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Part 2
Origins of the American Empire -
Revolution, World Wars and World Order
July 28, 2009
Russia, Oil
and Revolution
By the 1870s,
John D. Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil Empire had a virtual monopoly over the United
States, and even many foreign countries. In 1890, the King of
Holland gave his blessing for the creation of an international oil
company called Royal Dutch Oil Company, which was mainly founded to
refine and sell kerosene from Indonesia, a Dutch colony.
Also in 1890, a British company was
founded with the intended purpose of shipping oil, the Shell
Transport and Trading Company, and it,
“began transporting Royal Dutch oil
from Sumatra to destinations everywhere,” and eventually, “the
two companies merged to become Royal Dutch Shell.”[1]
Russia entered into the Industrial
Revolution later than any other large country and empire of its
time.
By the 1870s,
“Russia’s oil fields, including
those in Baku, were challenging Standard Oil’s supremacy in
Europe. Russia’s ascendancy in natural resources disrupted the
strategic balance of power in Europe and troubled Britain.”
Britain thus attempted to begin oil
explorations in the Middle East, specifically in Persia (Iran),
first through Baron Julius de Reuter, the founder of
Reuters News
 Service,
who gained exploration rights from the Shah of Iran.[2]
Reuter’s attempt at uncovering vast quantities of oil failed, and a
man named William Knox D’Arcy took the lead in Persia.
By the middle of the 19th century,
“the
Rothschilds were the richest family in the world,
perhaps in all of history. Their five international banking
houses comprised one of the first multinational corporations.”
Alfonse de Rothschild was,
“heavily invested in Russian oil at
least forty years before William Knox D’Arcy began tying up
Persian oil concessions for the British. Russian oil, which in
the 1860s was already emerging as the European rival to the
American monopoly Standard Oil, was the Baron [Rothschild]’s pet
project.”
In the early 1880s,
“almost two hundred Rothschild
refineries were at work in Baku,” Russia’s oil rich region.[3]
By the mid-1880s,
“the Rothschilds were poised to
become the chief oil supplier, not only to Europe but to the Far
East,” however, “the Baku-Batum railroad was already proving
inadequate to transport the volume of oil being produced.
Another route was needed, and came in the form of the recently
opened Suez Canal, which shortened the journey to the Far East
by four thousand miles. Palestine was suddenly of interest to
the Rothschilds as it provided access to the Suez.”[4]
When the Egyptian government was
bankrupt in 1874, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli
turned to his close friends, the Rothschilds,
“for the colossal cash advance
necessary” to buy shares in the Suez Canal Company.[5]
By this time, the Rothschilds were
already principle shareholders in the Bank of France,[6]
and the Bank of England, sitting alongside other notable
shareholders such as Baring Brothers, Morgan Grenfell and Lazard
Brothers.[7]
The Rothschilds,
“had long been involved in
developing Czarist Russia’s nascent industry and banking system,
while that country’s growing network of railroads was largely
financed by Rothschild-managed loans.”[8]
When the Czar died, he was succeeded by
his son, Czar Nicholas II, who instituted anti-Semitic pogroms,
discriminating against Jews, which had the effect of stimulating a
massive emigration of Jews out of Russia and Eastern Europe and into
Western Europe.
However, these East European and Russian
Jewish émigrés grew up in a newly industrializing nation in which
the tyranny of the government and collusion between it and powerful
financial and industrial interests left the great majority of people
dispossessed and incited more socialist tendencies in thought and
action.
The English Rothschilds were very alarmed,
“when the socialist tendencies of
the émigrés contributed to a massively disruptive tailors’
strike in the East End of London in 1888. A young Georgian
communist who would become known to the world as Joseph Stalin
was already organizing laborers to strike at the Rothschild oil
interests in Batum.”
The British Rothschilds were very
concerned with this wave of Jewish immigrants into Western Europe
and Britain, as they were intensely anti-Czarist and progressively
socialist, and the Rothschilds were known for their heavy
collaboration with the Czarist regimes of Russia. One potential
solution considered to the problem of increased socialist-leaning
Jewish immigrants in Britain was to institute restrictions on
immigration.
However, this would likely backlash, in
the sense that it would be viewed as comparable to expulsion. So,
Edmond Rothschild began his personal campaign to create a Jewish
homeland in Palestine in order to create a release valve for Jewish
émigrés to put their political action behind a new cause, and to
promote them emigrating to Palestine, and out of Western Europe.[9]
On top of this, as the pre-eminent Zionist in Britain, his proposal
for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine served major
economic interests of the Rothschilds and of the British Empire, in
that several years prior, Rothschild bought the Suez Canal for the
British, and it was the primary transport route for Russian oil.
Palestine, thus, would be a vital
landmass as a protectorate for British and Rothschild
imperial-economic interests.
The Rothschilds, despite their overtly pro-Zionist and pro-Jewish
rhetoric, did not stop their support of the Russian regime and
economic activities within anti-Semitic Russia.
In 1895, the Rothschilds, then one of
the world’s leading producers and distributors of oil,
“had gone so far as to co-sign an
agreement with rival producers – including America’s Standard
Oil [of Rockefeller interests] – to divide up world markets. It
never took effect, presumably because of the opposition of the
Russian government.”
In 1902, the Rothschilds,
“entered into a partnership with
Royal Dutch and Shell (soon to become a single global company)
to form the Asiatic Petroleum Company for exploiting the fields
of Southern Russia.”[10]
In the early 1900s, the Rothchilds were
the primary oil interests in Russia, second in the world only to the
Rockefellers. As industrialization was under way, conditions
worsened for the great majority of Russian people.
This spurred protests and riots, and a,
“young Stalin himself led the
agitation against the Caucasian oil industry in general, [and]
the Rothschilds in particular. Mass action by oil workers in
Baku [the major oil fields in Russia] in 1903 was the spark that
set off the first general strike across the Russian landmass.”
Then with the Russian loss in the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904, and further protests, came the
Revolution of 1905. In the following years, the Rothschilds sold
their Russian oil interests to Royal Dutch Shell, gaining
significant shares in the international oil company.[11]
The specter of political and social instability within Russia was
high and did not go without notice from international banking, oil,
and industrial interests. Naturally, the international banking
houses were keeping a close eye on developments within Russia. The
Rothschilds had to lessen their overt involvement with Russia, as
they could not maintain such a relationship with the most
anti-Jewish nation in the world at the time, while also claiming to
be the primary advocates of Jewish aspirations for a homeland.
This is why they sold their Russian oil
interests to Royal Dutch Shell, but then gained significant shares
in the company itself. So while publicly cutting their ties with
Russia, they still held massive interests in its industrial
capacity.
Following the Russo-Japanese War, the
Rothschilds,
“refused to participate in
underwriting a major loan, this at a time when Russia
desperately needed funds to stabilize the regime.”[12]
So, in 1906, John D. Rockefeller stepped
in to aid Czarist Russia, and offered $200,000,000, or,
“400,000,000 rubles for a concession
for railroads from Tashkend to Tomsk and from Tehita to
Polamoshna and a grant of land on both sides of the prospective
lines.”[13]
These international financiers were
still clearly intent upon maintaining their interests within Russia.
However, the Russian governments refusal to allow the deal between
the Rockefellers and Rothschilds and other major oil monopolies to
divide up the world’s oil reserves, may well have spurred discontent
among these powerful interests. If Russia refused to allow them to
control all the oil and have a right to all oil, did this mean that
Russia was planning on building a domestic oil industry?
If this were the case, it could pose a
threat to all the entrenched economic and financial interests,
particularly those of the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, as Russia’s
significant oil reserves and resources would allow it to possibly
even surpass the United States in industrialization. Further,
Czarist Russia became an increasingly unstable investment
environment, controlled by an increasingly unpredictable monarchy.
The 1917 October Revolution,
“inspired workers’ uprisings in the
oil fields against low wages and harsh working conditions. In
1919, Azerbaijan took advantage of the political unrest to
declare sovereignty over the Baku fields. That same year SONJ
[Standard Oil of New Jersey] made an agreement with the
Azerbaijani government to purchase undeveloped land for
exploration in the Baku region.
Amidst the chaos, foreign oil
companies rushed into Russia hoping to collect concessions at
reduced rates. The Nobel brothers sold much of their operations
to SONJ (today ExxonMobil) to build an alliance in 1920.”[14]
Antony C. Sutton, economist,
historian and author, as well as research fellow at Stanford
University’s Hoover Institution, wrote in
Wall Street And The Bolshevik
Revolution,
that both fascist and communist systems are,
“based on naked, unfettered
political power and individual coercion. Both systems require
monopoly control of society. While monopoly control of
industries was once the objective of J.P. Morgan and J.D.
Rockefeller, by the late nineteenth century the inner sanctums
of Wall Street understood that the most efficient way to gain an
unchallenged monopoly was to ‘go political’ and make society go
to work for the monopolists,” and that, “the totalitarian
socialist state is a perfect captive market for monopoly
capitalists, if an alliance can be made with the socialist
powerbrokers.”[15]
Thus, the major money powers of the west
decided to put their money behind the creation of a totalitarian
communist state in Russia, in order to create a captive economy,
which they could exploit and remove from competition.
When the Revolution began, Trotsky was in New York, and was
immediately granted an American passport by President Wilson, and
then given a Russian entry permit and a British transit visa, in
order to return to Russia and “carry forward” the revolution.[16]
Trotsky, while traveling, was arrested in Canada, but was released
as a result of British intervention.[17]
Trotsky traveled on board a ship in 1917, leaving New York, along
with an interesting cast of fellow passengers, including “other
Trotskyite revolutionaries, Wall Street financiers, American
Communists, and a man named Charles Crane. Charles Richard Crane,
former chairman of the Democratic Party’s finance committee, whose
son, Richard Crane, was an assistant to U.S. Secretary of State
Robert Lansing, played a significant part in what occurred in
Russia.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany,
William Dodd, said that Crane,
“did much to bring on the
[Alexander] Kerensky revolution which gave way to Communism.”
Kerensky was the second Prime Minister
in the Russian Provisional Government, which followed the collapse
of the Czarist government, and preceded the Bolshevik. Crane also
thought that the Kerensky government “is the revolution in its first
phase only.”[18]
The Revolution occurred in the midst of World War I, which broke out
in 1914, and had all the major European powers at war. Morgan and
Rockefeller interests, organized in Wall Street and centralized in
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most powerful of all the
regional Federal Reserve Banks, used “the Red Cross Mission as its
operational vehicle” in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik
Revolution.
The Red Cross Mission in Russia got its
endowment from wealthy people such as J.P. Morgan, Mrs. E. H.
Harriman, Cleveland H. Dodge, and Mrs. Russell Sage, and “in World
War I the Red Cross depended heavily on Wall Street, and
specifically the Morgan firm.”
When the American Red Cross set up a
mission to Russia,
“William Boyce Thompson, director of
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had ‘offered to pay the
entire expense of the commission’.”[19]
All expenses were paid for by William
Boyce Thompson, who was a major stockholder in Chase National Bank,
whose President had Thompson appointed head of the New York Fed.[20]
The Mission was primarily made up of lawyers, financiers, their
assistants, people affiliated with Standard Oil and the
Rockefeller’s National City Bank.[21]
The Mission supported through a loan,
the Provisional government of Alexander Kerensky, yet, William B.
Thompson of the New York Fed
“made a personal contribution of
$1,000,000 to the Bolsheviki for the purpose of spreading their
doctrine in Germany and Austria.”
Interestingly, when the Bolsheviks took
control,
“The National City Bank branch in
Petrograd had been exempted from the Bolshevik nationalization
decree – the only foreign or domestic Russian bank to have been
so exempted.”[22]
Ultimately, the Red Cross mission in
Russia,
“was in fact a mission of Wall
Street financiers to influence and pave the way for control,
through either Kerensky or the Bolshevik revolutionaries, of the
Russian market and resources.”[23]
The American International Corporation
(AIC), was,
“created in 1915 to develop domestic
and foreign enterprises, to extend American activities abroad,
and to promote the interests of American and foreign bankers,
business and engineering.”
It was created and controlled by Morgan,
Stillman and Rockefeller interests, and its directors were
affiliated with National City Bank (Rockefeller), the Carnegie
Foundation, General Electric, the DuPont family, New York Life
Insurance, American Bankers Association and the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York.
Members of its board financially
supported the Bolsheviks and urged the US State Department to
recognize the Bolshevik government.[24]
In 1920, Russian gold was being siphoned through Sweden, where it
was melted down and stamped with the Swedish mint, funneled through
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and into Kuhn, Loeb & Company
and Guaranty Trust Company (Morgan), two of the primary banking
interests behind the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
[25]
During the civil war in Russia between
the Reds and the Whites, while Wall Street financiers were aiding
the Bolsheviks quietly, they also began to finance Aleksandr Kolchak
(of the Whites) with millions of dollars, in order to ensure that
whoever emerged victorious in the war, Wall Street would win.[26]
As Antony Sutton wrote,
“Russia, then and now, constituted
the greatest potential competitive threat to American industrial
and financial supremacy,” and that, “The gigantic Russian market
was to be converted into a captive market and a technical colony
to be exploited by a few high-powered American financiers and
the corporations under their control.”[27]
Eventually, the Bolsheviks emerged
victorious, and Wall Street won.
Under Stalin’s Five-Year Plans in the
early 1930s, Soviet industrialization “required Western technology
and expertise,” and in a “frequently overlooked contribution” that
came “from abroad,” American firms aided in the industrialization of
the USSR, including Ford, General Electric and DuPont,[28]
with Standard Oil, General Electric, Austin Co., General
Motors, International Harvester, and Caterpillar Tractor trading
heavily with the Soviet Union.[29]
Standard Oil bought “gargantuan quantities of Red Oil,” General
Electric received a $100,000,000 contract from the Soviet Union to
build,
“the four largest hydroelectric
generators in the world,” Austin Co., got a $50,000,000 contract
to erect the City of Austingrad, “complete with tractor and
automobile factories involving an additional $30,000,000
contract for parts and technical assistance with Ford Motor
Corp.”
On top of this,
“Other [Soviet] business friends are
General Motors, DuPont de Nemours, International Harvester, John
Deere Co., Caterpillar Tractor, Radio Corp. and the U. S.
Shipping Board, which sold the Reds a fleet of 25 cargo
steamers.”
Banks with close ties to the Russian
economy included Chase National, National City Bank and Equitable
Trust, all of which are either Rockefeller or Morgan interests.[30]
World War
Restructures World Order
In the midst of World War I, a group of American scholars were
tasked with briefing,
“Woodrow Wilson about options for
the postwar world once the kaiser and imperial Germany fell to
defeat.”
This group was called, “The Inquiry.”
The group advised Wilson mostly through
his trusted aide, Col. Edward M. House, who was Wilson’s
“unofficial envoy to Europe during the period between the outbreak
of World War I in 1914 and the intervention by the United States in
1917,” and was the prime driving force in the Wilson administration
behind the establishment of the Federal Reserve System.[31]
“The Inquiry” laid the foundations for the creation of the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
the most powerful think tank in the US, and “The scholars of the
Inquiry helped draw the borders of post World War I central Europe.”
On May 30, 1919, a group of scholars and
diplomats from Britain and the US met at the Hotel Majestic, where
they,
“proposed a permanent Anglo-American
Institute of International Affairs, with one branch in London,
the other in New York.”
When the scholars returned from Paris,
they were met with open arms by New York lawyers and financiers, and
together they formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921.
The “British diplomats returning from
Paris had made great headway in founding their Royal Institute of
International Affairs.” The Anglo-American Institute envisioned in
Paris, with two branches and combined membership was not feasible,
so both the British and American branches retained national
membership, however, they would cooperate closely with one another.[32]
They were referred to, and still are, as
“Sister Institutes.”[33]
The Milner Group, the secret
society formed by Cecil Rhodes,
“dominated the British delegation to
the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the
formation and management of the League of Nations and of the
system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of
International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.”[34]
There were other groups founded in many
countries representing the same interests of the secret Milner
Group, and they came to be known as the Round Table Groups,
preeminent among them were the Royal Institute of International
Affairs (Chatham House), the Council on Foreign Relations in the
United States, and parallel groups were set up in Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa and India.[35]
World War I had marked a monumental period in history in what can be
understood as “transitional imperialism.”
What I mean by this is that
historically, periods of imperial decline and transition (that is,
the rise or fall of an empire or empires), are often marked by
increased international violence and war.
World War I was the result of the culmination of imperial ambitions
by various powers. This was the natural result of the wave of “New
Imperialism” that swept the industrialized world in the 1870s. In
1879, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary created the Dual
Alliance to combat growing Russian influence in the Balkans with the
decline of the Ottoman Empire. Italy joined in 1882, making it the
Triple Alliance.
In 1892, the Franco-Russia Alliance was
made, which was a military alliance between France and the Russian
Empire to counteract the German Empire’s supremacy over Europe. In
1904, the Entente Cordiale, a series of agreements between France
and Britain, was agreed upon in order to maintain a balance of power
in Europe.
In 1907, the Anglo-Russia Entente was
formed in an effort to end their long-running Great Game by setting
the boundaries of their imperial control over Afghanistan, Persia
and Tibet. It also acted as a balance to the growing German Empire’s
might and influence in Europe. After the signing of the
Anglo-Russian Entente, the Triple Entente was cemented between
Britain, Russia and France as a significant counter to the Triple
Alliance.
The decline of the Ottoman Empire had been a long and slow process.
The Ottoman Empire dated back to 1299,
and lasted until 1923.
“From 1517 until the end of World
War I, a period of 400 years, the Ottoman Empire was the ruling
power in the central Middle East. Ottoman administrative
institutions and practices shaped the peoples of the modern
Middle East and left a legacy that endured after the empire’s
disappearance.”[36]
In the late 16th century,
“Ottoman raw materials, normally
channeled into internal consumption and industry, were
increasingly exchanged for European manufactured products. This
trade benefited Ottoman merchants but led to a decline in state
revenues and a shortage of raw materials for domestic
consumption. As the costs of scarce materials rose, the empire
suffered from inflation, and the state was unable to procure
sufficient revenues to meet its expenses. Without these
revenues, the institutions that supported the Ottoman system,
especially the armed forces, were undermined.”
This was largely done through commercial
treaties known as Capitulations.
The first Capitulation,
“was negotiated with France in 1536;
it allowed French merchants to trade freely in Ottoman ports, to
be exempt from Ottoman taxes, and to import and export goods at
low tariff rates. In addition, the treaty granted
extraterritorial privileges to French merchants by permitting
them to come under the legal jurisdiction of the French consul
in Istanbul, thus making them subject to French rather than
Ottoman-Islamic law. This first treaty was the model for
subsequent agreements signed with other European states.”[37]
The Ottoman state had been sufficiently
weakened by the early 20th century, which happened to be the same
time period that Europeans, particularly the British, were looking
at Middle East oil to fuel their empires.
The major European alliances sought to
take advantage of this weakened Ottoman position. In 1909,
Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, inciting the anger of
the Russia Empire. The First Balkan War was fought between 1912 and
1913, in which Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria fought the
Ottoman Empire. The settlement that followed angered Bulgaria, which
then began to engage in territorial disputes with Serbia and
Romania.
Bulgaria then attacked Greece and Serbia
in 1913, followed by Romania and the Ottoman Empire declaring war
against Bulgaria, which was the Second Balkan War.
This further destabilized the region, and Austria-Hungary grew wary
of the growing influence of Serbia. When Austrian Archduke Franz
Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, Austria delivered an
ultimatum to Serbia, where the assassin was from, and then declared
war. The Russian Empire mobilized for war the next day, with German
mobilization following behind, and France behind it. Germany then
declared war on Russia, and World War I was under way.
The end of the Great War saw the disillusion of the Ottoman Empire,
breaking up its territory, which was carved up between France and
Britain at the Paris Peace Conference. The German Empire and
Austro-Hungarian Empires also officially ended as a result of the
war, for which Germany was given the sole blame for the war and
punished through the Versailles reparations.
The Russian Empire ended with the
Bolshevik Revolution, which resulted in Russia pulling out of the
war in 1917, the same year the United States entered the war. The
Great War turned the United States into a powerful nation in the
world, becoming a leading creditor nation with significant
international influence. The British and French maintained their
empires, though they were in decline. However, they attempted to
maintain significant control over the Middle East.
World War I was thus the culmination of a massive build-up of
imperial nations seeking expanded influence and markets for their
capital.
Entering the War, there were many
empires, leaving it, there were two dominant European Empires
(France and Britain) and an emerging new force in the world, the
United States.
The Great
Depression
The modern banking system
manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the
most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented.
Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin... Bankers own
the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to
create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create
enough money to buy it back again...
Take this great power away from
them, and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then
this would be a better and happier world to live in.... But, if
you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the
cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create
money and control credit.[38]
- Sir Josiah Stamp
Director of the Bank of England,
1927
Benjamin Strong, Governor of
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Montagu Norman,
Governor of the Bank of England, who worked closely together
throughout the 1920s, decided to,
“use the financial power of Britain
and the United States to force all the major countries of the
world to go on the gold standard and to operate it through
central banks free from all political control, with all
questions of international finance to be settled by agreements
by such central banks without interference from governments.”
These men were not working for the
governments and nations of whom they purportedly represented, but,
“were the technicians and agents of
the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had
raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them
down.”[39]
In the 1920s, the United States
experienced a stock market boom, which was a result of the
commercial banks providing “funds for the purchase of stock and took
the latter as collateral,” creating a massive wave of underwriting
and purchasing of securities.
The stock market speculation that
followed was the result of the banks,
“borrowing substantially from the
Federal Reserve. Thus the Federal Reserve System was helping to
finance the great stock market boom.”[40]
In 1927, a meeting took place in New
York City between:
-
Montagu Norman of the Bank of
England
-
Hjalmar Schacht, President of
the Reichsbank, the German central bank of the Weimar
Republic
-
Charles Rist, Deputy Governor of
the Bank of France
-
Benjamin Strong of the New York
Fed
The topic of the meeting was the,
“persistently weak reserve position
of the Bank of England. This, the bankers thought, could be
helped if the Federal Reserve System would ease interest rates
to encourage lending. Holders of gold would then seek the higher
returns from keeping their metal in London.”
The Fed obliged.[41]
The Bank of England had a weak reserve position because of Britain’s
position as champion of the gold standard.
Foreign central banks, including the
Bank of France, were transferring their exchange holdings into gold,
of which the Bank of England did not have enough to supply. So the
Fed lowered its discount rate, and began buying securities to equal
French gold purchases.
Money in the US, then,
“was going increasingly into
stock-market speculation rather than into production of real
wealth.”[42]
In early 1929, the Federal Reserve board
of governors “called upon the member banks to reduce their loans on
stock-exchange collateral,” and took other actions with the publicly
pronounced aim of reducing “the amount of credit available for
speculation.”
Yet, it had the reverse effect, as “the
available credit went more and more to speculation and decreasingly
to productive business.” On September 26, 1929, London was hit with
a financial panic, and the Bank of England raised its bank rate,
causing British money to leave Wall Street, “and the over inflated
market commenced to sag,” leading to a panic by mid-October.[43]
The longest-serving Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan,
wrote that the Fed triggered the speculative boom through its
pumping excess credit into the economy (sound familiar?), and
eventually this resulted in the American and British economies
collapsing due to the massive imbalances produced.
Britain then,
“abandoned the gold standard
completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric
of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures.
The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the
1930's.”[44]
The Bank for
International Settlements
In 1929, the Young Committee was formed
to create a program for the settlement of German reparations
payments that emerged out of the Versailles Treaty, written at the
Paris Peace talks in 1919.
The Committee was headed by Owen D.
Young, founder of Radio Corporation of America (RCA), as
a subsidiary of General Electric.
He was also President and CEO of GE from
1922 until 1939, co-author of the 1924 Dawes Plan, was appointed to
the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, and was
also, in 1929, deputy chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
When Young was sent to Europe in 1929 to form the program for German
reparations payments he was accompanied by J.P Morgan, Jr.[45]
What emerged from the Committee was the creation of the Young
Plan, which,
“was assertedly a device to occupy
Germany with American capital and pledge German real assets for
a gigantic mortgage held in the United States.”
Further, the Young Plan,
“increased unemployment more and
more,” allowing Hitler to say he would “do away with
unemployment,” which, “really was the reason of the enormous
success Hitler had in the election.”[46]
The Plan went into effect in 1930,
following the stock market crash. Part of the Plan entailed the
creation of an international settlement organization, which was
formed in 1930, and known as the
Bank for International Settlements
(BIS). It was purportedly designed to facilitate and coordinate the
reparations payments of Weimar Germany to the Allied powers.
However, its secondary function, which
is much more secretive, and much more important, was to act as “a
coordinator of the operations of central banks around the world.”
Described as “a bank for central banks,”
the BIS “is a private institution
with shareholders but it does operations for public agencies.
Such operations are kept strictly confidential so that the
public is usually unaware of most of the BIS operations.”[47]
The BIS was established,
“to remedy the decline of London as
the world’s financial center by providing a mechanism by which a
world with three chief financial centers in London, New York,
and Paris could still operate as one.”[48]
As Carroll Quigley explained:
[T]he powers of financial capitalism
had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a
world system of financial control in private hands able to
dominate the political system of each country and the economy of
the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a
feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in
concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private
meetings and conferences.
The apex of the system was to be the
Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a
private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks
which were themselves private corporations.[49]
The BIS was founded by,
“the central banks of Belgium,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United
Kingdom along with three leading commercial banks from the
United States, including J.P. Morgan & Company, First National
Bank of New York, and First National Bank of Chicago. Each
central bank subscribed to 16,000 shares and the three U.S.
banks also subscribed to this same number of shares.”
However, “Only central banks have
voting power.”[50]
In a letter dated November 21, 1933,
President Franklin Roosevelt told Edward M. House,
“The real truth... is, as you and I
know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned
the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson - and I am
not wholly excepting the administration of W[oodrow]. W[ilson].
The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight
with the Bank of the United States - only on a far bigger and
broader basis.”[51]
Banking on
Hitler
Throughout the 1930s, with the loans provided through the Dawes and
Young Plans, Germany was able to create a few dominant industrial
cartels, which were all financed by Wall Street bankers and
industrialists.[52]
These cartels provided the basis for and
main financial backing of the Nazi regime. Collaboration between the
German Nazi industry and American industry and finance continued,
specifically with Morgan and Rockefeller interests, as well as Ford
and DuPont. The Morgan-Rockefeller international banks and companies
associated with them “were intimately related to the growth of Nazi
industry.”[53]
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Empire “was
of critical assistance in helping Nazi Germany prepare for World War
II.”[54]
On top of this, the Rockefeller
Foundation was also pivotal in not only funding the racist and
elitist eugenics movement in the United States, but played a pivotal
part in bringing the eugenics ideology to Nazi Germany, facilitating
the beliefs that brought about the Holocaust.[55]
Hjalmar Schacht, the President of the Reichsbank throughout
Weimar Germany, stayed on as President of the German central bank
from 1933 until 1939, and was thus a central figure in Nazi Germany,
being a major driver being the German plans for reindustrialization,
redevelopment and rearmament.
Hitler, in 1934, made Schacht his
Minister of Economics.
Central banks across Europe began to purchase Nazi gold, which was
smuggled and melted down and re-stamped in Switzerland, (much like
was done with Soviet gold). Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Argentina,
Turkey, France, Great Britain, Poland, Hungary, and the United
States all “traded with the Nazis with gold transferred by the BIS.”
This was done as a collaborative effort
among central banks, as,
“the BIS did enter into gold and
currency transactions with Nazi Germany through its
participation with the Reichsbank.” Schacht wielded his
significant influence and “had become instrumental in placing
high-ranking Nazi officials and foreign collaborators on the BIS
Board of Directors.”[56]
Empire, War
and the Rise of the New Global Hegemon
World War Two also marked a period of massive imperial transition.
The build-up of the Third Reich led to Nazi imperialism throughout
Europe and North Africa and the Japanese Empire expanded into China.
At the end of the War, the British and
French Empires were all but vanished, holding onto remaining
colonies in Africa and Asia. The Soviet Union was devastated and
Germany, with much of Europe, was in ruins. What emerged from this
war that was most significant was the rise of a new empire, the
American Empire. America’s intervention into the war and expansion
into Europe as a liberating force allowed it to set up bases
throughout Europe as well as in Japan on the Pacific.
The Soviet Union, having taken Europe
from the East, expanded its influence and dominance across Eastern
Europe. Following Churchill’s speech that an “Iron Curtain” had
fallen across Europe, the Cold War was underway. Thus, World War II
ended the age of many European empires, even of those in decline,
and created a bi-polar world, which was divided between the USSR and
the USA.
Following World War II, the US, as the only major nation in the
world whose industrial base survived the devastation of the war,
assumed the position of global hegemony. It began to set up the
infrastructure, both national and international, to assume the
position of global superpower, exerting its hegemony across the
globe.
The crown had been passed from the
British Empire to the American Empire. Ultimately, both were and are
owned and controlled by the same interests, primarily represented
through the central banks and the private banking interests that
make up the dominant shareholders.
Before America had even entered the war in late 1941, the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
the American branch of the round table groups Carroll Quigley
discussed as having originated from the secret society of Cecil
Rhodes, was planning on America entering the war. The CFR had
essentially captured US foreign policy firmly in the grips of the
banking elite.
The establishment of the Federal Reserve
(1913) ensured that the United States would become indebted to and
owned by international banking interests, and thus, act in their
interest. The Fed financed the US role in World War I, provided the
credit for speculation, which led to the Great Depression, and
massive consolidation for the interests that own the Federal Reserve
System. It then financed US entry into World War II.
The CFR, established six years after the Federal Reserve was
created, worked to promote an internationalist agenda on behalf of
the international banking elite. It was to alter America’s
conceptualization of its place within the world – from isolationist
industrial nation to an engine of empire working for international
banking and corporate American interests.
Where the Fed took control of money and
debt, the CFR took control of the ideological foundations of such an
empire – encompassing the corporate, banking, political, foreign
policy, military, media, and academic elite of the nation into a
generally cohesive overall world view. By altering one’s ideology to
that of promoting such an internationalist agenda, the big money
that was behind it would ensure one’s rise through government,
industry, academia and media. The other major think tanks and policy
institutions in the United States are also represented at the CFR.
They are constitutive of divisions
within the elite, however, such divisions are predicated on the
basis of how to use American imperial power, where to use it, on
what basis to justify it, and other various methodological
differences.
The divide amongst elites was never on
the questions of: should we use American imperial power, why has
America become an Empire, or should there even be an empire? If one
takes such considerations to heart and questions these concepts, be
it within the foreign policy establishment, intelligence, military,
academia, finance, corporate world, or media; chances are, such a
person is not a member of the CFR.
The CFR effectively undertook a policy coup d’état over American
foreign policy with the Second World War. When war broke out, the
Council began a “strictly confidential” project called the War and
Peace Studies, in which top CFR members collaborated with the US
State Department in determining US policy, and the project was
entirely financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.[57]
The post-War world was already being
designed by members of the Council, who would go into government in
order to enact these designs.
The policy of “containment” towards the Soviet Union that would
define American foreign policy for nearly half a century was
envisaged in a 1947 edition of Foreign Affairs, the academic journal
of the Council on Foreign Relations. So too were the ideological
foundations for the Marshall Plan and NATO envisaged at the Council
on Foreign Relations, with members of the Council recruited to
enact, implement and lead these institutions.[58]
The Council also played a role in the
establishment and promotion of the United Nations,[59]
which was subsequently built on land bought from John D.
Rockefeller, Jr.[60]
The Rise of
the American Empire and Keynesian Political Economy
Within liberal political economy, a prominent individual and British
economist, John Maynard Keynes, undertook the process of
evolving liberal theory into what later became known as Keynesian
economics.
Following in the footsteps of the
dominance of the liberal order, in which the economic and political
realms were viewed as separate, and necessarily so, Keynes sought to
re-imagine the political-economic relationship. His work was largely
influenced by the events leading up to and following the Great
Depression, which was largely seen as a failure of the liberal
economic order.
Keynes wanted to combine state and
market forces, not rejecting the liberal notion of the “invisible
hand,” however, relegated that to a more distinct area, and imagined
a broader role for the state in the economy.
Keynes advocated for the state to act, or invest, when private
individuals would not, in an effort to stave off financial or
economic crises.
Thus, Keynes would argue, the state
strengthens the market. A Marxist theorist would likely point to
this as an example of how the state, within a capitalist society,
functions as an institutional organ which protects the interests of
the capitalist class. Keynes advocated a liberal international order
composed of free markets, however he recommended state intervention
domestically, particularly to protect jobs and control inflation.
Keynesian political economic theory served in large part as a basis
for the creation of the
Bretton-Woods System, established
in 1944, and his concept of embedded liberalism (promotion of
liberal international economy, and state intervention in domestic
economy), reigned supreme until the 1970s.
In 1944, representatives of the 44 Allied nations met for the
Bretton Woods conference (the United Nations Monetary and
Financial Conference) in New Hampshire, in an effort to
reorganize and regulate the international financial and monetary
order following the war.
The UK was represented by John Maynard
Keynes; with the American contingent represented by Harry Dexter
White, an American economist and senior US Treasury department
official. It was out of this conference that the
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD),
now part of the
World Bank, and the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now institutionalized in the
World Trade Organization (WTO), originated.
They were designed to be the
institutionalized economic foundations of exerting American hegemony
across the globe; they were, in essence, engines of economic empire.
In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the
National Security Act, which,
-
created the position of
Secretary of Defense overseeing the entire military
establishment, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
-
created the CIA modeled on its
war time incarnation of the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS)
-
created the National Security
Council, headed by a National Security Adviser, and designed
to give the President further advice on foreign affairs
issues separate from the State Department.
Essentially, the Act created the basis
for the national security state apparatus for empire building.
The founding of the CIA was urged by the War and Peace Studies
Project of the Council on Foreign Relations in the early 1940s, and
the architects of the CIA, designing the shape and organization of
the Agency, as well as its functions; were all Wall Street lawyers,
largely made up of members of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Deputy Directors of the CIA for the
first two decades were all “from the same New York legal and
financial circles.”[61]
Notes
[1] Edwin Black, Banking on Baghdad:
Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: 2004: page 105
[2] Edwin Black, Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year
History of War, Profit, and Conflict. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.:
2004: page 107
[3] Patricia Goldstone, Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of
the Man who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East.
Harcourt Trade, 2007: pages 21-22
[4] Patricia Goldstone, Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of
the Man who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East.
Harcourt Trade, 2007: page 22
[5] Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British
World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. Perseus, 2002:
pages 193-194
[6] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in
Our Time. The MacMillan Company: 1966: page 56
[7] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in
Our Time. The MacMillan Company: 1966: pages 499-500
[8] Herbert R. Lottman, Return of the Rothschilds: The Great
Banking Dynasty Through Two Turbulent Centuries. I.B. Tauris,
1995: page 81
[9] Patricia Goldstone, Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of
the Man who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East.
Harcourt Trade, 2007: pages 22-23
[10] Herbert R. Lottman, Return of the Rothschilds: The Great
Banking Dynasty Through Two Turbulent Centuries. I.B. Tauris,
1995: pages 141-142
[11] Herbert R. Lottman, Return of the Rothschilds: The Great
Banking Dynasty Through Two Turbulent Centuries. I.B. Tauris,
1995: pages 143-144
[12] Herbert R. Lottman, Return of the Rothschilds: The Great
Banking Dynasty Through Two Turbulent Centuries. I.B. Tauris,
1995: pages 141-142
[13] NYT, Rockefeller To Aid Czar? New York Times: March 6, 1906
[14] Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, The Politics of the Global Oil
Industry. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005: page 215
[15] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 16-17
[16] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: page 25
[17] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: page 34
[18] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 25-26
[19] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 71-73
[20] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 89-90
[21] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 73-77
[22] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 82-83
[23] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: page 87
[24] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 127-135
[25] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 159-161
[26] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 166-167
[27] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Buccaneer Books, New York, 1974: pages 172-173
[28] Michael Kort, The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath.
M.E. Sharpe, 2001: page 202
[29] Time, Russia & Recognition. Time Magazine: August 18, 1930:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789203,00.html
[30] Time, Everybody's Red Business. Time Magazine: June 9,
1930: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,739474-5,00.html
[31] H.W. Brands, "He Is My Independent Self". The Washington
Post: June 11, 2006: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801104.html
[32] CFR, Continuing the Inquiry. History of CFR: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/inquiry.html
[33] Chatham House, CHATHAM HOUSE (The Royal Institute of
International Affairs): Background. Chatham House History:
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/history/
[34] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment. GSG &
Associates, 1981: page 5
[35] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World
in Our Time. The MacMillan Company: 1966: pages 132-133
[36] William L. Cleaveland, A History of the Modern Middle East
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2004), 37-38
[37] William L. Cleaveland, A History of the Modern Middle East
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2004), 49-50
[38] Ellen Hodgson Brown, Web of Debt. Third Millennium Press:
2007: Page 2
[39] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World
in Our Time. The MacMillan Company: 1966: pages 326-327
[40] John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it
Went (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975), 173
[41] John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it
Went (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975), 174-175
[42] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World
in Our Time. The MacMillan Company: 1966: page 342
[43] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World
in Our Time. The MacMillan Company: 1966: page 344
[44] Alan Greenspan, “Gold and Economic Freedom” in Capitalism:
The Unknown Ideal. (New York: Signet, 1967), 99-100
[45] Time, HEROES: Man-of-the-Year. Time Magazine: Jan 6, 1930:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,738364-1,00.html
[46] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. G S G
& Associates Pub, 1976: pages 15-16
[47] James Calvin Baker, The Bank for International Settlements:
evolution and evaluation. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002: page
2
[48] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World
in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 324-325
[49] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World
in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 324
[50] James Calvin Baker, The Bank for International Settlements:
evolution and evaluation. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002: page
6
[51] Melvin Urofsky and Paul Finkelman, A March of Liberty: A
Constitutional History of the United States Volume II From 1877
to the Present 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, 2002: pp.
674
[52] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. G S G
& Associates Pub, 1976: pages 17-19
[53] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. G S G
& Associates Pub, 1976: pages 19-20
[54] Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. G S G
& Associates Pub, 1976: page 51
[55] Edwin Black, Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California
connection. The San Francisco Chronicle: November 9, 2003:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL
[56] James Calvin Baker, The Bank for International Settlements:
evolution and evaluation. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002: page
202
[57] CFR, War and Peace. CFR History: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html
[58] William P. Bundy, The History of Foreign Affairs. The
Council on Foreign Relations, 1994: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/foreign_affairs.html
[59] CFR, War and Peace. CFR History: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html
[60] UN, 1945-1949. Sixty Years: A Pictorial History of the
United Nations: http://www.un.org/issues/gallery/history/1940s.htm
[61] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007), 12
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