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Why Hitler Declared War on the United States

By John Wear | Inconvenient History | 2017-08-31

Abstract

Establishment historians state that Adolf Hitler made a mistake when he declared war on the United States. For example, British historian Andrew Roberts wrote:[1]

“It seems an unimaginably stupid thing to have done in retrospect, a suicidally hubristic act less than six months after attacking the Soviet Union. America was an uninvadable land mass of gigantic productive capacity and her intervention in 1917-18 had sealed Germany’s fate in the Great War.”

Historian Martin Gilbert wrote in regard to Germany’s declaration of war on the United States:[2]

“It was perhaps the greatest error, and certainly the single most decisive act, of the Second World War.”

In this article I will explain why Hitler was forced to declare war on the United States.

American Steps Toward War

In his State of the Union address to Congress on January 6, 1941, Roosevelt outlined his plan for lend-lease aid to the anti-Axis powers. International law has long recognized that it is an act of war for a neutral government to supply arms, munitions, and implements of war to a belligerent. But Roosevelt brushed off objections to lend-lease based on international law. Roosevelt stated:

“Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it to be.”

In this same speech, Roosevelt barred the door to suggestions of a negotiated peace:[3]

“We are committed to the proposition that the principles of morality and considerations of our own security will not permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers.”

President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law on March 11, 1941. This legislation marked the end of any pretense of neutrality on the part of the United States. Despite soothing assurances by Roosevelt that the United States would not get into the war, the adoption of the Lend-Lease Act was a decisive move which put America into an undeclared war in the Atlantic.

It opened up an immediate appeal for naval action to insure that munitions and supplies procured under the Lend-Lease Act would reach Great Britain.[4]

On April 9, 1941, the United States entered into an agreement with a Danish official for the defense of Greenland. Roosevelt simultaneously illegally sent American Marines to occupy Greenland.[5]

In June 1941, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill to relieve the British troops in Iceland, and this was done with U.S. Marines on July 7, 1941.[6] Also in June 1941, Roosevelt ordered the closing of all the German and Italian consulates in the United States.[7]

Another step toward war was the adoption on April 24, 1941, by the United States of a naval patrol system in the Atlantic to insure delivery of munitions and supplies to Great Britain. The American Navy under this scheme was assigned the responsibility of patrolling the Atlantic Ocean west of a median point represented by 25º longitude. American warships and planes within this area would search out German vessels and submarines and broadcast their position to the British Navy. Roosevelt tried to represent the naval patrol as a merely defensive move, but it was clearly a hostile act toward Germany designed to help the British war effort.[8]

The first wartime meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill began on August 9, 1941, in a conference at the harbor of Argentia in Newfoundland. The principal result of this conference was the signing of the Atlantic Charter on August 14, 1941. Roosevelt repeated to Churchill during this conference his predilection for an undeclared war, saying:

“I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war, they might argue about it for three months.”

The Atlantic Charter was in effect a joint declaration of war aims, although Congress had not voted for American participation in the war. The Atlantic Charter, which provided for Anglo-American cooperation in policing the world after the Second World War, was a tacit but inescapable implication that the United States would soon become involved in the war. This implication is fortified by the large number of top military and naval staff personnel who were present at the conference.[9]

Roosevelt’s Orders to Shoot-on Sight German Ships and Submarines

Roosevelt’s next move toward war was the issuing of secret orders on August 25, 1941, to the Atlantic Fleet to attack and destroy German and Italian “hostile forces.” These secret orders resulted in an incident on September 4, 1941, between an American destroyer, the Greer, and a German submarine.[10] Roosevelt falsely claimed in a fireside chat to the American public on September 11, 1941, that the German submarine had fired first.

The reality is that the Greer had tracked the German submarine for three hours, and broadcast the submarine’s location for the benefit of any British airplanes and destroyers which might be in the vicinity. The German submarine fired at the Greer only after a British airplane had dropped four depth charges which missed their mark. During this fireside chat Roosevelt finally admitted that, without consulting Congress or obtaining congressional sanction, he had ordered a shoot-on-sight campaign against Axis submarines.[11]

On September 13, 1941, Roosevelt ordered the Atlantic Fleet to escort convoys in which there were no American vessels.[12] This policy would make it more likely to provoke future incidents between American and German vessels. Roosevelt also agreed about this time to furnish Britain with “our best transport ships.” These included 12 liners and 20 cargo vessels manned by American crews to transport two British divisions to the Middle East.[13]

More serious incidents followed in the Atlantic. On October 17, 1941, an American destroyer, the Kearny, dropped depth charges on a German submarine. The German submarine retaliated and hit the Kearny with a torpedo, resulting in the loss of 11 lives. An older American destroyer, the Reuben James, was sunk with a casualty list of 115 of her crew members.[14] Some of her seamen were convinced the Reuben James had already sunk at least one U-boat before she was torpedoed by the German submarine.[15]

On October 27, 1941, Roosevelt broadcast over nationwide radio his Navy Day address. Roosevelt began his Navy Day address by stating that German submarines had torpedoed the U.S. destroyers Greer and Kearny. Roosevelt characterized these incidents as unprovoked acts of aggression directed against all Americans, and that “history will record who fired the first shot.”

What Roosevelt failed to mention in his broadcast is that in each case the U.S. destroyers had been involved in attack operations against the German submarines, which fired in self-defense only as a last resort. Hitler wanted to avoid war with the United States at all costs, and had expressly ordered German submarines to avoid conflicts with U.S. warships, except to avoid imminent destruction. It was Roosevelt’s shoot-on-sight orders to U.S. Navy vessels that were designed to make incidents like the ones Roosevelt condemned inevitable.[16]

Despite Roosevelt’s provocations, the American public was still against entering the war. By the end of October 1941, Roosevelt had no more ideas how to get into a formal and declared war:[17]

“… He had said everything ‘short of war’ that could be said. He had no more tricks left. The hat from which he had pulled so many rabbits was empty.”

Even full-page advertisements entitled “Stop Hitler Now” inserted in major American newspapers by Roosevelt’s supporters had failed to sway the American public. The advertisements warned the American people that a Europe dominated by Hitler was a threat to American democracy and the Western Hemisphere. The advertisements asked: “Will the Nazis considerately wait until we are ready to fight them? Anyone who argues that they will wait is either an imbecile or a traitor.” Roosevelt endorsed the advertisements, saying that they were “a great piece of work.”[18]

Yet the American people were still strongly against war.

Roosevelt Provokes Pearl Harbor Attack

Provoking Japan into an overt act of war was the principal policy that guided Roosevelt’s actions toward Japan throughout 1941. Lt. Cmdr. Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote an eight-action memorandum dated October 7, 1940, outlining how to provoke a Japanese attack on the United States.[19]

The climax of Roosevelt’s measures designed to bring about war in the Pacific occurred on July 25, 1941, when Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the United States. This brought commercial relations between the nations to an effective end, including an end to the export of oil to Japan.

Prince Konoye, the Japanese premier, requested a meeting with Roosevelt to resolve the differences between the United States and Japan. American Ambassador Grew sent a series of telegrams to Washington, D.C. in which he strongly recommended that such a meeting take place. However, Roosevelt steadfastly refused to meet with the Japanese premier.[20]

Foreign Minister Toyoda made a dispatch to Japanese Ambassador Nomura on July 31, 1941. Since U.S. Intelligence had cracked the Japanese diplomatic code, Roosevelt and his associates were able to read this message:[21]

“Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas… I know that the Germans are somewhat dissatisfied with our negotiations with the United States, but we wish at any cost to prevent the United States from getting into the war, and we wish to settle the Chinese incident.”

This obvious Japanese desire for peace with the United States did not change Roosevelt’s policy toward Japan. Roosevelt refused to lift the oil embargo against Japan. The Roosevelt administration was well aware that Japan imported approximately 90% of her oil, and that 75% to 80% of her oil imports came from the United States. Roosevelt also knew that the Netherlands East Indies, which produced 3% of the world’s oil output, was the only other convenient oil producer that could meet Japan’s import needs.[22]

On October 31, 1941, an oil agreement between Japan and the Netherlands East Indies expired. The Netherlands East Indies had promised to deliver about 11.4 million barrels of oil to Japan, but actually delivered only half of that amount. The Japanese Navy had consumed approximately 22% of its oil reserves by the time the war broke out.[23]

By the closing months of 1941, the United States was intercepting and breaking within a matter of hours almost every code produced by Japan.[24] In the last week of November 1941, President Roosevelt knew that an attack by the Japanese in the Pacific was imminent.

Roosevelt warned William Bullitt against traveling across the Pacific:[25]

“I am expecting the Japs to attack any time now, probably within the next three or four days.”

Roosevelt and his administration knew this based on the intercepted Japanese messages. This information was not given to the commanders at Pearl Harbor to enable them to prepare for and thwart the Japanese attack.

Adm. Husband Kimmel, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, states that if he had all of the important information then available to the Navy Department, he would have gone to sea with his fleet and been in a good position to intercept the Japanese attack.[26] Kimmel concludes in regard to the Pearl Harbor attacks:

When the information available in Washington was disclosed to me I was appalled. Nothing in my experience of nearly 42 years of service in the Navy had prepared me for the actions of the highest officials in our government which denied this vital information to the Pearl Harbor commanders.

If those in authority wished to engage in power politics, the least that they should have done was to advise their naval and military commanders what they were endeavoring to accomplish. To utilize the Pacific Fleet and the Army forces at Pearl Harbor as a lure for a Japanese attack without advising the commander-in-chief of the fleet and the commander of the Army base at Hawaii is something I am wholly unable to comprehend.[27]

The Rainbow Five Plan

On December 8, 1941, President Roosevelt made a speech to Congress calling for a declaration of war against Japan. Condemning the attack on Pearl Harbor as a “date which will live in infamy,” Roosevelt did not once mention Germany.

Hitler’s policy of keeping incidents between the United States and Germany to a minimum seemed to have succeeded. Hitler had ignored or downplayed the numerous provocations that Roosevelt had made against Germany. Even after Roosevelt issued orders to shoot-on-sight at German submarines, Hitler had ordered his naval commanders and air force to avoid incidents that Roosevelt might use to bring America into the war. Also, since the Tripartite Pact did not obligate Germany to join Japan in a war initiated by Japan, it appeared unlikely that Hitler would declare war on the United States.[28]

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor surprised Hitler. Hitler had never wanted Japan to attack the United States. Germany had repeatedly urged Japan to attack Singapore and the rest of Great Britain’s Far East Empire, but Japan refused to do so. After the war Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl said that Hitler had wanted Japan to attack Great Britain and the Soviet Union in the Far East, which would have set up a two-front war. Hitler thought Roosevelt would probably not be able to persuade the American public to go to war to defend Britain’s Asian colonies. Jodl said that Hitler had wanted in Japan “a strong new ally without a strong new enemy.”[29]

Hitler’s decision to stay out of war with the United States was made more difficult on December 4, 1941, when the Chicago Tribune carried in huge black letters the headline: F.D.R.’s WAR PLANS! The Washington Times Herald, the largest paper in the nation’s capital, carried a similar headline.

Chesly Manly, the Tribune’s Washington correspondent, revealed in his report what Roosevelt had repeatedly denied: that Roosevelt was planning to lead the United States into war against Germany. The source of Manly’s information was no less than a verbatim copy of Rainbow Five, the top-secret war plan drawn up at Roosevelt’s request by the joint board of the United States Army and Navy. Manly’s story even contained a copy of President Roosevelt’s letter ordering the preparation of the plan.[30]

Rainbow Five called for the creation of a 10-million-man army, including an expeditionary force of 5 million men that would invade Europe in 1943 to defeat Germany. On December 5, 1941, the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., cabled the entire transcript of the newspaper story to Berlin. The story was reviewed and analyzed in Berlin as “the Roosevelt War Plan.” On December 6, 1941, Adm. Erich Raeder submitted a report to Hitler prepared by his staff that analyzed the Rainbow Five plan. Raeder concluded the most important point contained in Rainbow Five was the fact that the United States would not be ready to launch a military offensive against Germany until July 1943.[31]

On December 9, 1941, Hitler returned to Berlin from the Russian front and plunged into two days of conferences with Raeder, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. The three advisors stressed that the Rainbow Five plan showed that the United States was determined to defeat Germany. They pointed out that Rainbow Five stated that the United States would undertake to carry on the war against Germany alone even if Russia collapsed and Britain surrendered to Germany. The three advisors leaned toward Adm. Raeder’s view that an air and U-boat offensive against both British and American ships might be risky, but that the United States was already unquestionably an enemy.[32]

On December 9, 1941, Roosevelt made a radio address to the nation that is seldom mentioned in the history books. In addition to numerous uncomplimentary remarks about Hitler and Nazism, Roosevelt accused Hitler of urging Japan to attack the United States. Roosevelt declared:[33]

“We know that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations with a joint plan. Germany and Italy consider themselves at war with the United States without even bothering about a formal declaration… Your government knows Germany has been telling Japan that if Japan would attack the United States, Japan would share the spoils when peace came. She was promised by Germany that if she came in she would receive control of the whole Pacific area and that means not only the Far East, but all the islands of the Pacific and also a stranglehold on the west coast of North and Central and South America.”

All of the above statements are obviously lies. Germany and Japan did not have a joint naval plan before Pearl Harbor, and never concocted one for the rest of the war. Germany did not have foreknowledge and certainly never encouraged Japan to attack the United States. Japan never had any ambition to attack the west coast of North, Central, or South America. Germany also never promised anything to Japan in the Far East. Germany’s power in the Far East was negligible.[34]

Roosevelt concluded in his speech on December 9, 1941:[35]

“We expect to eliminate the danger from Japan, but it would serve us ill if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini. So we are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows.”

On December 10, 1941, when Hitler resumed his conference with Raeder, Keitel, and Göring, Hitler said that Roosevelt’s speech confirmed everything in the Tribune story. Hitler considered Roosevelt’s speech to be a de facto declaration of war. Since war with the United States was inevitable, Hitler felt he had no choice but to declare war on the United States. Hitler declared war on the United States in his Reichstag speech on December 11, 1941, stating among other things:

Since the beginning of the war, the American President Roosevelt has steadily committed ever more serious crimes against international law. Along with illegal attacks against ships and other property of German and Italian citizens, there have been threats and even arbitrary deprivations of personal freedom by internment and such. The increasingly hostile attacks by the American President Roosevelt have reached the point that he has ordered the American navy to immediately attack, fire upon and sink all German and Italian ships, in complete violation of international law. American officials have even boasted about destroying German submarines in this criminal manner. American cruisers have attacked and captured German and Italian merchant ships, and their peaceful crews were taken away to imprisonment. In addition, President Roosevelt’s plan to attack Germany and Italy with military forces in Europe by 1943 at the latest was made public in the United States, and the American government made no effort to deny it.

Despite the years of intolerable provocations by President Roosevelt, Germany and Italy sincerely and very patiently tried to prevent the expansion of this war and to maintain relations with the United States. But as a result of his campaign, these efforts have failed.[36]

Hitler ended this speech with a declaration of war against the United States. Roosevelt had finally gotten a declared war with Germany using Japan as a back door to war.

Closing Thoughts on Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the United States

No nation has ever been led into war with as many soothing promises of peace as the American public received from President Roosevelt. Most of the American public felt that the United States had entered the First World War under false pretenses. Polls consistently showed that the American public did not favor entry into a second war in Europe. Roosevelt assuaged these fears with statements such as “… I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.”[37]

The truth is that Roosevelt did everything in his power to plunge the United States into war against Germany. Roosevelt eventually went so far as to order American vessels to shoot-on- sight German and Italian vessels—a flagrant act of war. However, Hitler wanted to avoid war with the United States at all costs. Hitler expressly ordered German submarines to avoid conflicts with U.S. warships, except to prevent imminent destruction. It appeared that Hitler’s efforts would be successful in keeping the United States out of the war against Germany.

Hitler declared war on the United States only after the leaked Rainbow Five plan convinced him that war with the United States was inevitable. The extraordinary cunning of leaking Rainbow Five at the very time he knew a Japanese attack was pending enabled Roosevelt to overcome the American public’s resistance to entering the war. It allowed the entry of the United States into World War Two in such a way as to make it appear that Germany and Japan were the aggressor nations.[38]

Notes

[1] Roberts, Andrew, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2011, pp. 193f.
[2] Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War: A Complete History, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989, p. 277.
[3] Chamberlain, William Henry, America’s Second Crusade, Chicago: Regnery, 1950, pp. 129f.
[4] Ibid., p. 130.
[5] Sanborn, Frederic R., Design For War: A Study of Secret Power Politics, 1937-1941, New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, p. 258.
[6] Churchill, Winston S., The Grand Alliance, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950, pp. 149f.
[7] Sanborn, Frederic R., “Roosevelt is Frustrated in Europe,” in Barnes, Harry Elmer (ed.), Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1993, p. 216.
[8] Chamberlain, William H., op. cit. (note 4),pp. 136f.
[9] Sanborn, Frederic R., “Roosevelt…,” op. cit. (note 7), pp. 217f.
[10] Ibid., p. 218.
[11] Chamberlain, William H., op. cit. (note 4), pp. 147f.
[12] Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79 Cong., 2 sess., 39 parts; Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946, Part V, p. 2295.
[13] Churchill, Winston S., op. cit. (note 6), pp. 492f.
[14] Chamberlain, William H., op. cit. (note 4), pp. 148f.
[15] Newsweek, November 10, 1941, p. 35.
[16] “Roosevelt’s ‘Secret Map’ Speech,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 1985, pp. 125f.
[17] Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins, an Intimate History, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948, p. 438; see also Churchill, Winston S., op. cit. (note 6), p. 539.
[18] Johnson, Walter, The Battle against Isolation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944, pp. 85-87.
[19] Stinnett, Robert B., Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, New York: The Free Press, 2000, pp. 6, 8.
[20] Morgenstern, George, “The Actual Road to Pearl Harbor,” in Barnes, Harry Elmer (ed.), Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1993, pp. 327-331.
[21] Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79 Cong., 2 sess., 39 parts; Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946, Part XII, p. 9.
[22] Miller, Edward S., Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007, p. 162.
[23] Sanborn, Frederic R., Design for War, op. cit. (note 5), p. 424.
[24] Stinnett, Robert B., op. cit. (note 19), p. 83.
[25] Feb. 12, 1946, conversation between William Bullitt and Henry Wallace, from Henry Wallace Diary, Henry Wallace Papers, Library of Congress Manuscripts, Washington, D.C. Quoted in Tzouliadis, Tim, The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia, New York: The Penguin Press, 2008, p. 240.
[26] Kimmel, Husband E., Admiral Kimmel’s Story, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1955, p. 110.
[27] Ibid., p. 186.
[28] Meskill, Johanna Menzel, Hitler and Japan: The Hollow Alliance, New York: 1955, p. 40.
[29] Fleming, Thomas, The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War within World War II, New York: Basic Books, 2001, pp. 31f.
[30] Ibid., p. 1.
[31] Ibid., pp. 1f., 33.
[32] Ibid., pp. 33f.
[33] Ibid., pp. 34f.
[34] Meskill, Johana M., op. cit. (note 28), pp. 1-47.
[35] http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/speeches/speech-3325
[36] “The Reichstag Speech of 11 December 1941: Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the United States,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 4, Winter 1988-1989, p. 412.
[37] Chamberlain, William H., op. cit. (note 4), p. 98.
[38] http://www.veteranstoday.com/2008/06/16/rainbow-5-roosevelts-secret-pre-pearl-harbor-war-plan-exposed/

August 26, 2019 - Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |

3 Comments »

  1. It’s a bit late to be crying over what Hitler did, these days, especially with the USA facing sinister intervention from another country, which has enormous power and Undue Influence, within, and from abroad.
    So much power and undue influence, that even Americans are NOT ALLOWED to recognise it, Nor discuss it publicly, without ending up on charges, in a court of Law.

    Like

    Brian Harry, Australia's avatar Comment by Brian Harry, Australia | August 26, 2019 | Reply

  2. HIDDEN HISTORY: THE SECRET ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR, Gerry Docherty/Jim Macgregor

    THE SECRET ELITE:
    Part (1):
    WHO THEY WERE/ARE
    Sunday
    Jun 2014
    Posted by Jim_and_Gerry in Secret Elite, United Kingdom

    If you are sympathetic to the view that Germany was responsible for the war and that Britain and her allies fought for the noble cause of saving civilization from German tyranny, we invite you to consider the possibility that you have been misled. We too were once convinced of Germany’s guilt, but having studied the war in minute detail for many years are now firmly of the opinion, and confident we can prove to you, that it was not Germany to blame, but a secret coterie of immensely wealthy upper-class men in Britain. Men who saw the rapidly developing economic, commercial and industrial power of Germany as a threat to their secret plan to bring the entire civilized world under the control of the British Empire. From the early years of the 20th century they met regularly in their great English country houses and plush London clubs to plan in secret how to bring an end to the German threat.

    In those smoke filled parlors of influence the secret cabal took the very conscious decision to meet the threat head-on through war. A war they carefully planned from 1903 onwards, deliberately started in 1914, and purposefully prolonged beyond 1915. They realized that a long war of attrition was the only means by which they could ensure Germany’s complete and utter destruction. It was not simply about victory over the German military machine. Their aim was to crush Germany as an economic and industrial rival. Having accomplished that, they went to unprecedented lengths to cover their tracks and conceal evidence of their guilt. We have uncovered a considerable amount of that evidence and will lay it before you over the coming months and years of the war’s centenary. We ask only that you examine it and let your open mindedness be the judge.

    SECRET ELITE’S HIDDEN CONTROL & CONNECTIONS 1891-1914
    The cabal in London was formally set up in 1891 and funded by the fortune accrued by Cecil Rhodes from gold and diamond mining in South Africa. It had an inner circle – “The Society of the Elect” – comprising members of Britain’s leading dynastic families, chosen members of the aristocracy, massively rich merchant bankers and powerful players in Britain’s military-industrial complex. They had common undergraduate associations, usually Oxford University, close personal relationships and their ultimate goal was to bring all habitable portions of the world under their control. Everything they touched was about control: of people and how their thoughts could be influenced, of political parties, no matter who was nominally in office. They acted in secret and, as professor Quigley revealed, were able to conceal their existence so that many of its most influential members ‘are unknown even to close students of British history.’ [1] The outer circle – “The Association of Helpers” – was large and quite fluid with a membership comprising like-minded political associates, committed, mostly Oxford University graduates, top diplomats and civil servants and newspaper proprietors and editors. At this level of involvement, members may or may not have been aware that they were either an integral part of or inadvertently being used by a secret society. Many on the outer edges of the group, idealists and honest politicians, may never have known that the real decisions were made by a ruthless clique about whom they had no knowledge. [2]

    Dynastic families, the Conservative Cecil’s and the Liberal Rosebery’s, had dominated British politics over the previous four centuries, and had nurtured British imperialism with a keen eye to ever increasing profit and power. The British Empire was a sacred shibboleth to be guarded, protected and continually expanded. The ruthless exploitation of foreign peoples brought vast wealth to a growing moneyed-class. Their greed was conveniently presented as an opportunity to improve the lives of the ‘uncivilised’ natives. The philosophical justification for the secret society lay in Oxford and the work of the professor of fine arts, John Ruskin who pandered to their prejudices by advocating that English ruling-class control be spread throughout the entire globe. Inside the close privacy of the great English country houses, often as guests of the world’s richest men, the Rothschilds, this secret power-base was developed though friendships and mutual interests.

    We have been able to trace the actions and activities of this group from around 1891 onwards, thanks to Professor Quigley who paved the way for later researchers to determine how these powerful men worked to their own ends. Aided by his close connections to certain members of the Secret Elite, Quigley revealed their ‘triple front penetration’ of politics, education and journalism and the methods they used to promote their cause while keeping themselves from public scrutiny. They controlled key politicians, senior diplomats and civil servants, particularly in the Foreign Office, lavishing high office and rewards on them, no matter which political party they nominally served. [3] They controlled the Press, either through pliant journalists or by owning and controlling the newspapers directly. They dictated editorial opinion through chosen placemen and were thus able to greatly influence public opinion. They Cecil Rhodes elite directly controlled the writing of history through appointments to Professorships, establishment of new University Chairs, publishing of official documents and the concealment or destruction of evidence that could implicate them in international and domestic events.

    Tentative discussions about the creation of an elite secret society had been going on through the 1880s but the earliest evidence we have of their formalising procedures dates from 1891. In February of that year, Cecil Rhodes, Lord Reginald Esher and W.T. Stead met in London to outline their ambition to subjugate the world to the primacy of the English race. Rhodes had already made his fortune in South Africa and was prepared to leave his legacy to finance the project. Stead was an immensely respected investigative journalist with an expanding readership who regarded him highly. Esher had the private ear of the monarch and as such had access to all of the important aristocratic households in the country. His royal patronage ensured that he held unelected positions in royal commissions and crucially, the covert Committee of Imperial Defence. Two further important men were quickly inducted into the cabal. Lord Nathaniel Rothschild, the international merchant banker, and Alfred Milner, at that time a relatively little known colonial administrator.

    Lord Rothschild
    Both of these men represented different aspects of control and influence. The Rothschild dynasty epitomised ‘the money power’ to a degree with which no other could compete. They were all-powerful in British and world banking and considered themselves the equals of royalty [4] even to the extent of calling their London base ‘New Court’. Alfred Milner was a self-made man, a gifted academic who began his working life as an aspiring lawyer, turned to journalism and eventually emerged as an immensely powerful and successful power-broker. In time, he became the undisputed leader of the Secret Elite in London.

    Together these men created a secret society with hierarchical layers of knowledge and involvement, tightly organised, small in number but abundantly influential in its collective associations. Though Masonic in its secrecy, membership was kept closely guarded and depended on friendships, birth and wealth. Quigley identified one additional feature. Members often had a very close association with Oxford University and in particular, All Souls College. At all times these elites acted in secret and even those who shared their views and who played a part in the events which unfolded may not have known about the inner circle which directed the policies they pursued.

    They believed that a new world order was required which would be Anglo-Saxon in origin, and dominated by the English ruling-class values so worshipped by Ruskin and his Oxford-based followers. They held a disdain for democracy and were unaccountable to any electorate. Behind a façade of altruism, they took control in secret, put placemen in political office, controlled and manipulated the press and the writing of history, directed policy to their own advancement and profit and planned, quite specifically, to remove the threat posed by German economic expansion and industrial development.

    In Hidden History we build on the evidence originally presented by Carroll Quigley to reveal in detail how the Secret Elite formed and developed in the twenty years leading up to 1914. They grew all powerful and it became abundantly clear that their leader was Alfred Milner.

    [1] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp.4-5.
    [2] Edward Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island, p.272.
    [3] Carroll Quigley, op. cit. p.197.
    [4] Niall Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p.251.

    THE SECRET ELITE: MILNER THE PUPPET MASTER
    (2):
    Monday
    Jun 2014
    Posted by Jim_and_Gerry in Secret Elite, United Kingdom

    Viscount Alfred Milner
    Alfred Milner stood above all others at the centre of this elite cabal. He was involved from the start and dedicated to the cause of elite Anglo-Saxon global rule. He maintained unquestioned authority among fellow members of the secret society, no matter their great riches and background. He was perhaps the one man among them who completely understood the entire process of manipulating power and dictating history, and was fearless in his ultimate objective. Without Milner at the helm from the moment of Rhodes death in 1902, it is doubtful if any other could have held the Secret Elite together with the steely determination to instigate the First World War. Unelected and unaccountable, he later sat in the inner-most sanctum of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet directing the British war policies from 1916-1918, a testament to his true stature. Yet he is virtually unknown to all but a few academics, deliberately airbrushed from history, hidden from unwanted intrusion from those who still seek to know and understand the First World War.

    Milner was cocooned by the most powerful men in the British Empire. He held sway with the Rothschilds and other immensely wealthy bankers, with the shadowy Lord Esher who controlled access to the monarch, with the press baron, Lord Northcliffe and editors and writers for The Times and other major newspapers. He had the ear of monarchs and was ennobled as Viscount Milner. While Governor General in South Africa he had drawn around him a select group of Oxford graduates from Balliol and New College, molding them into the most loyal and trustworthy acolytes known as Milner’s Kindergarten. Names like Lionel Curtis, Leo Amery, Philip Kerr, Robert Brand, Geoffrey Dawson and John Buchan went on to play highly significant roles for the Secret Elite in their war against Germany, and were rewarded with stellar careers in politics, law, business and finance. They were always Milner’s men. He was likewise intimately associated with top men in British politics. In the Liberal party they included Henry Asquith, Edward Grey, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. His association with Conservative leaders such as Arthur Balfour, Lord Roberts Lansdowne, Lord George Curzon, Robert Cecil and Edward Carson was born in Oxford, blossomed through the Boer War years, and never ceased to bear fruit in directing policy from behind closed doors. Milner was also closely linked to the British military hierarchy, Field Marshall Lord Roberts in particular, during his years in South Africa at the time of the Boer War.

    The Boer War proved an embarrassment which demonstrated clearly that the British Army was not fit for purpose and had to be reformed. This vital task was given to Alfred Milner’s trusted friend, the Liberal member of parliament, Richard Haldane. As Secretary of State for War from 1905-1912, Haldane successfully created the British Expeditionary Force and modernized the War Office. However, the all-powerful Field Marshall Lord Roberts who, although nominally retired from the army in 1905, retained his influence on military high command from behind the scenes. Like many of the earliest members of the Secret Elite, Roberts had bonded with Milner in the heat of the Boer War and was encouraged to continue his elder-statesman role among the high ranking officers of the British Army. As a member of the Secret Elite, Roberts’s approval for those appointed to most senior posts was a pre-requisite for their success, and they ultimately formed a cadre of senior officers that we have named the ‘Robert’s Academy’.

    Officers with outstanding leadership qualities and clear strategic thinking were overlooked for promotion, while members of the Roberts Academy with little discernible talent were promoted on the basis of their intense loyalty to the old field marshal and the secret agenda to which he was committed. The ordinary British soldier paid a very high price indeed for the disgraceful nepotism and outdated ideas of the Roberts Academy. Men such as General Douglas Haig, who ordered the disastrous attack at the Somme in 1916, retained greater faith in the effectiveness of the 19th century cavalry charge over the machine gun. Through Lord Roberts, Secret Elite influence over the British army and its preparations for war with Germany was absolute. In expanding our understanding of Secret Elite control, we have added the armed forces to Professor Quigley’s concept of their ‘triple-front penetration’ of politics, press and the writing of history.

    One of the most secret bodies entrusted with the task of preparing Britain for war with Germany was the Committee for Imperial Defence, (CID) set up after the Boer War fiasco to assist and advise the prime minister. Few politicians knew of the Committee’s existence and fewer still were aware of its top-secret sub-committee empowered in 1905 to prepare for joint military and naval action with France. The CID was dominated and controlled by the Secret Elite. Lord Esher was given permanent membership. Maurice Hankey, the powerful secretary of the CID was approved by both Milner and Roberts, and likewise was on 3 August 1914 a member of the Secret Elite. He organised meetings, prepared agendas and minutes, and requested every government department in Whitehall to prepare a War Book with detailed instructions on what to do once war was declared. Hankey’s value to the Secret Elite was unmatched and his influence eventually extended to the War Cabinet itself. Only the Secret Elite and their agents in government, Asquith, Grey, Haldane, Churchill and Lloyd George, knew about the preparations being made jointly with France and Russia for war with Germany. By August 1914, Prime Minister Asquith and Foreign Secretary Grey had repeatedly denied Britain’s secret commitment to go to war, and continually lied about it in parliament.

    Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey
    The most powerful department of government, and one that seemed to be solely accountable to itself, was the Foreign Office. Headed from 1906 onwards by Sir Edward Grey, it manipulated treaties, approved secret codicils, organised royal visits, fostered Secret Elite-supported conferences across the Empire and the Dominions, and controlled every aspect of British foreign policy. Grey had been chosen as Foreign Secretary by the Secret Elite as a safe pair of hands to lead this global power-base even although he had no justifiable qualifications to do so. He was barely coherent in spoken French, then the international language of diplomacy, and as Foreign Secretary, never left the shores of Britain until 1914. He was guided at every turn by the Secret Elite’s carefully selected mandarins in permanent posts within the Foreign Office. Sir Edward Grey was academically undistinguished, took his politics from The Times editorials, and was protected by his associates in the Secret Elite. He was a staunch imperialist fully attuned to the Secret Elite objective and had the support of Alfred Milner. He was rarely challenged in parliament by either his own Liberal Party or the opposition, and on 3 August 1914 it was he who steamrollered the Cabinet and parliament into a declaration of war with Germany. The men who pulled the strings behind this puppet-statesman were linked to Milner and the Secret Elite in a variety of ways; they included the vehemently anti-German Sir Eyre Crowe, permanent secretary Sir Arthur Nicolson, Sir George Buchanan, ambassador to Russia, Sir Francis Bertie, ambassador to France and Viscount Bryce, who had been ambassador to the United States. These were the men who controlled the information that was passed to Grey, annotated diplomatic telegrams and prepared his speeches. All had important roles to play in the genesis of the war and in the war itself.

    This secret, select, privileged, wealthy and frequently ennobled cabal steadily embraced the wealthiest international bankers and industrialists whose interests, by the eve of war, stretched across the Atlantic to America. Some were members of the Secret Elite inner core like Lord Nathaniel (Natty) Rothschild who ensured that Alfred Milner had no financial worries by giving him a directorship of his highly profitable Rio Tinto mining company. Milner was also made a member of the London Joint Stock Bank, director of the Mortgage Company of Egypt, and the Bank of British West Africa. Indeed, so many lucrative posts were thrust at him that Milner had to turn down a directorship of The Times and of the armaments giant, Armstrong-Whitworth. Despite these multiple directorships, Alfred Milner’s most important post was as unchallenged leader of the Secret Elite.

    Do not for a second imagine that the financial world’s allegiance and patronage of Milner and the Secret Elite was limited to the Rothschilds. Sir Ernest Cassel, friend and financier to King Edward VII, Lord John Revelstoke of Barings Bank, members of the Bank of England, the Rand millionaires Sir Alfred Beit and Sir Abe Bailey and later associates like Waldorf Astor were all closely involved. The British South Africa Company was a nest of Secret Elite vipers, and most tellingly, they controlled vast holdings in the armaments industry. Vickers, the Nobel Dynamite Trust, Cammel Laird, John Brown Shipbuilders and Armstrong Whitworth were but some of the international companies whose major shareholders were linked to the secret society.

    COMMENTS:
    David Optional Guyatt said:14 July, 2016 at 9:52 am
    Dear Jim and Gerry,

    I have been browsing your website and must say I am delighted to have found it. This subject has been long overdue for a serious and detailed study.

    It occurs to me that you may not (perhaps you have?) come across a curious and possibly important fragment that was only quoted in Quigley’s Anglo American Establishment, and that in the endnotes of Chapter 3. This concerns a letter {Cecil}Rhodes wrote to Stead in 1891 on the matter of the secret society. For it to succeed, Quigley said, it would require “gradually absorbing the wealth of the world.”

    Inasmuch as the global influence of the Rhodes-Milner kindergarten migrated to the US after WWII for obvious reasons, I though this quote very telling. And especially as it was reported in January 2014 by Oxfam and republished by numerous media that the combined wealth of the 85 wealthiest people is equal to that of the worlds poorest 3.5 billion ( http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13141362.Wealthiest_85_in_world__have_as_much_as_poorest_3_5_billion_/

    Whether by design or accident that vision has apparently succeeded…

    Kind regards and well done!

    David

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    Pip's avatar Comment by Pip | August 26, 2022 | Reply


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