World Wars
- Lafyva
- Oct 7, 2023
- 16 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Hitler needed as much money as possible to fight off the Communists/Jewish conspiracy against Europe. Hitler envisioned a fascist German monarchy with a nonunion, antilock national work force.
Millegan, Kris. Fleshing Out Skull & Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society (p. 107). Independent Publishers Group. Kindle Edition.
In October, 1923, an emotionally desperate Fritz Thyssen went to visit one of his and Germany’s great military heroes, General Erich Ludendorff. During the 1918 socialist rule in Berlin, Ludendorff organized a military resistance against the socialists and the industrialists were in great debt to him. When Thyssen met with Ludendorff, they discussed Germany’s economic collapse. Thyssen was apocalyptic, fearing the worst was yet to come. Ludendorff disagreed. “There is but one hope,” Ludendorff said, “Adolph Hitler and the National Socialist party.” Ludendorff respected Hitler immensely. “He is the only man who has any political sense.” Ludendorff encouraged Thyssen to join the Nazi movement. “Go listen to him one day” he said to Thyssen. Thyssen followed General Ludendorff’s advice and went to a number of meetings to hear Hitler speak. He became mesmerized by Hitler. “I realized his orator gifts and his ability to lead the masses. What impressed me most however was the order that reigned over his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers.” Thyssen arranged to meet privately with Hitler and Ludendorff in Munich. Hitler told Thyssen the Nazi movement was in financial trouble, it was not growing fast enough and was nationally irrelevant. Hitler needed as much money as possible to fight off the Communists/Jewish conspiracy against Europe. Hitler envisioned a fascist German monarchy with a nonunion, antilock national work force. Thyssen was overjoyed with the Nazi platform. He gave Hitler and Ludendorff 100,000 gold marks ($25,000) for the infant Nazi party. Others in the steel and coal industries soon followed Thyssen’s lead, although none came close to matching him. Many business leaders in Germany supported Hitler’s secret union-hating agenda. However, some donated because they feared they would be left out in the cold if he actually ever seized power.
Millegan, Kris. Fleshing Out Skull & Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society (pp. 106-107). Independent Publishers Group. Kindle Edition.
The SAS, which eschews uniforms, the use of last names, and badges of rank, is a Top Secret regiment skilled in both unconventional warfare and intelligence operations. Accused of using assassination and torture (notably sensory-deprivation techniques) against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and others, SAS veterans have long been available to Colonel Sterling for service in paramilitary adventures of an ad hoc sort and have served widely as mercenaries under various leaders and banners.
Hougan, Jim. Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents (p. 28). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.
Gustav Mannerheim was one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century and the only man to be decorated by both sides in both World Wars. He witnessed the coronation of the last Tsar, and he was both reprimanded for foolhardiness and decorated for bravery in the Russo-Japanese War. He spent two years undercover in Asia as an agent in the "Great Game," posing as a Swedish anthropologist, and then crossed China on horseback, stopping en route to teach the thirteenth Dalai Lama how to fire a pistol. After narrowly escaping the Bolsheviks in 1917, he arrived home to a newly independent Finland before leading the defence of his country in the Winter War.
The First World War was a catastrophe of such magnitude that, even today, the imagination has some difficulty grasping it. In the year 1916, in two battles (Verdun and the Somme) casualties of over 1,700,000 were suffered by both sides. In the artillery barrage which opened the French attack on Chemin des Dames in April 1917, 11,000,000 shells were fired on a 30-mile front in 10 days. Three months later, on an 11-mile front at Passchendaele, the British fired 4,250,000 shells costing £22,000,000 in a preliminary barrage, and lost 400,000 men in the ensuing infantry assault. In the German attack of March 1918, 62 divisions with 4,500 heavy guns and 1,000 planes were hurled on a front only 45 miles wide. On all fronts in the whole war almost 13,000,000 men in the various armed forces died from wounds and disease. It has been estimated by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that the war destroyed over $400,000,000,000 of property at a time when the value of every object in France and Belgium was not worth over $75,000,000,000. Obviously, expenditures of men and wealth at rates like these required a tremendous mobilization of resources throughout the world, and could not fail to have far-reaching effects on the patterns of thought and modes of action of people forced to undergo such a strain. Some states were destroyed or permanently crippled. There were profound modifications in finance, in economic life, in social relations, in intellectual outlook, and in emotional patterns. Nevertheless, two facts should be recognized. The war brought nothing really new into the world; rather it sped up processes of change which had been going on for a considerable period and would have continued anyway, with the result that changes which would have taken place over a period of thirty or even fifty years in peacetime were brought about in five years during the war. Also, the changes were much greater in objective facts and in the organization of society than they were in men’s ideas of these facts or organization. It was as if the changes were too rapid for men’s minds to accept them, or, what is more likely, that men, seeing the great changes which were occurring on all sides, recognized them, but assumed that they were merely temporary wartime aberrations, and that, when peace came, they would pass away and everyone could go back to the slow, pleasant world of 1913. This point of view, which dominated the thinking of the 1920’s, was widespread and very dangerous. In their efforts to go back to 1913, men refused to recognize that the wartime changes were more or less permanent, and, instead of trying to solve the problems arising from these changes, set up a false facade of pretense, painted to look like 1913, to cover up the great changes which had taken place. Then, by acting as if this facade were reality, and by neglecting the maladjusted reality which was moving beneath it, the people of the 1920’s drifted in a hectic world of unreality until the world depression of 1929-1935, and the international crises which followed, tore away the facade and showed the horrible, long-neglected reality beneath it. The magnitude of the war and the fact that it might last for more than six months were quite unexpected for both sides and were impressed upon them only gradually. It first became clear in regard to consumption of supplies, especially ammunition, and in the problem of how to pay for these supplies. In July 1914, the military men were confident that a decision would be reached in six months because their military plans and the examples of 1866 and 1870 indicated an immediate decision. This belief was supported by the financial experts who, while greatly underestimating the cost of fighting, were confident that the financial resources of all states would be exhausted in six months. By “financial resources” they meant the gold reserves of the various nations. These were clearly limited; all the Great Powers were on the gold standard under which bank notes and paper money could be converted into gold on demand. However, each country suspended the gold standard at the outbreak of war. This removed the automatic limitation on the supply of paper money. Then each country proceeded to pay for the war by borrowing from the banks. The banks created the money which they lent by merely giving the government a deposit of any size against which the government could draw checks. The banks were no longer limited in the amount of credit they could create because they no longer had to pay out gold for checks on demand. Thus the creation of money in the form of credit by the banks was limited only by the demands of its borrowers. Naturally, as governments borrowed to pay for their needs, private businesses borrowed in order to be able to fill the government’s orders. The gold which could no longer be demanded merely rested in the vaults, except where some of it was exported to pay for supplies from neutral countries or from fellow belligerents. As a result, the percentage of outstanding bank notes covered by gold reserves steadily fell, and the percentage of bank credit covered by either gold or bank notes fell even further.
Naturally, when the supply of money was increased in this fashion faster than the supply of goods, prices rose because a larger supply of money was competing for a smaller supply of goods. This effect was made worse by the fact that the supply of goods tended to be reduced by wartime destruction. People received money for making capital goods, consumers’ goods, and munitions, but they could spend their money only to buy consumers’ goods, since capital goods and munitions were not offered for sale. Since governments tried to reduce the supply of consumers’ goods while increasing the supply of the other two products, the problem of rising prices (inflation) became acute. At the same time the problem of public debt became steadily worse because governments were financing such a large part of their activities by bank credit. These two problems, inflation and public debt, continued to grow, even after the fighting stopped, because of the continued disruption of economic life and the need to pay for past activities. Only in the period 1920-1925 did these two stop increasing in most countries, and they remained problems long after that. Inflation indicates not only an increase in the prices of goods but also a decrease in the value of money (since it will buy less goods). Accordingly, people in an inflation seek to get goods and to get rid of money. Thus inflation increases production and purchases for consumption or hoarding, but it reduces saving or creation of capital. It benefits debtors (by making a fixed-money debt less of a burden) but injures creditors (by reducing the value of their savings and credits). Since the middle classes of European society, with their bank savings, checking deposits, mortgages, insurance, and bond holdings, were the creditor class, they were injured and even ruined by the wartime inflation. In Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia, where the inflation went so far that the monetary unit became completely valueless by 1924, the middle classes were largely destroyed, and their members were driven to desperation or at least to an almost psychopathic hatred of the form of government or the social class that they believed to be responsible for their plight. Since the last stages of inflation which dealt the fatal blow to the middle classes occurred after the war rather than during it (in 1923 in Germany), this hatred was directed against the parliamentary governments which were functioning after 1918 rather than against the monarchical governments which functioned in 1914-1918. In France and Italy, where the inflation went so far that the franc or lire was reduced permanently to one-fifth of its prewar value, the hatred of the injured middle classes was directed against the parliamentary regime which had functioned both during and after the war and against the working class which they felt had profited by their misfortunes. These things were not true in Britain or the United States, where the inflation was brought under control and the monetary unit restored to most of its prewar value. Even in these countries, prices rose by 200 to 300 percent, while public debts rose about 1,000 percent.
Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (pp. 271-272). GSG & Associates Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (pp. 269-271). GSG & Associates Publishers. Kindle Edition.
World Wars I and II remain the greatest expression of Westphalian war, in both scope and destruction, and their battlefields spanned the globe, by then mostly colonized by European states. In addition to the horrific losses of life, World War I also claimed the Habsburg and Ottoman empires as casualties, and the Treaty of Versailles seriously enfeebled Germany. However, this destructive test of the Westphalian order did not invalidate it. In one generation, Japan’s imperial pursuits put it in direct competition with the United States, Italy’s imperial conquests took it deep into northeast Africa, and Germany rebounded to threaten European powers once more under the Nazi regime. On September 1, 1939, World War II erupted and perhaps marked the zenith of the Westphalian order. The Axis countries of Germany and Japan suffered total defeat and occupation by other states, and Italy was rendered ineffectual as a world power. The Allied countries of Britain and France were also grievously wounded and retreated from their colonies in the decades to follow. The Suez Canal crisis in 1956 demonstrated that Britain and France, the last of the old European powers, were no longer leading actors on the world stage, replaced by the younger United States and Soviet Union. However, international relations had changed, because warfare had changed. Armed with world-destroying nuclear weapons, the US and Soviet superpowers sought power without tempting direct confrontation and therefore fought a cold war through allied states, proxy wars, and economic competition.
McFate, Sean. The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (pp. 67-68). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
The heavy casualties, the growing shortages, the slow decline in quality of goods, and the gradual growth of the use of substitutes, as well as the constantly increasing pressure of governments on the activities of their citizens—all these placed a great strain on the morale of the various European peoples. The importance of this question was just as great in the autocratic and semi-democratic countries as it was in the ones with fully democratic and parliamentary regimes. The latter did not generally permit any general elections during the war, but both types required the full support of their peoples in order to maintain their battle lines and economic activities at full effectiveness. At the beginning, the fever of patriotism and national enthusiasm was so great that this was no problem. Ancient and deadly political rivals clasped hands, or even sat in the same Cabinet, and pledged a united front to the enemy of their fatherland. But disillusionment was quick, and appeared as early as the winter of 1914. This change was parallel to the growth of the realization that the war was to be a long one and not the lightning stroke of a single campaign and a single battle which all had expected. The inadequacies of the preparations to deal with the heavy casualties or to provide munitions for the needs of modern war, as well as the shortage or disruption of the supply of civilian goods, led to public agitation. Committees were formed, but proved relatively ineffective, and in most activities in most countries were replaced by single-headed agencies equipped with extensive controls. The use of voluntary or semi-voluntary methods of control generally vanished with the committees and were replaced by compulsion, however covert. In governments as wholes a somewhat similar shifting of personnel took place until each Cabinet came to be dominated by a single man, endowed with greater energy, or a greater willingness to make quick decisions on scanty information than his fellows. In this way Lloyd George replaced Asquith in England; Clemenceau replaced a series of lesser leaders in France; Wilson strengthened his control on his own government in the United States; and, in a distinctly German way, Ludendorff came to dominate the government of his country. In order to build up the morale of their own peoples and to lower that of their enemies, countries engaged in a variety of activities designed to regulate the flow of information to these peoples. This involved censorship, propaganda, and curtailment of civil liberties. These were established in all countries, without a hitch in the Central Powers and Russia where there were long traditions of extensive police authority, but no less effectively in France and Britain. In France a State of Siege was proclaimed on August 2, 1914. This gave the government the right to rule by decree, established censorship, and placed the police under military control. In general, French censorship was not so severe as the German nor so skillful as the British, while their propaganda was far better than the German but could not compare with the British. The complexities of French political life and the slow movement of its bureaucracy allowed all kinds of delays and evasions of control, especially by influential persons. When Clemenceau was in opposition to the government in the early days of the war, his paper, L’homme libre, was suspended; he continued to publish it with impunity under the name L‘homme enchainé. The British censorship was established on August 5, 1914, and at once intercepted all cables and private mail which it could reach, including that of neutral countries. These at once became an important source of military and economic intelligence. A Defence of the Realm Act (familiarly known as DORA) was passed giving the government the power to censor all information. A Press Censorship Committee was set up in 1914 and was replaced by the Press Bureau under Frederick E. Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) in 1916. Established in Crewe House, it was able to control all news printed in the press, acting as the direct agent of the Admiralty and War Offices. The censorship of printed books was fairly lenient, and was much more so for books to be read in England than for books for export, with the result that “best sellers” in England were unknown in America. Parallel with the censorship was the War Propaganda Bureau under Sir Charles Masterman, which had an American Bureau of Information under Sir Gilbert Parker at Wellington House. This last agency was able to control almost all information going to the American press, and by 1916 was acting as an international news service itself, distributing European news to about 35 American papers which had no foreign reporters of their own. The Censorship and the Propaganda bureaus worked together in Britain as well as elsewhere. The former concealed all stories of Entente violations of the laws of war or of the rules of humanity, and reports on their own military mistakes or their own war plans and less altruistic war aims, while the Propaganda Bureau widely publicized the violations and crudities of the Central Powers, their prewar schemes for mobilization, and their agreements regarding war aims. The German violation of Belgian neutrality was constantly bewailed, while nothing was said of the Entente violation of Greek neutrality. A great deal was made of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, while the Russian mobilization which had precipitated the war was hardly mentioned. In the Central Powers a great deal was made of the Entente “encirclement,” while nothing was said of the Kaiser’s demands for “a place in the sun” or the High Command’s refusal to renounce annexation of any part of Belgium. In general, manufacture of outright lies by propaganda agencies was infrequent, and the desired picture of the enemy was built up by a process of selection and distortion of evidence until, by 1918, many in the West regarded the Germans as bloodthirsty and sadistic militarists, while the Germans regarded the Russians as “subhuman monsters.” A great deal was made, especially by the British, of “atrocity” propaganda; stories of German mutilation of bodies, violation of women, cutting off of children’s hands, desecration of churches and shrines, and crucifixions of Belgians were widely believed in the West by 1916. Lord Bryce headed a committee which produced a volume of such stories in 1915, and it is quite evident that this well-educated man, “the greatest English authority on the United States,” was completely taken in by his own stories. Here, again, outright manufacture of falsehoods was infrequent, although General Henry Charteris in 1917 created a story that the Germans were cooking human bodies to extract glycerine, and produced pictures to prove it. Again, photographs of mutilated bodies in a Russian anti-Semitic outrage in 1905 were circulated as pictures of Belgians in 1915. There were several reasons for the use of such atrocity stories: (a) to build up the fighting spirit of the mass army; (b) to stiffen civilian morale; (c) to encourage enlistments, especially in England, where volunteers were used for one and a half years; (d) to increase subscriptions for war bonds; (e) to justify one’s own breaches of international law or the customs of war; (f) to destroy the chances of negotiating peace (as in December 1916) or to justify a severe final peace (as Germany did in respect to Brest-Litovsk); and (g) to win the support of neutrals. On the whole, the relative innocence and credulity of the average person, who was not yet immunized to propaganda assaults through mediums of mass communication in 1914, made the use of such stories relatively effective. But the discovery, in the period after 1919, that they had been hoaxed gave rise to a skepticism toward all government communications which was especially noticeable in the Second World War.
Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (pp. 276-278). GSG & Associates Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Obviously, expenditures of men and wealth at rates like these required a tremendous mobilization of resources throughout the world, and could not fail to have far-reaching effects on the patterns of thought and modes of action of people forced to undergo such a strain. Some states were destroyed or permanently crippled. There were profound modifications in finance, in economic life, in social relations, in intellectual outlook, and in emotional patterns. Nevertheless, two facts should be recognized. The war brought nothing really new into the world; rather it sped up processes of change which had been going on for a considerable period and would have continued anyway, with the result that changes which would have taken place over a period of thirty or even fifty years in peacetime were brought about in five years during the war. Also, the changes were much greater in objective facts and in the organization of society than they were in men’s ideas of these facts or organization. It was as if the changes were too rapid for men’s minds to accept them, or, what is more likely, that men, seeing the great changes which were occurring on all sides, recognized them, but assumed that they were merely temporary wartime aberrations, and that, when peace came, they would pass away and everyone could go back to the slow, pleasant world of 1913. This point of view, which dominated the thinking of the 1920’s, was widespread and very dangerous. In their efforts to go back to 1913, men refused to recognize that the wartime changes were more or less permanent, and, instead of trying to solve the problems arising from these changes, set up a false facade of pretense, painted to look like 1913, to cover up the great changes which had taken place. Then, by acting as if this facade were reality, and by neglecting the maladjusted reality which was moving beneath it, the people of the 1920’s drifted in a hectic world of unreality until the world depression of 1929-1935, and the international crises which followed, tore away the facade and showed the horrible, long-neglected reality beneath it.
Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (pp. 270-271). GSG & Associates Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Henry Ford receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi officials, 1938.
Praising American leadership in eugenics in his book Mein Kampf,[6]: 80 Adolf Hitler considered Ford an inspiration, and noted this admiration in his book, calling him "a single great man".[7]: 241 Hitler was also known to keep copies of The International Jew, as well as a large portrait of Ford in his Munich office.[6]: 80 [7]: 241
American companies that had dealings with Nazi Germany included Ford Motor Company,[2][3] Coca-Cola,[4][5] and IBM.[6][7][8] Ford Werke and Ford SAF (Ford's subsidiaries in Germany and France, respectively) produced military vehicles and other equipment for Nazi Germany's war effort. Some of Ford's operations in Germany at the time were run using forced labor. When the U.S. Army liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found "destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire."[9]
Like Swiss banks, American car companies deny helping the Nazi war machine or profiting from forced labor at their German subsidiaries during World War II.[9] "General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland," according to Bradford Snell. "The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM."[9] In some cases, GM and Ford agreed to convert their German plants to military production when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls for military production in US plants at home.[9]
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