Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil

by Tell the Truth

  The Fourteen Points were accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918. Britain later agreed to all of the points except the freedom of the seas. Britain also wanted Germany to make reparation payments for the war, and thought that that should be added to the Fourteen Points. Following Friedrich Ebert’s proposal to the chancellor, the latter arbitrarily announced the abdication of the Kaiser on 9th November. On 11th November, the Armistice was declared. Thus, by 1918, the aim of the financial powers of destroying national dynasties (Hohenzollerns, Romanovs and Ottomans) had been achieved and a truce was agreed. “Democratic” political systems allowed these powers greater and continual influence, through the imposition of their chosen lackeys, than had been the case with monarchies—or dictatorships.

  Memo from today: June 20, 2014. Ukraine’s President Poroschenko has just announced a 14-point plan for peace. Why “14”? Did someone tell this billionaire candy-manufacturer that he would sound statesmanlike if he used a previously significant number?

  In the end, the Treaty of Versailles (28 June, 1919) had little to do with the Fourteen Points and was never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Under the terms of the Treaty, Germany accepted the blame for starting the war (the “War Guilt clause”), which allowed the Allies to impose reparations. Germany lost territories which, in some cases, it had possessed for 800 to 1,000 years. Germany was forbidden from having submarines or an air force, and its army was limited to 100,000 men. No German troops were to be stationed in the Rhineland, which was occupied by France. Germany lost territory to France and Belgium, and to the newly created Czechoslovakia. Germany’s colonies were given to Britain and France. Germany was forbidden to join the League of Nations, or unite with Austria.

  After 1919, the world changed. The USA went from the greatest pre-war debtor to the greatest post-war creditor. The British and French financed their costs in the First World War in the main from U.S. banks. (How credit can be assumed from a debtor nation is a question that can have only one answer: the loans were only nominally from “U.S. banks,” but originated in Europe and resulted in European nations becoming indebted to U.S. banks. The commanding force remained the City of London.)

  They now had to meet their war debts in America. According to the 1921 demands, the German Reich had to pay reparations to the victors in an amount which was double the entire cost to Germany of the 1914 to 1918 war (164 billion Reichsmark, war costs 1914-1918—331 billion Reichsmark when adjusted for inflation). France and Britain hoped to redeem their war debts to the U.S. from these German payments. The Soviet Union had also to redeem its debts with its former allies, but war damage and revolution prevented it from doing so. This was the burden which faced the world’s economy in the early Twenties. Additionally Germany had been excluded as a trading partner by the Versailles Treaty. (deutsche- zukunft.net/hintergrundwissen, author’s translation)

  An indication of the discord and incompetence which characterized successive Weimar governments from 1919 to 1933 can be ascertained from the following:

  Napoleon I declared: “Gouverner c’est prévoir!” – Governing implies foresight! Mr. Wirth, who has shown so clearly the opposite of foresight, proceeds to govern as chancellor, and Dr. Hirsch, the man who immortalized the “foreign currency cushion,” was sent with Dr. Rathenau to Cannes as representative of the German government for negotiations with the Entente Powers! Today, however, none of the responsible personalities in government or the parties by which it is supported remembers having advocated fulfilment. Today the formula goes: we wanted by trying the impossible fulfilment to prove the impossibility of fullfilment. The gentlemen who wanted in this way to free themselves of the claim that the the ultimatum can be fulfilled, are either equipped with not quite discerningly reliable memories or they possess in unusual capacity the gift of expressing themselves ambiguously. The chancellor, Dr. Wirth, himself even as recently as July 6, 1921, as above cited (page 23), established the goal that the fulfilment obligations must be covered through current income, and he expressed only a slight doubt whether this goal could be achieved “right at the start.”

  The “Tag” of June 20, 1921 reported about the speech which Dr. Wirth gave at a public meeting in Essen: “Dr. Wirth answered the question about whether the war reparations could be paid with “Yes.” For him it is certain that we can reach the goal of making the payments, if we truly desire to do so.” Recently Dr. Wirth has claimed that he never made such a statement, but at the time he allowed that statement to be reported in the press without contradiction.

  And Mr. Rathenau? In the “Berliner Tageblatt” of May 10, 1921, in the morning edition of the day on which the parliament decided the acceptance of the ultimatum, Mr. Rathenau expressed himself about the ultimatum as follows: “The remnant of our honour is that we adhere to what we promise and promise nothing that we cannot adhere to...Germany should pay but not recover. The more it pays, --that is achieves—the deeper it should entangle itself in debt...Germany must never be in a position to do what it has promised. It must every year whimper and beg, excuse itself and promise, and the others will, according to their combination of interests, appear merciful, vile, threatening or crushing and have the right to any reprisal or torture. That is impossible and therefore we must not sign.”

  However, when on the next day despite Dr. Rathenau’s conjuration the ultimatum was signed, Dr. Rathenau changed his position. On June 2, 1921, he spoke as follows to parliament: “The conviction how one is to confront assumed obligations, whether they are willing or unwilling, I derive from my former business experience...The position of the businessman the whole world over and during centuries has been based on trust, and this trust has as its symbol the written word: a signature. When a document carries the signature of my company or my name, or even the signature of my people and country, then I defend this signature as my honour (Very good! from the Social Democrats) and the honour of my country. (Heckling from the right.) I believe it is capable of compliance, if we are determined to undergo extreme distress, that is what it is about (very true! From the Social Democrats, heckling and Listen up! from the right, excited acclamation from the united Communists). Between non-compliance and compliance lies the factor of distress. I would gladly have avoided the distress which will occur if we comply honestly. (Renewed calls from the right). Whether we can comply depends on the degree of the distress into which we deliver ourselves. (Excited shouts from the right). – There is no absolute unfulfillability, for it is only a matter of how deep in misery a people can be allowed to fall.”

  Before the decision about the acceptance or rejection there was however for a moment the impression that the majority of the parliament would recoil from undertaking the eternally unfulfillable obligations and so with our own hands to convert the threatened violence into law. Even the majority Social Democrats seemed unwilling to participate in a further demonstration of submission under an unfulfillable decree. “Vorwärts” wrote then, in answer to French voices which counselled the Social Democrats submission in the cause of “reconciliation of the peoples”: “Of all promises which were made to us, not one has been held. Behind the mask of international striving for understanding came always and again the traits of a sometimes naive, sometimes mischievous nationalism. An honest understanding that we as Social Democrats are also committed to represent the interests of our own severely oppressed people we have found on the other side of German borders consistently only among a part of the working folk and among committed international Socialists, never among the responsible statesmen of France or England und certainly not of course in the Parisian popular press. Briefly put, if we are asked if we want to help our own people to create real peace, to create honest relations between the peoples based on equal rights and mutual respect, then we answer Yes and a thousand times Yes! But to the question if we want to become the agents and executors of unfulfillable, harmful demands which destroy every true peace, there is only one decisive answer, a clear No!”

  On the following day,
the Social Democratic president of the parliament, Löbe, published an article in the “Breslauer Volksmacht,” in which was written:

  The Social Democrats are like all bourgeois parties convinced of the impossibility of fulfilling the payments demanded. They too can only undertake together with all other German comrades responsibility for a document which holds children and grandchildren in debt bondage. All parties, not just ours, must be confronted with the question, whether they hold the delivery of German territory to the enemy, or the attempt to pay horrendous sums of money, for the right way out of our desperate situation...Government and Social Democrats could only sign the enormous note of debt if the Deutschnationalen (German Nationalists) too declare that there is no other way out...The foreign position of our country is so desperate that here the often abused yearning for a “United Front” must become effective – we must bear the pressure of the enemy together, if the last attempt fails, we must fulfil the obligations together, if they protect us from the worst, we must also bear the responsibility for both together!

  The Social Democratic president therefore declared then -- two weeks before the decision about the ultimatum—that the fulfilment of the Entente demands was impossible; he made the agreement of his party to the submission to the ultimatum dependent on all other parties, including the German Nationals, undertaking full joint responsibility for this submission and its consequences. He described the creation of a united front for the protection against the monstrous pressure as the order of the day. This, his view of the position and the consequences to be deduced from it, he stated not only in the cited article from the “Breslauer Volksmacht,” but also amplified in a personal discussion with the leader of the German Nationals, State Minister Hergt. The possibility seemed given, that finally all parties, from the German Nationals to the Socialist majority, would unite in determined rejection of the unfulfillable demands. The situation in the Reichstag, after the ultimatum had been presented, seemed in fact to develop in that direction. The debate over the ultimatum in the foreign affairs committee reinforced the impression that something completely unfulfillable was being demanded, that a German signature quite unnecessarily sacrificed the honour of the German name, and that the attempt to fulfil the unfulfilable in a short time must lead to collapse.

  At the last moment however, a reversal occurred. Not only the Social Democrats but also the Centre Party began to vacillate. For, those who opposed the acceptance of the ultimatum were rebuked because, through submission, the invasion of the Ruhr could be averted and the Reich could retain Upper Silesia; that the acceptance of the ultimatum would be a tangible proof of our goodwill, upon which the Entente countries were waiting, in order to assume a friendly, understanding position towards us and to reverse the “Sanctions” imposed on us in March. (N.B. France occupied the Ruhr in December 1922, “to ensure payment of war reparations in kind” (Wikipedia); despite a plebiscite which favoured adherence to Germany, much of Upper Silesia was ceded to Poland by the Weimar Republic in June 1922.)

  Although it had been settled that in none of these points any firm and tangible assurances for the case of our submission existed, the prospects disclosed did not fail to have an effect; when, on the 50th anniversary of the signature of the Peace of Frankfurt the vote in Parliament over the ultimatum was held, the Müller-Franken-Trimborn motion was passed with 220 against 172 votes, which read: “The Reichstag agrees that the government of the Reich hand in the declaration requested in the note of May 5, 1921 from the Allied governments.”

  The new government under Dr. Wirth made “Fulfillment” its main programme. The chancellor made propaganda for the “Fulfillment Programme” before the parliament and the popular assembly, with an unusual use of important words. In his speech about his programme on June 1, 1921 before the parliament, he declared in the name of his cabinet that he wanted to show at home and abroad “that we are serious about the start of the new era, that we are fulfilling our obligations to the utmost, and are battling with work and achievement for freedom and fatherland.” The London Ultimatum demanded payment of one billion Goldmarks by May 31, 1921, and this either in cash or gold-backed currency or in three-monthly treasury warrants, based on gold, which must be guaranteed by German big banks. Even this first payment –all experts were agreed— exceeded the strength of the German economy. For Dr. Wirth, by contrast, they seemed apparently to be a child’s game. In his already mentioned speech of June 1, 1921, he said: “In the financial domain, the one billion Goldmarks to be paid by May 31 will be punctually delivered despite the extremely heavy claims through current needs and other disbursements of the peace treaty.”

  What had been delivered then? – 150 million Goldmarks had been paid in gold-backed currencies; that is, nearly the entire reserve of foreign currency accumulated by the national bank over a long period had been handed over to the Guarantee Committee. For the remaining 850 million Goldmarks, the Chancellor and Finance Minister Dr. Wirth had signed national treasury notes maturing on 31 August 1921. At the time, Dr. Wirth committed the blunder of confusing the underwriting of bills of exchange, thus the most official signature under a promissory note, with the payment, that is the redemption, of a debt. He thought he could allow himself this for – so he said –”the finance ministry has met the required preparations and collocations in order to secure the fulfilment within the deadline.” What these “required preparations and collocations” were all about, the German economy would experience to its horror. (Die Politik der Erfüllung, Karl Helfferich, 1922, pp30-33, author’s translation)

  As additional persuasion to agree to their terms, the Entente powers threatened to invade Germany and to re-impose the blockade. In fact, the food blockade was not terminated until July 12, 1919. On May 7 of that year, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau (later first Weimar Foreign Minister) had indignantly referred to this fact in addressing the Versailles assembly:

  The hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since November 11, 1918, as a result of the blockade, were killed with cold deliberation, after our enemies had been assured of their complete victory. (Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965).

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  This war, in its inception was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war. (Wilson, speech at the Coliseum in St. Louis, Missouri, on the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations, 5 September 1919)

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  The Treaty of Versailles is a model of ingenious measures for the economic destruction of Germany. (Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank president, 1923)

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  Until 1918, 763,000 Germans perished from undernourishment and illness on account of the blockade. The aforementioned were mainly children, women and the elderly - in other words, the weakest members of society. (Prof. H.C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: the Campaign against American Neutrality, 1939).

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  Even after the signing of the armistic agreement on November 11, 1918, the blockade was not lifted (Charles C. Tansill, Backdoor to War, 1952).

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  The German people cannot be trusted with weapons because of their character defects. England’s war aim must therefore be to disarm Germany. It must be placed under international supervision, British War and Naval Minister Duff Cooper, Evening Standard in October 1939. Duff Cooper is also supposed to have said: “We did all we could to starve women and children in Germany.”

  The extra-national background of those who “advised” the political leaders at Versailles is not irrelevant: Woodrow Wilson was advised by Bernard Baruch; Lloyd George, by Alfred Milner, a Rothschild employee, and Sir Philip Sassoon, a Rothschild relation; Georges Clemenceau, by his Minister for the Interior, Georges Mandel, whose real name was Rothschild, although apparently unrelated to the banking family. The interpreter was Paul Mantoux; and the Military Adviser was Mr. Kish.

  The Jewish aim was neither a just implementation of peace, nor fair treatment of Germany, but rather to maximize benefit to the various Jew
ish communities of Europe and the US. “At the beginning of 1919, diplomatic activity in Paris became the main focus of the various attempts to fulfil Jewish aspirations.” (Ben-Sasson, H. A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976 p. 940).

  C. Fink, in The Minority Question at the Paris Peace Conference (Boemeke et al (eds), The Treaty of Versailles, Cambridge University Press 1998 p. 259) concurs:

  In March 1919, pro-Zionist and nationalist Jewish delegations arrived in Paris. “Nearly every victorious nation, it seems, had its own Jewish representatives. Some sought formal and explicit Jewish rights in their own nations, and others worked for recognition of a Jewish national state. Polish Jews were notable beneficiaries; they succeeded in achieving explicit mention in the Polish Treaty for Minority Rights.” (Inconvenient History)

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  If Petrograd does not yet fall, if [General] Denikin is not moving forward, then this is what the great Jewish bankers of London and New York have decreed. These bankers are bound by ties of blood to those Jews who in Moscow as in Budapest are taking their revenge on the Aryan race that has condemned them to dispersion for so many centuries. In Russia, 80 percent of the managers of the Soviets are Jews, in Budapest 17 out of 22 people’s commissars are Jews. Might it not be that bolshevism is the vendetta of Judaism against Christianity?? It is certainly worth pondering. It is entirely possible that bolshevism will drown in the blood of a pogrom of catastrophic proportions. World finance is in the hands of the Jews. Whoever owns the strongboxes of the peoples is in control of their political systems. Behind the puppets (making peace) in Paris, there are the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Schiffs, the Guggenheims who are of the same blood who are conquering Petrograd and Budapest. Race does not betray race....Bolshevism is a defense of the international plutocracy. This is the basic truth of the matter. The international plutocracy dominated and controlled by Jews has a supreme interest in all of Russian life accelerating its process of disintegration to the point of paroxysm. A Russia that is paralyzed, disorganized, starved, will be a place where tomorrow the bourgeoisie, yes the bourgeoisie, of proletarians will celebrate its spectacular feast of plenty. (Benito Mussolini, Il Popolo d’Italia, June 1919)