capable railway network was a prerequisite for the mobilisation of the huge Russian armies which would be critical when war with Germany was declared. [10] Look again at the men who laid down the stipulation. International bankers. How odd, unless of course it was they who were planning the war.

In late July 1914, Czar Nicholas II, urged on in his recklessness by the French president, Poincare, and secret understandings with the British government, used the pretext of protecting Serbia against Austrian retribution to force Germany to declare war. He ordered the general mobilisation of Russia’s armies through a massive build-up of troops along Germany’s Eastern border. General mobilisation was recognised by all nations as an act of war. Faced with invasion by millions of Russian troops, and despite repeated requests from Kaiser Wilhelm directly to Czar Nicholas that he should stop the troop movements, Germany was left with no choice but to mobilise her own forces and go to war with Russia. [11]

To repay the Czar for his ‘loyalty’, the Secret Elite dangled before him the golden carrot of Russia’s ultimate dream. A solemn promise was given that Russia would be given Constantinople and the Straits once Germany had been defeated, the holy grail of Russian leaders for centuries. That was why Russia went to war in July 1914, not, as she claimed, to defend Serbia. As the years dragged on and the Russian losses on the Eastern Front approached six million dead or seriously wounded, even the Czar began to suspect that Perfidious Albion had tricked them into war with an empty promise. [12] It had. Their ownership of Constantinople remained as illusionary as it always had.

In a sense it was as though Russia went to war in 1914 despite the revolutionary undercurrent. Victory on the field of battle, the glittering reward of a warm-water port at Constantinople, the spoils from a broken and defeated Germany would surely have renewed popular faith in the Russian monarchy. In fact the deeply wounded Russian people suffered defeat, disgrace and ultimate disintegration. The socialist forces that had been growing steadily between 1904 and 1914 found direct backing from foreign quarters few ever understood. This has to be fully examined.

1. Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 86-87.
2. Ron Chernow, The Warburgs, p. 110.
3. Takahashi Korekiyo, The Rothschilds and the Russo-Japanese War,1904-6, pp. 20-21.
4. Pearson, The Sealed Train, p. 34.
5. George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories, vol. 1, p. 77.
6. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, p. 60.
7. Trotsky, My Life, p. 208.
8. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution. p. 65.
9. McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist, p. xvii.
10. Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, p. 297.
11. Ibid, p. 239.
12. Guido Preparata, Conjuring Hitler, p. 27.

Revolution In Russia 1: Understanding Influences

The First World War drained Russia, literally and metaphorically. By January 1917, after two-and-a-half years of mortal combat, six million young Russians had been killed, seriously wounded or lost in action for no territorial or strategic gain. The dream of winning Constantinople had become a nightmare of miserable defeat. Food shortages, hunger, anti-war agitation and civil unrest increased by the day across the Czar’s once-mighty Empire. On 22 February, 1917, 12,000 workers at the giant Putilov manufacturing plant in Petrograd [1] went on strike and were joined on the streets by thousands of demonstrators chanting ‘Down with the Czar’. Soldiers from the city garrison were sent out to arrest the ring-leaders and end the protest, but they refused to open fire on the angry crowds. The Czar abdicated almost immediately, allegedly because he believed that he had lost the support of his military. The event was bloodless apart from the death of several officers shot by their own men. Thus the first Russian Revolution, known as the ‘February Revolution’, ended 300 years of autocratic monarchical rule. A governing body was established in the Winter Palace in Petrograd by liberal deputies from the existing parliamentary body, the Duma, together with socialists and independents. Termed the ‘Provisional Government’, it kept Russia in the war against Germany and began formulating plans for democratic rule through an elected legislative assembly of the people. It was a beginning.

The seizure of power by Bolshevik revolutionaries on 25 October, 1917, [2] brought communism to Russia and major strife to the entire world for the greater part of the twentieth century. For readers not versed in modern Russian history it is important to note that the Bolshevik Revolution was very distinct from the revolution that had taken place eight months earlier.

During the night of October 24/25, a group of armed communists seized key areas of Petrograd, entered the Winter Palace and assumed control of the country. The coup was led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, two extreme Marxist revolutionaries who had returned to Russia earlier that year from enforced exile. This was the ‘Bolshevik Revolution’, also known as the ‘October Revolution’. Lenin and Trotsky smothered the fledgling attempt at democratic governance, took Russia out of the war with Germany and installed a ruthless communist system that suppressed Russia for the next seventy-four years.

According to received history, the February Revolution was an entirely spontaneous uprising of the people. It was not. The Putilov strike, and the city garrison’s refusal to act against the strikers, was orchestrated from abroad by well-financed agents who had been stirring unrest among the workers and soldiers with propaganda and bribery. The October Revolution was also directly influenced by the same international bankers, with vast financial and logistical support which enabled Lenin and Trotsky to seize power. What is particularly relevant to the Secret Elite narrative is the evidence of their complicity from both sides of the Atlantic. Without external intervention, the Russian Revolutions would never have taken the ruinous direction which destroyed a nation’s hope for justice and democracy. As these blogs unfold over the next weeks please bear this in mind.

Russia had been ruled by the ‘divine right’ of Czars from the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584) until the abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917. The ruling Romanovs dynasty was one of the richest families in the world, on a par with the Rothschilds. They owned huge estates with elaborate palaces, yachts, a massive collection of diamonds (amounting to 25,300 carats), emeralds, sapphires and fifty-four of the priceless jewel-encrusted Faberge eggs. [3] In May 1917, the New York Times estimated the total wealth of the dynasty to be in the region of $9,000,000,000, [4] a breath-taking sum today let alone a century ago. A significant number of upper and middle class Russians (the bourgeoisie), included merchants, government officials, lawyers, doctors and army officers who enjoyed comfortable incomes and life styles. That said, urban factory workers (the proletariat) and rural agrarian workers (the peasants) comprised the vast majority of the population of 175 million in 1914. But the war haemorrhaged both youth and loyalty. The populace survived on the edge of poverty and hunger, but did not generally support revolutionaries. [5] If radical change was required, it would have to be manufactured.

Czar Alexander II had abolished serfdom in 1861 but opposed movements for political reform. Having survived several attempts on his life, he was eventually assassinated on the streets of St Petersburg in 1881 by members of a revolutionary group, ‘People’s Will’, led by a Jew, Vera Figner. Thereafter, the Jews in the Pale of Settlement [6] were subjected to a series of terrifying pogroms (religious-ethnic massacres). Over the following decades peasants rebelled over taxes which left them debt ridden and oppressed by hopelessness. Workers went on strike for better wages and working conditions. Students demanded civil liberties for all, and even the comfortable bourgeoisie began calling for representative government. Though this clamour for social change and greater equality was apparent across Europe, the Romanovs resisted challenges to their autocratic authority with bitter determination.

In 1897, in the midst of this social unrest, a 27 year-old Marxist lawyer and intellectual Russian radical, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, was arrested by Czarist secret police (the Okhrana) for subversive activities and sentenced to three years exile in Siberia. Ulyanov was treated lightly in comparison to his older brother, Alexander, who ten years earlier plotted to assassinate Czar Alexander III and was hanged for his troubles. Vladimir Ulyanov took the alias Lenin and would go on to become the most powerful man in Russia following the October Revolution.

Born in Simbirsk (renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour in 1924), a town on the Volga some 900 kilometres east of Moscow, Lenin’s father was an inspector of the provinces schools. His mother, the daughter of a baptised Jewish doctor, Alexander Blank, [7] bought the family a farm of some two hundred acres near Samara for 7,500 roubles. The fact that Lenin had Jewish forebears would have had absolutely no relevance were it not for the fact that many consider the Bolshevik Revolution to have been a Jewish plot. We have already explained how powerful individuals within the Secret Elite who supported Zionism were behind the Balfour Declaration of 2 November, 1917 which led eventually to the creation of the state of Israel. Within 72 hours of that declaration, the men who were financed and aided by these same individuals, seized control of Russia. It does not require a great leap of imagination to consider the possibility that these two seismic events in world history were connected in some way.

In March 1919, The Times reported, ‘One of the most curious features of the Bolshevist movement is the high percentage of non-Russia elements amongst its leaders. Of the 20 or 30 leaders who provide the central machinery of the Bolshevist movement, not less than 75 per cent are Jews …’ [8] Note that The Times differentiated between Russian and Jew, as if it were not possible to be both, while the Jewish Chronicle emphasised the importance of the Jewish influence on Bolshevism: ‘There is much in the fact of Bolshevism itself, in the fact that so many Jews are Bolsheviks, in the fact that the ideals of Bolshevism at many points are consonant with the finest ideals of Judaism’. [9] Another Jewish journal, American Hebrew, reported: ‘What Jewish idealism and Jewish discontent have so powerfully contributed to produce in Russia, the same historic qualities of the Jewish mind are tending to promote in other countries … The Bolshevik revolution in Russia was the work of Jewish brains, of Jewish dissatisfaction, of Jewish planning, whose goal is to create a new order in the world. What was performed in so excellent a way in Russia, thanks to Jewish brains, and because of Jewish dissatisfaction and by Jewish planning, shall also, through the same Jewish mental and physical forces, become a reality all over the world.’ [10] It is interesting to note that in 1920, just three years after the Balfour Declaration, Jewish journals were openly discussing the primacy of Jews in creating a new world order.

Rabbi Stephen Wise later commented on the Russian situation: ‘Some call it Marxism I call it Judaism.’ [11] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a victim of the communist regime who spent many years exiled in Siberia and was a later recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was emphatic that Jews were not involved in the first revolution: ‘The February Revolution was not made by the Jews for the Russians; it was certainly carried out by the Russians themselves … We were ourselves the authors of this shipwreck.’ [12] Solzhenitsyn, however, added: ‘In the course of the summer and autumn of 1917, the Zionist movement continued to gather strength in Russia: in September it had 300,000 adherents. Less known is that Orthodox Jewish organisations enjoyed great popularity in 1917, yielding only to the Zionists and surpassing the socialist parties.’ [13] He observed: ‘There are many Jewish authors who to this very day either deny the support of Jews for Bolshevism, or even reject it angrily, or else…only speak defensively about it… These Jewish renegades were for several years leaders at the centre of the Bolshevik Party, at the head of the Red Army (Trotsky), of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, of the two capitals, of the Comintern …’ [14] Given the repression of the Jews in Russia, it is hardly surprising that they swelled the numbers of active revolutionaries during this period. They had suffered the horror of the pogroms. They had nursed a genuine resentment for Czarist repression. They were determined to change the world.

The relationship between Jews and revolutionaries was explained by Theodor Herzl, one of the fathers of the Zionist movement in a pamphlet, De Judenstat, addressed to the Rothschilds: ‘When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties, and at the same time, when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse’. [15] On Herzl’s death, his successor as president of the World Zionist Organisation was the Russian born David Wolfsohn. In his closing speech at the International Zionist Congress at The Hague in 1907, Wolfsohn pleaded for greater unity among the Jews and said that eventually ‘they must conquer the world’. [16] He did not expand on the role that Jewish Bolshevik revolutionaries might play in this Jewish global aspiration, but from his position it seems apparent that political Zionism and the future ‘homeland’ certainly would. [17] Wolfsohn’s successor as president of the Zionist organisation in 1911 was Otto Warburg, a noted scientist and relative of the Warburg banking family which features heavily in this book. Warburg later spoke of the ‘brilliant prospects of Palestine’ and how an extensive Jewish colonisation would ‘expand into neighbouring countries’. [18]

A report in 1919 from the British Secret Service revealed: ‘There is now definite evidence that Bolshevism is an international movement controlled by Jews; communications are passing between the leaders in America, France, Russia and England, with a view toward concerted action.’ [19] Hilaire Belloc, Anglo-French writer, philosopher and one time Liberal MP at Westminster, wrote: ‘As for anyone who does not know that the present revolutionary movement is Jewish in Russia, I can only say that he must be a man who is taken in by the suppression of our despicable Press. [20] Contemporary commentators failed to link the Balfour Declaration and the Russian Revolution in October/November 1917, despite their links to Zionism and the ‘concerted action’ from both sides of the Atlantic. It should not be seen as a criticism; it was a fact.

1. The Russian capital, St Petersburg, was renamed Petrograd at the beginning of WW1 to give it a less German sounding name. It reverted to St Petersburg on the fall of communism.
2. The date, October 25, 1917, was calculated by the old-style the Julian calendar then still used in Russia – The Gregorian calendar used elsewhere in Europe and the United States registered the date as November 7, 1917, thus the old style Julian calendar was 13 days behind the Gregorian.
3. Sean McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist, The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks, p. xix.
4. New York Times, 12 May, 1917.
5. Peter Waldron, The End of Imperial Russia, 1855 – 1917, p. 22.
6. The Pale of Settlement was territory within the borders of czarist Russia wherein Jews were legally authorised to live. It included present day Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova and much of Latvia and Lithuania.
7. Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin, Life and Legacy, p. 5.
8. The Times, 29 March, 1919.
9. Jewish Chronicle, 4 April, 1919.
10. American Hebrew, 20 September, 1920.
11. Rabbi Stephen Wise, The American Bulletin, 5 May, 1935.
12. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Juifs et Russes pendant la periode soviétique, Volume 2, pp. 44–45.
13. Ibid., p. 54.
14. Ibid., p. 91.
15. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_7cNJAAAAMAAJ
16. New York Times, September 17, 1914, David Wolfsohn obituary.
17. Zionism in Europe and America proved to be a comparatively slow-burning evolution. Between 1900 -1917 there was a serious divergence between Zionists who promoted a faith based assimilist belief, and the political Zionists who had one aim – a return to what they claimed as their former homeland in Palestine.
18. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 14, 1929. http://www.jta.org/1929/07/14/archive/german-zionists-celebrate-seventieth-birthday-of-otto-warburg
19. Scotland Yard, A Monthly Review of the Progress of Revolutionary Movements Abroad, July 16, 1919.
20. Hilaire Belloc. G.K.’s Weekly, 4 February, 1937.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 10: The Final Reckoning

The previous nine blogs have presented the reasons why the men of secret power wanted rid of Herbert Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War from 1914-1916 … but were unable to manoeuvre him from office. He had threatened the smooth running of Trans-Atlantic finance, had interfered with, and apparently delayed, the enormous growth in armaments and munitions, and did not agree that the war would be won by the nation which fired most shells across the barren pot-holes of the Western Front. His phenomenal contribution to voluntary recruitment could not go on forever. Its initial success in the early months of the war was unsustainable. Conscription had to be introduced in March 1916 when the Military Service Act came into force [1] just as the parliamentarians had wanted, and Kitchener did not trust politicians. He was justified in his mistrust of gossiping Cabinet colleagues. Prime Minister Asquith, for example, shared secret confidential information with his paramour [2] Venetia Stanley on a daily basis. [3] He famously stated that he would give Cabinet ministers all they information they sought ‘if they would only divorce their wives.’ [4] In this, as in many of his other beliefs, Kitchener was absolutely right. London society was a hotbed of unbridled war-gossip especially in the first two years of the conflict.

What Kitchener failed to understand was that neither he, nor the British Cabinet, called the tune. The elite Bankers and financiers, the owners of the military-industrial complex, the manipulators of power and influence, the newspaper moguls and the academic guardians of historical record, the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic had ordained the war to crush Germany and amass even greater fortunes in the process. The Secret Elite whom we have identified by name in Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, [5] and further expanded in previous blogs, [6] held this as their sole objective.

An early end to the war was not to be contemplated. Nor was the notion of a just and fair peace about which Kitchener had been talking. What use was a compromise which would have allowed German commerce and industry to remain intact with all of the advantages through which modern business practice thrived? It was inconceivable that they would allow the war to end before the American government joined the conflict. The United States had to be drawn into the war in order to offload the enormous private loans and debts accrued by the Morgan/Rothschild/Rockefeller empires through their monopolies on arms, munitions and international loans. Had Kitchener influenced a move for peace in 1916, the burden of debt would not have been shouldered by US taxpayers, and likewise, British and French tax-payers, but by the financial institutions. An honourable peace would have left Germany strong and independent. Germany had to be made to pay for a war they had never wanted. Lord Kitchener’s threatened intervention imperilled every aspect of the Secret Elite’s aim.

He knew he had enemies, clearly.

Though he himself was a very loyal servant to King and Country, Herbert Kitchener had to struggle against professional jealousy and disloyalty from his senior staff. Sir Henry Wilson, the Principal Liaison Officer between the allied forces in France, was a regular correspondent with Lord Alfred Milner, the acknowledged leader of the Secret Elite, and acted as a high level informant behind the backs of Kitchener and Asquith. The Prime Minister wrote that both he and Kitchener considered Wilson a constantly intriguing serpent [7] so there was little love lost on either side.

The Secretary of State’s enemies amongst the press included editors of the Morning Post and the National Review, but his loudest critic was Lord Northcliffe at The Times and The Mail. Ever close to the Secret Elite, The Times, through their privileged correspondent Charles Repington, had tried to bring Kitchener into public disrepute by fanning the flames of the so-called munitions crisis in 1915. [8] Far from weakening Lord Kitchener, their accusations against him damaged their reputation and underlined the strength of public support he continued to enjoy. [9] Thus Horatio Kitchener was a man with many enemies, not in the trenches, the workplace or the ordinary home, but inside the core of the Establishment. That he understood. What he could not grasp was the grand plan which had been constructed above the realm of public politics.

Asquith was obliged to shake-up his Cabinet in May 1915 and the net impact of the reorganisation was to bring more members of the Secret Elite into public office. Professor Carroll Quigley [10] identified eleven members of Asquith’s ‘coalition’ Cabinet as members of this cabal including Lords Lansdowne and Curzon, Andrew Bonar Law, the Conservative Party leader, Sir Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Walter Long, the Earl of Selborne, Robert Cecil and most importantly, Arthur J. Balfour, former Prime Minister, as First Lord of the Admiralty. The man whom they dearly wanted removed, Lord Kitchener, stood firm. Though in private they all wanted rid of him, in public he could not be criticised.

For as long as they could find reason to tolerate him, especially once his powers over munitions had been shifted wholesale into Lloyd Geoge’s court, Kitchener remained an asset both as the international figure-head for the British military and as a buffer between the Prime Minister and his detractors. However, once he began to speak privately about his role as a peace-maker at the end of the war, and share his ideals with leading figures in both the military and the government, [11] Kitchener’s days were numbered. The asset had become a liability. But how could they get rid of him? You might construct a long list of possibilities – ‘heart-attack’, ‘suicide’, a full range of ‘natural causes’ might have been actioned. Any public suggestion of his alleged homosexuality would certainly have ruined him but what possible good would have come from trashing the name and reputation of the hero of the Empire? None. Though the military and political agents of the Secret Elite schemed behind his back, it was in the interests of all to protect Kitchener’s public reputation. He had to be removed with a subtlety which brooked no backlash. What were the odds against Herbert Kitchener dying in a naval tragedy, lost at sea? No-one could have anticipated such a scenario or possibly suspect unlawful practice. Surely?

Before anyone rushes to close the account with the dismissive and entirely unfair claim that this is simply another conspiracy, re-read the volume of evidence, actual and circumstantial, which we have already presented. [12]

We have clearly established that there was no immediate need for Herbert Kitchener to visit Russia. Knowing that the Somme offensive would begin in July, he threatened to pull out of the venture as late as 2 June 1916 rather than have it postponed. [13] The central Secret Elite place-man at the Czar’s court in Petrograd (St Petersburg) was Sir John Hanbury-Williams, a close friend and associate of Alfred Milner. [14] Williams’s position as Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia from 1914-1917 was consolidated by ancestral diplomatic connections with the Empress Catherine the Great, which granted him a special place in the Czar’s more intimate circles. [15]

The Secret Elite network spun a spider’s web of influence across the globe. Hanbury-Williams had conjured the Grand Duke’s supposed appeal to the British to attack the Dardanelles [16] in 1915, and it was he who co-ordinated Kitchener’s visit to Russia in 1916. His diary shows that the Czar ‘talked over the proposed visit of Lord Kitchener with the greatest keenest and interest’ before Hanbury-Williams organised the details with the British Ambassador and the military attache, Sir Alfred Knox. [17] The plan to send Kitchener to Russia emanated from Britain, not Russia. Indeed Hanbury-Williams’s published record omitted detailed reference to the background preparations for what was transformed into ‘Kitchener’s’ visit. Allegedly, when Lord Kitchener insisted that any postponement of his visit would result in its cancellation, Hanbury-Williams took immediate steps to stress Czar Nicholas’s personal wish that the visit go ahead. [18] The plans devised by Hanbury-Williams were transposed into the Czar’s wishes. So ran the web of deceit.

Everyone personally connected with the Secret Elite whose name had been associated with the ‘mission’ to Russian withdrew. To add to this co-incidence, their reaction to the news of Kitchener’s death on HMS Hampshire was in its own right, suspicious. Lloyd George claimed that he heard the ‘startling’ news on his way to a War Council in Downing Street on 6 June. When he entered the Cabinet Room he described ‘the Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Mr Balfour and Sir Maurice Hankey sitting at a table all looking stunned’. This was indeed an inner circle of powerful men who understood what had happened, yet they were unable to talk about the consequences? Remarkably, given the enormity of what had just taken place, ‘Sir Maurice and I quite forgot for the moment that had it not been for the Irish negotiations, we would have shared the same fate.’ [19] That is untrue. From the outset Hankey said he would not go, and Lloyd George’s refusal had nothing to do with Ireland. [20] How many people would have reacted with such sang-froid? He and Hankey ‘quite forgot’ that they should have been on that same ill fated ship? [21] It defied human nature.

Indeed, without breaking step or pausing for a moment to contemplate the many contributions of the now deceased Secretary of State for War, Lloyd George knew that ‘the passing of Lord Kitchener left an empty place at the War Office. I realised that this place might be offered to me.’ [22] This man of many plots, of endless carping behind the backs of others, who briefed the press, especially Northcliffe, against Kitchener, displayed an almost callous cynicism. Lloyd George did indeed accept that office on 4 July, but not before ensuring that all the powers that had been systematically stripped from Kitchener were reinvested in the new Secretary of State for War.

On hearing of Kitchener’s death, Northcliffe is reported to have burst into his sister’s drawing room declaring, ‘Providence is on the side of the British Empire’ [23] Fawning tributes dripped from the mouths of the guilty. Admiral Jellicoe solemnly declared that the navy’s grief for ‘a soldier’ whose loss ‘we deplore so deeply. It was our privilege to see him last; he died with many of our comrades’. [24] No mention was made of Admiralty culpability or unswept channels.

Look again at the depth of that culpability. HMS Hampshire was barely fit for service and its loss added little to the Navy’s post-Jutland woes. Jellicoe and his masters at the Admiralty approved the ship’s route into a known minefield. Naval intelligence at Room 40 had carefully monitored all U-Boat activity. References to the minefield and the sinking of the trawler, Laurel Rose were removed or altered to suit the cover-up ‘explanation’ when difficult questions were raised about the fate of the Hampshire. The official report was kept secret. Key documents have still never seen the light of day.

Kitchener’s murder was covered with dripping platitudes and cynically penned obituaries. In the House of Lords, Lansdowne proclaimed that Kitchener’s death ‘was a great and dignified exit from the stage upon which he had played so prominent a part during the long years of his life.’ [25] The two-faced Asquith lamented ‘his career has been cut short while still in the full tide of unexhausted powers and possibilities.’ [26] The Secret Elite’s John Buchan ordained that ‘in a sense his work was finished’ and ‘his death was a fitting conclusion to the drama of his life.’ [27] ‘Bollocks’ may not be a recognised historical assessment, but ‘bollocks’ it remains. They peddled lies as fraudsters do.

The full panoply of State and Church gathered at St Paul’s Cathedral on 13 June to hold a service of remembrance for Lord Kitchener and his staff. The King and Queen accompanied by Queen Alexandra, the Lord Mayor in his black and gold robes, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and assorted Aldermen and Sheriffs all gathered to pay their final respects to the former Secretary of State for War and champion of the Empire. They sang ‘Abide with me’, recited the ‘De Profundis’, read from the liturgy, said Prayers for the Country at War and thanked God for a brave and courageous life. The service ended with all three verses of God Save the King. [28] Thus with a great sense of theatre, Kitchener’s memory was consigned to the annals of received history. How quintessentially British.

No-one has ever been held to account for the murder of Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener and over 700 other men.

[1] Conscription: the First World War – UK Parliament
http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private…/conscription/
[2] Asquith’s complex relationship with the much younger Venetia Stanley has intrigued commentators over the century. Whether or not they were lovers remains unproven.
[3] Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock, H.H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, Oxford University Press, 1982.
[4] Viscount Hankey, The Supreme Command, Vol. 1, p. 221.
[5] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, Mainstream, 2013 pp. 12-16 onwards, Appendix 1, p. 362 and Appendix 2, pp. 363-9.
[6] Secret Elite, Blogs 1-3, posted June 15-17, 2014.
[7] Brock and Brock, H.H. Asquith, Letters, p. 342, (Asquith to Venetia Stanley 28 Dec 1914.)
[8] see blog; Munitions 6: Crisis, What Crisis? posted 8 July 2015.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Professor Carroll Quigley, author of The Anglo-American Establishment, initially identified and named the secret cabal who controlled British foreign policy from the early years of the twentieth century.
[11] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, pp. 209-10.
[12] previous blogs posted from 4 May, 2016 – 29 June 2016.
[13] George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, Volume 3, pp. 350-1.
[14] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 56.
[15] John Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, as I knew him, p. 1.
[16] See blog, Gallipoli 9, posted 20 March 2015.
[17] Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, p. 94.
[18] Ibid., pp. 98-9.
[19] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol.1, p. 456.
[20] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Vol. I, p. 269.
[21] Hankey Diary 6 June 1916, quoted in Roskill, Hankey Vol 1, pp. 279-80.
[22] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 456.
[23] J Lee Thomson, Politicians, the Press and Propaganda, Lord Northcliffe & The Great War, 1914-1919, p. 101.
[24] The Times, 14 June 1914.
[25] Lord Lansdowne , Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 June 1916 vol 22 cc315-22.
[26] House of Commons Debate, 21 June 1916 vol 83 cc145-51.
[27] John Buchan, Episodes of the Great War, pp. 246-7.
[28] The Times 14 June 1914.

GUEST BLOG: Professor Hans Fenske (2) Early German Peace Proposals

Right away, the war was ideologically charged by the Allies. During a tour of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Asquith – in Edinburgh, in September – called the war a crusade against the arrogance of a single power trying to dominate the development of Europe. In Dublin, he declared the need to prevent small nations being annihilated by an overbearing power, and claimed that the war was about the final abolition of militarism as the ruling factor in the relationships between states. In London, on 9 November, he spoke on the necessary abolition of Prussian militarism, and his fellow party member Lloyd George wanted to see the German people liberated from the hell of the military caste. The speech from the throne of 11 November held that England would continue for as long as it could dictate the peace. All this was accompanied by sharp anti-German propaganda in the media. This even went so far that Germany was frequently called “Barbaria”. The British government was later not to leave their position briefly sketched here.

In France, too, there were demands to break up Prussian militarism. In October 1944, Foreign Minister Delcassé told the Russian ambassador that the aim of France was to annihilate the German Reich and to weaken Prussia’s military and political power as much as possible. In a similar vein, in a memorandum for the French government, Sazonov  in September spoke about the destruction of German power and the German arrogance to be predominant in Europe. On 5 September, the three Entente nations contractually committed themselves not to agree on a separate peace and to talk about their war goals in public only after having consulted their Allies. Several treaties were entered into regarding these goals, even with countries like Italy which only joined the Allies later in the course of the war. The plans were about weakening Germany and destroying the Danube Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war in the autumn of 1914 on the side of the Central Powers.

After the important initial successes of the German army in the West, it could not be excluded that there soon would have to be talks about peace with the opponents. That’s why Bethmann-Hollweg, who stayed in the headquarters at the time, had a catalogue of possible goals compiled – which he expressly declared provisional – which he sent to the state secretaries of the exterior and the interior for revision on 9 September. The proposals required France to commit itself to reparations for the duration of 15 to 20 years to be calculated so that she would not be capable of spending much on armament, but without calling for territorial sacrifices with the exception of the Briey ore basin. Moreover, she should be closely linked to Germany by means of a trade agreement. A different section talked about a Central European economic association under German leadership. Bethmann-Hollweg could most identify with this. But this paper did not represent a firm agenda. With the Marne battle, the German offensive came to a halt, static warfare began, and hopes for the war ending soon had to be given up.

In mid-November, the Prussian War Minister General von Falkenhayn who now led the operations in the West, told the Chancellor that it was impossible to reach a decent peace as long as Russia, France and England stuck together. So they would have to break Russia away from the Entente coalition. Their thinking was that France probably would give in once Russia made peace. Russia should have to pay sufficient war reparations but remain territorially intact, apart from slight corrections along the border. France should also have to pay reparations yet receive an honourable peace, since Germany and France would have to amicably coexist again after the war. Bethmann-Hollweg fully agreed with these considerations. If Russia could not be prised away from the opposing coalition, the war might take a disastrous turn for Germany. If this didn’t happen the prospect of the war ending because of a general mutual weariness without any decisive defeat of one party or the other became likely. Bethmann-Hollweg kept to this opinion thereafter. Now, his aim in war was Germany’s self-assertion. He wanted to get guarantees for its safety, but he explained this only in general terms. Belgium and Poland were not to become the ground for preparing military action against Germany ever again.

Shortly after the conversation of von Falkenhayn and Bethmann-Hollweg, the Danish King Christian X. offered – via the Danish ship owner and state councillor Hans Niels Andersen and the German ship owner Albert Ballin, a friend of Emperor Wilhelm II. – his services in mediating a peace in London and St. Petersburg. Bethmann-Hollweg wanted to delay an answer so as to be able to improve the military position in the East, but von Falkenhayn and the Emperor considered an understanding with Russia to be urgent and gave Andersen a positive answer. During his visit to Petrograd, as the Russian capital was now called, in 1915, Andersen was told by Nicholas II. that he would never leave his Allies in the lurch, and that he was decidedly against a separate peace. The British and French ambassadors, who had come to know about Andersen’s visit, also tried to influence Sazonov in this sense.

When, following Bethmann-Hollweg’s request, Andersen went to Petrograd again in June and in August, he got the same answer. In November of 1914, the Ministry of State also tried to enter into talks with Japan which had declared war on the German Empire in August and had annexed the German leased territory Kiautschou in the Chinese province of Shantung. The state secretary Jagow thought that England could not have any interest in further strengthening Japan. This would offer the German Empire the opportunity to get into closer contact with Japan, provided Germany would accept the loss of Kiautschou.

Then, Japan could mediate with Russia. But this contact effort failed completely. In December 1914, the Japanese ambassador in Stockholm, Uchida, made it known to his German colleague via Swedish intermediaries that Japan was not interested in communicating with Germany. In this, he acted not on orders by his government, but on his own initiative. So these contacts were fruitless. When in early 1916 Uchida first met with the German ambassador in person, he had to declare that according to the London agreement of September 1914, there would be no separate peace and that the German Empire would have to succumb to the peace conditions imposed by the Entente.

Bethmann-Hollweg publicly declared several times that the Reich would be ready to enter into talks provided the offers were appropriate. When talking to Col. Edward Mandel House, a confidant of President Wilson, he declared his sympathy for a step towards peace made by the U.S. As the year went on, there were three more statements in the same vein. In October, he came to an understanding with the Austrian-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Stephan Burián, towards a joint step towards peace. This should happen at a point in time when it could not be construed as a sign of weakness. This was the case after the conquest of Romania. On 12 December, the Central Powers of the Entente submitted the proposal, via neutral countries, to soon enter into peace talks. They would submit proposals to form an appropriate foundation for an enduring peace. They stated this publicly, Bethmann- Hollweg for instance in the German Reichstag. The Allies brusquely refused and declared that Germany and its Allies would have to atone for everything they had committed, as well as providing reparations and security collateral.

They even refused the mediation offer Wilson made on 16 December. They said that currently it was impossible to enter into a peace reflecting their ideas. They wanted the restitution of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro, the handing back of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the cession of all regions with Polish settlements to Russia and the breaking up of the Danube Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. Also, they did not want to allow the Central Powers to take part in peace negotiations on equal terms.

In late January 1917, Wilson again offered the German ambassador his services for reaching a reconciliation between the warring opponents and asked to be informed about the German conceptions. He was told that Germany wanted to win a frontier protecting Germany and Poland against Russia – the Central Powers recently had proclaimed the Kingdom of Poland –, an agreement about colonial matters, certain corrections concerning the border to France, and an economic and financial compensation between the warring opponents.

Following the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in November 1916, his great-nephew Karl stepped up to the top of the Habsburg Empire. After the failed peace offer of December 1916, Karl I was looking for peace options on private routes. In the spring of 1917, his brother-in-law Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, a Belgian officer, conducted several talks in Switzerland, Paris and London, which, however, did not achieve any results.

July 1914 (3) The Storm Gathers

The storm was brewed in Russia through the malevolent French President, Raymond Poincare, as St Petersburg became the focal point of meaningful decision making in Europe from mid July 1914. That is not to infer that Czar Nicholas II or his foreign minister, Sazonov, suddenly asserted themselves and stood determined to see this through. Far from it. At each stage, the Secret Elite placemen were physically present to continually reassure the czar and Sazonov that they were making the right decisions, reinforcing them in the certainty that their actions were being forced on them by Austria, and behind Austria, mendacious Germany. The Secret Elite knew that Sazonov would make the defence of Serbia an issue of national pride, and that the aggressive Russian response would draw Germany into the trap of a European war. Paléologue and Buchanan, the French and British ambassadors in St Petersburg, were there to constantly embolden him and keep him from wavering from this course. The lure of the greatest prize drew the Russians on to recklessness. The golden carrot of Constantinople was almost within their reach. This is what they had been secretly promised by Grey and the British foreign office. It was an empty promise, but served its purpose well.

Poincaré’s presidential visit had been scheduled to renew promises of a joint attack on Germany that would destroy their common enemy. Reports of his private conversations with the czar were carried in the press, but no word was written about the substance of the discussions. [1] Indeed, French diplomatic telegrams were altered and suppressed after the war, to conceal the true nature of Poincaré’s visit. [2] His sole purpose was to reassure the czar and Sazonov that France would stand beside them, and to encourage them to begin military preparations immediately for war with Germany. Every Russian at court in St Petersburg believed that the enemy was Germany and that war would be the outcome. The Russian military greeted him enthusiastically. They too were convinced that war was ‘inevitable’ and Poincaré’s endorsement was precisely what they wanted to hear. [3]

Ambassador Buchanan sent a telegram to the Foreign Office in London on 24 July, summarising Poincaré’s visit: ‘The French ambassador gave me to understand that France would not only give Russia strong diplomatic support, but would, if necessary, fulfil all the obligations imposed on her by the alliance.’ [4] Poincaré and Sazonov had agreed the deal. When Russia went to war against Germany and Austria, France would fulfil her commitment to Russia. This telegram explicitly proved that by 24 July Sir Edward Grey knew that his world war was ordained.

In the Foreign Office, Buchanan’s telegram was subjected to minute scrutiny, and the private notes attached to it demonstrated the inner convolutions of Secret Elite thinking. [5] Sir Eyre Crowe’s surgical analysis cut to the heart of the matter. Whatever the merits of the Austrian case against Serbia, he believed it would be ‘impolitic’ to interfere in St Petersburg or Paris, ‘dangerous’, even. Dangerous? As in, any intervention from Britain might stop them starting a war?

Put all of this into perspective. Austria had suffered assassination, humiliation and taunts from Serbia, but that didn’t count. Russia and France had agreed that they would stand together and go to war, which seemed perfectly reasonable to Sir Eyre Crowe, so Britain should simply let that happen.

He phrased his diplomatic comments in the following way: ‘The point that matters is whether Germany is or is not absolutely determined to have this war now.’ [6] His twisted logic flew in the face of what he already knew. It was not Germany that was determined to ‘have this war now’; it was the Secret Elite. Crowe’s reasoning contained an awesome revelation: “Our interests are tied up with those of France and Russia in this struggle, which is not for the possession of Serbia, but one between Germany aiming at a political dictatorship in Europe, and the Powers who desire to retain individual freedom. [7]

Ask yourself this question: what were the coincident interests between Britain and Russia? Shared ambition that could only come to blows in Persia? No, it was war with Germany. Would Britain ever have seriously contemplated giving Russia possession of the Straits? No. Was Russia a land of individual freedoms? No. The very notion of the czarist empire being associated with freedoms was ludicrous. Not one single Jewish Member of the British Parliament was free to travel into Russia. [8] This twisted, illogical bias was nothing more than the bile of Secret Elite philosophy. Crowe ended his minute with a recommendation that the fleet be mobilised as soon as any of the Great Powers made their first step to war, but Edward Grey had previously checked that point with Winston Churchill. The fleet was ready and waiting for the coming storm.

Austria presented the ‘Note’ to Serbia once Poincaré and the French delegation had departed St Petersburg on 23 July. The delay was futile. The French and Russians had already made their fateful, but still secret, tryst and Sazonov’s commitment to protect Serbia was absolute. All had been determined long before the Austrian demands became public. [9] Berchtold insisted that the Note was non-negotiable ‘We cannot be satisfied with anything less than their unconditional acceptance within the stated terms; otherwise we should be obliged to draw further consequences.’ [10] The consequences were not as he imagined.

Baron von Gieslingen, the Austro-Hungarian minister at Belgrade, handed the Note to the Serbian government at 6 p.m. on Thursday, 23 July. It comprised ten demands that had been leaked over the preceding weeks and, as far as Berchtold was aware would be acceptable in the courts of Europe. A 48-hour deadline was set for an unequivocal acceptance of every point. Every demand was already known to the Secret Elite agents, including the timescale for a reply.

Berchtold and his advisors were totally unprepared for what happened next. Despite all of the international support and encouragement that they had been given over the preceding weeks, what followed was an orchestrated overreaction from Russia, France and Britain, whose well-coordinated pretence at outrage was completely at odds with previous statements. Those who had encouraged strong Austrian action now declared that, rather than aiming for justice from Serbia, Austria was abusing the situation as a pretext to provoke a war. The argument turned in a most bizarre way. Austria was accused of having presented ‘no evidence’ of the Serbian complicity, and they insisted that ‘more time ’ought to be given for the Serbian Reply. [11] It was a sham, a blatant attempt to gain additional time for the Russian and French military preparations. [12] Austria remained unmoved and insisted on a reply within 48 hours.

On 24 July, Austro-Hungarian ambassadors were subject to verbal abuse when they presented their demands on Serbia to the entente governments. In St Petersburg, Sazonov exploded at the Austrian ambassador, constantly interrupting his attempt to explain the Note. ‘I know what you want. You want to go to war with Serbia … you are setting fire to Europe.’ [13] Point by point, Sazonov challenged and rejected every part of the Austrian Note. His lack of perspective made nonsense of his tantrum, but since he already had detailed knowledge of the demands, it was a sham.

Sir Edward Grey met with Count Mensdorff, the Austrian ambassador to Britain, at Downing Street on the morning of 24 July. Given that he was not known to rush to judgement, Grey’s immediate pronouncement that the Note was ‘the most formidable document that has ever been addressed from one state to another’ [14] was ridiculous. When Mensdorff tried to explain the merits of the case, Grey rejected the arguments as ‘not our concern’. He could hardly have been more dismissive. This too was a sham.

It was different in Paris. With all the senior ministers who might have dealt with the Austrian explanation literally at sea, the Note was handed to the minister of justice, whose moderate and unemotional reaction was in complete contrast to the paroxysms elsewhere. No one had thought to give him sight of the entente’s official script. With near indecent haste, Paul Cambon, the French ambassador at London, was ordered back to France to hold the fort at Quai D’Orsay.

While the entente foreign ministers orchestrated as close to a perfect storm of indignation as they could muster, several British newspapers considered the Austrian demands to be perfectly justified. The Manchester Guardian, the Daily News and the Daily Chronicle all voiced a reasoned understanding of the Austrian position. Of the conservative newspapers, the Daily Telegraph was the most impartial. It supported the Austrians in ‘demanding full and prompt repudiation of all those nefarious schemes which have politics as their excuse and murder as their handmaid’. [15] The Manchester Guardian deeply regretted that Russia was prepared to threaten ‘extreme measures’ if strong Austrian action was forced upon Serbia. As its editorial explained, Austria had a good reason to be overbearing towards Serbia, but ‘Russia’s threat of war is a piece of sheer brutality, not disguised by her sudden discovery of the sacredness of the balance of power in Europe’. [16] It was a sarcastic but justified rebuff to the Russian presumption of interest in Serbian affairs. Predictably, The Times was batting for the other side. An editorial, published two days before the Note was handed over, under the heading, ‘A Danger to Europe’, supported the Russians and cast doubt on Austrian intentions to localise the war. [17] As ever, the voice of the Secret Elite was a step ahead.

The Serbian Reply was carefully crafted and moderate in character. [18] It not only won the approval and sympathy of the entente powers but also of neutrals everywhere. It even commanded the admiration of Berchtold, who described the Reply as ‘the most brilliant example of diplomatic skill which I have ever known’, but he added that though it appeared to be reasonable, it was ‘wholly worthless in content’. [19] The diplomatic language certainly had all the hallmarks of a professional tactician. Pasic had previously relied on Hartwig, the Russian ambassador, whose untimely death ought to have left him bereft of ideas. Yet, out of nowhere, this comparative nonentity apparently produced a masterstroke of international diplomacy. Pasic was reputedly a lost, floundering soul without his Russian mentor, so who was behind the Serbian Reply? Belgrade had immediately appealed to Sazonov, Paléologue and the czar for help. [20] Behind the scenes, the telegraph lines between London, Belgrade, St Petersburg and Paris nearly went into meltdown. Sir Edward Grey telegraphed Belgrade on Friday evening (24 July) at 9.30 p.m. to advise the Serbs on how they should respond. He specifically suggested that they ‘give a favourable reply on as many points as possible within the limit of time, and not to meet Austria with a blank negative’. He wanted them to apologise, express regret for the conduct of their officials and reply in a manner that represented the best interests of Serbia. Grey refused to give any further advice without liaising directly with Russia and France. [21] His time-serving words covered the fact that Britain, France and Russia had already agreed their joint position.

The input from London, Paris and St Petersburg represented a massive public-relations offensive on behalf of Serbia. The Reply was couched in very conciliatory language, with feigned humility and apparent openness and sincerity. European opinion still sided with Austria rather than Serbia, and that would have been reinforced had the Serbs presented an arrogant or insulting reply. Serbia had to be reinvented as a brave and helpless little nation that had gone beyond the boundary of national dignity in surrendering to Austria’s harsh demands. Of all the diplomatic ruses before the war began, there was no cleverer ‘subterfuge than the planning of the Serbian response to Austria’. [22]

To the unwitting, it appeared as though all points bar two had been accepted and that ‘poor little Serbia’ had yielded to the immense and unfair pressure from her neighbour. Kaiser Wilhelm, for example, returned from his three-week cruise and hailed the Serbian Reply as ‘a triumph of diplomacy’ when he first read it. [23] Wilhelm jotted on it: ‘a brilliant performance for a time-limit of only 48 hours. This is more than one could have expected!’ [24] He was convinced that the Austrians would be satisfied and that the few reservations Serbia had made on particular points would be cleared up by negotiation. Kaiser Wilhelm’s immediate and spontaneous response clearly indicated his belief, indeed his joy, that all risk of war had been removed. ‘With it [the Serbian response] every reason for war falls to the ground.’ [25]

Wilhelm’s analysis was sadly naive. He accepted the Serbian concessions at face value, but the Austrians did not. While the Serbian response appeared to consent to virtually every Austrian demand, it was so hedged with qualifications that the Austrians were bound to take umbrage. Only two of Austria’s demands were accepted in their entirety, while the answers to the others were evasive. [26] Reservations and lies had been carefully disguised by skilful dissembling. The most important Austrian demand was rejected outright. Berchtold insisted that judicial proceedings be taken against everyone associated with the assassination plot and that Austro-Hungarian police officers be directly involved in the investigations. Serbia baulked at this, claiming that such an intrusion would be a violation of her constitution. That was not the case. The Austrians had demanded that their police be allowed to assist in the investigation of the crime, not that its officials be allowed to participate in internal Serbian court procedures. There were numerous precedents for such cross-border police involvement. [27] But the Serbs nailed their colours to this spurious assertion and claimed that the Austrian Note was an infringement of their sovereignty.

The Secret Elite knew that Austria would not accept the Reply. It was specifically designed to be rejected. No amount of cosmetic wordplay could hide the fact that it did not accede to the Austrian stipulations. The lie that Austria-Hungary deliberately made the Note so tough that Serbia would have no choice but to refuse it has unfortunately been set in concrete by some historians. The myth that the Secret Elite wanted to promulgate, was that Austria was ‘told’ by Germany to attack Serbia. The best lie is the big lie. If Austria was hell-bent on war with Serbia, why did she entertain the gruelling three-week diplomatic route? Freed from extraneous interference the Austrian army was entirely capable of defeating Serbia. Hawks in the Austrian military had demanded an immediate attack, but the diplomats insisted on the long-delayed Note that unwittingly gave Britain, France and Russia time to lay their trap. [28] The Serbian Reply, and Austria’s consequent reaction, sprang that trap.

On 25 July, Sir George Buchanan in St Petersburg penned a strictly confidential telegram to Sir Edward Grey. It arrived in the Foreign Office at 10.30 p.m. The message could not have been clearer: ‘Russia cannot allow Austria to crush Serbia and become the predominant Power in the Balkans, and, secure of support of France, she will face all the risks of war.’ [29]

The allegation that Austria wanted to crush Serbia was yet another piece of propaganda manufactured to justify the entente over-reaction. But worse still was the French connection: the blank cheque. ‘Secure of support of France’, Russia was prepared to ‘face all the risks of war’. Buchanan spelled out the absolute reassurances that Poincaré had given to Sazonov. These were in fact more than reassurances; this was an incitement to war. Poincaré was inviting Sazonov to lead the line, promising that both countries would march behind the same banner. It was precisely what the Secret Elite had planned.

It was not the Austrian Note that made war inevitable, it was the Serbian Reply designed to provoke the reaction for which Russia, France and Britain were thoroughly prepared.

[1] Sidney B. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. II, p. 280.
[2] A detailed analysis of the French official telegrams was printed in 1927 showing the omissions and alterations to original documents that had been approved at the Quai d’Orsay. In particular, details of Poincaré’s visit to St Petersburg and subsequent Russian military manoeuvres were removed. G. Demartial, L’Evangile du Quai d’ Orsay, p. 11.
[3] Harry Elmer Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p. 331.
[4] Buchanan to Grey, 24 July, BD 101, in Geiss, July 1914, p. 196.
[5] Buchanan to Grey 24 July, BD 101. The notes appended to this telegram are particularly valuable. Sir Eyre Crowe at the Foreign Office, a rabid anti-German, advocated immediate preparations to back up France and Russia. The telegram was then passed to the permanent undersecretary, Sir Arthur Nicolson, who added his support to Crowe. Sir Edward Grey responded that he had discussed the matter with Churchill. Layers of support and influence surrounded Grey.
[6] Imanuel Geiss, July 1914, p. 198.
[7] Ibid., p. 199.
[8] Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 10 July 1914, vol. 64, cc1397–398.
[9] Max Montgelas, British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, p. 65.
[10] John S. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, pp. 1062–3.
[11] Montgelas, British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, p. 66.
[12] Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p. 200.
[13] Extract from the Austrian Red Book, OD 10616, 24 July 1914, in Geiss,
July 1914, p. 174.
[14] Geiss, July 1914, p. 175. Mensdorff to Berchtold, 24 July 1914.
[15] Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 32.
[16] Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1914.
[17] The Times, 22 July 1914.
[18] Pierre Renouvin, The Immediate Origins of the War, p. 99.
[19] Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. II, p. 340.
[20] Ibid., p. 337.
[21] Ibid., p. 339.
[22] Barnes, Genesis of the World War, pp. 200–1.
[23] Niall Ferguson, Pity of War, p. 156.
[24] Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. II, p. 348.
[25] Ferguson, Pity of War, p. 156.
[26] Joseph Ward Swain, Beginning the Twentieth Century. p. 353.
[27] Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 1040.
[28] Harry Elmer Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice, p. 47.
[29] Buchanan to Grey, 25 July 1914, BD 125, in Geiss, July 1914, p. 213.