War Without End 8: The Old Order Changeth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War Without End 7: The Advance Of The Vested Interests

For some students of history, the claim that international bankers had influenced and supported the British Secret Elite and their political agents to prolong the war will induce cognitive dissonance. It grates awkwardly against mainstream history taught in the classroom, read in the newspapers or watched on film and television versions of the First World War. The realisation that we have been lied to, opens the way to a new level of appreciation of what was actually happening. It may take time. For example, consider the American and British delegations to the armistice/preparatory peace talks in Paris in 1919. When the British economist, John Maynard Keynes arrived in January to be housed with the British delegation in the luxurious Hotel Majestic, ‘no one yet knew what the Conference was doing or whether it had started’. [1] There were numerous officials who attended informal meetings many of which were not recorded. Paris swarmed with self-interest from around the globe. Britain was formally represented by the eventual signatories to the Treaty, David Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour, Alfred Milner, Andrew Bonar Law and Georges Barnes who were all closely linked to, or approved by the Secret Elite. But there was a plethora of hangers-on.

Leo Amery, Milner’s parliamentary secretary, shuttled back and forth between London and Paris for five months. His task was to influence and advise on the discussions about the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and direct negotiations with France over the future of the Arabs and the Zionists, the latter whose cause he strongly supported. [2] William Ormsby-Gore was present, a member of the Secret Elite, who had been Alfred Milner’s parliamentary private secretary and an assistant secretary to Sir Mark Sykes. Lord Robert Cecil, a cousin of Alfred Balfour had been given charge of the Blockade from 1916 and had direct links with Herbert Hoover. He was tasked to liaise with President Wilson on his ideas for a League of Nations [3] and ensured the Empire’s interests were safeguarded. Cecil was later appointed Chair of the Supreme Economic Council and drew his advice from Robert Brand, a Milner man from his Boer War reconstruction years. Brand was managing director of the merchant bank, Lazard Brothers, and a Director of Lloyd’s Bank. [4] Keynes himself was the Treasury advisor appointed to assist Cecil’s team, and as an outsider his observations were not coloured by secret loyalties.

Consider this assembly of imperial loyalists, all of whom were committed to the ultimate victory of the English ruling-class in a struggle for one world domination. These heirs to Cecil Rhodes’s dream marched on Versailles with serious purpose. Protect, strengthen and enlarge the Empire for ‘the benefit of mankind’. They had a staunch ally inside the American camp, an academic historian whom Professor Carroll Quigley named as a member of the Secret Elite, George Louis Beer. [5] Beer strongly supported the Mandate system which would allow Britain to take responsibility for Palestine. He was a member of the Round Table and Milner had him named as the head of the Mandate Department of the League of Nations.

The official members of the American Commission included, President Woodrow Wilson and Colonel Edward Mandel House, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Henry White, a former Ambassador at Rome and Paris and General Talisker Bliss. [6] Strange to relate, these men were probably the least important of the Americans in Paris. Certainly Wilson and House shared the limelight, and that, as ever, suited the real powers behind the curtain. But the President had been severely weakened.  Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious political blow in the 1918 mid-term elections to the Senate and House of Representatives in the United States. The Democrats had lost control of both Houses of Congress to the Republican Party which did not bode well for Wilson’s chance of a third term in office. [7]

Of much more importance was the entourage of vested interest from the banking community which chose to accompany him. These included, Thomas Lamont a senior partner in J.P. Morgan and Bernard Baruch, who left Wall Street in 1916 to advise Wilson. Baruch served on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defence, became the chairman of the War Industries Board in the USA in 1918, and successfully managed America’s economic mobilisation through which he reputedly netted a personal fortune of $200 million. [8] His origins were Wall Street and war industries and he was believed to be a Rothschild agent. [9]

Herbert Hoover hovered around the conferences, aided and advised by the team which worked with him in Belgium. Other important financiers from the US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, [10] J.P. Morgan’s bank in Boston, the International Harvester Company (owned from 1902 by J.P. Morgan) and several others, whose fortunes were linked to Hoover’s malpractice in Belgium, became major contributors. Vance McCormick, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and Chair of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace (1919) was nominally a simple politician, but he also served as head of the War Trade Board (1916 to 1919). Links to industry and finance, mainly J.P. Morgan, dovetailed at every point.

High level profiteering by major banks was not an exclusive American domaine. One example of how rich European bankers had also become, may be gauged from the post war success of Emile Francqui’s Societe Generale bank in Brussels. Having made an exorbitant fortune through its link with Herbert Hoover’s Belgian Relief programme and its internal association with the Bundesbank during the occupation of Belgium, [11] it flourished as never before from 1919 onwards. It’s London branch, the Banque Belge pour L’Etranger was the financial centre for all of the Societe Generale’s affairs outside occupied territories.

In the immediate post-war period it benefitted greatly from the influx of capital which followed the signing of the armistice. It created a series of new companies to accommodate the immense reconstruction in Belgium and extended and modernised the country’s infrastructure. Banque Belge pour L’Etranger opened new international branches in New York (1917), Paris, Manchester and Cologne (1919), Bucharest (1920) and Constantinople. (1924) [12] While the poor in Belgium remained needy and impoverished, its banks flourished. In wars, all wars, billions of dollars are made through profits accrued from the manufacture of warships, airplanes, weapons, and munitions. At war’s end, they reap a second dividend through reconstruction of cities, towns and villages shattered by the conflict. War is good business for banks; very good business. But these vested interests were not exclusively financial.

As has been said repeatedly, no event ‘just happens’ as if by mystical or divine intervention. Two important Americans who made their way to Paris were Supreme Court Judge, Mr Justice Brandeis, and his close associate, Felix Frankfurter. Brandeis openly ‘went abroad on Zionist missions’ and had three ‘busy and profitable days’ in Paris where he ‘lunched effectively’ with his new friend, Alfred Balfour and breakfasted with the American Peace Commissioners.’ [13] The only item on his agenda was Palestine. Indeed most of the leading Zionists went to Paris during the conference. Chaim Weizmann maintained his high-pressure tactic of interviews and meetings with the powerful and the influential, [14] the most important of which was held at the French foreign office at the Quay D’Orsay on February 27, 1919.

The British representation, Arthur Balfour, Alfred Milner, Maurice Hankey and William Ormsby-Gore, was, as we have detailed above, handsomely pro-Zionist. The American delegation that day was limited to Robert Lansing and former Ambassador White while the Zionist delegation was headed by Chaim Weizmann. [15] He presented a Statement of the Zionist Organisation with regard to Palestine, which supported a British Mandate. In other words, the land would come under British control, a development much sought after by the Zionists who felt confident of Britain’s sympathy. Weizmann claimed to speak in the name of a million Jews ‘who, staff in hand, waited for the signal to move’. [16] While the claim was clear and bold, it was not backed-up by any rush of eager immigrants once the mandate had been agreed.

A Franco-Jewish historian, Sylvain Levi, had been included in the French delegation. He was not a Zionist, and questioned the validity of the ingrained idea of a “country of their ancestors” and warned that the eastern European migrant Jews would include many who ‘would carry with them into Palestine, highly explosive passions conducive to very serious trouble in a country which might be likened to a concentration camp of Jewish refugees’. He stated that ‘nations could not be created at will … and that the realisation of a certain number of aspirations would not suffice to create a national identity …’ [17] Levi warned that it was dangerous to create a precedent whereby people who already possessed citizenship in one country would be called upon to govern and exercise other rights of citizenship in a new country. [18] This was not the Zionist party-line. Indeed it ran contrary to all their arguments in favour of a Jewish Homeland.

Weizmann was stunned, frozen in anger. Lansing stepped in to save the day. He asked for clarification about the correct meaning of a ‘Jewish national home.’ Weizmann prevaricated. The Zionists he said did not want to set up an autonomous Jewish government, merely set up, under a Mandate, an administration ‘not necessarily Jewish,’ to send 70-80,000 Jews per year into Palestine. That they would build up gradually a nationality that would be as Jewish as the French nation was French and the British nation, British.’ [19] This was a pivotal moment. Had Levi’s interpretation carried weight with the British and American delegates, who knows where history would have taken Palestine. What matters is that Levi was ignored; that Weizmann prevailed, thanks to a quick-witted American Secretary of State.

If the Zionist agenda later became self-evident and openly contentious, little attention has been paid to the J.P. Morgan/Warburg/Rockefeller/Wall Street assault on Versailles. What brought that legion of damned bankers to Paris? Their presence had the feel of an exclusive conference for sales executives, for in many ways that was their agenda. War was opportunity and so was its consequence. In America, the January 1919 Bankers Magazine reported a high level conference held in Atlantic City. Entitled, ‘A Reconstruction Congress’, it was spearheaded by Rockefeller Jnr., banker, William Cox Redfield (President Wilson’s Secretary of State for Commerce from 1913-1919) and James A. Farrell of the US Steel Corporation, part of the Morgan Empire. Rockefeller opened the Congress by stating: ‘Never was there such an opportunity as exists today for the industrial leader with clear vision … to establish a solid foundation for industrial prosperity’. [20] This prosperity was to be had on the back of reconstruction and reparation in Europe. The Reconstruction Congress stressed that ‘there seems no reason why enterprise should not move forward with confidence in the great work of reconstruction’. The market – place was the new world of post-war investment, reparations and reconstruction, but this new world order embraced its old world mentor as a partner.

In the same edition of Bankers Magazine, the US financial elites advocated the re-union of ‘the two great English-speaking countries of the world’ whose language, faith in democracy and concern for human liberty ‘derives from the same source.’ Put aside the grand lie of meaningful democracy and concern for humanity. These were the weasel-words behind which the Secret Elite had always protected themselves. One can almost hear Cecil Rhodes speaking. Magnanimously, the Americans accepted that Britain had spread civilisation; that differences between the English-speaking nations had become less marked and wider financial co-operation ‘will be welcome by the English bankers’. At which point the Bankers Magazine announced a new alliance: ‘The people of these two great English-speaking democracies have made their minds definitely to pull together hereafter – and no propaganda engendered either in hell or in Germany can change this purpose.’ [21]

And there it was. A statement from the heart of American banking that categorically announced the merger of Britain’s Secret Elite and the US Money power in a united design to ‘pull together hereafter’, for these were the people about whom the article was talking. Not ordinary people; powerful bankers and financiers. It was as if the birth of a new world order had been announced in their columns. It was to be a marriage of like purpose and all that remained to be ironed out were the pre-nuptial agreements. The Anglo-American establishment was to be in their joint control. What makes this all the more galling is the fact that in both Britain and America the ordinary man and woman was close to despair. High prices, low wages and industrial disputes became the order of the day. General strikes took place in Seattle and Winnipeg. [22] In Glasgow, troops from England had to be rushed into the fray carrying rifles with bayonets. Tanks were brought into the streets and union leaders beaten and thrown into prison. [23] The new Anglo-American establishment rose above such working-class protest. It always has.

1. Keynes, Dr. Melchior, p. 70.
2. J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 359.
3. The League of Nations came into being on 10 January 1920. It was the first international organisation which theoretically aimed to maintain world peace, prevent wars through collective security and disarmament. International disputes were to be solved through negotiation and arbitration. It failed because those who wielded real power ensured that it did not succeed..
4. Kathleen Burk, ‘Brand, Robert Henry, Baron Brand (1878–1963)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
5. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 168.
6. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0043.pdf
7. http://www.usmidtermelections.com/midterm_summary.php?year=1918_1918&chart…
8. Mujahid Kamran, The International Bankers, World Wars 1, II and Beyond, p. 146.
9. Ibid., p. 63.
10. Minutes of the Federal Reserve Board, 20 January 1919, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/historical/nara/bog_minutes/19190120_Minutes.pdf
11. See Chapter 17.
12. Manfred Pohl, Handbook on the History of European Banks, pp 84-5.
13. Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life, p. 529.
14. Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers, Six Months That Changed The World. p. 429.
15. FRUS vol. IV, p. 159.
16. Ibid., p. 165.
17. Ibid., p. 167.
18. Ibid., p. 168.
19. Ibid., p. 169.
20. The Bankers Magazine Vol. 49, No 1, January 1919, p. 8.
21. Ibid., p. 7.
22. https://libcom.org/history/1919-winnipeg-general-strike.
23. Chanie Rosenberg, http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr226/rosenberg.htm

War Without End 6: Fixing The Blame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War Without End 2: The Deadly Armistice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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