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Post by justjohn on Mar 3, 2012 16:25:36 GMT -7
Dirty Little Secrets Of WWII The Hidden, Awkward Origins Of World War 2 By Jason Collett 9-6-10 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 Defense (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 p129). 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 handswhen 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 campsPresident 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 Jewsamong the few with money to splurge, a high proportion [were] Jewsthe 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 Nevile 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 NicholsonPeacemaking 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 bookDisgrace 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 ArendtEichmann 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 planing, 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 tospur 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. E-mail comment received: I worked and studied in Berlin for three years, have an MA in International Relations and a BA in Government with a minor in History. I am embarrassed to say that until I read this article, I had no idea of the scope and cause for the anti-Semitism in Germany before WWII. The Halt Order at Dunkirk was never mentioned in my studies, nor was the ownership of the media, banks and businesses. Thank you for the excellent article. It certainly gives me a new perspective. I have always questioned the actual numbers of Jewish victims of the concentration camps, as the numbers didn't make sense based upon Germany's population. Perhaps it was fear of failing or being labeled an anti-Semite by my history professors (all but two were Jewish) and classmates that I refrained from demanding an honest discussion during my classes. I once said that the only reason Israel existed was out of Holocaust guilt, and I was immediately labeled a terrorist sympathizer. I see what is now happening in Israel and I am aghast. The parallels to WW II are frightening. Even today, one cannot bring up this subject without being labeled a Holocaust denier or white supremacist. Thanks again for an excellent article. I am forwarding it to several friends. JBP
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Post by justjohn on Mar 4, 2012 11:39:52 GMT -7
"The Soviet Story" is a unique first time documentary film by director Edvins Snore. The film tells the story of the Soviet regime and how the Soviet Union helped Nazi Germany instigate the Holocaust. The film shows recently uncovered archive documents revealing this. Interviews with former Soviet Military intelligence officials reveal shocking details. "The Soviet Story" was filmed over 2 years in Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, France, UK and Belgium. Material for the documentary was collected by the author, Edvins Snore, for more than 10 years. As a result, "The Soviet Story" presents a truly unique insight into recent Soviet history, told by people, once Soviet citizens, who have first-hand knowledge of it.
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Post by justjohn on Mar 7, 2012 7:49:01 GMT -7
Christian Science Monitor
The Vietnam history you haven't heard
By Mark Moyar / January 22, 2007 QUANTICO, VA.
With ever-increasing frequency, Americans are told that Iraq is another Vietnam, usually by those accusing the Bush administration of miring the United States in a hopeless war. For most who make this comparison, the Vietnam War was an act of hubris, fought for no good reason and in alliance with cowards. But new historical research shows this conventional interpretation of Vietnam to be deeply flawed. The analogy, therefore, must be rethought. Three journalists handed down the standard version of the Vietnam War in three bestselling tomes. The first two, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" (1972) and Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," (1983) each sold more than 1 million copies, while the third, Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" (1988), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
These books have profoundly influenced almost everything else that has been written about the Vietnam War. Because of the iconic status of these journalists and the political inclinations of the intelligentsia, the three books received few serious challenges – prior to the publication last summer of my "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."
Historians such as Guenter Lewy, Lewis Sorley, and Michael Lind have also effectively contested some of the journalists' basic interpretations, and antiwar historians have produced more modest modifications, but the Halberstam-Sheehan-Karnow rendition of the war has remained dominant.
One reason for the durability of their version is that the endless repetition by other commentators produced the impression that it had to be right. Earlier, when writing a book on counterinsurgency in the latter years of the war entitled "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey," I, too, presumed that the first half of the war had been covered exhaustively. Only after many subsequent forays into archives and Vietnamese-language sources did I discover that the standard narrative of the critical early years was terribly wrong.
The books of Messrs. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow can be fully understood only in the light of the authors' actions in Vietnam during 1962 and 1963. Their writings were key elements in the drama, particularly in the summer and fall of 1963 when the US Embassy instigated a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
Undermining South Vietnam's leader
During 1963, in contrast to later years, the American press corps largely favored American involvement in Vietnam. Many also believed, however, that the South Vietnamese president had to be replaced before the war could be won. Perhaps not fully aware of cultural differences, they faulted Mr. Diem for refusing to afford dissidents – and US reporters – the same freedoms they enjoyed in peacetime America.
Diem mishandled the Buddhist protests of mid-1963, they contended, by using a heavy hand instead of offering concessions. In truth, Diem did make concessions initially, but the Buddhists responded by accelerating their protests, enumerating more fictitious grievances, and demanding Diem's removal. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow largely dismissed Diem's contention that the Buddhists were infiltrated with Communist agents, yet newly available Communist sources reveal that Diem was correct.
The Buddhists' unopposed insolence in the summer of 1963 undermined the Diem government's prestige, something no Vietnamese government could afford for long. Eventually, Diem's generals recommended that the government arrest the Buddhist movement's leaders and disperse the other protesters in order to restore its prestige. Diem consented and worked together with generals in executing the mission.
But then Halberstam and Sheehan published tendentious stories accusing Diem of acting without the knowledge of the military, citing "highly reliable" – but anonymous – sources. They also published stories stating that the officer corps was upset with Diem for his treatment of the Buddhists, based heavily on information from a Reuters stringer named Pham Xuan An who, unbeknownst to them, was actually a Communist agent. The stories were not true. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow would play crucial roles in events that fomented the coup that removed Diem on Nov. 1, 1963. Their anti-Diem information, much of it from ill-informed or agenda-driven sources, gave Diem's opponents in the US government the reasons they needed to remove what they considered to be an ineffective allied government. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge accepted their reports, spurring him to incite the coup.
Because the war went very poorly for the South Vietnamese after Diem's overthrow and assassination, the three journalists soon faced accusations that they had helped wreck the South Vietnamese government. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow skillfully produced a defense, one they have maintained to this day.
By taking a few pieces of evidence out of context, they asserted that the South Vietnamese war effort had been wrecked before Diem's death rather than after it, something that they had not claimed at the time. They were thus able to convince the American people that Diem had ruined the country and that the press had been right in denouncing him.
A multitude of previously untapped American and Vietnamese Communist sources show that the South Vietnamese war effort actually was thriving until the very end of Diem's life. Diem's armed forces hurt the Communists far more seriously than Americans have been led to believe. So, too, did his poorly understood "strategic hamlets," fortified South Vietnamese communities stocked with government cadres and militiamen.
When the war became unpopular in America during the late 1960s, Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow stopped expressing support for the US defense of South Vietnam. They ridiculed the principal American rationale for war – the so-called domino theory, which predicted that the fall of South Vietnam would lead to the fall of the other countries in the region. When many of the dominoes did not fall after South Vietnam fell in 1975, they held it up as proof that they were right.
The balance of power in Asia
Implicit in their argument was the assumption that Asia's international politics were essentially frozen in time between US intervention in 1965 and the end of the war in 1975. But the policies and capabilities of China and many of the region's other countries changed dramatically during that decade, and in considerable measure as a result of American intervention in Vietnam.
A variety of old and new sources from the communist side confirm what most Southeast Asian leaders knew then: In 1965, China and North Vietnam firmly intended to collaborate in knocking over the dominoes once they finished off South Vietnam – an ambition they no longer had in 1975.
The military leaders of Indonesia, the most important Southeast Asian domino, informed the US in February 1965 that their future willingness to stand up to the pro-Communist President Sukarno and the massive Indonesian Communist Party would depend upon America's actions in Vietnam.
"President Johnson should learn to use his power and should hit North Vietnam hard," said General Marjadi in explaining why American inaction was discouraging the generals from taking a firm anticommunist position. "The prize for victory in Vietnam is all of Asia. Asia respects power, and has no respect for weakness or for strong people afraid to act." Indonesian generals later said that US intervention inspired them to oust Sukarno and work to destroy the Indonesian Communist Party in late 1965.
These are just a few of the numerous cases where the writings of Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow got it wrong. The record shows they were wrong, as well, to portray North Vietnam's revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh, as a xenophobic nationalist who put national interests ahead of global communism's interests. They were wrong to accuse America's military leaders of employing faulty military tactics. And they were wrong to claim that the US could not have won the war.
So, has Iraq become another Vietnam? For all the apparent similarities – and differences – it is much too early to tell. For all the books on the Iraq war, many critical facts are not yet known. As with Vietnam, it may take 40 years or more to uncover them. Most important, we do not yet know how Iraq will end. Ultimately, it was the contest of wills – not predestination – that determined the outcome of the Vietnam War. A similar contest will determine whether Iraq is one day remembered as another Vietnam.
• Mark Moyar is the author of "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."
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Post by justjohn on Mar 9, 2012 4:26:37 GMT -7
STEALING A NATION (John Pilger, 2004) is an extraordinary film about the plight of people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - secretly and brutally expelled from their homeland by British governments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to make way for an American military base. The base, on the main island of Diego Garcia, was a launch pad for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Stealing a Nation has won both the Royal Television Society's top award as Britain's best documentary in 2004-5, and a 'Chris Award' at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival. A brochure of the film is available at www.bullfrogfilms.com/guides/stealguide.pdf. On April 8, 2008, the Chagos Islanders have launched a national Campaign for Resettlement of their islands - go to www.letthemreturn.com
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Post by justjohn on Mar 10, 2012 5:37:36 GMT -7
Forrestal Ignored: China Lost to Reds, Korean War Fought
The following account is from the anonymous author, “Cornell Simpson,” published in his little-known and little-read 1966 book, The Death of James Forrestal. I had previously reported—upon what I thought was good authority—that “Simpson” was Medford Evans. I have since been informed, as one can read in “News from the Mail Bag,” that he was probably someone else. Whoever he was, the more I have learned since encountering his book some years ago the more appreciation I have gained for his perspicacity and for the general accuracy of his observations. Here we let him speak for himself from pp. 54-56, supplying our own links as deemed appropriate:
As secretary of the navy, Forrestal had originated a plan to end the war with Japan five and a half months before V-J Day finally dawned. He had mapped this plan on the basis of massive intelligence information obtained on and prior to March 1, 1945, to the effect that the Japanese were already desperately anxious to surrender and the fact that the Japanese emperor had even asked the pope to act as peace mediator. If Roosevelt had acted on Forrestal’s plan, the war would have ground to a halt in a few days. A-bombs would never have incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thousands of Americans would not have died in the unnecessary battle of Okinawa and later bloody encounters, and the Russians would not have had a chance to muscle into the Pacific war for the last six of its 1,347 days, thus giving Washington the pretext for handing them the key to the conquest of all Asia.
The last point, of course, is why the fellow travelers hurriedly persuaded FDR to reject Forrestal’s plan, and why they saw to it that the American people heard nothing about this chance to save untold numbers of American lives. (These facts have since been corroborated by Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, deputy director of U.S. naval intelligence during World War II, and by top Japanese political leaders.)
In May, another move to end the Pacific war was similarly scuttled. The very same month that Germany surrendered, Truman approved a peace ultimatum to Japan, subject to endorsement by the military. But on May 29 General [George C.] Marshall rejected it as “premature.”
Significantly, on the day before, Harry Hopkins had conferred with Stalin in Moscow and urgently cabled Washington that the Red army would not be “properly deployed on the Manchurian positions” until August 8. This meant that since Russia had to make the gesture of entering the war in order to receive the territories promised her at Yalta, Stalin did not want the United States to make peace with Japan until after August 8. There was no other reason for prolonging the war.
Had it not been for Marshall’s veto of the peace ultimatum (eventually given Japan on July 27), the war probably would have ended by mid-June instead of mid-August; and the U.S. and Chinese Nationalist troops, instead of the Red army, would have accepted the surrender of Japan’s Kwantung army. In that case the Yenan Reds would not have gotten the Mukden arsenal and Manchuria’s industries and railroads, which enormously helped them to conquer all of China; our War Department (Marshall) would not have had occasion to partition Korea with the Communists at the thirty-eighth parallel; and there would have been no Korean War.
By delaying our “peace offensive” against Japan, Marshall prolonged the Pacific war two months until the Red army could be wheeled into position to reap the spoils of victory!*
At the end of July Forrestal once more tried to halt the Pacific slaughter. This time he considered the situation so critical that he made an eleventh-hour flight to the Potsdam conference in Berlin. He was determined to warn Truman that it would be a calamity to bribe Russia to enter the Pacific war, and that insisting on a harsh and needless unconditional surrender would merely prolong the carnage. His dramatic flight had been inspired by a talk on July 6 with Undersecretary of State Joseph C. Grew, Forrestal noted in The Forrestal Diaries (pp. 73-74),
…expressed satisfaction that we had finally whipped into shape the draft of the proposed message to the Japanese by the President, the aim of which is to make more specific what we mean by the phrase “unconditional surrender.” He said, however, he was afraid it would be ditched on the way over [to the Potsdam Conference] by people who accompany the President—[Charles] Bohlen among others—who reflect the view that we cannot afford to hold out any clarification of terms to Japan which could be construed as a desire to get the Japanese war over with before Russia has an opportunity to enter.
Evidently Grew’s suspicions were well founded. Forrestal reached Berlin too late; the Potsdam ultimatum had been given to Japan as his plane was leaving Washington.
Many of Simpson’s observations look better and better with the passage of time and the accumulation of more information. His take on J. Robert Oppenheimer and, of course, on Forrestal’s death and the likely laundering of his diaries by the White House are particularly good cases in point. I think I’ll have to do a bit more digging into this rare little 186-page book.
David Martin
May 30, 2011
Addendum
James Forrestal eventually did manage to save untold numbers of lives when he later gave advice to President Truman that was not ignored. That came in the wake of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The common belief is that the dropping of the bombs themselves ended the war. It did not. The bomb on Hiroshima on August 5, 1945, produced no response from the Japanese. The second bomb was then dropped on Nagasaki on August 9.
The following passages are from Mr. Truman’s War by J. Robert Moskin (1996) pp. 311-313:
At 7:33 A.M. the next day, August 10, in Washington, U.S. monitors picked up a shortwave message from Radio Tokyo addressed to the Swiss and Swedish governments for transmission to the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union. The message said that at the command of His Majesty the Emperor and in the cause of peace, the Japanese government was ready to accept the terms of the joint declaration of July 26 (Potsdam Declaration – ed.) “with the understanding that said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.”
In short, the old sticking point remained. The Japanese still did not surrender unconditionally and therefore they did not accept the Potsdam Declaration in its entirety. To be sure there were important advisers within the administration who wanted to take this offer, but they were mainly the same ones who had argued against the “unconditional surrender” demand before the bombs were dropped.
[And] strong voices…spoke against acceptance. Not only many leaders but the vast majority of the American people wanted retribution and vengeance after the long, bloody, brutal war, and these voters had the power, if they wished, to make politicians who permitted the Emperor to stay pay a high political price at home.
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[Secretary of State James F.] Byrnes strongly opposed [acceptance]. He held out for strict unconditional surrender. Why, he asked, accept less than we had demanded at Potsdam before we had the atomic bomb and before the Soviet Union was in the war? “I do not see why we should retreat from our demand for unconditional surrender,” he said, “If any conditions are to be accepted, I want the United States and not Japan to state the conditions.”
Navy Secretary Forrestal came up with a shrewd and simple solution: Accept the offer and declare that it accomplishes what the Potsdam Declaration demanded. Say that the Emperor and the Japanese government will rule subject to the orders of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. This would imply recognition of the Emperor while tending to neutralize American public passions against the Emperor. Truman liked this. It would be close enough to “unconditional.”
And so it was done, and smoothly sold to the war-weary American people. Moskin would not dare utter the thought, but this was essentially the same course that Forrestal had been urging all along, and what was “close enough to unconditional” after the dropping of the bombs and after the bloody battle of Okinawa should have been close enough to unconditional before those tragic events. At least Truman did finally see the light, and unimaginable additional carnage—The dropping of more A-bombs? The invasion of the main Japanese islands?—was averted.
David Martin
March 5, 2012
*Concerning Marshall, on page 85, Simpson presents an important indicator that Forrestal’s diaries, which were confiscated by the Truman White House, were severely edited before being released:
Perhaps the most important single omission from the published diaries concerned Forrestal's perpetual antagonist General George Catlett Marshall. It should be remembered that Marshall opposed virtually every anti-Communist measure preposed [sic] by Forrestal or anyone else, and that Marshall's own record was that of a long series of acts consistently beneficial to Soviet Russia and harmful to the United States. Yet Forrestal's published diaries contained no criticism of Marshall. In fact, [diary editor Walter] Millis claimed in the part of the book he himself wrote that though Forrestal had "occasional" differences with the general, "he greatly admired and respected" Marshall.
There is considerable evidence that Forrestal's original diaries contained a great deal of caustic criticism and highly derogatory information on Marshall—information which would have dealt a real setback to both Marshall and his pro-Communist friends if it had reached the American people.
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Post by justjohn on Mar 11, 2012 4:26:12 GMT -7
WASHINGTON, March 7—Under question from Sen. Sessions at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey indicated that "international permission," rather than Congressional approval, provided a 'legal basis' for military action by the United States.
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Post by justjohn on Mar 12, 2012 6:45:01 GMT -7
BBC News Magazine
12 March 2012 Last updated at 06:04 ET
The stabbed governor of Sarawak
By Mike Thomson BBC Radio 4
Previously secret documents show British officials covered up evidence about the assassination of a colonial governor in East Asia after World War II, fearing the truth might spark a war. But this, it seems, left an unjust stain on the reputation of a British man from a family of so-called White Rajahs.
In December 1949 the new governor of the recently acquired British colony of Sarawak was on his first official tour. Among Scotsman Duncan Stewart's previous postings was Palestine - one of the most dangerous in the world at that time. After that, it was thought he would have little to fear in the comparatively sleepy backwater of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo.
After a couple of weeks in the job, he went to the town of Sibu on his first official visit. He was welcomed warmly by a large crowd, who all seemed to be enjoying themselves, according to press reports of the day.
After inspecting a guard of honour, he walked on flanked by a gaggle of excited school children. Then a youth walked towards Governor Stewart holding a camera and asked to take his photo. As his Majesty's representative prepared to pose, another youth stabbed him.
Officials quickly grabbed the two youths and arrested them.
Despite suffering a deep stab wound, Governor Stewart is reported to have carried on for a while, as if the murderous assault hadn't happened. But when blood began to seep through his starched white uniform he was rushed away for treatment. He died a few days later, after being flown to a hospital in Singapore.
Two local Malay youths, Rosli bin Dobi and Moshidi bin Sedek, were tried for murder and later hanged. Both were thought to be members of a group dedicated to restoring Anthony Brooke, heir-elect of a British family of so-called White Rajahs, to the throne of Sarawak. The "anti-cession" movement objected to the decision to cede Sarawak to the British.
The Brookes had ruled this northern slice of the island of Borneo since the mid-19th Century. It had been given to Anthony's Great Great Uncle James by the then Sultan of Brunei, after the Victorian adventurer had quelled a revolt for him.
It was then run as a virtually independent and apparently benevolent kingdom by the Brooke family. The interests of the varied local tribal groups were, it seems, well protected by the Brookes as commercial pressures grew following an influx of investors and businessmen.
But, finally, in July 1946, Sarawak became Britain's last colonial acquisition. It was handed over to the British crown by Anthony Brooke's uncle, Charles Vyner Brooke, in exchange for a £200,000 pay-off.
But Anthony Brooke, who had been expected to take over as White Rajah of Sarawak, was not happy about this.
Neither were many locals. Even though his family were as British as the new colonial masters, they had become part of the local fabric, unlike the pith-helmeted rulers from far away.
Numerous anti-cession protests were held. Placards called for a return to White Rajah rule led by Anthony Brooke.
So when the British governor was killed, suspicions naturally fell on him as the leader and focus of the anti-cession movement. Was he involved in the assassination plot as part of his bid to win back power? British officials left that looking a distinct possibility - but they knew more than they let on.
"That's not what the British government believes at all," says historian Simon Ball, of Glasgow University, who has extensively researched the case.
Indeed, evidence shows the ringleaders of the assassination plot were not acting for Anthony Brooke, nor did they have any intention of returning him to power. Instead, in a letter discovered by Professor Ball, written by one co-conspirator to the other, they make clear their intentions of helping neighbouring Indonesia to take over British Sarawak.
"What they want is freedom as part of Indonesia. So this is the underlying political motive for the killing. It's not to support [Anthony] Brooke."
The British it seems, feared that to confront Indonesia with its involvement in such a plot might spark an unwelcome conflict. The newly independent nation had just driven out Dutch colonial troops by force, and the UK already had its hands full dealing with insurrection in British-run Malaysia to the north-west.
So they decided to keep quiet about the fact that this had little to do with Brooke's supporters and a lot to do with an anti-colonial independence movement. In a letter marked "confidential", John Higham of the Colonial Office wrote to a colleague in the Foreign Office. "We have now come to the very definite conclusion that the publication of the correspondence would be dangerous and that it would be undesirable to show it to Anthony Brooke."
The Superintendent of the local Special Branch wrote two weeks later: "There is no evidence or suspicion that AB [Anthony Brooke] knew of the intention to assassinate H.E. [His Excellency] The Governor."
But despite all this, the finger of blame for the death of Governor Duncan Stewart was left pointing at Anthony Brooke, who was never officially told that his anti-cession campaign had little to do with the assassination.
A year later he formerly gave up his claim to the Sarawak throne and travelled the world as a self-appointed peace ambassador, before settling in rural New Zealand where he died, aged 98, last year. His grandson, Jason Brooke, says it is distressing that his grandfather went to his grave not knowing the truth.
"I think it was very, very difficult for Anthony, the way he was landed with these… more than implications, almost accusations, of having at least a moral responsibility for what had happened to Duncan Stewart. It's sad, but that's history."
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Post by kaima on Mar 13, 2012 8:06:36 GMT -7
Mercedes tarnishes image
An apparent attempt to spruce up Daimler's online image has turned into an embarrassment for the German carmaker, after it was discovered that someone using a company computer had edited its Wikipedia page. The firm insists it was an employee acting alone, but it's not the first time a Daimler IP address has been used to massage the page. Info
With some 40 million clicks every day, the German-language Wikipedia is a force to be reckoned with. For PR companies and firms seeking to polish their online image, the temptation to anonymously tinker with an article on the online encyclopedia may prove hard to resist.
Anyone making changes to a Wikipedia article can either register by name or under a pseudonym -- or they can opt not to identify themselves. This openness is one of Wikipedia's underlying principles. However, there is one way of getting information on who is making anonymous changes: by establishing the IP address of the server they use.
On Feb. 22, a section of the Wikipedia article on the German car company Daimler entitled "Lobbying" was deleted by someone at the IP address 141.113.85.93. It would have been a fairly routine edit -- had the IP address not belonged to one of Daimler's servers.
The deleted passage, which was based on articles from the website of the German TV news show Tagesschau and the daily newspaper Die Welt, related that in 2007 Daimler-Benz, along with BMW and Porsche, was awarded the online "Worst EU Lobbying Award" for "the dilution and delay of binding CO2 reduction targets." The Wikipedia article went on to explain that a "high ranking DaimlerChrysler employee" worked in the German Transport Ministry while it was drawing up plans for the multi-billion German truck toll system. The deleted texts were, however, restored by a Wikipedia user with the username "Inkowik," a common occurrence at the online encyclopedia where active users police the site to ensure that it is not manipulated to serve vested interests.
Respecting Privacy
Daimler spokesman Florian Martens stressed that there had not been an order "on behalf of Daimler AG" to erase the text. "It clearly involved independent, personal changes by employees," said Martens. Supporting his explanation is the fact that the user from the Daimler IP address also edited German-language articles on "Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden" and "muesli" at around the same time. A day before the controversial edit, the user also joined in online discussions about the articles on "Jehovah's Witnesses" and "Raymond Victor Franz," a prominent Jehovah's Witness.
Out of respect for privacy, Martens said they would not try and identify which employee was responsible for the edit. Even though Daimler has a company policy that staff should consult the communications department before making any kind of publication, Martens sees "no reason" to prohibit employees' use of social media sites, including Wikipedia.
This stance comes across as unusually laissez-faire. Regardless of whether the edit was requested by the company, the anonymous Wikipedia editor clearly broke the company's in-house social media guide. Point 8 of these rules states: "If you actively represent Daimler or its interests on the Internet, be clear about it! You can ensure transparency, for example, by adding a disclaimer to your post such as: 'I am a Daimler employee and am stating my own opinion here.'"
'Daimler Should Investigate'
Ulrich Müller heads the organization Lobby Control which is one of the organizers of the "Worst EU Lobbying Award." He remains unconvinced by Daimler's explanation. He says he finds it "problematic" when "information on Wikipedia which is critical about Daimler is deleted using Daimler computers." Daimler, he says, should investigate and "work to ensure that such actions do not happen again in the future."
But research conducted by SPIEGEL ONLINE reveals that the Stuttgart-based company has a history of editing unflattering information on Wikipedia. Someone using the IP address 141.113.100.23, which also belongs to Daimler, made a total of 24 changes to the Wikipedia article on Daimler back in 2005 and 2006. Some of the edits targeted information relating to the firm's relationship with the Nazi regime. The user erased passages relating that, during World War II, "prisoners of war and slave laborers worked at a facility" built by Daimler-Benz in Ludwigsfelde, classified at the time as a "model National Socialist company," building aircraft engines. Also deleted was the information that a satellite camp of Ravensbrück concentration camp "existed" in the facility's Deutschlandhalle ("Germany Hall") toward the end of the war, and that "1,100 female concentration camp prisoners were forced to labor" in the aircraft engine plant. A similar passage in the section about a factory in Berlin's Marienfelde district was also deleted.
Image Management
Daimler confirmed the factual accuracy of these passages, but insisted it had not ordered the deletions. Company spokesman Martens said that they would only edit a Wikipedia article if someone "explicitly pointed out factual errors."
Martens also explained that the company's communication department had had a full-time social media manager since the beginning of 2007, who dealt with questions regarding Wikipedia, among other issues. In the past, Daimler has been active on Wikipedia using the user account "Daimler Corp. Communications."
There is a history of companies tweaking their Wikipedia entries. An IP address linked to energy firm RWE AG was used to make changes to an article on the decommissioned German nuclear power station Biblis, which was closed down last year in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. The edit described Biblis as "a milestone in terms of safety."
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Post by kaima on Mar 14, 2012 0:07:06 GMT -7
Capitalism, Version 2012 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: March 13, 2012
David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy magazine, has a smart new book out, entitled “Power, Inc.,” about the epic rivalry between big business and government that captures, in many ways, what the 2012 election should be about — and it’s not “contraception,” although the word does begin with a “C.” It’s the future of “capitalism” and whether it will be shaped in America or somewhere else. Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman Go to Columnist Page » Related Video America’s Future Readers’ Comments
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Rothkopf argues that while for much of the 20th century the great struggle on the world stage was between capitalism and communism, which capitalism won, the great struggle in the 21st century will be about which version of capitalism will win, which one will prove the most effective at generating growth and become the most emulated.
“Will it be Beijing’s capitalism with Chinese characteristics?” asks Rothkopf. “Will it be the democratic development capitalism of India and Brazil? Will it be entrepreneurial small-state capitalism of Singapore and Israel? Will it be European safety-net capitalism? Or will it be American capitalism?” It is an intriguing question, which raises another: What is American capitalism today, and what will enable it to thrive in the 21st century?
Rothkopf’s view, which I share, is that the thing others have most admired and tried to emulate about American capitalism is precisely what we’ve been ignoring: America’s success for over 200 years was largely due to its healthy, balanced public-private partnership — where government provided the institutions, rules, safety nets, education, research and infrastructure to empower the private sector to innovate, invest and take the risks that promote growth and jobs.
When the private sector overwhelms the public, you get the 2008 subprime crisis. When the public overwhelms the private, you get choking regulations. You need a balance, which is why we have to get past this cartoonish “argument that the choice is either all government or all the market,” argues Rothkopf. The lesson of history, he adds, is that capitalism thrives best when you have this balance, and “when you lose the balance, you get in trouble.”
For that reason, the ideal 2012 election would be one that offered the public competing conservative and liberal versions of the key grand bargains, the key balances, that America needs to forge to adapt its capitalism to this century.
The first is a grand bargain to fix our long-term structural deficit by phasing in $1 in tax increases, via tax reform, for every $3 to $4 in cuts to entitlements and defense over the next decade. If the Republican Party continues to take the view that there must be no tax increases, we’re stuck. Capitalism can’t work without safety nets or fiscal prudence, and we need both in a sustainable balance.
As part of this, we will need an intergenerational grand bargain so we don’t end up in an intergenerational civil war. We need a proper balance between government spending on nursing homes and nursery schools — on the last six months of life and the first six months of life.
Another grand bargain we need is between the environmental community and the oil and gas industry over how to do two things at once: safely exploit America’s newfound riches in natural gas, while simultaneously building a bridge to a low-carbon energy economy, with greater emphasis on energy efficiency.
Another grand bargain we need is on infrastructure. We have more than a $2 trillion deficit in bridges, roads, airports, ports and bandwidth, and the government doesn’t have the money to make it up. We need a bargain that enables the government to both enlist and partner with the private sector to unleash private investments in infrastructure that will serve the public and offer investors appropriate returns.
Within both education and health care, we need grand bargains that better allocate resources between remediation and prevention. In both health and education, we spend more than anyone else in the world — without better outcomes. We waste too much money treating people for preventable diseases and reteaching students in college what they should have learned in high school. Modern capitalism requires skilled workers and workers with portable health care that allows them to move for any job.
We also need a grand bargain between employers, employees and government — à la Germany — where government provides the incentives for employers to hire, train and retrain labor.
We can’t have any of these bargains, though, without a more informed public debate. The “big thing that’s missing” in U.S. politics today, Bill Gates said to me in a recent interview, “is this technocratic understanding of the facts and where things are working and where they’re not working,” so the debate can be driven by data, not ideology.
Capitalism and political systems — like companies — must constantly evolve to stay vital. People are watching how we evolve and whether our version of democratic capitalism can continue to thrive. A lot is at stake here. But if “we continue to treat politics as a reality show played for cheap theatrics,” argues Rothkopf, “we increase the likelihood that the next chapter in the ongoing story of capitalism is going to be written somewhere else.”
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Post by justjohn on Mar 14, 2012 5:21:08 GMT -7
Standing Army documentary (2010) english trailer
EFFENDEM FILM, TAKAE FILMS presents: Standing Army
The US has encircled the world with a web of military bases that today amount to more than 700, in 40 countries. It's one of the most powerful forces at play in the world, yet one of the less talked-about. Why do countries like Germany, Italy, Japan still host hundreds of US military bases and thousands US soldiers? what stance has president Obama taken on this subject? This documentary answers these and other questions both through the words of experts Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Chalmers Johnson and through those directly affected by US bases in Italy, Japan and the Indian Ocean.
and just so that you understand it in LAYMAN'S TALK, here's Joe Rogan talking Corporate War Machine in the way it needs telling to You The People:
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Post by kaima on Mar 14, 2012 11:14:51 GMT -7
:through the words of experts Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Chalmers Johnson: Rhetorical question: What makes these public speakers "experts"? Truly, that seems far fetched, and a generous title granted to people who are merely well known talking heads!
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Post by kaima on Mar 14, 2012 11:18:59 GMT -7
The stabbed governor of SarawakBut, finally, in July 1946, Sarawak became Britain's last colonial acquisition. It was handed over to the British crown by Anthony Brooke's uncle, Charles Vyner Brooke, in exchange for a £200,000 pay-off. "But Anthony Brooke, who had been expected to take over as White Rajah of Sarawak, was not happy about this." This is much of America was "bought" from the Indians. Come to me and I will sell you as many of my neighbor's houses as you have money to buy! Then you can move them out while waving your new "ownership" papers in their faces. In America this is also complicated by a very different sense of ownership by the natives. Some things are not "owned" but just utilized, as the air, water and other resources. Not a bad concept!
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Post by justjohn on Mar 16, 2012 5:59:10 GMT -7
Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump
Posted: 03/15/2012 7:58 pm
Gas prices continue to rise, which is finally giving Republicans an issue. Mitt Romney is demanding the President open up more domestic drilling; the super PAC behind Rick Santorum just released a new ad in Louisiana blasting the President on gas prices; and the GOP is attacking the White House on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
But the rise in gas prices has almost nothing to do with energy policy. It has everything to do with America's continuing failure to adequately regulate Wall Street. But don't hold your breath waiting for Republicans to tell the truth.
As I've noted before, oil supplies aren't being squeezed. Over 80 percent of America's energy needs are now being satisfied by domestic supplies. In fact, we're starting to become an energy exporter. Demand for oil isn't rising in any event. Demand is down in the U.S. compared to last year at this time, and global demand is still moderate given the economic slowdowns in Europe and China.
But Wall Street is betting on higher oil prices in the future -- and that betting is causing prices to rise. The Street is laying odds that unrest in Syria will spill over into other countries or that tensions with Iran will affect the Persian Gulf, and that global demand will pick up as American consumers bounce back to life.
These bets are pushing up oil prices because Wall Street firms and other big financial players now dominate oil trading.
Financial speculators historically accounted for about 30 percent of oil contracts, producers and end users for about 70 percent. But today speculators account for 64 percent of all contracts.
Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- the federal agency that regulates trading in oil futures, among other commodities -- warns that too few financial players control too much of the oil market. This allows them to push oil prices higher and higher -- not only on the basis of their expectations about the future but also expectations about how high other speculators will drive the price.
In other words, a relatively few players with very deep pockets are placing huge bets on oil -- and you're paying.
Chilton estimates that drivers of small cars like Honda Civics are paying an extra $7.30 every time they fill up -- and that money is going into the pockets of Wall Street speculators. Drivers of larger vehicles like the Ford Explorer are paying speculators $10.41 when they fill up.
Funny, but I don't hear Republicans rail against Wall Street speculators. Could this have anything to do with the fact that hedge funds and money managers are bankrolling the GOP as never before?
Wall Street isn't bankrolling Democrats nearly as much this time around because the Street is still smarting from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law pushed by the Democrats, and from the president's offhand remark in 2010 calling the denizens of the Street "fat cats."
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is trying to limit how much speculators can bet in oil futures -- a power it was given by Dodd-Frank. It issued a rule in October, but it won't take effect for another year.
Meanwhile, Wall Street has gone to court to stop the rule. It's already won a stay.
As rising gas prices start wagging the election-year dog, the President should let America know what's really causing prices to rise.
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Post by justjohn on Mar 18, 2012 4:35:25 GMT -7
The Pacific Book Untold Stories Ho Chi Minh and the OSSBy Claude G. Berube OSS Deer Team members pose with Viet Minh leaders Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap during training at Tan Trao in August 1945. Deer Team members standing, l to r, are Rene Defourneaux, (Ho), Allison Thomas, (Giap), Henry Prunier and Paul Hoagland, far right. Kneeling, left, are Lawrence Vogt and Aaron Squires. (Rene Defourneaux) OSS Deer Team members pose with Viet Minh leaders Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap during training at Tan Trao in August 1945. Deer Team members standing, l to r, are Rene Defourneaux, (Ho), Allison Thomas, (Giap), Henry Prunier and Paul Hoagland, far right. Kneeling, left, are Lawrence Vogt and Aaron Squires. (Rene Defourneaux) In the mid-1940s, the Viet Minh, under Ho Chi Minh, looked to the West for help in its independence movement and got it. As U.S. Army Major Allison Thomas sat down to dinner with Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap on September 15, 1945, he had one vexing question on his mind. Ho had secured power a few weeks earlier, and Thomas was preparing to leave Hanoi the next day and return stateside, his mission complete. He and a small team of Americans had been in French Indochina with Ho and Giap for two months, as part of an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) mission to train Viet Minh guerrillas and gather intelligence to use against the Japanese in the waning days of World War II. But now, after Ho's declaration of independence and Japan's surrender the previous month, the war in the Pacific was over. So was the OSS mission in Indochina. At this last dinner with his gracious hosts, Thomas decided to get right to the heart of it. So many of the reports he had filed with the OSS touched on Ho's ambiguous allegiances and intents, and Thomas had had enough. He asked Ho point-blank: Was he a Communist? Ho replied: "Yes. But we can still be friends, can't we?" It was a startling admission. In the mid-1940s, the Viet Minh leadership, under Ho Chi Minh, looked to the West for help in its independence movement and got it. As World War II ended, the United States and its allies, most of them former colonial powers, now confronted a new problem. Independence movements were emerging all over the East. But former colonial powers had lost their military muscle, and the Americans simply wanted to "bring the boys home." During the war, the United States had sought any and all allies to combat the fascist powers, only to find, years later, it may have inadvertently given birth to new world leaders either through misconceptions or missed opportunities. Vietnam's independence leader, Ho Chi Minh, had been only a relatively minor figure just a few years earlier. In 1945, Ho became the leader of a movement that would result in revolutionary tumult for decades to come. Deer Team Meets a "Mr. Hoo" Two months before Thomas' farewell dinner with Ho and Giap, he and six others from Special Operations Team Number 13, code-named "Deer," had parachuted into a jungle camp called Tan Trao, near Hanoi, with directions to proceed to the headquarters of Ho Chi Minh, whom they naively knew only as a "Mr. Hoo." Their mission, as they understood it, was to set up a guerrilla team of 50 to 100 men to attack and interdict the railroad from Hanoi to Lang Son to prevent the Japanese from going into China. They were also to find Japanese targets such as military bases and depots, and send back to OSS agents in China whatever intelligence they could. And they were to provide weather reports for air drops and U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) operations on an as-needed basis. Thomas had parachuted in on July 16, 1945, part of a three-man advance team that also included radio operator 1st Sgt. William Zielski and Pfc Henry Prunier, their interpreter. Not knowing who or what to expect when they reached the drop zone, Thomas and his team soon found themselves surrounded by 200 guerrilla fighters who greeted them warmly and showed them to their huts. They then met with Ho Chi Minh, who called himself "C.M. Hoo," at his headquarters to coordinate operations with him. Thomas had no idea that Ho was a Communist, spoke Russian or had visited the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, Ho openly discussed politics with Thomas, stressing not only the abuses by the French, but also his desire to work with the French toward a solution. In his first official report to OSS Director Archimedes L.A. Patti in Kunming, China, the following day, Thomas noted, referring to Ho: "He personally likes many French but most of his soldiers don't." This may have been one of Ho's ongoing ruses to ingratiate himself with potential but temporary allies. In his mid-50s, Ho apparently thoroughly convinced the Deer Team commander of his sincerity. In an effort to further dispel OSS or U.S. government concerns about Ho, Thomas emphatically wrote in the report: "Forget the Communist Bogy. VML [Viet Minh League] is not Communist. Stands for freedom and reforms from French harshness." On July 30, the remainder of the Deer Team parachuted in, consisting of the assistant team leader, Lieutenant René Defourneaux, Staff Sgt. Lawrence R. Vogt, a weapons instructor, photographer Sergeant Aaron Squires and a medic, Pfc Paul Hoagland. Defourneaux, a French expatriate who had become a U.S. citizen, had parachuted into France earlier in the war to help the Resistance before joining the OSS. The first person that Defourneaux met when he reached the drop zone was a "Mr. Van," General Giap, who seemed to be in charge. Ho was not around much, but when Defourneaux saw him, his first impression was of a sick old man clearly suffering from some disease. In one of the ironies of history, the Vietnam War, at least with the Communists under Ho Chi Minh, might never have happened if the Americans hadn't arrived when they did. "Ho was so ill he could not move from the corner of a smoky hut," Defourneaux said. Ho didn't seem to have much time to live; Defourneaux heard it would not be weeks but days. "Our medic thought it might have been dysentery, dengue fever, hepatitis," he recalled. "While being treated by Pfc Hoagland, Ho directed his people into the jungle to search for herbs. Ho shortly recovered, attributing it to his knowledge of the jungle." In other reports to the OSS, Thomas had raised a number of political concerns, from Ho's allegiances, to Indochina's struggle with the French, Vichy, Japanese, Chinese and the British. In a July 27 report, Thomas had stated that Ho's league was an amalgamation of all political parties that stood for liberty with "no political ideas beyond that." Thomas added, "Ho definitely tabooed the idea that the party was communistic" since "the peasants didn't know what the word communism or socialism meant—but they did understand liberty and independence." He noted that it was impossible for the French to stay, nor were they welcome since the Vietnamese "hated them worse than the Japs….Ho said he would welcome a million American soldiers to come in but not any French." Control of French Indochina During WWII French Indochina during World War II was a simmering cauldron of colonial powers on the decline, of colonial powers divided and other powers on the rise. Comprised largely of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, French Indochina had become in the late 19th century the "jewel in France's crown" in Southeast Asia. Among the several competing global, regional and internal interests in French Indochina during World War II were: Vichy France, which controlled its colony only with permission of its Japanese ally and German dominator; followed then by the French Republic, which sought to reclaim its colonial territories; the United States, which was fighting against Japan; and Japan, which sought to maintain its regional hegemony. Also involved were the warring Communists and Nationalists in China, which sought to influence the region to their south; and a variety of independence-seeking indigenous factions that all wanted to remove the yoke of any colonial or imperial power. Vietnam itself was divided into three main regions with their own factions fighting for control: the northern Tonkin, central Annam and southern Cochinchina. French control over Indochina was challenged only when France fell to the Germans in 1940 and was divided into two governments—occupied France, and to the south the nominally neutral, German-dominated Vichy government under World War I hero Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain. Vichy retained control of most of the French overseas territories during the war, including Indochina. However, the French remaining in Indochina were less loyal to the German puppet Vichy government than they were to Pétain. As Japan expanded into the Pacific and Asia early in World War II, it ironically found itself hamstrung by its own alliance with Nazi Germany. For, so long as both the Vichy government and Imperial Japan were tied to Germany, the French retained de facto control of Indochina, although Japan was permitted to establish military bases. As the war in the Pacific wound down, however, the Allied invasion of Normandy and liberation of Paris resulted in the fall of Vichy France in August 1944 and, with it, any claims on colonial territories. Throughout most of World War II, the United States was finding and supporting allies in China and other Southeast Asian regions, including French Indochina, to pose a threat to the Japanese military wherever possible. With the liberation of France in 1944, the U.S. government turned to its primary coordinator of intelligence during the war: the OSS, created in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. OSS to Ho: Work With Us Against the Japanese At the time, the OSS was operating a base in China's wartime capital, Chungking. With the growing military complications in Indochina, Brig. Gen. William Donovan, the director of the OSS, instructed his staff to use "anyone who will work with us against the Japanese, but do not become involved in French-Indochinese politics." The Viet Minh, a liberation movement that had emerged under Ho Chi Minh in the early 1940s, was seeking not only Vietnam's independence from France, but also freedom from the Japanese occupation. In mid-1944 the OSS approached Ho to help organize an intelligence network in Indochina to help fight the Japanese and to help rescue downed American pilots. By then, "Ho had been cooperating with the Americans in propaganda activities," wrote Captain Archimedes Patti, head of the OSS base in Kunming, China, and later Hanoi. The American association with Ho had actually begun in December 1942 when representatives of the Viet Minh approached the U.S. Embassy in China for help in securing the release of "an Annamite named Ho Chih-chi (?) [sic]" from a Nationalist Chinese prison, where he was being held for having invalid documents. In September 1943, when Ho was finally released, he returned to Vietnam to organize Vietnamese seeking independence. An October 1943 OSS memo proposed that the United States "use the Annamites…to immobilize large numbers of Japanese troops by conducting systematic guerrilla warfare in the difficult jungle country." The missive went on to suggest the OSS's most effective propaganda line was to "convince the Annamites that this war, if won by the Allies, will gain their independence." As the Axis retreated in Europe, and what remained of the Vichy French government fell, Japan was no longer restrained in Indochina by its ties to Germany. The Japanese quickly made inroads into Vietnam, staging a coup d'état in March 1945 that dissolved the French government and established a puppet government. On March 11, Emperor Bao Dai proclaimed Vietnam's independence and his intent to cooperate with the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh was surprised by this development, and regarded another independence movement as a threat to the Viet Minh's. At the same time, with the Japanese coup against the French, the OSS realized it was cut off from the flow of intelligence from French Indochina to its base in Kunming, and it urged Ho to work with the United States. "The coup has produced many new and perhaps delicate problems which will demand considerable attention," the OSS officers in China reported to headquarters. "The French are no longer in power. There are 24 million [Vietnamese] in Indochina [offering] support for the new nationalistic regime. Militarily, it calls for an alteration of military plans; we can't count on French and native troops." The Japanese did not have the military strength to defend all of Vietnam, however, and the Viet Minh began to organize themselves as the provisional government in all but the largest towns, where the Japanese had strongholds. Also in March 1945, Viet Minh guerrillas rescued a U.S. pilot who had been shot down in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh himself escorted the pilot back to the American forces in Kunming, where the Fourteenth Air Force was based. Rejecting an offer of a monetary reward, Ho asked only for the honor of meeting Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault, founder of China's legendary American Volunteer Group, the "Flying Tigers," and now commander of the Fourteenth Air Force. During the meeting on March 29, Chennault thanked Ho, who, after promising to help any other downed American pilots, requested only an autographed photo of the general. Ho would later cannily show the picture to other nationalist Vietnamese factions as proof of his warm relations with—and implied support from—the Americans. At this time, few knew that Ho (whose real name was Nguyen Ai Quoc) was a long-time Communist who had been trained in the Soviet Union. Even the Office of War Information reportedly was impressed by Ho and his "English, intelligence and obvious interest in the Allied war effort." On April 27, Captain Patti met with Ho Chi Minh to ask him for permission to send an OSS team to work with him and the Annamites to gather intelligence on the Japanese. "Welcome, my good friend," said Ho in greeting Patti. He agreed to work with an OSS team and asked Patti for modern weapons. Ho then set up a training camp in the jungle, at place he called Tan Trao—the former hamlet of Kimlung and the new location of Viet Minh headquarters—about 200 kilometers from Hanoi. There he prepared for the Americans' arrival. Deer Team Begins Training the Viet Minh Captain Patti's OSS group, the Deer Team, was established on May 16 and made its way from the United States to the OSS station in Kunming, where it waited two months for permission to enter French Indochina. Finally the decision was made for Major Thomas and the team's six other members to parachute to the Tan Trao training camp in July. Captain Patti had served with Thomas in North Africa and thought he "was a fine young officer but understandably unsophisticated in the way of international power struggles." Thomas became quick friends with Ho and Giap at Tan Trao, often ignoring the rest of the team. Part of the team's mission was to indicate targets for the USAAF, but Thomas spent most of his time with Ho and Giap, and even redirected USAAF targets against the Japanese based on Ho's recommendations, in direct conflict with orders he had received from the OSS. Defourneaux, who had assumed the alias of Raymond Douglas, the son of a Franco-American mother, to protect him from the locals, had a different experience with Ho. The leader continually probed Defourneaux and challenged his cover story, wary of him. Ho told Defourneaux he hoped the United States would handle Vietnam the way it had the Philippines. "We deserved the same treatment," said Ho. "You should help us reach the point of independence. We are self-sufficient." Defourneaux did not believe that Giap and Ho were "on the same wavelength," and that Giap was doing things independently. At the time, he did not know that Giap, or "Mr. Van," another of the OSS's "friends of the forest," was running an indoctrination school on communism. As Thomas' friendship with Giap and Ho grew, his relationship with his own men deteriorated, and Defourneaux became wary of them. Ho, and especially Giap, had "full control over our leader," said Defourneaux. In his diary, Defourneaux wrote of Thomas: "I stay with the boys and cannot help hear their conversations. They hate him, personally I hate him more and more every day." He said that Thomas thought Ho and Giap were simply agrarian reformers, "but Ho didn't know how to use a shovel and Giap didn't know how to milk a cow." Deer Team members supervise small-arms training at Ho's Tan Trao jungle camp in August 1945. (National Archives) Deer Team members supervise small-arms training at Ho's Tan Trao jungle camp in August 1945. (National Archives) The members of the Deer Team had to wait a couple of weeks for supply drops in early August before they could start small-arms and weapons training for the guerrilla forces. Once the arms arrived, the Americans showed the Viet Minh (most were recently civilians) how to fire the American M-1 rifle and M-1 carbine, and how to use mortars, grenades, bazookas and machine guns. For training, they used U.S. Army field manuals, and focused on guerrilla warfare. Japan Surrenders and Ho Declares Vietnamese Independence Shortly after training began the second week in August, Sergeant Zielski, the team's radio operator, picked up a broadcast on August 15 announcing the Japanese surrender, following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, and Nagasaki on the 9th. Realizing its training mission was over, the Deer Team issued arms to the soldiers and prepared to leave the following day. Under the terms of Japan's surrender, the British would occupy the south of Vietnam, and the Chinese would move to the north to disarm Japanese soldiers and return them to their homeland. The Americans left camp on August 16 and traveled on foot with Giap and his troops to Thai Nguyen, the French provincial capital. There, the guerrillas fought the French and the Japanese until the French governor capitulated, on August 25, and the Japanese, finally realizing their homeland had surrendered, accepted a truce the next day. During this fighting, Giap had arranged for the Deer Team to stay hidden away in a safe house on the outskirts of town. Meanwhile, the Viet Minh had planned to hold a conference in Tan Trao on August 16, the National People's Congress. About 30 delegates from Vietnam, Thailand and Laos had assembled in the village to discuss their concerns. Over the next several days, amid political uncertainty, several of the delegates had attempted to seize control. Ultimately Ho Chi Minh claimed leadership and was elected president of the provisional government on August 27. They proposed and voted on a new national anthem, and a new national flag with a gold star on a red background, which would become intimately familiar to most U.S. ground troops two decades later. A week later, on September 2, the same day General Douglas MacArthur received the formal Japanese surrender aboard the battleship Missouri, Ho Chi Minh was in Hanoi and declared Vietnamese independence from all colonial powers, using the American Declaration of Independence as his template. Banners of "Welcome to the Allies" (specifically, the United States) flew in the city's Ba Dihn Square, the OSS contingent in Hanoi photographed the occasion and Minister of the Interior Giap recognized U.S. support in a speech. Coincidentally, the same day of Ho's declaration of independence, Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, the nephew of two-time presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, arrived in Saigon. The colonel was commander of another OSS team in Indochina, code-named "Embankment," which was overseeing intelligence in the Saigon area. As the month wore on in Saigon, the British, free from hostilities with the Japanese, became politically involved, chaos ensued and civil war raged. Dewey was ordered out of Vietnam by the British, who suspected him of working with the Viet Minh. Before leaving, Dewey wrote in a report to the OSS: "Cochinchina is burning, the French and British are finished here, and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia." On September 26, two days after the Viet Minh led a national strike in response to British-imposed martial law, Dewey was ready to depart Saigon. Leaving in an unmarked jeep for the airport, he was ambushed and killed a few yards from an OSS house, thus becoming the first American casualty in Vietnam, nearly two decades before full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Although there was wide speculation on the shooters, ranging from conspiracies involving allies to cases of mistaken identities, an investigation failed to produce an answer. Captain Patti informed Ho Chi Minh of Dewey's death, and Ho expressed his regrets to U.S. headquarters in Saigon. OSS Ends Its Mission in Indochina With the war in the Pacific over, the OSS ended its mission in Indochina. The Deer Team had stayed in Thai Nguyen for a few days following the Viet Minh victory there, "getting fat, getting a sun-tan, visiting the city and waiting for permission [from Patti] to go to Hanoi," said Defourneaux. "The Viet Minh did everything to make our stay as pleasant as possible for us." Once they arrived in Hanoi, the Americans prepared to return to the United States. The night before leaving, Major Thomas had his private dinner with Ho and Giap. In the years that followed, Ho Chi Minh continued to write letters of a diplomatic nature to President Harry Truman, asking for U.S. aid, but the letters were never answered. Ho didn't break with the United States until the Americans gradually became involved with the French in working against the Vietnamese in the 1950s.Although OSS agents clearly played a role in Indochina during the World War II, clear causes and effects with regard to the future U.S.-Vietnamese conflict are far more cloudy. First, working with individuals or organizations that did not share American values or interests was not uncommon, particularly during World War II. Perhaps the best example was the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union, specifically with Josef Stalin. Second, the United States needed to reach out to an established and recognized organization within Indochina. There was no natural indigenous U.S. ally in that region, nor was there an embedded colonial interest because France itself was divided. Third, through its in situ OSS team, the United States had little immediate effective tactical, operational or strategic impact on Ho Chi Minh, the future General Giap or the Viet Minh. Was America, through the OSS, responsible for the rise of Ho Chi Minh and his subsequent war against the United States? No, but neither was it completely free of such responsibility. Ho manipulated the inexperienced leader of the Deer Team as well as U.S. diplomatic officials in Kunming to serve his unstated needs. Having a personal photo of Chennault or having OSS agents stand by his side demonstrated his international standing among the Vietnamese. Also, the failure to identify Ho Chi Minh as Soviet-trained and a Communist ideologue was a major American intelligence shortcoming that smoothed the way for Ho's emergence as a national leader and in the end, an enemy of the United States. In later years when asked by journalists or historians about his relationship with Ho, Thomas was defensive: "I was friendly with him and why shouldn't I be? After all, we were both there for the same purpose, fighting the Japanese…it wasn't my job to find out whether he was a Communist or not." Ultimately, out of the chaotic and momentous conclusion of World War II—almost imperceptibly—the die was cast for the coming storm that over the next three decades would pit the world's greatest superpower against an indigenous movement led by men who, at its birth, sought the friendship and support of the United States. Claude G. Berube teaches at the United States Naval Academy and is the co-author with John Rodgaard of A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution.
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Post by pieter on Mar 18, 2012 5:35:54 GMT -7
Dirty Little Secrets Of WWII The Hidden, Awkward Origins Of World War 2 By Jason Collett 9-6-10 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 Defense (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 p129). 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 handswhen 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 campsPresident 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 Jewsamong the few with money to splurge, a high proportion [were] Jewsthe 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 Nevile 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 NicholsonPeacemaking 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 bookDisgrace 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 ArendtEichmann 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 planing, 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 tospur 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. E-mail comment received: I worked and studied in Berlin for three years, have an MA in International Relations and a BA in Government with a minor in History. I am embarrassed to say that until I read this article, I had no idea of the scope and cause for the anti-Semitism in Germany before WWII. The Halt Order at Dunkirk was never mentioned in my studies, nor was the ownership of the media, banks and businesses. Thank you for the excellent article. It certainly gives me a new perspective. I have always questioned the actual numbers of Jewish victims of the concentration camps, as the numbers didn't make sense based upon Germany's population. Perhaps it was fear of failing or being labeled an anti-Semite by my history professors (all but two were Jewish) and classmates that I refrained from demanding an honest discussion during my classes. I once said that the only reason Israel existed was out of Holocaust guilt, and I was immediately labeled a terrorist sympathizer. I see what is now happening in Israel and I am aghast. The parallels to WW II are frightening. Even today, one cannot bring up this subject without being labeled a Holocaust denier or white supremacist. Thanks again for an excellent article. I am forwarding it to several friends. JBP Should we blame the jews for their intelligence as a minority and their ban from other professions than commerce and trade? For centuries they were denied acces to professions by the their surrounding Christian majority societies they lived in. Early medieval period was a time of flourishing Jewish culture. Jewish and Christian life evolved in ‘ diametrically opposite directions’ during the final centuries of Roman empire. Jewish life became autonomous, decentralized, community-centered. Christian life became a rigid hierarchical system under the supreme authority of the Pope and the Roman Emperor. Jewish life can be characterized as democratic. Rabbis in the Talmud interpreted Deut. 29:9, “ your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel” and “ Although I have appointed for you heads, elders, and officers, you are all equal before me” ( Tanhuma) to stress political shared power. Shared power entailed responsibilities: “ you are all responsible for one another. If there be only one righteous man among you, you will all profit from his merits, and not you alone, but the entire world…But if one of you sins, the whole generation will suffer.” Jewish ProfessionsAre there certain professions that are “Jewish”? For instance, is finance a “ Jewish business”? This is a strange question in the twenty-first century, when Jews can be found in a wide range of professions. So where did these assumptions come from and why do they persist? The facts are that after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe operated on the feudal system and was, in reality, ruled by the Catholic Church. In 1179, the Roman Catholic Church declared usury, the lending of money at interest, forbidden to all Christians. This prohibition took away all incentives for people to lend money to anyone other than one’s dearest and closest friends and neighbors. Those in need therefore turned to the Jews. While Jewish law prohibits charging interest of a fellow Jew, there is no prohibition against lending money at interest to a non-Jew. But where did the Jews get the money to lend? Ironically, there was another law that Jews were forbidden to own land, which led Jews to become merchants. Jews excelled at being merchants because when they went from one town to the next they had a built in “ network” with the local Jewish communities. This was also beneficial when it came to gathering large sums of money to provide the loans that the nobility needed. Thus, the Jews became the bankers of the world.
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