The Hidden,
Awkward Origins Of World War 2
By Jason
Collett
The unexpected views of four key diplomats who were
close to events. Just consider the following:
Joseph
P. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Britain during the years immediately preceding
WW2 was the father of the famous American Kennedy dynasty. James Forrestal the
first US Secretary of Defence (1947-1949) quotes him as saying „Chamberlain
(the British Prime Minister) stated that America and the world Jews had forced
England into the war“. (The Forrestal Diaries ed. Millis, Cassell 1952 p.129).
Count
Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador in Washington, in a report to the Polish
Foreign Office in January 1939, is quoted approvingly by the highly respected
British military historian Major-General JFC Fuller. Concerning public opinion
in America he says „Above all, propaganda here is entirely in Jewish hands when
bearing public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people
have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe It is interesting
to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign no reference at all is
made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a
friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part
of the democratic group of countries Jewry was able not only to establish a
dangerous centre in the New World for the dissemination of hatred and enmity,
but it also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps President
Roosevelt has been given the power... to create huge reserves in armaments for
a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for.“ (Fuller, JFC: The
Decisive Battles of the Western World vol. 3 pp 372-374.)
Hugh
Wilson, the American Ambassador in Berlin until 1938, the year before the war
broke out, found anti-Semitism in Germany ‘understandable’. This was because
before the advent of the Nazis, „the stage, the press, medicine and law [were]
crowded with Jews among the few with money to splurge, a high proportion [were]
Jews the leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia, a movement desperately
feared in Germany, were Jews. One could feel the spreading resentment and
hatred.“ (Hugh Wilson: Diplomat between the Wars, Longmans 1941, quoted in
Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh, Hodder 1976).
Sir
Neville Henderson, British Ambassador in Berlin ‘said further that the hostile
attitude in Great Britain was the work of Jews and enemies of the Nazis, which
was what Hitler thought himself’ (Taylor, AJP: The Origins of the Second World
War Penguin 1965, 1987 etc. p 324).
Is
all of this merely attributable to terrible ‘anti-Semitism’?
The
economic background to the war is necessary for a fuller understanding, before
casting judgement on the originators of these viewpoints.
At
the end of the First World War, Germany was essentially tricked [see Paul
Johnson A History of the Modern World (1983) p24 and H. Nicholson Peace making
1919 (1933) pp13-16] into paying massive reparations to France and other
economic competitors and former belligerent countries in terms of the so-called
Treaty of Versailles, thanks to the liberal American President Woodrow Wilson.
Germany was declared to be solely responsible for the war, in spite of the fact
that ‘Germany did not plot a European war, did not want one, and made genuine
efforts, though too belated, to avert one.’ (Professor Sydney B Fay The Origins
of the World War (vol. 2 p 552)).
As
a result of these massive enforced financial reparations, by 1923 the situation
in Germany became desperate and inflation on an astronomical scale became the
only way out for the government. Printing presses were engaged to print money
around the clock. In 1921 the exchange rate was 75 marks to the dollar. By 1924
this had become about 5 trillion marks to the dollar. This virtually destroyed
the German middle class (Koestler The God that Failed p 28), reducing any bank
savings to a virtual zero.
According
to Sir Arthur Bryant the British historian (Unfinished Victory (1940 pp.
136-144):
‘It
was the Jews with their international affiliations and their hereditary flair
for finance who were best able to seize such opportunities... They did so with
such effect that, even in November 1938, after five years of anti-Semitic
legislation and persecution, they still owned, according to the Times
correspondent in Berlin, something like a third of the real property in the
Reich. Most of it came into their hands during the inflation.. But to those who
had lost their all this bewildering transfer seemed a monstrous injustice.
After prolonged sufferings they had now been deprived of their last possessions.
They saw them pass into the hands of strangers, many of whom had not shared
their sacrifices and who cared little or nothing for their national standards
and traditions. The Jews obtained a wonderful ascendancy in politics, business
and the learned professions (in spite of constituting) less than one percent of
the population.
The
banks, including the Reichsbank and the big private banks, were practically
controlled by them. So were the publishing trade, the cinema, the theatres and
a large part of the press all the normal means, in fact, by which public
opinion in a civilized country is formed.. The largest newspaper combine in the
country with a daily circulation of four millions was a Jewish monopoly.. Every
year it became harder and harder for a gentile to gain or keep a foothold in
any privileged occupation.. At this time it was not the ‘Aryans’ who exercised
racial discrimination. It was a discrimination that operated without violence.
It was exercised by a minority against a majority. There was no persecution,
only elimination.. It was the contrast between the wealth enjoyed and
lavishly displayed by aliens of cosmopolitan tastes, and the poverty and
misery of native Germans, that has made anti-Semitism so dangerous and ugly a
force in the new Europe. Beggars on horseback are seldom popular, least of all
with those whom they have just thrown out of the saddle.“
Goodness
gracious, Sir Arthur! What made you get out of the wrong side of the bed?
Strangely
enough, a book unexpectedly published by Princeton University Press in 1984,
Sarah Gordon (Hitler, Germans and the „Jewish Question“) essentially confirms
what Bryant says. According to her, ‘Jews were never a large percentage of the
total German population; at no time did they exceed 1% of the population during
the years 1871-1933.’ But she adds ‘Jews were over-represented in business,
commerce, and public and private service.. They were especially visible in
private banking in Berlin, which in 1923 had 150 private Jewish banks, as opposed
to only 11 private non-Jewish banks.. They owned 41% of iron and scrap iron
firms and 57% of other metal businesses.. Jews were very active in the stock
market, particularly in Berlin, where in 1928 they comprised 80% of the leading
members of the stock exchange. By 1933, when the Nazis began eliminating Jews
from prominent positions, 85% of the brokers on the Berlin Stock exchange were
dismissed because of their „race“.. At least a quarter of full professors and
instructors (at German universities) had Jewish origins.. In 1905-6 Jewish
students comprised 25% of the law and medical students.. In 1931, 50% of the
234 theatre directors in Germany were Jewish, and in Berlin the number was
80%.. In 1929 it was estimated that the per capita income of Jews in Berlin was
twice that of other Berlin residents..’ etc etc.
Arthur
Koestler confirms the Jewish over-involvement in German publishing. ‘Ullstein’s
was a kind of super-trust; the largest organization of its kind in Europe, and
probably In the world. They published four daily papers in Berlin alone, among
these the venerable Vossische Zeitung, founded in the eighteenth century, and
the B.Z. am Mittag, an evening paper.. Apart from these, Ullstein’s published
more than a dozen weekly and monthly periodicals, ran their own news service,
their own travel agency, etc., and were one of the leading book publishers. The
firm was owned by the brothers Ullstein - they were five, like the original
Rothschild brothers, and like them also, they were Jews.’ (The God that Failed
(1950) ed. RHS Crossman, p 31).
Edgar
Mowrer, Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, wrote an anti-German
tract called Germany Puts the Clock Back (published as a Penguin Special and
reprinted five times between December 1937 and April 1938). He nevertheless
notes ‘In the all-important administration of Prussia, any number of strategic
positions came into the hands of Hebrews.. A telephone conversation between
three Jews in Ministerial offices could result in the suspension of any periodical
or newspaper in the state.. The Jews came in Germany to play in politics and
administration that same considerable part that they had previously won by open
competition in business, trade, banking, the Press, the arts, the sciences and
the intellectual and cultural life of the country. And thereby the impression
was strengthened that Germany, a country with a mission of its own, had fallen
into the hands of foreigners.’
Mowrer
says ‘No one who lived through the period from 1919 to 1926 is likely to forget
the sexual promiscuity that prevailed.. Throughout a town like Berlin, hotels
and pensions made vast fortunes by letting rooms by the hour or day to
baggageless, unregistered guests. Hundreds of cabarets, pleasure resorts and
the like served for purposes of getting acquainted and acquiring the proper
mood..’ (pp. 153-4). Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutes outside the
doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. He adds ‘Most of them (the
night clubs and vice-resorts) were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the
Jews.. among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.’
(pp. 144-5).
Douglas
Reed, Chief Central European correspondent before WWII for the London Times,
was profoundly anti-German and anti-Hitler. But nevertheless he reported: ‘I
watched the Brown Shirts going from shop to shop with paint pots and daubing on
the window panes the word „Jew“, in dripping red letters. The Kurfürstendamm
was to me a revelation. I knew that Jews were prominent in business life, but I
did not know that they almost monopolized important branches of it. Germany had
one Jew to one hundred gentiles, said the statistics; but the fashionable
Kurfürstendamm, according to the dripping red legends, had about one gentile
shop to ninety-nine Jewish ones.’ (Reed Insanity Fair (1938) p. 152-3). In Reed’s
book Disgrace Abounding of the following year he notes ‘In the Berlin (of
pre-Hitler years) most of the theatres were Jewish-owned or Jewish-leased, most
of the leading film and stage actors were Jews, the plays performed were often
by German, Austrian or Hungarian Jews and were staged by Jewish film producers,
applauded by Jewish dramatic critics in Jewish newspapers.. The Jews are not
cleverer than the Gentiles, if by clever you mean good at their jobs. They
ruthlessly exploit the common feeling of Jews, first to get a foothold in a
particular trade or calling, then to squeeze the non-Jews out of it.. It is not
true that Jews are better journalists than Gentiles. They held all the posts on
those Berlin papers because the proprietors and editors were Jewish’ (pp238-9).
The
Jewish writer Edwin Black notes ‘For example, in Berlin alone, about 75% of the
attorneys and nearly as many of the doctors were Jewish.’ (Black,The Transfer
Agreement (1984) p58.
To
cap it all, Jews were perceived as dangerous enemies of Germany after Samuel
Untermeyer, the leader of the World Jewish Economic Federation, declared war on
Germany on August 6 1933. (Edwin Black The Transfer Agreement: the Untold Story
of the Secret Pact between the Third Reich and Palestine (1984) pp272-277)
According to Black, ‘The one man who most embodied the potential death blow to
Germany was Samuel Untermeyer.’ (p 369). This was the culmination of a
worldwide boycott of German goods led by international Jewish organizations.
The London Daily Express on March 24, 1933 carried the headline Judea Declares
War on Germany. The boycott was particularly motivated by the German imposition
of the Nuremberg Laws, which ironically were similar in intent and content to
the Jewish cultural exclusivism practiced so visibly in present-day Israel
(Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem p 7).
Hitler
saw the tremendous danger posed to Germany by Communism. He appreciated the
desperate need to eliminate this threat, a fact that earned him the immense
hatred and animosity of the Jewish organisations and the media and politicians
of the west which they could influence. After all, according to the Jewish
writer Chaim Bermant, although Jews formed less than five percent of Russia’s
population, they formed more than fifty percent of its revolutionaries.
According to the Jewish writer Chaim Bermant in his book The Jews (1977,
chapter 8):
‘It
must be added that most of the leading revolutionaries who convulsed Europe in
the final decades of the last century and the first decades of this one,
stemmed from prosperous Jewish families.. They were perhaps typified by the
father of revolution, Karl Marx.. Thus when, after the chaos of World War I,
revolutions broke out all over Europe, Jews were everywhere at the helm;
Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kamenev and Zinoviev in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, Kurt
Eisner in Bavaria, and, most improbable of all, Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin.
‘To
many outside observers, the Russian revolution looked like a Jewish conspiracy,
especially when it was followed by Jewish-led revolutionary outbreaks in much
of central Europe. The leadership of the Bolshevik Party had a preponderance of
Jews.. Of the seven members of the Politburo, the inner cabinet of the country,
four, Trotsky (Bronstein), Zinoviev (Radomsky), Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and
Sverdlov, were Jews.’ Other authors agree with this:
„There
has been a tendency to circumvent or simply ignore the significant role of
Jewish intellectuals in the German Communist Party, and thereby seriously
neglect one of the genuine and objective reasons for increased anti-Semitism
during and after World War 1.. The prominence of Jews in the revolution and
early Weimar Republic is indisputable, and this was a very serious contributing
cause for increased anti-Semitism in post-war years.. It is clear then that the
stereotype of Jews as socialists and communists... led many Germans to distrust
the Jewish minority as a whole and to brand Jews as enemies of the German
nation.“ (Sarah Gordon Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’ Princeton
University Press (1984) p 23).
„The
second paroxysm of strong anti-Semitism came after the critical role of Jews in
International Communism and the Russian Revolution and during the economic
crises of the 1920s and 30s Anti-Semitism intensified throughout Europe and
North America following the perceived and actual centrality of Jews in the
Russian Revolution.. Such feelings were not restricted to Germany, or to vulgar
extremists like the Nazis. All over Northern Europe and North America,
anti-Semitism became the norm in ‘nice society’, and ‘nice society’ included
the universities.“ (Martin Bernal, Black Athenavol. 1 pp. 367, 387).
„The
major role Jewish leaders played in the November (Russian) revolution was
probably more important than any other factor in confirming (Hitler’s)
anti-Semitic beliefs.“ (J&S Pool, Who Financed Hitler, p.164).
Hitler
came to power in Germany with two main aims, the rectification of the unjust
provisions of the Versailles Treaty, and the destruction of the Soviet/
Communist threat to Germany. Strangely enough, contrary to the mythology
created by those who had an opposing ethnic agenda, he had no plans or desire
for a larger war of conquest. Professor AJP Taylor showed this in his book The
Origins of the Second World War, to the disappointment of the professional
western political establishment. Taylor says, „The state of German armament in
1939 gives the decisive proof that Hitler was not contemplating general war,
and probably not intending war at all“ (p.267), and „Even in 1939 the German
army was not equipped for a prolonged war; and in 1940 the German land forces
were inferior to the French in everything except leadership“ (p104-5). What
occurred in Europe in 1939-41 was the result of unforeseen weaknesses and a
tipping of the balance of power, and Hitler was an opportunist ‘who took
advantages whenever they offered themselves’ (Taylor). Britain and France
declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Hitler wanted peace with
Britain, as the German generals admitted (Basil Liddell Hart, The Other Side of
the Hill 1948, Pan Books 1983) with regard to the so-called Halt Order at
Dunkirk, where Hitler had the opportunity to capture the entire British Army,
but chose not to. Liddell Hart, one of Britain’s most respected military
historians, quotes the German General von Blumentritt with regard to this Halt
Order:
„He
(Hitler) then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire,
of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilisation that Britain had
brought into the world. He remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the
creation of its Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but ‘where
there is planning, there are shavings flying’. He compared the British Empire
with the Catholic Church saying they were both essential elements of
stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she
should acknowledge Germany’s position on the Continent. The return of Germany’s
colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to
support Britain with troops if she should be involved in difficulties
anywhere..“ (p 200).
According
to Liddell Hart, „At the time we believed that the repulse of the Luftwaffe in
the ‘Battle over Britain’ had saved her. That is only part of the explanation,
the last part of it. The original cause, which goes much deeper, is that Hitler
did not want to conquer England. He took little interest in the invasion
preparations, and for weeks did nothing to spur them on; then, after a brief
impulse to invade, he veered around again and suspended the preparations. He
was preparing, instead, to invade Russia“ (p140).
David
Irving in the foreword to his book The Warpath (1978) refers to „the discovery...
that at no time did this man (Hitler) pose or intend a real threat to Britain
or the Empire.“
This
gives a completely different complexion, not only to the war, but to the
successful suppression of this information during the war and afterwards.
Historians today know only too well where the boundaries lie within which they
can paint their pictures of the war and its aftermath, and the consequences of
venturing beyond those boundaries, irrespective of the evidence. Unfortunately,
only too few of them have been prepared to have the courage to break out of
this dreadful straitjacket of official and unofficial censorship.
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