Germany Did Not Start World War II

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS • NOVEMBER 22, 2019

 

This is the second installment of Ron Unz’s long report on the emergent truth about World War II. (https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-understanding-world-war-ii/) Unz has a facility for summarizing vast works of scholarship into their essentials. Unz is also intellectually honest and has massive intellectual courage. He saves the rest of us a lot of work.

The aims of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, a mass movement that came to power legally in Germany, to correct the unemployment caused by unjust reparations forced on Germany by a starvation policy imposed by the British following World War I and to put Germany, dismembered by the unjust and demonic Versailles Treaty, back together, has been demonized and its intentions mischaracterized by most Western historians. There is no worst, or more uninformed, epithet than to be called a Nazi.

World War II began when the Churchill government and the French, quickly betrayed and abandoned by the British, declared war on Germany. The declaration of war on Germany resulted from an unenforceable “guarantee” given by Britain to the military dictatorship in Poland, a guarantee designed to provoke a German invasion of Poland. The German leader, Adolf Hitler, had re-acquired German territories given to Denmark, France, and Czechoslovakia by the humiliating Versailles Treaty and had united with German Austria without war. But three wanted war with Germany: Zionist Jews who saw war as a path to a Jewish state in Palestine, Winston Churchill, who dreamed of repeating the military conquests of his famous ancestor, and Franklin D. Roosevelt who intended to ruin Britain with war and take over the British pound’s role as world reserve currency and destroy Britain’s control of world trade. The British guarantee emboldened the Polish military dictatorship to refuse to negotiate the return of German territory and population.

World War II was a war started by private agendas. Jews understood these agendas and encouraged them. Roosevelt’s lust for world hegemony and Churchill’s lust to rival his famous ancestor’s defeat of the Sun King of France with his defeat of Germany traveled roads paved for them by Jewish anti-German propaganda. All Hitler contributed was to force countries given German territory by the Versailles Treaty to release the lands and the Germans, who were heavily persecuted in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Hitler’s restoration of Germany’s national boundaries was misrepresented in the British and US press as “German aggression.”

This fake news story of German aggression was used to build the case that Germany, which was merely recovering its national territory and rescuing German people from persecution in Czechoslovakia and Poland, was an aggressor with world conquest as its goal. The American people and in Britain the Chamberlain government resisted this false story for a long time, but as historians have revealed the British and American press was controlled by Zionist Jews, and these Jews had all the entrances they needed into Churchill and Roosevelt.

It is difficult to believe that a world war that killed 50, perhaps 60, million people and doomed the world to permanent war and misunderstandings was the product of a few personal interests. Hitler stated many times that he did not want, or intend, war with Britain and France and only intended to recover the lost German populations stolen from Germany by the unjust Versailles Treaty. No less an important Englishman than John Maynard Keynes, the father of modern economics, denounced the Versailles Treaty as certain to lead to a new war. Keynes was correct.

Never was a war as unnecessary, and only the US profited from it. Britain was ruined. Britain lost the reserve currency role and its control of world trade, which were Roosevelt’s intentions, and Britain lost its empire, also Roosevelt’s intention.

David Irving describes how Roosevelt played the drunken British Prime Minister into mortgaging the British Empire to America in support for his war against Germany. Roosevelt understood how war could rescue his administration from the Great Depression. He also understood how war, by bankrupting Britain, would leave the United States as the world hegemon.

Hitler had nothing to do with any of this. The war was forced on him. As established stories have an immunity to facts, Unz’s report has a tough row to hoe.

Viktor Suvorov has produced documented books that Hitler had no choice but to invade Russia as Stalin had assembled on Germany’s border the largest and most formidable invasion force in history. Hitler struck first before the Soviet invasion force was prepared. Consequently, the enormous early victories of German arms were a product of Soviet bases being overrun with enormous losses in men and equipment. John Wear’s findings support Suvorov’s conclusion. https://russia-insider.com/en/history/germans-cut-through-red-army-1941-because-soviets-were-only-prepared-attack/ri27845

The war forced on Germany was too much for Germany. Faced with having to occupy defeated Europe, with the threat of an American invasion, faced with a Russian front, and faced with having to rescue Italy in Greece and North Africa, German resources, despite the magnificence of the German Army, were too thin to prevail. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, each for his own reasons, had forced Germany into a war that Hitler did not want.

Unz reports that revisionist historians have “implicated FDR as a pivotal figure in orchestrating the world war by his constant pressure upon the British political leadership, a policy that he privately even admitted could mean his impeachment if revealed. Among other testimony, we have the statements of the Polish and British ambassadors to Washington and the American ambassador to London, who also passed along the concurring opinion of Prime Minister Chamberlain himself. Indeed, the German capture and publication of secret Polish diplomatic documents in 1939 had already revealed much of this information, and William Henry Chamberlin confirmed their authenticity in his 1950 book. But since the mainstream media never reported any of this information, these facts remain little known even today.”

With Churchill having set the stage for war with Germany, Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the outbreak by exerting diplomatic pressure on the British and Polish governments to avoid any negotiated settlement with Germany. The Polish government’s mistreatment of Germans in territories under Polish control forced Hitler’s hand. The joint German and Soviet invasion of Poland, with the Soviet Union taking half of Poland resulted in England and France declaring war only on Germany. It was alright for the Soviets to invade Poland, but not for Germany.

Roosevelt orchestrated the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor to take the US into the war against Germany. The Polish ambassador to the United States, Count Jerzy Potocki, described the overwhelming Jewish hostility to Germany and its impact on American attitudes toward Germany in a secret report to the Polish Foreign Minister in Warsaw:

“There is a feeling now prevalent in the United States marked by growing hatred of Fascism, and above all of Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with National Socialism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100% [of the] radio, film, daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible–above all religious persecution and concentration camps are exploited–this propaganda is nevertheless extremely effective since the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe.

“At the present moment most Americans regard Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism as the greatest evil and greatest peril threatening the world. The situation here provides an excellent platform for public speakers of all kinds, for emigrants from Germany and Czechoslovakia who with a great many words and with most various calumnies incite the public. They praise American liberty which they contrast with the totalitarian states.

“It is interesting to note that in this extremely well-planned campaign which is conducted above all against National Socialism, Soviet Russia is almost completely eliminated. Soviet Russia, if mentioned at all, is mentioned in a friendly manner and things are presented in such a way that it would seem that the Soviet Union were cooperating with the bloc of democratic states. Thanks to the clever propaganda the sympathies of the American public are completely on the side of Red Spain.

“This propaganda, this war psychosis is being artificially created. The American people are told that peace in Europe is hanging only by a thread and that war is inevitable. At the same time the American people are unequivocally told that in case of a world war, America also must take an active part in order to defend the slogans of liberty and democracy in the world. President Roosevelt was the first one to express hatred against Fascism. In doing so he was serving a double purpose; first he wanted to divert the attention of the American people from difficult and intricate domestic problems, especially from the problem of the struggle between capital and labor. Second, by creating a war psychosis and by spreading rumors concerning dangers threatening Europe, he wanted to induce the American people to accept an enormous armament program which far exceeds United States defense requirements.

“Regarding the first point, it must be said that the internal situation on the labor market is growing worse constantly. The unemployed today already number 12 million. Federal and state expenditures are increasing daily. Only the huge sums, running into billions, which the treasury expends for emergency labor projects, are keeping a certain amount of peace in the country. Thus far only the usual strikes and local unrest have taken place. But how long this government aid can be kept up it is difficult to predict today. The excitement and indignation of public opinion, and the serious conflict between private enterprises and enormous trusts on the one hand, and with labor on the other, have made many enemies for Roosevelt and are causing him many sleepless nights.

“As to point two, I can only say that President Roosevelt, as a clever player of politics and a connoisseur of American mentality, speedily steered public attention away from the domestic situation in order to fasten it on foreign policy. The way to achieve this was simple. One needed, on the one hand, to enhance the war menace overhanging the world on account of Chancellor Hitler, and, on the other hand, to create a specter by talking about the attack of the totalitarian states on the United States. The Munich pact came to President Roosevelt as a godsend. He described it as the capitulation of France and England to bellicose German militarism. As was said here: Hitler compelled Chamberlain at pistol-point. Hence, France and England had no choice and had to conclude a shameful peace.

“The prevalent hatred against everything which is in any way connected with German National Socialism is further kindled by the brutal attitude against the Jews in Germany and by the émigré problem. In this action Jewish intellectuals participated; for instance, Bernard Baruch [financial adviser to Churchill]; the Governor of New York State, Lehman; the newly appointed judge of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter; Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, and others who are personal friends of Roosevelt. They want the President to become the champion of human rights, freedom of religion and speech, and the man who in the future will punish trouble-mongers. These groups, people who want to pose as representatives of “Americanism” and “defenders of democracy” in the last analysis, are connected by unbreakable ties with international Jewry.

“For this Jewish international, which above all is concerned with the interests of its race, to put the President of the United States at this ‘ideal’ post of champion of human rights, was a clever move. In this manner they created a dangerous hotbed for hatred and hostility in this hemisphere and divided the world into two hostile camps. The entire issue is worked out in a mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been forcing the foundation for vitalizing American foreign policy, and simultaneously has been procuring enormous stocks for the coming war, for which the Jews are striving consciously. With regard to domestic policy, it is extremely convenient to divert public attention from anti-Semitism which is ever growing in the United States, by talking about the necessity of defending faith and individual liberty against the onslaught of Fascism.”

Count Jerzy Potocki to Polish Foreign Minister in Warsaw, The German White Paper: Full Text of the Polish Documents Issued by the Berlin Foreign Office; with a foreword by C. Hartley Grattan, New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, 1940, pp. 29-31.

Unz summarizes the role of Jewish anti-German propaganda in launching World War II and the role of propaganda in general in distorting historical understanding:

“Given the heavy Jewish involvement in financing Churchill and his allies and also steering the American government and public in the direction of war against Germany, organized Jewish groups probably bore the central responsibility for provoking the world war, and this was surely recognized by most knowledgeable individuals at the time. Indeed, the Forrestal Diaries recorded the very telling statement by our ambassador in London: ‘Chamberlain, he says, stated that America and the Jews had forced England into the war.’

“The ongoing struggle between Hitler and international Jewry had been receiving considerable public attention for years. During his political rise, Hitler had hardly concealed his intent to dislodge Germany’s tiny Jewish population from the stranglehold they had gained over German media and finance, and instead run the country in the best interests of the 99% German majority, a proposal that provoked the bitter hostility of Jews everywhere. Indeed, immediately after he came into office, a major London newspaper had carried a memorable 1933 headline announcing that the Jews of the world had declared war on Germany, and were organizing an international boycott to starve the Germans into submission.

“In recent years, somewhat similar Jewish-organized efforts at international sanctions aimed at bringing recalcitrant nations to their knees have become a regular part of global politics. But these days the Jewish dominance of the U.S. political system has become so overwhelming that instead of private boycotts, such actions are directly enforced by the American government. To some extent, this had already been the case with Iraq during the 1990s, but became far more common after the turn of the new century.

“Although our official government investigation concluded that the total financial cost of the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been an absolutely trivial sum, the Neocon-dominated Bush Administration nonetheless used this as an excuse to establish an important new Treasury Department position, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. That office soon began utilizing America’s control of the global banking system and dollar-denominated international trade to enforce financial sanctions and wage economic warfare, with these measures typically being directed against individuals, organizations, and nations considered unfriendly towards Israel, notably Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria.

“Perhaps coincidentally, although Jews comprise merely 2% of the American population, all four individuals holding that very powerful Treasury post over the last 15 years since its inception—Stuart A. Levey, David S. Cohen, Adam Szubin, Sigal Mandelker—have been Jewish, with the most recent of these being an Israeli citizen. Levey, the first Under Secretary, began his work under President Bush, then continued without a break for years under President Obama, underscoring the entirely bipartisan nature of these activities.

“Most foreign policy experts have certainly been aware that Jewish groups and activists played the central role in driving our country into its disastrous 2003 Iraq War, and that many of these same groups and individuals have spent the last dozen years or so working to foment a similar American attack on Iran, though as yet unsuccessfully. This seems quite reminiscent of the late 1930s political situation in Britain and America.

“Individuals outraged by the misleading media coverage surrounding the Iraq War but who have always casually accepted the conventional narrative of World War II should consider a thought-experiment I suggested last year:

‘When we seek to understand the past, we must be careful to avoid drawing from a narrow selection of sources, especially if one side proved politically victorious in the end and completely dominated the later production of books and other commentary. Prior to the existence of the Internet, this was an especially difficult task, often requiring a considerable amount of scholarly effort, even if only to examine the bound volumes of once popular periodicals. Yet without such diligence, we can fall into very serious error.

‘The Iraq War and its aftermath was certainly one of the central events in American history during the 2000s. Yet suppose some readers in the distant future had only the collected archives of The Weekly Standard, National Review, the WSJ op-ed page, and FoxNews transcripts to furnish their understanding of the history of that period, perhaps along with the books written by the contributors to those outlets. I doubt that more than a small fraction of what they would read could be categorized as outright lies. But the massively skewed coverage, the distortions, exaggerations, and especially the breathtaking omissions would surely provide them with an exceptionally unrealistic view of what had actually happened during that important period.’

“Another striking historical parallel is the fierce demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who provoked the great hostility of Jewish elements when he ousted the handful of Jewish Oligarchs who had seized control of Russian society under the drunken misrule of President Boris Yeltsin and totally impoverished the bulk of the population. This conflict intensified after Jewish investor William F. Browder arranged Congressional passage of the Magnitsky Act to punish Russian leaders for the legal actions they had taken against his huge financial empire in their country. Putin’s harshest Neocon critics have often condemned him as “a new Hitler” while some neutral observers have agreed that no foreign leader since the German Chancellor of the 1930s has been so fiercely vilified in the American media. Seen from a different angle, there may indeed be a close correspondence between Putin and Hitler, but not in the way usually suggested. [Propaganda used to demonize both]

“Knowledgeable individuals have certainly been aware of the crucial Jewish role in orchestrating our military or financial attacks against Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Russia, but it has been exceptionally rare for any prominent public figures or reputable journalists to mention these facts lest they be denounced and vilified by zealous Jewish activists and the media they dominate. For example, a couple of years ago a single suggestive Tweet by famed CIA anti-proliferation operative Valerie Plame provoked such an enormous wave of vituperation that she was forced to resign her position at a prominent non-profit. A close parallel involving a far more famous figure had occurred three generations earlier [Lindbergh].

“These facts, now firmly established by decades of scholarship, provide some necessary context to Lindbergh’s famously controversial speech at an America First rally in September 1941. At that event, he charged that three groups in particular were “pressing this country toward war: the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration,” and thereby unleashed an enormous firestorm of media attacks and denunciations, including widespread accusations of anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies. Given the realities of the political situation, Lindbergh’s statement constituted a perfect illustration of Michael Kinsley’s famous quip that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” But as a consequence, Lindbergh’s once-heroic reputation suffered enormous and permanent damage, with the campaign of vilification echoing for the remaining three decades of his life, and even well beyond. Although he was not entirely purged from public life, his standing was certainly never even remotely the same.

“With such examples in mind, we should hardly be surprised that for decades this huge Jewish involvement in orchestrating World War II was carefully omitted from nearly all subsequent historical narratives, even those that sharply challenged the mythology of the official account. The index of A.J.P. Taylor’s iconoclastic 1961 work contains absolutely no mention of Jews, and the same is true of the previous books by Chamberlin and Grenfell. In 1953, Harry Elmer Barnes, the dean of historical revisionists, edited his major volume aimed at demolishing the falsehoods of World War II, and once again any discussion of the Jewish role was almost entirely lacking, with only part of one single sentence and Chamberlain’s dangling short quote appearing across more than 200,000 words of text. Both Barnes and many of his contributors had already been purged and their book was only released by a tiny publisher in Idaho, but they still sought to avoid certain unmentionables.

“Even the arch-revisionist David Hoggan seems to have carefully skirted the topic of Jewish influence. His 30 page index lacks any entry on Jews and his 700 pages of text contain only scattered references. Indeed, although he does quote the explicit private statements of both the Polish ambassador and the British Prime Minister emphasizing the enormous Jewish role in promoting the war, he then rather questionably asserts that these confidential statements of individuals with the best understanding of events should simply be disregarded.

“In the popular Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort, the great nemesis of the young magicians, is often identified as ‘He Who Must Not Be Named,’ since the mere vocalization of those few particular syllables might bring doom upon the speaker. Jews have long enjoyed enormous power and influence over the media and political life, while fanatic Jewish activists demonstrate hair-trigger eagerness to denounce and vilify all those suspected of being insufficiently friendly towards their ethnic group. The combination of these two factors has therefore induced such a ‘Lord Voldemort Effect’ regarding Jewish activities in most writers and public figures. Once we recognize this reality, we should become very cautious in analyzing controversial historical issues that might possibly contain a Jewish dimension, and also be particularly wary of arguments from silence.

“Those writers willing to break this fearsome Jewish Taboo regarding World War II were quite rare, but one notable exception comes to mind. As I recently wrote:

‘Some years ago, I came across a totally obscure 1951 book entitled The Iron Curtain Over America by John Beaty, a well-regarded university professor. Beaty had spent his wartime years in Military Intelligence, being tasked with preparing the daily briefing reports distributed to all top American officials summarizing available intelligence information acquired during the previous 24 hours, which was obviously a position of considerable responsibility.

‘As a zealous anti-Communist, he regarded much of America’s Jewish population as deeply implicated in subversive activity, therefore constituting a serious threat to traditional American freedoms. In particular, the growing Jewish stranglehold over publishing and the media was making it increasingly difficult for discordant views to reach the American people, with this regime of censorship constituting the ‘Iron Curtain’ described in his title. He blamed Jewish interests for the totally unnecessary war with Hitler’s Germany, which had long sought good relations with America, but instead had suffered total destruction for its strong opposition to Europe’s Jewish-backed Communist menace.

‘Then as now, a book taking such controversial positions stood little chance of finding a mainstream New York publisher, but it was soon released by a small Dallas firm, and then became enormously successful, going through some seventeen printings over the next few years. According to Scott McConnell, founding editor of The American Conservative, Beaty’s book became the second most popular conservative text of the 1950s, ranking only behind Russell Kirk’s iconic classic, The Conservative Mind.

‘Books by unknown authors that are released by tiny publishers rarely sell many copies, but the work came to the attention of George E. Stratemeyer, a retired general who had been one of Douglas MacArthur’s commanders, and he wrote Beaty a letter of endorsement. Beaty began including that letter in his promotional materials, drawing the ire of the ADL [the Jewish Anti-defamation League], whose national chairman contacted Stratemeyer, demanding that he repudiate the book, which was described as a ‘primer for lunatic fringe groups’ all across America. Instead, Stratemeyer delivered a ‘blistering reply to the ADL,’ denouncing it for making ‘veiled threats’ against ‘free expression and thoughts’ and trying to establish Soviet-style repression in the United States. He declared that every ‘loyal citizen’ should read The Iron Curtain Over America, whose pages finally revealed the truth about our national predicament, and he began actively promoting the book around the country while attacking the Jewish attempt to silence him. Numerous other top American generals and admirals soon joined Statemeyer in publicly endorsing the work, as did a couple of influential members of the U.S. Senate, leading to its enormous national sales.’

“In contrast to nearly all the other World War II narratives discussed above, whether orthodox or revisionist, the index of Beaty’s volume is absolutely overflowing with references to Jews and Jewish activities, containing dozens of separate entries and with the topic mentioned on a substantial fraction of all the pages in his fairly short book. I therefore suspect that any casual modern reader who encountered Beaty’s volume would be stunned and dismayed by such extremely pervasive material, and probably dismiss the author as being delusional and ‘Jew-obsessed;’ but I think that Beaty’s treatment is probably the far more honest and realistic one. As I noted last year on a related matter: ‘…once the historical record has been sufficiently whitewashed or rewritten, any lingering strands of the original reality that survive are often perceived as bizarre delusions or denounced as “conspiracy theories.’

“Beaty’s wartime role at the absolute nexus of American Intelligence certainly gave him a great deal of insight into the pattern of events, and the glowing endorsement of his account by many of our highest-ranking military commanders supports that conclusion. More recently, a decade of of archival research by Prof. Joseph Bendersky, a prominent mainstream historian, revealed that Beaty’s views were privately shared by many of our Military Intelligence professionals and top generals of the era, being quite widespread in such circles.”

“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” The control over explanations means that the historical assumptions that govern the politics of today are entirely misleading.

It is the few revisionist historians and Ron Unz their explicator who possibly can save the world from destruction by deception.

https://www.unz.com/proberts/germany-did-not-start-world-war-ii/

(Republished from PaulCraigRoberts.org by permission of author or representative)