Обществото на поклонниците и международният фашизъм

PART II

Pilgrims and international fascism

“Conservative people often fail to see what they are doing when they ignore the evident perils of the Fascist state on the ground that it is after all preferable to Communism… If the Fascist state wins out, the cleavages [between a small group of leaders and all the rest] will be extraordinarily great…”

~

1930s, liberal Catholic spokesman George N. Shuster (1939, George Seldes, ‘The Catholic Crisis’, pp. 9-10)

The collaboration of U.S., British and French companies and banks with the fascist regimes, especially Germany, goes back to the birth of Communist Russia in 1917 and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Simply put, fascism is the antithesis to everything communism is supposed to have stood for. Working conditions have never been particularly uplifting for the average citizen, but the industrial revolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century rapidly began to change things. As a result of technological advances leading to more wealth and better education, the suppressed workers class slowly began to organize itself against the ruling class of industrialists and land barons. This led to the creation of political movements as socialism and communism, which promoted the idea of a class struggle. The industrialists resisted by firing, intimidating, and-or murdering workers who tried to organize labor unions. [127] Politicians sponsored by this same ruling class also had by far the biggest chance of getting elected to public office, not only due to funds donated to their electoral campaigns but also by having the press on their sides. William E. Dodd, FDR’s ambassador to Nazi Germany from 1933-1938, characterized fascism in the following way:

“When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress, they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions.” [128]

The biggest fear of the great industrialists and land barons has always been communism and socialism. If the working classes would manage to stage revolutions, as happened in the Soviet Union in 1917 (which soon turned into a banal dictatorship), they would not only demand higher wages, social security and a reduced work week, but would also attempt to break up monopolies and redistribute great land holdings. The ruling class was not about to let this happen and sponsored leaders that would suppress these labor movements. Some of these leaders became known as fascist dictators.Mussolini in Italy (1922)

Mussolini, who rose to power in October 1922 with his “March on Rome”, was sponsored by the Lega Industriale of Turin, the Confederazione Generale dell’Industria, the Associazione fra Industriali Metallurgici Mecannici ed Affini, the Landowners Association, the Societa Ansaldo (shipbuilders), Fiat, of the Agnelli family that later helped run Bilderberg; the Banca Commerciale of Milan and a whole range of other banks and corporations. [129] This makes sense, considering Mussolini and his “blackshirts” essentially were glorified, violent union busters for Italian industry.

Leading Wall Street bankers were also very supportive of Mussolini’s regime. Among the most prominent backers were Thomas W. Lamont and his boss J. P. Morgan, Jr. Both were members of the Pilgrims, with Lamont serving as chairman of the Pilgrims from 1939 to 1945. On his return from Italy, Morgan stated to a friend, “We had the great satisfaction of seeing Mr. Mussolini’s [fascist] Revolution.” Lamont expounded similar praise. The two were primarily competing with Dillon, Read & Co., another major Pilgrims-dominated bank, for exclusive business with the fascist dictator. [130]

From England we have Harry Brittain, a co-founder, secretary and long time chairman of the Pilgrims of Great Britain, who was honorary president of the (obviously) pro-facist Friends of Italy from 1936 to 1939. Pilgrims Walter Runciman is another good example of a British Mussolini supporter. As a Jew, he was critical of the persecution of the Jews by the Germans, but he adored fascism itself. [131] This stance was not unsual at all at the time, or even after World War II.Hitler in Germany (1933)

Among the industrialists and bankers who provided crucial financial support to Hitler’s party were Fritz Thyssen, Hjalmar Schacht, Friedrich Frick and Baron Kurt von Schroder.

The Wall Street and industrialist allies of these Nazi financiers included Henry Ford, the du Ponts, Alfred Sloan of General Motors, Joseph Kennedy, the Watson family of IBM, the Dillons, Harrimans, Rockefellers, and Dulles brothers. [132: all names discussed plus full sources] Except Ford, all these families had representatives in the Pilgrims, with the Ford interests always strongly represented in the society. Also not unimportant, post-World War II, Henry Ford II could be found in the 1001 Club with the Rockefellers, Bechtels, Rothschilds, Agnellis, Thyssens and other elites.

British bankers and industrialists cooperated closely with their American and German counterparts. Leading representatives of the Bank of England, National Westminster, Lloyds Bank, J. Henry Schroder, Lazard, Unilever, British Imperial Airways, and Imperial Chemical Industries were all lining up to do business with Hitler. [133] Many of these interests were organized in the Federation of British Industries, the equivalent of the fascist National Association of Manufacturers in the U.S. [134]

Of particular interest in Great Britain is Neville Chamberlain, prime minister from May 1937 until World War II broke out in May 1940. There are various theories about Chamberlain’s appeasement policy: a lack of foresight, fear of a potential new war with Germany, or, at its most daring, indifference towards events on the European mainland. In all cases he is portrayed as a well-intentioned man. That wasn’t Quigley’s opinion, however, who made the case that Chamberlain and his group were looking to give Hitler a free hand in destroying the communist Soviet Union. This is also ISGP’s position and will be explained later in this article.

As Quigley already reported (without sources), indeed Chamberlain was a shareholder in Imperial Chemical Industries. But there is more than that to be found. For starters, his son Francis was employed as a staffer at ICI. [135] And his first cousin, Arthur Chamberlain [136], was a close long-term business associate of 1st Baron McGowan, a Pilgrim who was the founding president of Imperial Chemical Industries in 1926 and ICI’s chairman from 1930 to 1950. Arthur Chamberlain and McGowan both sat on the board of U.S. companies DuPont and General Motors, along with numerous Pilgrims. [137] Probably not by coincidence, Arthur was another fervent supporter of appeasement [138], a total reversal of policy before his cousin became British prime minister. [139]

That’s not all. McGowan was a director of the Anti-Socialist and Communist Union (known as the Economic League during the Cold War), as well as the Anglo-German Friendship Society. Both groups also counted the deep involvement of the earlier-mentioned Mussolini supporters and Pilgrims Lord Walter Runciman and Sir Harry Brittain. In 1939 Runciman played a key role on Chamberlain’s behalf of handing over Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. At home it was Pilgrim and former MI5 officer Sir Joseph Ball who ran Chamberlain’s PR campaign to promote the appeasement policy. Ball became notorious for undermining communist and socialist undercurrents in British society and later for having recruited the controversial Tiny Rowland to Lonrho. [140]The motives of men like the Chamberlains, Lord McGowan, Runciman, Ball, Brittain and their American counterparts seem to be pretty clear today. None of these motives involved a passion for human rights. Instead, these men saw fascism as a means to eradicate communism and socialism – so they supported it in every way possible.Pilgrims-backed eugenics movement inspires Hitler

Also not unimportant, until World War II Pilgrims Society families as Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Osborn, Harriman, Whitney, Dodge, Pyne, Roosevelt, Baker, Mills and Schiff, who dominated the New York Zoological Society [141] and the Museum of Natural History (Darwinism) [142], inspired and financed the eugenics movement [143], originally founded in 1883 by Charles Darwin’s cousin and disciple, Sir Francis Galton. In later decades Leonard Darwin (1850-1943) and Charles Galton Darwin (1887-1962) continued to play important roles in the Eugenics movement, coming up with such wonderfully subtle claims as: “some Americans are born to be a burden on the rest” and stating that sexual sterilization would be necessary for the “insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic”. [144]

Madison Grant, as long-time chairman of the Zoological Society, is among the more notorious examples. In 1916 he and Henry F. Osborn (the Zoological Society chair before Grant; with half his family in the Pilgrims, all major conservationists close to the Rockefellers) wrote The Passing of the Great Race. In the book Osborn warned of “the gradual dying out among our [white] people of those hereditary traits … and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble character.” [145] In later years Grant received a thank-you note for the book from Hitler [146], who replaced the terms “Anglo-Saxon” and “Nordic” with “Aryan” and began to specifically target the Jews for elimination from the gene pool. That’s not to say that the Pilgrims families agreed with this policy – some of them were Jewish – but, as key financiers of the eugenics movement, they are known to have played a role in shaping Hitler’s thinking.

Just to be thorough: After World War II Pilgrim Fairfield Osborn, president of the Zoological Society from 1940 to 1968, cooperated closely with Laurance Rockefeller, Zoological Society trustee since at least 1941 [147], to set up the core of the modern conservation moment [148]: birth control, natural resources (above and below ground), and since the 1980s, the rise of CO2.Franco in Spain (1939)

Sponsors of Franco during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War included individuals as the Duke of Alba, a major landowner; tobacco monopolist Juan March; Rio Tinto Spain and the Society of Jesus. The latter had suffered great loss of land holdings with the ouster of King Alfonso XIII in 1931 by the democratically-elected republican-socialists. [149] Incredibly, even Britain supported the fascist takeover of Franco over the more moderate republican-socialists. [150]

Even after World War II Franco remained popular in the network of the World Anti-Communist League, American Security Council and Le Cercle, all groups with deep involvement of conservative members of the Anglo-American elite. Franco remained in place as the fascist ruler of Spain until his death in 1975.Fascism in Japan

The situation in Japan concerning corporate elites having had a hand in the country’s militant expansions, differs a little from the West. True, in the decades before World War II, Japan was controlled by a financial oligarchy surrounding emperor Hirohoto. The major “Zaibatsu” in this oligarchy were Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda. [151] Some of them had cartel agreements with companies as Standard Oil and I.G. Farben. [152]

However, leading up to World War II, the Zaibatsu were increasingly pushed aside by more radical tennoist/shintoist militants of the Black Dragon Society, a situation one could compare to an extent with a (potential) neocon take-over of the White House and State Department. The Black Dragon Society’s network still revolved around the emperor, but established its own corporate monopolies.

After the war, many of the traditional Zaibatsu reemerged as corporate elites, although the Black Dragon Society, with CIA and Rockefeller support, remained in place as well. Key Black Dragon/Yakuza men as Yoshio Kodama and Riochy Sasakawa were used to keep tight control over Japan’s political establishment even beyond the Cold War.

More information about the Black Dragon Society can be found ISGP’s American Security Council article.Fascism in France

Key bastions of French/Vichy fascism included Banque Worms, Banque Nationale pour Le Commerce et l’Industrie, the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, and the Banque de l’Indochine. [153] Chase Paris was equally pro-fascist [154], while the pro-fascist British branch of Lazard closely cooperated with its French counterpart. [155]

One of the French versions of fascism centered around reports of a “Synarchist Movement of Empire” which, together with sympathetic elements in the United States, Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and likely other countries, reportedly was interested in carving up the world in monopolistic cartels, followed by political integration. Coincidentally, among the American interests said to be sympathetic to the Synarchy were known pro-fascist industrialists as Ford and Du Pont. A WWII U.S. intelligence document reportedly read:“The reactionary movement known as “Synarchie” has been in existence in France for nearly a century. Its aim has always been to carry out a bloodless revolution, inspired by the upper classes, aimed at producing a form of government by “technicians” (the founder of the movement was a “polytechnician”), under which home and foreign policy would be subordinated to international economy…

“It is alleged that certain industrial circles in Great Britain are also in sympathy with the movement. Some headway is claimed to have been made in securing the adhesion of big U.S. industry to the movement…

“In regard to Germany, it is hoped ultimately to eliminate Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler with his Gestapo, from the political scene, thus facilitating the formation of an Anglo-Franco-German economic bloc…

“The source has added that in the Worms group it is believed that those circles in Great Britain who are favorably disposed to their plans, are most critical of [the pro-interventionist] Mr. Churchill…” [156

]

The Synarchy is generally dismissed by historians these days, even though there’s overwhelming evidence that big business supported international fascism in the years before World War II. It is also ignored that American diplomats and French judges took reports of the Synarchy very serious. Promising reports on the Synarchy went away in the months after World War II, and most of the big financiers and industrialists (who were said to be behind the Synarchy) were released. Reports that this Synarchy had been behind fascist groups like the Cagoule, which tried to undermine French democracy the Germans rolled in, were never thoroughly investigated. [157]Fascism in Great Britain

Before and during World War II there was a large group of aristocrats, bankers, and industrialists which sought to cooperate with the new fascist regimes in Europe. Prime minister Chamberlain, the Duke of Windsor clique, Imperial Chemical Industries and the Federation of British Industries, press barons as Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, the major banking families dominating the Bank of England–they all supported “Anglo-German peace” while promoting domestic groups as the British Union of Fascists, the Link, the Nordic League and the secretive Right Club. These groups will be discussed in a minute.Fascism in the United States

As already reported, and as will be detailed later on this article, the industrialists and Wall Street bankers that supported the fascist regimes in Europe, also promoted domestic fascism within the United States through the American Liberty League, the National Association of Manufacturers and other groups. The names behind this network included the largest family fortunes in the United States of the time, including Ford, du Pont, Rockefeller, Dulles, Harriman, Dillon, Mellon, McCormick, Hartford, Harkness, Duke, Pew, Pitcairn, Clark, Reynolds, and Kress. [158] To this list of promoters of fascism can be added: Morgan, Watson, Aldrich, Dillon, Dulles, etc. Many of these families belonged to the Pilgrims.How the anti-communist Anglo-American-Nazi alliance failed

As is well-known, Germany only paid about 12 percent of total reparations initially demanded at the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, even after two revisions: the 1924 Dawes Plan and the 1929 Young Plan. Numerous Pilgrims had been involved in Versailles: David and James Bruce (a Templar family married into the Mellons), Lord Robert Cecil, a member of one of Britain’s oldest families; and Lord Arthur Salter from Britain; Morgan’s chief attorney John Davis, Morgan partner Russell Leffingwell, Vanderbilt lawyer Frank Polk and the Rockefeller-allied Dulles brothers from the United States. The Dawes and Young plans were named after other leading members of the Pilgrims Society: Charles Dawes and Rockefeller man Owen Young.

There actually was disagreement within the international establishment about what to do with Germany. The French wanted to tear it down militarily, financially and politically and take control of Germany’s huge coal and iron ore reserves. Even at the 1932 Lausanne Conference, the French were the only ones who refused to make any concessions and wanted Germany to continue to pay the reparations in full. Britain and the United States disagreed, and the reparations were canceled altogether, ironically months before Hitler was appointed chancellor.

Influential elements in the British establishment – among them a number of Pilgrims-involved men as Lord Esher, Lord D’Abernon, General Jan Smuts, H.A.L. Fisher and Lord Curzon – had always been apprehensive of enslaving Germany through reparations, as historically France had been a great opponent of Britain. They didn’t want to witness the rise of an all-powerful France that would be in a position to challenge the worldwide interests of the British Commonwealth. So, instead, they advocated to cancel reparations, provide loans, and revitalize Germany’s economy, an agenda that, with the aid of Wall Street, went into full swing with the cancellation of reparations in June 1932 and the emergence of Hitler as Germany’s chancellor in January 1933. [159]

Hitler understood Britain’s position very well. Already in 1924, in his book Mein Kampf, he wrote:

“What England has always desired, and will continue to desire, is to prevent any one Continental Power in Europe from attaining a position of world importance…The consequences of England’s war policy were and are disastrous for Germany. However, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that, as things stand to-day, the necessary interests of England no longer demand the destruction of Germany. On the contrary, British diplomacy must tend more and more, from year to year, towards curbing France’s unbridled lust after hegemony…” [160]

British bankers as Montagu Norman, Lord Kindersley and Charles Hambro – the last two members of the Pilgrims – saw Germany, even after the Nazis had taken over, as “a great stabilizing force” [161], a reference to both French and communist influence being reined in. They encouraged large loans to be made to Germany.

The same attitude dominated at Wall Street. The Morgan bank extended large loans to Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. In the mid 1920s Dillon, Read & Company, another major Pilgrims firm, set up Vereinigte Stahlwerke (German Steel Trust) and the German Credit and Investment Corp. with Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen would become one of the most important financiers of Hitler. The Harriman family, Pilgrims and good friends of the Dillons, set up the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) with this same Fritz Thyssen. Other Nazi financiers, the Rockefellers and Schroders, joined forces in 1936, setting up Schroder Rockefeller & Co. The Watsons of IBM (Pilgrims) provided the Nazis with identification and cataloging technology that would make the holocaust so brutally effective. The prominent Pilgrims-dominated law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, headed at the time by the Dulles brothers (Pilgrims), put together a lot of the contracts between Wall Street and the Nazi industrialists. One of the Dulles brothers, Allen, was on the board of the Schroder Bank and was closely associated with Baron Kurt von Schroder, who together with Hjalmar Schacht and Fritz Thyssen was a crucial supporter of Hitler. (By the 1970s, Baron Bruno L. Schroder belonged to the Pilgrims.) Sources for all these connections have already been provided in a previous section of this article.

Support for the Nazis in certain British aristocratic circles was just as strong. This might be confusing to a lot of people as it is still generally believed that Hitler was looking to conquer Great Britain. It appears that this wasn’t the case at all. Hitler’s primary concern had always been a “drang nach Osten” to expand Germany’s “Lebensraum” into eastern Europe and Russia. Although he may have had plans from the beginning to secure the Atlantic border at some point, the British Empire was to be left alone. In fact, Hitler believed an alliance with Great Britain was desirable:

“If new territory were to be acquired in Europe it must have been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights… For such a policy, however, there was only one possible ally in Europe. That was England. Only by alliance with England was it possible to safeguard the rear of the new German crusade… No sacrifice should have been considered too great if it was a necessary means of gaining England’s friendship. Colonial and naval ambitions should have been abandoned and attempts should not have been made to compete against British industries.” [162]

Hitler repeated his desire for an Anglo-German alliance on many occasions. [163] Certain aristocratic circles in both Britain and Germany responded to this call by setting up a number of private Anglo-German societies. The Imperial Policy Group was organized in 1934; the Anglo-German Fellowship in 1935. The Anglo-German Association, which had existed since 1929, was equally filled with aristocratic supporters of a militant German regime.

A number of groups which sought to promote domestic fascism were also set up. The British Union of Fascists is the most well known, but there also were the Link, the Nordic League, and the more secretive and extremely anti-Semitic Right Club, organized in 1939. Following is a brief description of these societies and some of the peculiar people that could be found in them.

Anglo-German Association 1929	At the time it was founded, the set up of the Anglo-German Association was compared to that of the Pilgrims and the Anglo-French Society, with both a domestic and a foreign branch. [165] The society’s aims were “to promote general friendly relations between Great Britain and Germany.” [166] First president of the society was the Pilgrim Lord Reading, who retired from the society in 1933 after public persecutions against Jews had begun in Germany. [167] President of the German branch was Wilhelm Cuno, who at the same time was chairman of the Hamburg-Amerika Line [168], the shipping line which throughout the 1930s worked in cooperation with the Harriman and Walker-Bush families in bringing Nazi propaganda and German agents to the United States. [169] The vice presidents of the British society mainly were hard-right, anti-communist appeasers, among them Lord D’Abernon*, Philip Snowden, H. A. L. Fisher*, and General Sir Ian Hamilton. [170] The latter might well have been a relative of the Duke of Hamilton whom Rudolf Hess tried to reach in May 1941. Sir Ian actually was among those Hess was interested in meeting after parachuting into Britain. Carroll Quigley was very familiar with at least two vice presidents of the Anglo-German Association and recognized their hard-right leanings:“The “anti-Bolsheviks,” who were also anti-French, were extremely important from 1919 to 1926, but then decreased to little more than a lunatic fringe, rising again in numbers and influence after 1934 to dominate the real policy of the government in 1939. In the earlier period the chief figures in this group were Lord Curzon*, Lord D’Abernon, and General Smuts*. They did what they could to destroy reparations, permit German rearmament, and tear down what they called “French militarism.”… The anti-Bolsheviks, including D’Abernon, Smuts, Sir John Simon, and H. A. L. Fisher (Warden of All Souls College), were willing to go to any extreme to tear down France and build up Germany. … D’Abernon advocated a secret alliance of Britain “with the German military leaders in cooperating against the Soviets.”” [171]* attended one or more Pilgrims Society meetings.
Imperial Policy Group 1934	The Imperial Policy Group was organized by a number of Conservative members of Parliament, among them Lord Scone, Alfred Wise and Victor Raikes. [172] The group was “seriously alarmed as to the drift of public opinion to the left” and preferred to return to an “Imperial policy”. Among the things they were interested in seeing was a “strengthening of the Constitution.” [173] The group would soon become great supporters of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. After the extremely treacherous and immoral Munich Agreement of 1938, in which Czechoslovakia was handed over to the Nazis, Victor Raikes even stated that Chamberlain “will go down in history as the greatest European statesman of this or any other time.” [174] The most interesting person that was involved with the Imperial Policy Group was Kenneth de Courcy, who had been among the founders, acted as secretary, and wrote the group’s reviews on international affairs. [175] De Courcy was an agent and informant of Major General Stewart Menzies [176], the deputy head of the SIS (MI6), a strong advocate of appeasement, and a life-long anti-communist crusader and propagandist. De Courcy was also in close contact with Neville Chamberlain, whom he briefed after meeting with Mussolini in Italy and Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia, [177] and the Pilgrim and notoriously pro-Nazi Duke of Windsor (King Edward VII Jan.-Dec. 1936) [178], who was at the center of the anti-communist British-Nazi cooperation. Interestingly, on July 17, 1941, the News Review wrote about de Courcy:“Outspokenly hostile was the Upper Crust Imperial Policy Group, whose secretary is Kenneth de Courcy. Year ago Mr. de Courcy was saying that Petain should negotiate peace rather than have a Communist Government set up in Paris. He once defended the Cagoulards (“Hooded Ones”), Fascist terrorist organization which attempted to seize power in France just before the war.” [179]De Courcy and his associates sued the News Review for libel and won. Whatever the details of the case, this is exactly the kind of ideas one would expect from a person like de Courcy. His associates were on the same page as the bankers and industrialists behind both the Cagoule and the Synarchy in France. After World War II de Courcy continued to write his Intelligence Digest, a small anti-communist propaganda magazine which was also distributed in the United States. He became involved with the British Israel World Federation, which promotes the idea that “the descendants of the so-called “Lost Ten Tribes” of the Northern House of Israel are to be found in the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic and kindred peoples of today.” [180] In 1989 de Courcy’s name turned up again when Lyndon LaRouche claimed that he had been approached by de Courcy as a dealmaker on behalf of the people behind the Larouche persecution. [181]
Anglo-German Fellowship 1935	The Anglo-German Fellowship, alternately known as the Anglo-German Friendship Society, was set up in 1935 with the help of City banker Ernest Tennant, who for several years by then had been a friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop, an unofficial and later official diplomat of Hitler in London. [182] Like the Anglo-German Association, the Anglo-German Fellowship had branches in both Germany and England. In a short amount of time the fellowship gathered about 50 members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, three directors of the Bank of England and many generals, admirals, bishops and bankers. Pilgrims co-founder and chairman Sir Harry Brittain and the Pilgrim Lord McGowan, the Imperial Chemical Industries chairman from 1930 to 1950 and General Motors director who was close to the Chamberlain family, were among the Council members. The fellowship would organize dinners in London that would be attended by both British and German citizens. Among the German aristocrats visiting meetings in London were the Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, head of the German fellowship; Prince Otto von Bismark, a business associate of Hjalmar Schacht; Prince Ludwig of Hesse, who married the daughter of a British ambassador to the U.S. (a Pilgrim) who also was a long-time chairman of Rio Tinto; Graf Durckheim-Montmartin, one of Ribbentrop’s diplomats who at the same time was an occultist in contact with fascist occultists as Karl Haushofer and Julius Evola; Baron Steengracht, the Reich Foreign Office State Secretary; SS-Gruppenführer Graf von Pückler; Kurt Von Stutterheim, London correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt; and Baroness Schroder, apparently the wife or a close relative of Baron Bruno Schroder or maybe the notorious Baron Kurt von Schroder. [183] British visitors of Anglo-German Fellowship evenings have included a number of well known aristocratic appeasers, among them the Duke of Hamilton, the Lord Steward of the Royal Household whom Rudolf Hess tried to reach in 1941; Lord Londonderry, leader of the House of Lords and member of the Imperial Policy Group; the Duke of Wellington, a landowner who was a member of the secret fascist group the Right Club; Sir Ernest Bennett, another member of the Right Club; Frank Cyril Tiarks and his son Henry Frederick Tiarks (a Pilgrim), leading lights in the Bank of England and the Schroder Bank; Lord Lothian, a Pilgrim who was seen by Quigley as one of the leaders of the Round Table; and Lord Halifax, one of Chamberlain’s missionaries and a post-war Pilgrims president who was a great supporter of National Socialism. [184] Lord Walter Runciman of the Pilgrims was among the members of the central council, along with earlier-mentioned Pilgrims Sir Harry Brittain and Lord McGowan. [185] The purpose of the Anglo-German Fellowship was to “bring about enduring friendship between the German and British peoples.” [186] The German attitude, which often corresponded with those of British aristocrats, was represented by a conversation Tennant had with Ribbentrop in mid 1939, about which Tennant recorded:“Hitler had always hoped and expected to come to a firm understanding with Britain by which Germany, after having guaranteed the present frontiers of France, Holland and Belgium forever, would look after Britain’s interests on the Continent in exchange for Britain looking after Germany’s interests overseas. This would have meant peace and prosperity for 1000 years. Hitler used to have tremendous ideas of what could be done with the two countries marching in step side by side… Ribbentrop’s last words to me as we parted on the platform in Berlin were ‘Good-bye, and let us remember your English proverb – “It is never too late to mend”‘. [187]Interestingly, Tennant was a (very) close relative of the younger Sir Peter Tennant [188], who after World War II would chair some of the meetings of the hard-right, anti-communist and super-secretive Pinay Cercle. Certain French members of this Cercle used to have close ties to the Banque Worms and the Synarchy clique. The son of Sir Ernest Bennett (a fellowship member), Sir Frederic M. Bennett, was another post-war anti-communist crusader closely associated with the British Pinay Cercle leadership. One interesting name that stands out among the visitors of the Anglo-German Fellowship is the Princess de Chimay. [189] Her husband, the Prince of Chimay, had died in 1937. This family name is of particular interest to ISGP, because the family castle has been named in the Dutroux X-Dossiers as a place where members of a fascist underground were raping and hunting on children in the 1970s and 1980s.
Right Club 1939	The Right Club was an anti-semitic, fascist group set up in May 1939 by Captain Archibald Ramsay, MP. In contrast to the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, the Right Club was exclusive and secret. It was only in the late 1990s that a good number of names and details of this club became available to the public. A summary of the history of the legendary “Red Book”, which contained the members and donors of the Right Club, was given by The Independent in 2000:“The existence of the Red Book first emerged in 1943 during a heated debate in Parliament. By then, it had already been seized by MI5. For 40 years, the ledger was believed to have been lost and its whereabouts was much speculated upon… What happened to the Red Book? According to Professor Richard Griffiths, the police had it until October 1944. But it seems likely that it was returned to Ramsay after his release. Nothing was seen of it until the late 1980s, when it was discovered at the bottom of an old safe in a solicitor’s office. Luckily, the finder was familiar with Professor Griffiths’s work and passed it to him. Professor Griffiths used it as a primary source for his book, Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, The Right Club and British Anti-Semitism 1939-40 [published in 1998], then deposited the book at the Wiener Library. Last week it was, for the first time, opened to the public.” [190]Although the Independent claimed to be the first to review the Red Book after Professor Griffiths, it actually was the Daily Mail who already in December 1998 went to visit Professor Griffiths and reviewed a copy of the book. The Daily Mail wrote: “Among Right-wingers, from Edward VIII downwards, there was a widespread view that only a powerful Germany could hold back the threat of Bolshevism, and that Britain should be supporting Hitler, not preparing to attack him. Most people who shared this belief were not demonstrably anti-Semitic: but a minority were, and a number of them appear in the pages of the Red Book [of the Right Club]… “Civilian life never really suited him [Archibald Ramsay] and he saw the spectre of what he called Organised Jewry behind every ‘subversive’ movement, ranging from Oliver Cromwell and the French Revolution to the spread of Communism. There was a host of well-connected men and women who shared Ramsay’s views. They joined the Right Club, whose main object was to avert war, in Ramsay’s words, by working ‘to oppose and expose the activities of organised Jewry’… It forged connections with other pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic groups, such as The Link, with more than 4,000 members, founded by Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, a former Director of Naval Intelligence [another group it strongly overlapped with was the Nordic League, which believed in the Aryan master race theory]… These were people whose bibles were Hitler’s Mein Kampf and something called the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion…” [191]Even though it was considerable more extreme, and therefore dangerous to be affiliated with, still a number of influential aristocrats were members of the Right Club. The Duke of Wellington, a frequent chair of the club’s meetings, and Sir Ernest Bennett [192] have already been mentioned as they were also visitors of the Anglo-German Fellowship. Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, founder of the fascist Link group, was a member of the Right Club. [193] Domvile was immediately picked up after war with Germany broke out. During his internment he claimed to fellow-inmates that Hitler “would soon be in this country, but that there was no reason to worry about it, because he would bring the Duke of Windsor over as King and conditions generally would be much improved.” [194] Major-General John Fuller, a good friend of the fascist press baron Lord Rothermere, was a member. [195] Fuller was a respected military figure on one hand; an occultist formerly close to Aleister Crowley on the other. Other members of the Right Club were the 2nd Duke of Westminster, the 2nd Baron Redesdale, who was the father of the Mitford Sisters; William Joyce, who fled Britain when World War II broke out and became a Nazi propagandist; the Marquess of Graham, the later 7th Duke of Montrose and Minister of Defence in Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front government; Commander E. H. Cole, an anti-communist crusader since day one who had been appointed Chancellor of the White Knights, a British version of the Ku Klux Klan; Sir James Edmondson, a Conservative MP who was vice-chamberlain of the [Royal] Household from 1939 to 1942; the 1st Baron Teviot, a great-grandson of the 6th Marquess of Lothian, a Conservative MP, a comptroller of the Household from 1939 to 1940 and chairman of the Liberal National Party/National Liberal Party from 1940 to 1956; and many others. [196] Ramsay actually ran the Right Club with former Russian White Army fascist Anna Wolkoff, who had developed a good relationship with the Duchess of Windsor. [197] In early 1940, Ramsay and Wolkoff were contacted by a cypher clerk at the United States Embassy in London who had been given highest level security clearances. This cypher clerk, Tyler Kent, was copying top secret communications between Roosevelt and Churchill and was particularly looking for evidence that Roosevelt wanted to bring the United States into World War II, something which was opposed by approximately 90 percent of U.S. citizens. Kent, Wolkoff and Ramsay provided their copied information to Italy and Germany, and tried to reach anti-Roosevelt isolationist forces in the United States. They were soon found out about and arrested in May 1940. A copy of the Red Book was found in Tyler’s possession, which aided in the arrest of several hundred other fascists in the same period. [198]

Показване на повече

As can be indicated from the societies just described, appeasement was not at all unique to the Chamberlain government; it was a policy supported by many people. There was a great difference, however, between the public’s idea of appeasement, which was simply focused on the avoidance of a new war, and the idea of the ruling class to use appeasement as a tool to reorganize Europe in a way to their liking.

These differences in attitude are quite obvious considering the almost total lack of sympathy for the people having to live under fascist rule. Not only did the appeasers sell out the Czechoslovakians, they also left Poland in the cold when it was attacked by Germany, and had earlier supported Franco’s takeover of Spain. As early as 1933, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Zionist-oriented families as the Cecils and Rothschilds described in-depth the persecutions against the Jews. [199] To the appeasers this didn’t matter at all. They set up harsh immigration laws preventing the Jews from entering England and through the 1939 White Paper even made sure that immigration to Palestine was almost impossible. The reason for this last move was simple: Chamberlain and associates were also appeasing the anti-semite, fascist Arabs of the Middle-East, like Ibn Saud and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

The appeasers’ approach to Europe was entirely geopolitical. An example of this attitude is a 1936 speech of Arthur Salter (Pilgrims), a person who largely devised the structure on which today’s European Union is based:

“[Salter] offered his arguments to support appeasement. He quoted Smuts’s speech of 1934 with approval and pointed out the great need for living space and raw materials for Japan, Italy, and Germany. The only solution, he felt, was for Britain to yield to these needs… The liquidation of countries between Germany and Russia could proceed as soon as the Rhineland was fortified, without fear on Germany’s part that France would be able to attack her in the west while she was occupied in the east.” [200]

A co-appeaser of Sir Arthur Salter, Sir Ernest Bennett, as a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Right Club arguably a total fascist, defended Chamberlain’s policies as follows in 1939:

“If the Germans, Italians, Turks, or other nations had no liking for parliaments, and preferred to be controlled by individual leaders whom they admired and trusted, surely that was their affair, not ours… leave other nations to govern themselves as they think fit.” [201]

An ally on the other side of the ocean, the earlier-mentioned Thomas W. Lamont, the Morgan banker and Pilgrims chairman who was a great supporter of Mussolini, was quoted saying almost exactly the same thing:

“Are we liberal enough to be willing for the Italian people to have the sort of government they apparently want?” [202]

It’s just really hard for the average person to understand mindsets like these, and it’s no surprise then that the British people were completely done with appeasement when even after the 1938 Munich Agreement – which many people already were very uncomfortable with – Hitler continued to demand new territory.

The British public has actually been the reason that Chamberlain and his associates were never able to negotiate an alliance with Nazi Germany [203], something which Hitler desperately wanted. Because of this, Hitler was forced to attack the West first, cripple both France and England, and secure the entire Atlantic coast, from Hammerfest down to the Pyrenees.

Already after the Dunkirk victory Hitler concluded that the “English won’t show up again in this war” [204], but nevertheless continued an air and sea campaign against Great Britain, trying to force a surrender. Hitler had many reasons to prevent a prolonged war against Great Britain, including:

1. Conquering England would be very difficult because of its military power, isolation from mainland Europe, and material support from the United States.
2. An alliance with England would make a successful invasion of the USSR more likely and would neutralize any threat from France (or England for that matter).
3. Conquering Great Britain would result in the collapse of its empire, something which Hitler assumed would mainly benefit the Americans and the Japanese, as Germany would not be able to maintain the empire.
4. Hitler believed in Germany’s Teutonic heritage, which lay in the East; not in the West.
5. Hitler was very much interested in destroying Jews and communism, both of which could primarily be found to the East of Germany.
6. Hitler considered Great Britain an equal in terms of cultural achievements and purity of the genes.

For about a year Hitler continued his campaign against Great Britain. Besides regular warfare, Hitler also dropped numerous leaflets of his July 1940 speech ‘A last appeal to reason’ over Britain, trying to up the pressure on Churchill to negotiate a peace settlement. [205] None of this worked, Hitler gave up, and the last great German bombardment on British soil was on May 10, 1941. The following month Hitler began his attack on the Soviet Union.

The same day as the last German bombardment on Britain, one of the more peculiar events of World War II transpired: Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, flew to Scotland in an effort to reach the Duke of Hamilton. Unfortunately for Hess, his self-imposed [206] mission failed, and he was put in jail. Initially Hess wouldn’t say a word about what he had come to do in Britain. It was only after a visit from Lord Beaverbrook, an old friend, that he explained Hitler’s desire for an Anglo-German military alliance against the Soviet Union. [207] Hess was a rather curious mysticist who apparently didn’t realize his own irrationality. Hitler’s idea of an anti-communist alliance was already known in the anti-communist, pro-German upper class he tried to reach, but they had not been able to circumvent Churchill or public opinion. Hess somehow assumed that his visit would have made a difference. As Churchill recounted:

“We have also to remember how oddly foreigners view our country and its way of doing things. When Rudolf Hess flew over here some months ago he firmly believed that he had only to gain access to certain circles in this country for what he described as “the Churchill clique” to be thrown out of power and for a Government to be set up with which Hitler could negotiate a magnanimous peace.” [208]

At this point there still are more questions than answers when it comes to the extent of the collaboration between Western politicians, bankers and industrialists with their Nazi counterparts. The role of leading Wall Street bankers is quite well known, but details about Great Britain and especially France are still lacking. The same is true for the reasons behind this cooperation. Although the appeasers and isolationists were all allied in anti-communism, many of them appear to have had slightly varying reasons for supporting a soft-line approach toward Nazi Germany. The reasons that have been mentioned include:

1. Businessmen who were only interested in making money.
2. Members of the British establishment (and their allies) who wanted to build up Germany as a counterweight to France and the Soviet Union.
3. Members of the British establishment (and their allies) who not only wanted to build up Germany, but also wanted it to attack Russia and cripple France.
4. Bankers and industrialists from Allied countries who conspired with their colleagues in the fascist nations in an effort to destroy international communism, undermine labor unions and individual rights, and carve up the world markets in monopolies.

The ideas of these groups overlap to such an extent and so many members have been hiding their true reasons for supporting appeasement and isolation that it is almost impossible to tell who were only interested in making money, who were solely defending the interests of their class or their country, and who truly were international fascist conspirators.

An example is the Rockefeller family. It has often been claimed that the Rockefellers were only interested in making money. However, they were also very anti-communist and close to the British aristocracy, which makes them candidates for category two or three. They might also fit in category four, as their Standard Oil company was part of an international cartel network that included DuPont, General Motors and Ford in the United States, Imperial Chemical Industries in England, Kuhlmann in France, I.G. Farben in Germany, and Mitsui in Japan. Standard Oil’s openly pro-Nazi and pro-American fascism policies before and during World War II are additional evidence that the claim that they were only interested in making money is too simplistic.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the father of appeasement, is another good example. He is often portrayed as a well-intentioned man who desperately desired to avoid another war. However, on the other hand he was rabidly anti-communist and never cared one bit for the Jews in either Nazi Germany or Palestine. As already reported, the Chamberlain family had significant stockholdings and top-level ties to Pilgrims-linked multinationals Imperial Chemical Industries, Du Pont and General Motors [209], facts that may help explain why Neville encouraged investment in Nazi Germany. He also had no problem with agitating the Soviets. [210]

What makes the question of Nazi collaboration with the West even more confusing is the fact that many members of the same establishment that worked with the Nazi regime at the same time tried to get rid of Hitler. The anti-Hitler resistance in Germany largely centered around Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and his associates, who worked together with British Intelligence since 1938 in an effort to overthrow the German dictator. Prince Berhard’s younger brother, Aschwin, was among the intermediaries between the German conspirators and British Intelligence. These conspirators were not so much against authoritarian regimes, as their support for Franco and Mussolini demonstrates, or their early support for Hitler, but they did consider Hitler a loose cannon who in the end would destroy Germany and possibly take the entire West with him.

The whole problem with Hitler was that he could not be controlled by the establishments of the time. For centuries Germany had been divided by monarchist Protestant (mainly Prussian) and Catholic (mainly Bavarian) interests. Except for his anti-communism and anti-socialism, Hitler had little in common with these monarchist aristocrats, which he made painfully clear when marginalizing the influence of Franz von Papen in both 1933 and 1934. Von Papen was a reactionary Catholic nobleman and Knight of Malta who had earlier boasted to his associates that he would be able to control Hitler. He made the same mistake as Fritz Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s early crucial supporters, and the British appeasers. All of them were looking for a strong, anti-communist leader, but at the same time one that the Vatican or the Anglo-American interests could reason with.

Hitler, on the other hand, once he didn’t need his patrons anymore, set off on his own Germanic paganist agenda of Eurasian domination, which ultimately was anti-Prostestant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, or even anti-Masonic for that matter. Many high society people would have been fine with this as long as the Nazis wipied out communism, or if the Nazis at the very least kept Soviet communism away from Europe. Unfortunately for these aristocrats, public opinion wouldn’t allow Britain to go fascist, which would have been necessary to prevent Hitler from securing the Atlantic coast first; and as soon as Hitler did this, public opinion in Britain demanded that the appeasers had to go and war be declared.

But even before Chamberlain was ousted by the public in May 1940, the less-hardline members of the Anglo-American establishment already understood their mistake of having tried to work with Hitler. Arthur Salter, the appeaser who earlier had agreed to Germany’s “need” for living space and raw materials, had been urging the Chamberlain government since the summer of 1939 to form an anti-German alliance with the Soviet Union. Other members of the Astor’s Cliveden Set (and the Anglo-American Establishment) also changed their opinion. In early 1937 the Pilgrims of the United States had still been interested in inviting members of the pro-appeasement Imperial Policy Group, but by October 1939, when England had officially declared war on Germany, Lord Lothian was invited to give a speech on how England would appreciate it if the United States would stand by its side when the real fighting would break out. Lothian received the full support of his friend Thomas W. Lamont, the Morgan banker and Pilgrims Society chairman, who arranged for Lothian to speak to a number of New York-based groups. In May 1940, Lamont became one of the members of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, the most visible of the pro-interventionist lobby and pressure groups. Among the Pilgrims who were members of this committee were Nicholas Murray Butler, John W. Davis, James W. Gerard, Frank L. Polk, Bishop James de Wolf Perry and Adlai Stevenson. [211] In December 1941, with the Pearl Harbor attack, followed a few days later with a declaration of war by Germany, these establishment figures got what they needed.

It is clear that by the middle of 1939 members of the Anglo-American Establishment were on the same page as Franklin Delano Roosevelt when it came to his pro-interventionist policies, but still they couldn’t help intensely disliking the man. For years they had tried to get rid of him, mainly for reasons having to do with the New Deal.The Pilgrims, FDR and American fascism

“At a garden party at the British embassy in Washington [in 1939], the king and queen sat up on a porch in remote splendor with several private citizens–Jack Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. Only two New Dealers [working under President Franklin Roosevelt], James Farley and Cordell Hull, were allowed to join them. … It didn’t help the House of Morgan, for it reinforced the old stereotype of the firm’s being in league with the British Crown. … In late August 1939, Jack Morgan and King George VI were shooting together at Balmoral in Scotland, complaining about the bird shortage, when Europe suddenly mobilized for war. Like sovereigns retreating to their respective capitals, the king returned to London and Jack to Wall Street.”

~

1990, Ron Chernow, ‘The House of Morgan’, p. 440

FDR had been elected president of the United States in 1933 when the Great Depression was at its worst. About 25 percent of the population was out of work with millions living on the streets. Roosevelt immediately introduced his far reaching New Deal program, which included the crippling of stock speculation, the setting up watch dog agencies for banks, and the introduction of large scale construction projects for the unemployed. The New Deal further established a national minimum wage, limited a regular workweek to 40 hours, abolished child labor, introduced social security, supported the homeless, and prevented employers from hindering unionization. To finance these projects Roosevelt had to take the United States off the gold standard.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States from 1933 to 1945. FDR fought Wall Street and the big industrialists over the New Deal, their policy of isolationism and the attempts to implement an American form of fascism.
Conspiracy literature often tries to point out that FDR brought the U.S. into World War II, first by cutting off the Japanese from American oil and steel; then by allowing the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. However, it might be prudent to contemplate what may have happened if the United States would not have entered World War II. There wouldn’t have been a D-Day; Germany and Japan may well have taken over half of Asia, and with the support of the Arabs (which they had) received unlimited amounts of oil; the British Empire – with no U.S. support – would likely either have turned fascist or would have gone down, while the American bankers and industrialists would likely have been a lot more successful at establishing their own form of fascism (a total suppression of the labor force and of democratic rights). Latin America already was largely fascist and Africa would have been plundered for its resources.
No, although he may have had his flaws, FDR’s policy of intervention was the right one. It was only at the last moment that he received support from a significant portion of the Anglo-American Establishment, after they had come to realize that the British public wouldn’t tolerate an Anglo-German peace and that Hitler could not be counted on to leave Britain alone forever. Needless to say, the big interests were horrified with this New Deal program. Almost immediately they began to make plans to get rid of Roosevelt; plans which were exposed in detail by General Smedley Butler before the 1934 McCormack-Dickstein Committee. Butler detailed how in July 1933 he had been approached by Gerald C. MacGuire, a Wall Street bond salesman with a position in the American Legion. MacGuire and his financiers had devised a whole scheme through which Butler would be able to make a speech to the American Legion in favor of the gold standard. The excuse MacGuire gave was that he and his associates didn’t want the veterans of World War I to receive the bonus they had been promised by Congress to be handed to them in devaluated currency at some point in the future. Butler knew that something was wrong here, but tried to play along for a while, leading to MacGuire giving him certain details of who were behind the scheme. It turned out that behind MacGuire were men as Grayson M. P. Murphy, head of the family’s brokerage firm at which MacGuire was employed and also director of the Guarantee Trust; Robert S. Clark, a wealthy banker whom Butler had known in the past; James H. Perkins, chairman of the Rockefeller’s National City Bank; men from the Morgan Bank; and John W. Davis, chair of Davis, Polk and Wardwell, chief attorney of J. P. Morgan & Co. and founding president of the Council on Foreign Relations. [212] And important for this article: Murphy’s son was a Pilgrim, Davis was president of the Pilgrims, the men heading the Morgan Bank were Pilgrims, and Perkins almost certainly was another Pilgrim.

In the end Butler refused to make one or more speeches in favor of the gold standard, but by flooding a meeting with telegrams the bankers still managed to have the American Legion adopt a formal resolution in favor of returning to the gold standard. Roosevelt would not allow himself to be pressured by the legion however; the United States remained off the gold standard.

During late 1933 and early 1934 Butler didn’t hear anything from MacGuire, who until then had regularly contacted him. In the spring and summer of 1934 Butler did receive two cards from MacGuire: one from France; the other from Berlin, making Butler wonder what MacGuire was up to this time. In August 1934 MacGuire approached Butler in person again, the reason being that “his group” still considered the general the only person who effectively could rally hundreds of thousands of veterans behind him towards a common goal. The “Morgan group” had reluctantly agreed, even though they really preferred the less-popular Douglas MacArthur. During this latest conversation MacGuire explained to Butler what he had been doing in the past year. It turned out that by this time more was in the planning than just the return of the gold standard. According to MacGuire, after the American Legion’s gold standard resolution had been rejected by Roosevelt, his financial backers had sent him to Europe to study the veterans paramilitary organizations of France, Germany and Italy. MacGuire appeared to be quite fond of Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s SA and SS, but stated that he instead had recommended to his backers that the model of the French far-right league the Croix de Feu be adopted for an American version of these paramilitary veterans’ forces. According to MacGuire, the press would announce the creation of this “superorganization” in two or three weeks. He further hinted that its founders would include some of the most important men in the United States and that former New York Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith – who had become an employee of the Du Pont family – would be among these founders

At that point Butler had already concluded that a lot of what MacGuire had told him was true, not the least because the many predictions MacGuire made had a tendency to come true. This latest prediction was no exception. Two weeks after his discussion with MacGuire, newspapers reported on the founding of the American Liberty League. Investigative author Jules Archer, who documented the whole affair in great detail, wrote:

“Butler’s eyes widened when he read that the treasurer of the American Liberty League was none other than MacGuire’s own boss, Grayson M.-P. Murphy, and one of its financiers was Robert S. Clark. Heading and directing the organization were Du Pont and J.P. Morgan and Company men. Morgan attorney John W. Davis was a member of the National Executive Committee-the same Davis that Clark had identified as author of the gold-standard speech MacGuire had tried to get Butler to make to the American Legion convention in Chicago. “Heavy contributors to the American Liberty League included the Pitcairn family (Pittsburgh Plate Glass), Andrew W. Mellon Associates, Rockefeller Associates, E.F. Hutton Associates, William S. Knudsen (General Motors), and the Pew family (Sun Oil Associates). J. Howard Pew, longtime friend and supporter of Robert Welch, who later founded the John Birch Society, was a generous patron, along with other members of the Pew family, of extremist right-wing causes. Other directors of the league included Al Smith and John J. Raskob. “Two organizations affiliated with the league were openly Fascist and antilabor. One was the Sentinels of the Republic, financed chiefly by the Pitcairn family and J. Howard Pew. Its members labeled the New Deal “Jewish Communism” and insisted “the old line of Americans of $1,200.00 a year want a Hitler.” “The other was the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, which the conservative Baltimore Sun described as “a hybrid organization financed by northern money, but playing on the Ku Klux Klan prejudices of the south.” Its sponsor, John H. Kirby, collaborated in anti-Semitic drives against the New Deal with the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, leader of the first Silver Shirt Squad of American storm troopers. “”The brood of anti-New Deal organizations spawned by the Liberty League,” the New York Post subsequently charged, “are in turn spawning fascism.”” [213]

Показване на повече

After reading about the founding of the American Liberty League, Butler decided to have someone come in and confirm his story. He contacted an old friend, Paul Comly French, an investigative journalist for the Philadelphia Record whose articles also appeared in the New York Post. After the blessing of Philadelphia Record city editor Tom O’Neil, French began his effort to confirm Butler’s story. Butler at some point introduced French to MacGuire, leading to a two hour discussion between the latter two without Butler being present.

Butler and French were invited to testify to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee on November 20, 1934. Judging from French’s testimony, MacGuire had been more forthcoming to French than he had ever dared to be to Butler. French testified:

“We need a fascist government in this country, he insisted, to save the nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight. “During the conversation he told me he had been in Italy and Germany during the summer of 1934 and had made an intensive study of the background of the Nazi and Fascist movements and how the veterans had played a part in them. He said he had obtained enough information on the Fascist and Nazi movements and of the part played by the veterans, to properly set one up in this country… “He [MacGuire] had a very brilliant solution of the unemployment situation. He said that Roosevelt had muffed it terrifically, but that he had the plan. He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks-enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do; that that was the ideal plan. “He had another suggestion to register all persons all over the country, like they do in Europe. He said that would stop a lot of the Communist agitators who were running around the country.” [214]

Показване на повече

Butler and French were also supported by the testimony of James Van Zandt, head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. After having been given information by MacGuire, Butler had warned Van Zandt that he too would probably be approached by the fascist plotters. At the hearing Van Zandt testified that this had indeed been the case, and that he had seen some of the data on fascist organizations MacGuire had taken back with him from Europe. Van Zandt further testified that not only he himself, Douglas MacArthur and Hanford MacNider had been approached (as Butler had stated), but also Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., a founder of the American Legion. MacArthur and Roosevelt would vehemently deny that they had been approached by any coup plotters, but this actually means very little. MacArthur would later become a close associate of the anti-communist cult leader Sun Myung Moon, while his cousin – another Moon associate – would become deeply involved in the darkest aspects of the fascist international. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.’s family were also extreme right wing anti-communist crusaders who supported the post war Nazi networks and rose to top positions in the CIA. For more information about MacArthur and his cousin MacArthur II, read ISGP’s Beyond the Dutroux Affair article. For more information on the descendants of Theodore Roosevelt, read on.

When questioning Gerald MacGuire in front of their committee, John McCormack and Samuel Dickstein found out he couldn’t present an alibi on numerous occasions. The committee additionally found evidence that MacGuire had written detailed reports on Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Hitler’s Brownshirts, the French Croix de Feu and a related fascist group from the Netherlands to Robert Clark and Clark’s attorney, Albert G. Christmas. But even though the initial hearings and investigation clearly showed their had been a fascist coup in the making in the United States, the committee would fail to subpoena the powerful bankers and industrialists mentioned during the hearings. In the weeks following the testimonies of Butler, French, Van Zandt and MacGuire, the committee asked to be renewed in order to continue the investigation. The House of Representatives decided to let the committee expire instead, shutting it down in January 1935. The whole affair would soon be forgotten. Many years later, during an interview with Jules Archer on September 17, 1971, John McCormack would summarize the view of the committee at the time:

“There was no doubt that General Butler was telling the truth. We believed his testimony one hundred percent. He was a great, patriotic American in every respect. “Millions were at stake when Clark and the others got the Legion to pass that resolution on the gold standard in 1933. When Roosevelt refused to be pressured by it, and went even further off the gold standard, those fellows got desperate and decided to look into European methods, with the idea of introducing them to America. They sent Macguire to Europe to study the Fascist organizations. “The way I figure it, we did our job in the committee by exposing the plot, and then it was up to the Department of Justice to do their job-to take it from there. I have no knowledge why the Attorney General did not pursue this matter except that most likely it was deemed politically inadvisable.” [215]

Показване на повече

n line with some of the rumors in the days of the committee, McCormack stated in his biography that he suspected that President Roosevelt himself had supported the cover-up. A public prosecution of the nation’s most powerful men would have added tremendous burdens to Roosevelt’s already overcrowded schedule (not to mention the doom it may have spelled to the nation’s economy). The affair could also have split Roosevelt’s own party, as a number of leading Democrats were allied with the fascists. McCormack reasoned that it may have been enough for Roosevelt to thwart the plot and keep the suspects under surveillance. This is actually a strategy that has also been attributed to Roosevelt by John Loftus.

There is evidence that the big interests were not deterred by the Butler affair and that they continued their intrigues against Roosevelt. Cornelius “Neil” Vanderbilt, Jr., the son of a Pilgrims Society executive who has been named on several occasions in this article, published his biography in 1959. In this biography Neil described how he had decided to become a reporter – a career move his parents did not support – and how by 1932 he had become an unofficial informer to his good friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this capacity Neil traveled around the country, listening to the word on the street, and regularly met with world leaders (his association with the U.S. president was a great way to get interviews). Vanderbilt further described how the entire “old 400” and their associates absolutely despised the president and did everything they could to get rid of him.

In 1936, for example, Neil was told over dinner how Ogden Mills and Andrew Mellon – respectively a member and an executive member of the Pilgrims Society – were planning to tie “tie [Roosevelt’s] hands financially, very, very soon”. An excerpt of Neil’s account to the private secretary of President Roosevelt:

“I see that John D. Jr. [Rockefeller, a Pilgrim] has crawled back again upon the band wagon, which reminds me that Tuesday evening I took Mrs. Winthrop Aldrich [her husband was a Pilgrim] in to dinner here at the house, and after dinner Winthrop spent the better part of one-half hour in discussing how men of affairs should teach the President the lesson that the minority of 17 million who voted for Landon [anti-New Deal; claimed that FDR was subverting the Constitution] was a strenuous minority [big business] and would oppose any of his progressive, radical [read: “communist”] plans… “Last night I took Lady Granard in to dinner. She is Ogden Mills’ sister, as you probably know, and her husband is Master of the Horse at the British [Royal] Court. She was very abusive and extremely nasty in all of her many references to the Chief [FDR] and said that her brother and Mr. Mellon and others were formulating plans to tie his hands financially, very, very soon. “I thought these things might be of interest to the President before he went south and am sending them to you in the strictest confidence.” [216]

Показване на повече

Much more damning was Neil’s account of a plot being hatched to oust Roosevelt which counted the involvement of his mother’s associates. Neil placed the hatching of this plot around 1940, a full six to seven years after the testimonies of Butler, French and Van Zandt. Neil didn’t give names, but it is known that his mother knew virtually everyone in the Anglo-American establishment, including the Morgans, Rockefellers and Harrimans–so it appears that some of the same interests were involved as those mentioned to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in late 1933. Neil:

“No small part of my duty as a “public ear” for FDR was to report to him opinions expressed in Newport and at the Fifth Avenue house by people who were my mother’s guests, because these people often represented important forces or areas of influence… “The 1940 election, breaking the third-term precedent, confirmed FDR as the people’s choice to carry on through the war years… but many people were not pleased, especially those traditionalists who were outraged by the overthrow of the third-term precedent which they had counted on to rid them of “That Man.” … “On the fringes of this group were the anti-New Dealers whose prejudices were already roused, certain wealthy and influential Southerners, certain Catholic admirers of Franco, certain sections of the press… These people were no less intense in their anti-Roosevelt feeling, and they could be depended on to spread or originate rumors and fan the flames of hate, although they lacked the power and unity of the hard core of financial and industrial opposition. “In addition to these fellow travelers in the anti-Roosevelt movement, there were also a few who acted as liaison with the hard core of opposition that really meant business. And some of them, I was sorry to discover, were to be met at my mother’s house–wealthy industrialists, internationalists of the royalist persuasion… “For years my father had been too ill to see his old friends, and so he never knew that relatives of a wealthy Midwesterner, whom Mother never liked but who was kind to me in my childhood, were involved in what I now had to consider a real conspiracy. Finally, from one of my oldest friends and colleagues in Washington, to whom I was indebted for past favors, I got confirmation of what I had learned in New Port and New York. “I use the word conspiracy; I really am talking of a plot–a serious, long-discussed plan to -shall I say- capture the President… “One problem was whether to tell FDR. It was no time to add to his worries. At length, torn by this question, I talked to Mrs. Roosevelt about it–this was late in the day, months after the investigations began. She promised to tell FDR at Hyde Park, and she did, only to discover, as she told me later, that he had known all along… “So what happened? Well, as you know, the President never was captured by the enemy. Neither was any conspiracy exposed, with public scandals and punishments. When the facts were known, I was permitted to call my friend, and another army man I knew well, and offer a tip that all the plans were known. Those in the cabal were not disgraced or downgraded, but they weren’t promoted either.” [217]

Показване на повече

Since it was funded by the largest banking and industrial fortunes, fascism in the United States had many heads. Next to the American Liberty League, there was the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Industrial Information Committee, and the National Economy League. These organizations were all funded and headed by the same interests. Smaller groupings of almost exclusively anti-semitic fascists included the Crusaders, the Sentinels of the Republic, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, the Order of ’76, the Ku Klux Klan, and the KKK’s Black Legion. Like the much larger and more respectable American Legion, these groups were often used to break labor strikes with the argument that the laborers were part of a communist takeover of the United States. George Seldes in his 1943 book ‘Facts and Fascism’ detailed a lot of these organizations. He also covered the terrible repression of labor unions by the major industrialists who at the same time funded and promoted fascism.