By the late 18th century the once mighty Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned by its neighboring powers Prussia Russia and Austria and rooted out of the geopolitical game. The power of the Roman Catholic Church was waning as well as that of the Catholic States in Europe. Meanwhile Great Britain was building its empire through strategic investments around the globe often waging wars to protect its commercial interests. These investments and wars were largely financed by the key bankers in the City of London - House of Rothschild and affiliated banking families. The Rothschilds were believers of Talmud, a rabbinic commentary to Torah which elevated Jews to the supreme race and permitted discrimination of non-Jews especially Christians. When Lionel Rothschilds was asked one day what he and Jewish prime minister of Britain Benjamin Disraeli talked about he replied: 'The Race as usual' and after the birth of Lionel's son Leopold, Disraeli congratulated him adding 'I hope he will prove worthy of his true and sacred race'.
SCIENTIFIC RACISM
In the 19th century, the City of London elites were searching for theories that would justify the English colonial policies and thus protect the commercial interests of Britain. This resulted in the creation of the doctrine of Free Trade by Adam Smith to facilitate Britain's unrestricted economic expansion as well as Thomas Malthus's theories about depopulation through wars and famine. Malthus's idea of struggle for survival over earth's scare resources inspired a botanist Charles Darwin to introduce a theory that populations evolved through the process of natural selection and that extinct ancestors of Homo Sapiens would have been classed among primates. After reading Darwin's work, English philosopher Herbert Spenser coined the term 'survival of the fittest'. Soon, the Christian belief that 'God created all people equal' was replaced by Social Darwinism - the notion that human affairs were a jungle in which not just the fittest of nations classes and individuals will survive but the fittest alone had the right to survive. What followed was the development of practical sciences of 'improving human race' by experimenting with human breeding which came to be known as eugenics and which spread rapidly to the United States and Europe especially Germany.
At the same time the British elites were taking interests in theories that sought justification of racial differences in science. Max Muller, a German-born Orientalist and professor at the University of Oxford was the first of scholars to popularize the notion of superior 'Aryan Race' which was then picked up by French diplomat Arthur de Gobineau. He asserted the distinctions between the three races 'black', 'white', and 'yellow' arguing the superiority of the white race as the most intelligent and physically the most beautiful and the one which created all great civilizations in history. Within the white race he believed the Germans were the last reserve of the Aryan race - the superior white race destined to rule. Gibineau's theory was developed further by Houston Chamberlain, a British-born writer and Germanophile who lived in multi-ethnic Vienna. He considered that Britain's culture revolved too much around money and accused Jews including the Jewish prime minister of Britain Benjamin Disraeli for taking British life down to what he considered to be extremely low level. In 1899, the Munich publisher Hugo Bruckmann published his work The Foundations a pseudo-scientific racial history of humanity where he argued that all the 'foundations' of the 19th century which saw huge economic and technological advances in the west were work of the Aryan race. German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II donated funds for Chamberlain's publication and arranged its distribution among the German Army.
BIRTH OF THE GERMAN REICH
Germany was at the time in period of rapid industrialization and militarization. In the 19th century all Germanic lands were unified by Prussia, a state that arose from the German military order of Teutonic knights. Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck entered into a close alliance with the House of Rothschild and the armament Krupp company which helped him to defeat Austria and France and unify Germany under Prussia's leadership. By 1876, the Krupp firm armed 46 other nations including Russia especially to keep Polish nation subdued. Then, following the British example, Bismarck emancipated Jews in order to utilize their intellect and capital in the service of the new state. The Jews began to assimilate into German society playing influential role as bankers parliamentarians journalists scientists and businessmen. Bismarck also wanted to end the country's dependency on the Rothschilds and other banks associated with the Rothschilds and thus facilitated the creation of Deutsche Bank. The founder of Deutsche Bank Jewish financier Ludwig Bamberg advised Bismarck on the formation of the Deutsche Reichsbank, the first central bank of the German Reich - pegging Deutsche Mark - which had been the currency of the German Reich since 1871 - to Gold and making it a stable currency. Soon other banks came to existence such as Disconto-Gesellschaft, Darmstatter, Dresden which were founded or run by Jewish directors.
JEWISH EMANCIPATION
These German-Jewish banker played central role in the financing of the rapidly growing German industry - steel and armaments railroads shipping chemicals and automobile industry helping to transfer the family enterprises into new joint-stock corporations limited by shares which, taking example of US corporate designs, started to form cartels, associations of legally independent firms with the intent of influencing the market by means of regulation of prices. Bismarck's social and economic reforms like bank credits, state subsidies, protective tariffs combined with the use of foreign patents helped to create powerful cartels which enjoyed virtual monopoly in various fields in Europe. He ruthlessly thwarted the development of a coherent democratic movement and left behind a powerful military-industrial complex which grew dangerously influential on the German foreign policy.
THE RISE OF AMERICAN BANKSTERS
In the United States, the Civil War that erupted in 1861 between the merchant North and agrarian South over protective tariffs that northern states wanted to introduce to protect themselves from European competitors, left various industrialists and bankers incredibly rich. Among them was John D. Rockefeller who had his own shipping business in Ohio and assisted the Union Army by providing massive amounts of food and supplies. He was also expanding interests in oil refineries. Oil was actually discovered in the region of Galicia in Poland then occupied by Austria. Polish chemist Ignacy Lukasiewicz was a first person in the world to distill kerosene out of steep oil, invent the kerosene lamp, dig the first oil well and build the first oil refinery. However, it would be the American entrepreneurs who would benefit from the potential of oil as a new energy source and would seek to monopolize it. Cleveland in Ohio was the nearest big city to the new oil fields. John Rockeffeler went into a joint venture with a chemist Samuel Andrews one of the few men who knew the refining process. During the civil war oil was needed for karosene lamps and was thus supplied to the Union Army. Rockefeller soon bought his partner out and formed the Standard Oil Company in Ohio that gained a monopoly in oil industry by buying rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and its products around the globe. He monopolized the petroleum and allied industries also taking control of National City Bank of New York which became the largest bank within the United States.
Second man of that league who made money during the Civil War was J.P. Morgan. He received banking training in the City of London and his family firm made money issuing a French loan during the French-Prussian war of 1871. J.P. Morgan like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, James Hill and Edward Harriman became wealthy through railroad ownership. Mergers, buyouts and leveraged acquisitions became their standard ways of operation. J.P. Morgan also backed inventors in new electric industry forming General Electric, co-founded of U.S. Steel Corporation and advanced money to facilitate purchase of New York Times. All these men became extremely rich through the combination of hard work ruthless approach when driving out competition and the support of the banking community that was largely dominated by German-Jewish bankers who started to migrate to the United States after failed revolutions of 1848. They created a crucial bridge between the US and the German elites.
One of the most important banks was M.M. Warburg and Co operating in port city of Hamburg. It was founded by two Jewish brothers Moses and Gerson Warburg. Like the Rothschilds, the Warburg family intermarried with other Jewish banking families building a web of interrelated finance and interlocking directorships. After migrating to America, Felix Warburg married Frieda Schiff, daughter of Jacob Schiff, a banker who grew up in Frankfurt alongside the Rothschilds. Jacob Schiff became the head of an investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co founded in the USA by two Jewish immigrants, Solomon Loeb and Abraham Kuhn. The partners of Kuhn, Loeb were turn closely related by blood and marriage to other prominent German-Jewish bankers including partners of J & W Seligman, Speyer & Co, Goldman Sachs & Co and Lehman brothers. Max Warburg who spent some time at N.M. Rothschild in the City of London was director of M.M. Warburg & Co in Hamburg and was the main advisor to German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II. Marx's brother Paul Warburg trained his financial skills in the City of London at Samuel Montagu, before becoming an advisor to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and co-founder of Federal Reserve - the private banking cartel in the United States. The Warburgs helped to form Commerz-und Disconto bank in Hamburg and introduced American securities to the German market. The Warburgs constituted the crucial link between the German Reich and the American and City of London corporate and banking elites.
These powerful American and banking tycoons needed their own man in politics to ensure their interests were protected. By late 19th century, James Hill, J.P. Morgan, Kuhn and Loeb, Vanderbilt and David Rockefeller created the largest campaign fund to elect William McKinley. He was elected president of the United States 1897 ushering America in period of foreign interventions. Commercial considerations were underpinned by laws of Social Darwinism, theory of Free Trade and conviction that the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon race were, in the words of contemporary political scientists John Burgess: 'particularly endowed with the capacity of establishing national states'. US interventions occurred in Argentina (1852) Nicaragua (1852) Uruguay (1855) Hawaii (1893) and in Nicaragua (1894). The US. corporate elites also supported republican revolution in China led by Sun yet-sen, marking the end to over 2500 years of imperial government in China. This marked the beginning of an era of warring warlords and internal chaos in China creating fertile ground for the spreading of the communist ideology.
TRANSATLANTIC ALLIANCE
By the early 20th century, the merchant elites in Great Britain and the United States developed a powerful alliance pursuing jointly their commercial interests all around the globe. This 'transatlantic alliance' rested on the conviction of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race thus British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour and British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain called it sometimes 'the race alliance'. Rhodes scholarships in Oxford favored American students and in 1902 the City of London initiated a secretive dining club 'the pilgrims' that brought the groups of rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic together on regular basis. At least 18 members of the London elite attended pilgrims dinners including head of the banking sector in London Nathaniel Rothschild; Viceroy of India and later British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, the owner of Daily Mail and Daily Mirror 1st Viscount Northcliff and British prime minister Arthur Balfour. In New York, members of Pilgrims included the new rising Morgan and Rockefeller dynasties.
PREPARATION FOR WAR
What they discussed at the time was the rising military and economic power of the German Reich that was altering the balance of power in Europe. The establishment of the German colonies in the sub-Saharan Africa interfered the British spheres of interests. Also, the financing by the Deutsche bank of the Berlin-Baghdad railway project would give Germany access to suspected oil fields in the region. Thus, the early 20th century Milner's Group, the successors of Rhodes secret society embarked on a secret plan to create anti-German coalition. King Edward VII was used by the British elites as an intermediary in the formation of a new alliance with France - Entente Cordiale - and taking advantage of a dynastic alliance between the German dynasty Saxe-Coburg and Ghota that ruled Britain and the Russian dynasty of Romanovs, the British signed the treaty with Russia. The formation of this Triple Entente was grounded in France's drive to reign Alsace-Lorraine lost in Franco-Prussian war, Russia's ambition to gain the Straits of Constantinople and Britain's master plan to suppress the raising power of the German Reich. The armament companies pushed for war as that would bring them lots of business as well as the oil companies who wanted to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and open the region for large oil exploitation.
Why Germany that was militarily better prepared was going to loose the First Great War?
How the Polish patriotic leaders used this war to fight for Poland's independence?
Well… that’s for next time.
So stay tuned, leave your comments - and if you prefer history with actual walking join me on my Free Walking Tours in Kraków Old Town.
Trust me… it’s much more fun
