Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (25 page)

The essence of the message was the need for “peace without victory.”
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What did that mean?

President Wilson said that if the eventual victors of World War I imposed harsh and humiliating terms on the vanquished, the inevitable consequence would be, at some point, World War II. If negotiations to end the first one were to lead to an enduring peace, it followed that they should not result in settlement terms that violated the rights of either side. In other words: If the British and their Allies were to win and then rubbed German noses in the excrement of their defeat, the predictable consequence would be another great conflict. (And vice versa if the Germans won). Thus the need for “peace without victory.” It was not just a clear vision, it was a most prophetic warning.

With that Wilsonian message there was a proposal for the creation of a world body to be called the League of Nations. It was to be the vehicle through which the governments of nations, led by the “major forces”, would co-operate to maintain peace and “make the world safe for democracy”. Wilson believed that the League of Nations was essential and needed to be created as a matter of urgency, as part of the peace-making process that would take place in Paris as soon as the fighting could be stopped. Lansing wanted the creation of the League of Nations to be postponed: and when the moment came he was opposed to the idea of President Wilson attending the Paris Peace Conference. When the President ignored his Secretary of State’s advice and insisted on leading the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference himself, the two men were on a collision course. Unfortunately Woodrow Wilson was not adept at dealing with those he did not like or trust and those who opposed him.

My reading of events in perspective is that knowledge of Lansing’s collusion with Britain and Zionism made President Wilson aware that if he did not remain in complete control of his agenda and if he did not secure the widest possible public sympathy for his vision of a New World Order, it would be sabotaged by powerful American vested interests in collusion with Britain-and-Zionism.

In that context President Wilson, with his 22 January address to Congress, was going over the heads of his own and other political and military Establishments—the governing elites of the Old Western Order— and was appealing directly to the people of the world for support for his vision of a New World Order. By doing so he was hoping to generate sufficient popular momentum to prevent the implementation of his vision being sabotaged.

In its section on the History of the United States,
Encyclopaedia Britannica
puts it this way: “In one of the most ambitious rhetorical efforts in modern history, President Wilson attempted to rally the people of the world in a movement for a peace settlement that would remove the causes of future wars and establish the machinery to maintain peace.” In my view President Wilson was looking upon his pre-emptive strike on 22 January 1917 as an insurance policy.

Worthy of note here to complete the background understanding is the fact that Woodrow Wilson’s early training—that which made him more qualified for public service than probably any other President before or since—had included detailed study of the American decision-making process in action. As an undergraduate he had written and published a skilful and critical analysis of the committee system of the U.S. Congress. His clear, precise and scholarly doctoral dissertation, published in 1885, had the title, “Congressional Government”. As a result of his studies Wilson was completely aware that the Congressional committee system was open to abuse by powerful lobbies whose prime concern was not the public interest. A man as informed as Woodrow Wilson about how The System really worked did not need experience in the highest office to tell him that the power of the presidency had limits other than those imposed by constitutional checks and balances; and that there were ways short of assassination to stop a president doing what he believed to be right. (There would come a time when some distinguished Americans would acknowledge that the U.S. has “the best democracy money can buy”. In President Wilson’s day the extent to which America’s version of democracy would be for sale, to Zionism especially, was probably not foreseeable. My point for now is only that President Wilson was informed and wise enough to know that he needed an insurance policy).

The Wilson address of 22 January did, in fact, elicit a confidential response from Britain expressing a readiness to accept the president’s mediation. Whether Britain was serious or was only playing a game to reduce Wilson’s irritation is not known to me. But it was too late. Germany had passed the point of no return. Its submarines had already been let off the leash to do their unlimited worst and were heading for their first targets. They struck on 1 February (1917).

President Wilson responded by breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany, but he was still determined to keep America out of the war. He announced that he would accept unrestricted submarine warfare against belligerent merchant ships and would act only if American vessels were sunk. In early March he put arms on American ships in the hope that this would deter German submarine attacks on them. On 18 March three American merchant ships were sunk. On 6 April America declared war on Germany and joined the Allies.

When the German submarines were let off the leash it was no secret that America was unprepared and ill-equipped to go to war in Europe, and that the mobilisation of America’s industrial, financial and manpower resources would take time to organise. That being so, Germany’s militarists had concluded that America would not be able to mobilise for war on a scale big enough and in time enough to change the balance of power, in the waters around the British Isles especially, before Britain would be obliged to surrender.

It was not, in fact, until the spring of 1918 that the American people and their economy were harnessed for total war. And that, everyone in America agreed, was a “near miracle” given how unprepared and ill-equipped the U.S. had been when it declared war.

As it happened the mobilisation in America took place in two distinct phases.

From the declaration of war until November 1917, Wilson’s administration relied mainly on voluntary and co-operative efforts. That was phase one or what might be called the pre-Balfour Declaration phase.

In phase two, from December, the government moved with fierce determination to establish complete control over every important aspect of economic life. The railways were nationalised; a war industries board established ironclad controls over industry; food and fuel were strictly rationed; an emergency corporation began construction of a vast merchant fleet; and a war labour board used coercive measures to prevent strikes. And, in the Land of the Free, opposition to the war was sternly suppressed, first by the Espionage Act of 1917, then by the even more severe Sedition Act of 1918. It’s reasonable to suppose that President Wilson became more and more alarmed on account of the repressive legislation being enacted in the name of suppressing dissent and opposition to the war. He was in politics to extend the freedom of citizens, not to place limits on the amount of it they already had.

America’s military contribution to the winning of the war was small compared to that of the other main Allies, but it was decisive in one respect and helpful in another. The U.S. Navy provided the ships that assisted Britain to overcome the German submarine threat. On the western front the main impact of the infusion of American ground forces—up to 1,200,000 by September 1918—was a psychological one. The escalating number of American forces had the effect of speeding up the breaking down of the German army’s morale and will to fight on; and the consequence of that was Germany’s surrender a year earlier than Allied military commanders had anticipated.

Given Churchill’s admission that Britain expected and received valued and important assistance from the Zionists in return for giving them the Balfour Declaration, the following (picking up from where I left the subject in Chapter Four) is a necessary question. In the “in America” scenario of Neumann’s statement, what assistance were the Zionists expected by Britain to provide, and what assistance did they actually provide?

There are some clues.

By 1 April 1917, when the German submarine threat was at its greatest and the British Admiralty was entertaining the prospect of surrender, the Allies had exhausted their means of paying for essential supplies from America. Without huge loans Britain would not have been able to sustain the war. My guess is that the Zionists were expected to use their influence to see to it that Britain got the loan funding and other credits it needed. (And which Britain is still today repaying).

Could Lawrence have been right when he said the Zionists were rewarded for “bringing America into the war”?

The issue was, apparently, clear-cut. If German submarines attacked and sank neutral American vessels, the U.S. would declare war. As it happened, there was a delay of three weeks minus one day between the sinking of the three American vessels and the U.S. declaration of war. Why the delay? Short answer—America’s almost total unpreparedness for war.

Before he could declare war, President Wilson had to be certain that he could mobilise the vast financial and industrial resources necessary to provide the U.S. with the munitions—not just ammunition and guns, but tanks and other armoured vehicles of all kinds, aircraft of all kinds and ships of all kinds. Establishing whether or not such vast financial and industrial resources could actually be mobilised and harnessed, against the clock and on a sustainable basis, was not something that could happen overnight. And putting everything together, if it could be done, was a job for only the most remarkable man. He needed to be wealthy in his own right (wealth being the measure of personal success needed to impress others), extremely well connected to financial and industrial America, and to be, in addition, a deal-maker, motivator and organiser second to none.

That man, the one most responsible for the “near miracle” of America’s mobilisation for war against the clock, was Bernard Mannes Baruch. He was a Jewish American gentleman who would be described in retrospect and with remarkable brevity by the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
as a “financier known as an adviser to U.S presidents.” The
Britannica
noted that the designation “elder statesman” was applied to Baruch “more often than to any other American.”

So who, really, was Baruch? What was the stuff of which his behind-closed-doors legend was made?

After graduating from the College of the City of New York in 1889, Baruch started his working life as an office boy in a linen business. Then he became fascinated by Wall Street. He worked in several brokerage houses on it and, over the years, amassed a fortune as a stock market speculator. In 1916 he was appointed by President Wilson to the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defence. On the face of it a curious appointment. What relevance to National Defence was experience in the linen industry and success as a stock market speculator? Subsequently he became chairman of the War Industries Board and in that capacity he was, so to speak, Mr. Mobilisation. (In 1919 he was also a member of the Supreme Economic Council at the Paris Peace Conference and served as a personal adviser to President Wilson on the terms of the peace. Nearly two decades later it was Baruch, as reported by Walter Lippman, who coined the phrase Cold War).

In retrospect there is a case for saying that Baruch was, in effect, one of the two trump cards in Zionism’s hand when it was negotiating with the British for the Balfour Declaration, (the other being its influence in revolutionary Russia).

Given that Britain “expected” important assistance from Zionism, there must have been a moment when the British said to the Zionists, “What can you do for us that will influence the situation in America?” At the time the question was asked the British would have been completely aware that the U.S., without an extraordinary effort to mobilise its financial and industrial resources for war, was in no state to assist Britain and its allies.

My speculation is that the Zionists replied to the effect that they had people in positions of influence—they may or may not have named Baruch—who could see to it that America performed as required.

Another possible explanation for the delay between the sinking of the three American merchant vessels and the U.S. declaration of war is that the clamour in America for war was not spontaneously overwhelming and had to be worked up. It could have been that the Zionists, assisted by their influential and unquestioning supporters in the media, were expected by Britain to play, and did play, an important role in the creation of a pro-war atmosphere that left a reluctant President Wilson with no choice.

There is no way of knowing precisely what Lawrence really meant when he said the Zionists were rewarded for “bringing America into the war.” If he meant that the U.S. might not have been able to mobilise in time enough to assist Britain in her darkest hours without the influence and efforts of American Jewry as organised by the Zionists, I think he might have been right.

My research for this book led me to the conclusion that Bernard Mannes Baruch was, quietly, the single most influential Jewish American of his time—1870 to 1965. (The story of his influence continues in Chapter Twelve—Forrestal’s “Suicide”).

From the moment President Wilson was committed to war he displayed outstanding qualities of leadership on that front, too. But he continued to enlarge and explain his vision for peace as the war progressed.

He constantly stressed that, so far as America was concerned, the war was “a crusade on behalf of freedom.”
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What he had in mind, as he frequently indicated, was not just the overthrow of the German government and the liberation of the German nation, but the freedom of peoples under foreign rule throughout the huge area of conflict and by implication everywhere. Not a message the imperial British (or the French) wanted to hear.