#42 Could Britain have been solely responsible for the 1914 war?
In the last several blogs we have been examining which nation might have been responsible for the origins of the global war that began in 1914. As I suggested, could it have been the British state who was at the time the sole world’s superpower? Although undoubtedly controversial still, there is considerable evidence that culpability for the war lies with a small group within the ruling classes of the British state.
The major British historians as we have seen have strenuously denied such liability.
Cupidity - Greed by R. Ferro, 1916. This satirical drawing shows the hands of men from countries involved in World War One, arguing for control of the world. 28 countries fought in the war, a conflict everyone thought would be short-lived, but which lasted more than four years as empires battled to expand their borders and heighten their power. Held by Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico.
However, when taken in the colonial context at the time, it seems entirely logical that the ruling classes of the British state who were also the ruling classes of by far the most powerful colonial governing body in the world would wish not just to maintain such preeminence but to expand it if they were able. Yet the major history books tell us otherwise.
There is a small body of historians who have argued the case that the British ruling classes or a powerful part of that class, did wish to go to war with Germany in 1914. And further that they prepared all the conditions for such a war. This small group of historians has in the main been ignored by the establishment historians who have been given prominence by the major publishers in both the USA and UK.
These historians, having gathered a considerable body of evidence, have argued that a small cabal of Englishmen both willed and manipulated events, to go to war against Germany in 1914.
This blog is putting forward the proposition that it is possible that British ruling classes at the beginning of the 20th century decided that they needed to destroy Germany as a major Colonial power, and therefore needed a major war to this end. This possibility ought to be seriously considered in the 21st century by all historians of the period 1900 to 1945. There is a serious body of evidence to make this claim. Here are the list of historians and a very brief summary of their work:
1. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A history of the World in our Time, Macmillan. 1966 1348 pages. A huge work of scholarship. Quigley asserts that a secret society initially led by Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner, and others had considerable influence over British and American foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century. From 1909 to 1913, Milner organized the outer ring of this society as the semi-secret Round Table groups.
2. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo American Experiment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (written in 1949 and published posthumously in 1981). Although a highly respected professor at Georgetown University, Quigley could not find a publisher for this work is itself significant. Also see http://www.unityofthepolis.com/professor-carroll-quigley-and-the-article-that-said-too-little/
3. Guido Preparata, Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich, Pluto Books (2005) - Guido Giacomo Preparata shows that the truth is very different to the established story. He uses meticulous economic analysis to demonstrates that Hitler's extraordinary rise to power was facilitated -- and eventually financed -- by the British and American political classes during the decade following World War I. Through a close analysis of events in the Third Reich, Preparata unveils a startling history of Anglo-American geopolitical interests in the early twentieth century. He explains that Britain, still clinging to its empire, was terrified of an alliance forming between Germany and Russia. He shows how the UK, through the Bank of England, came to exercise control over Weimar Germany and how Anglo-American financial support for Hitler enabled the Nazis to seize power. This controversial study shows that Nazism was not regarded as an aberration: for the British and American establishment of the time, it was regarded as a convenient way of destabilising Europe and driving Germany into conflict with Stalinist Russia, thus preventing the formation of any rival continental power block. Guido Giacomo Preparata lays bare the economic forces at play in the Third Reich and identifies the key players in the British and American establishment who aided Hitler's meteoric rise.
4. Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, Mainstream Publishing (2013). Perhaps the key book to read on the topic, Hidden History uniquely exposes those responsible for the First World War. It reveals how accounts of the war’s origins have been deliberately falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of very rich and powerful men in London responsible for the most heinous crime perpetrated on humanity. For ten years, they plotted the destruction of Germany as the first stage of their plan to take control of the world. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was no chance happening. It lit a fuse that had been carefully set through a chain of command stretching from Sarajevo through Belgrade and St Petersburg to that cabal in London.
When considering who was responsible for the 1914 war, it is important to remember how these have been carefully constructed by the victors at Versailles in 1919 and maintained by compliant historians ever since. The official version is flawed by the volume of evidence they destroyed or concealed from public view.
Why it is so difficult to ask the question about British Culpability for the 1914 war?
In part, the evidence of British culpability has been ignored because to even suggest that some Englishmen willed this war would be deeply politically demeaning. The established historian’s position has therefore been silence.
There is a second hurdle. The group of upper-class English men who will be described below worked in secret. They can be understood as a vast international conspiracy, and historians rightly don't like conspiracy theories, as they rely on secrecy that cannot be researched. Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor have all unearthed considerable hard evidence from various archives. Readers will have to make up their minds.
The main difficulty today is this. The major protagonists worked, in secrecy… hardly surprisingly. At the time in the late 19th and early 20th century, there were no university departments of international or development studies. There were no think tanks of experts to guide politicians. There was no secret department of governments, that are now commonplace. The Rhodes and the Milners and all the people who worked around them knew perfectly well that their aspirations to rule the world were not ideas that needed to be propagated in public. So, the job of the historian is in part to unravel the past.
The Rhodes Colossus: Caricature of Cecil John Rhodes, after he announced plans for a telegraph line and railroad from Cape Town to Cairo. By Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910) - Punch and Exploring History 1400-1900: An anthology of primary sources, p. 401 by Rachel C. Gibbons
Definition of Ruling Classes
Throughout this blog, there is reference to the ‘ruling classes’. This is a favourite concept of many analysts, and it is useful to attempt a definition. Few historians would deny that there were ruling groups that dominated the old feudal societies as well as the newer societies that had overthrown feudal dynasties. Ruling classes have varied across the world; the best definition comes from Guido Preparata’s great work Conjuring Hitler. He discusses “self-perpetuating fraternities.... issued from the banking houses, the diplomatic corps, the officer class, and the executive aristocracy which remain solidly entrenched in the constitutional fabric of the modern 'democracies'. These 'clubs' act rule, breed and think like a compact oligarchy, and co-opts the middle class to use it as a filter” (page xvi). Over time, self-perpetuating fraternities have continued to develop in the high professions, government, and the military.
Superpowers and their role in the World
Superpowers are an element in world politics unique to the last 300 years of history. They need to be studied by themselves. The Great Powers of the pre Capitalist age were only able to control a relatively small part of the world. Today, a contemporary dominant superpower can struggle to maintain some form of order across the entire world. In this sense, they are unique creatures of our scientific age.
That the sole superpower of the day at the end of the 19th century should have planned to go to war to knock out their competitor Germany and to expand their influence should come as no surprise to readers in the 21st century. No one today expects the USA, our dominant superpower, not to be open about its aspirations to control the world.
The argument in its essence is straightforward. Cecil Rhodes, a man of almost infinite wealth, had cut his teeth in South Africa where he deliberately fomented the Boer war to own the diamond and gold mines. Rhodes had ambitious ideas that Britain should rule the world. In 1891 he had persuaded a small group – three other key people that included Alfred Milner, who became the leading force of the group; Lord Roseberry, son-in-law of Leopold Rothschild who had financed Rhodes; and Alfred Beit, a banker - to join him. In 1902, after Rhodes’ death, this group set up the Rhodes Scholarship Fund whose goal was to train an elite group from the British and US empires. This group set up the Rhodes Milner Round Table, which had affiliates across the British Empire and brought in the Royal Institute for International Affairs in Britain and the Council of Foreign Relations in the USA.
According to Docherty and MacGregor this small group:
"sought a war to crush Germany, [they then] orchestrated events in order to bring this about" ... "A secret society was established of rich and powerful men was established in London in 1891 with the long term aim of taking control of the entire world"
Docherty and MacGregor, Hidden History, p. 12
Docherty and Macgregor then spend the next 450 pages documenting just how Milner's group, alongside many in the political aristocracy, bankers, and newspapermen in Britain, successfully achieved their objective. The story Docherty and MacGregor tell is supported extensively from the archives.
The Rhodes and Milner group were advocates of benign politics, as they saw the world, through the existing ruling classes, Rhodes advocated: that the control of the state should be restricted to a small ruling class. Social order was to be built upon the authority of superiors, imposing upon inferiors absolute unquestioning obedience. His life work illustrated his abhorrence concerning the disintegration of the, “'rightful' authority of the ruling class". (page 19) These views were widely shared at the time in British ruling circles.
By the end of the 19th century, a group of the most powerful people in Britain, in the Cabinet and banking and among the monarch, had organised themselves privately as friends. Here was a relatively small group of men who sought to create an enduring British/American Empire. This was a loosely organised group of senior members of parliament, financiers and industrialists. These included Lord Grey, H.G Wells, Lord Milner, Lord Rothschild, Cecil Rhodes, and Halford Mackinder, although there were many others.
I have little doubt that the mainstream will ignore these blogs. It is my view that unless us Western European historians, come to terms with many of the less attractive characteristics of our history, we will not be able to produce a better world for our children. If we are serious about the need to achieve this goal, a re-examination of these turbulent 30 years of history, from 1914 to 1945 is a fine starting point.
