June 7, 2011

A Different View of World War I

Here follow some facts from WWI that provide a different picture of that war. 

The Beginning 

World War One, we are told, began with the killing of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, June 28 1914. He was shot by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist, whose motivation was that a part of Serbia belonged to Austro-Hungary. This is well-known. What is less known is that Princip did not act alone, but was part of a group called the Black Hand. He was not in Sarajevo on his own that day; he and his co-conspirators had been given guns, bullets, and been transported to the town by officers in the Serbian army. Austria did not know the exact details of the murder but it was generally (and correctly) assumed that Serbia's military was involved. Austria demanded that Serbia allow the Austrian army to enter the country and find the conspirators. When Serbia refused, Austria invaded.

At the time the world was divided by the Powers, those nations that had created large empires across the globe. It was common knowledge that a Power did not declare war on another for the sake of protecting a non-Power; if they had done so, there would have been constant war between these empires. Yet Britain and France used Serbia as an excuse for declaring war against Austria. The British people cared nothing for this far-away country in the violent Balkans; as one British newspaper put it, "If it would be possible to tow Serbia out to sea and sink it, the continent would be that much lighter." 

When Britain invaded the Dutch Boer lands in South Africa, acting on behalf of the (mostly Jewish) British diamond traders, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria did not declare war on Britain. This even though the war was unprovoked and brutal. The British were outclassed by the Boers, who were lighter armed but knew the terrain. The Boers introduced the camouflage uniform to warfare. The British introduced the concentration camp. The British-built concentration camps were used to contain the Boer population, causing the deaths of thousands.

Yet Germany did not declare war, because the Boers were not a Power, and Germany did not want a great war. Britain did want such a war. It had always been British policy to divide and conquer. Britain would always support the second-strongest nation in continental Europe against the strongest one, to make sure that no other nation could ever challenge Britain's strength. The British allied with Russia and Prussia against Napoleon, and later with France against Germany. Germany had become too strong and had too many allies. German culture, German philosophy, and the Germany economy dominated the continent, which British strategy would not allow.

Let it be said clearly: it was Britain, France and Russia that first declared war on Germany and Austria, not the other way around. And that is how WWI began.



The Funding of the War

Britain and France were unprepared financially for the war and soon found themselves running out of money. In 1915 they turned to two wealthy Jewish banking houses, Rothschild and Morgan. These began funding the two Powers with several million dollars a day, unfathomable sums in that era.



The British and French governments then chose these American-Jewish families as their primary purchasing agents. In just a few months, the House of Morgan was the primary financier and purchasing agent of the entire war effort. While maintaining that he was opposed to war, J.P. Morgan made a profit of $30,000,000 through his enterprises with Britain and France alone.

The Balfour Declaration

"Let me tell you the following words as if I were showing you the rings of a ladder leading upward and upward ... the Zionist Congress; the English Uganda proposition; the future World War; the Peace Conference where, with the help of England, a free and Jewish Palestine will be created."
--Max Nordau, 6th Zionist Congress in Balse, Switzerland, 1903

"We told the authorities in London; we shall be in Palestine whether you want us there or not. You may speed up or slow down our coming, but it would be better for you to help us, otherwise our constructive force will turn into a destructive one that will bring about ferment in the entire world."
--Judishe Rundschau, #4, 1920, Germany, by Chaim Weismann, a Zionist leader

Despite their new funding, the British side did not do well in this war. Russia's peasant armies were mowed down by German machine guns. The German army reached the gates of Paris, and the French had lost 600,000 young men at the battle of Verdun. 1/4 of ships leaving British ports in 1914-1918 were destroyed by the German Navy. British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour later said, "At that time, it certainly looked as though we were going to lose the war."

In 1916, two years after the war began, Germany offered peace. The peace offered was a "white peace," where all borders would go back to what they used to be. This despite the fact that Germany had conquered Poland, Belarus, Estonia and Ukraine from Russia, and a large part of France. Germany was prepared to give it all up. And the British government considered the offer seriously, knowing that their attack on Germany had failed and the British people were fed up with the fighting.

But at this point something strange happened. According to the Jewish industrialist Benjamin Freedman, the Zionist Movement now approached the British government with the offer to get the United States to join the war on Britain's side. Up until then most Jews had been pro-German, since Germany gave Jews unrestricted access to its financial and political life, and since the Jews hated the Czar, their old enemy. In fact, Germany was probably the most pro-Jewish country in Europe, while both France and Russia held considerable suspicion toward wealthy Jews.

But Britain was in a position to attack the Ottoman Empire, a German ally, and invade Palestine. According to Benjamin Freedman - who was present at the Versailles Conference as one of the delegates representing the Zionists (the only delegation that represented a race, not a nation) - a deal was struck. The Zionists would work on pushing America to join the war, and Britain would give the Zionists Palestine.

This was made official later in the Balfour Declaration, written in 1917. The Balfour Declaration explicitly states that Britain will hand over Palestine to the Zionists - despite the fact that Palestine belonged to another country. The United States had entered the war earlier the same year. The Balfour Declaration was drafted by Leopold Amery, a half-Jew on his father's side, although he kept his Jewishness secret.

Jews already held considerable media influence in the United States. It was no secret that J.P. Morgan held influence over a great majority of American media networks. American media worked heavily on maligning the Germans, called "Huns," and making Americans, who opposed the war, accept an attack on Germany. The British were called America's "cultural brothers" and the war was presented as one of democracy versus tyranny.


The Sinking of the Lusitania

The sinking of the BMR Lusitania in 1915 is a known cause célèbre for the American entrance in the war. The American public were told they could not stand by while Germans sank civilian British ships.

It has since then been revealed that the Lusitania did in fact carry munitions from Britain to the war on the continent, making it a legal target for the German military. Britain habitually transported civilians and munitions on the same ships, knowing that their sinking in a German attack could be used for propaganda purposes.

Anti-German Propaganda

The propaganda leveled at Germany by Britain and the U.S. was especially vicious. While German newspapers would at most draw cartoons to ridicule the enemy as silly, the British portrayed the Germans as brutal, blood-thirsty savages. The British military had a well-focused propaganda department with the sole purpose of maintaining this image. Germans were systematically called Huns and German soldiers were accused of killing babies with their bayonets.



The war was also presented as a way to defend American liberty. Supposedly Germany, representing all things evil, would attack America if not attacked first. A collection of posters presenting this case can be viewed here:




Starvation Campaign Against Germany

Britain blockaded Germany, not only preventing shipments relevant to the war effort, but also food. Professor H.D. Peterson writes in Propaganda and War that, “An estimated 763,000 Germans perished from undernourishment and illness on account of the (British) blockade.  The aforementioned were mainly children, women and the elderly – in other words, the weakest members of society.”

Charles Tansill writes in his minutely detailed book Backdoor to War, “Even after the signing of the armistice argreement on Nov. 11, 1918 the blockade of German was not lifted.  It continued for many months after the war during which time the Allied powers did not allow the delivery of foodstuffs to Germany.”

Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty wrote:  “We did everything in our power to starve woman and children in Germany.”

Winston Churchill, already an influential politician in 1919, said that, “Should Germany begin to trade in the next fifty years we will have fought the War for nothing.”

Altogether, Germany was forced to pay 226 billion Reichsmark to the victors. This compared to when France declared war on Prussia (1870-1871) with the Spanish succession as an excuse, and was forced to give up Elsass and Lothringen and pay 5 billion Reichsmark. When Germany could not pay the punitive sum – which everyone knew it couldn’t – France occupied the Ruhr and the Rhineland, to obtain control over German coal mines and minerals.