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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