tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22796739235184421862024-03-13T03:48:34.014-07:00Hercolano-Texts in English Language (2) - 59 articles from the BARNES REVIEWΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-58677240642785443122010-03-22T06:15:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:15:49.900-07:00What Did Ezra Pound Really Say?<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
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By Michael Collins Piper</div><br />
From 1945 through 1958 America’s iconoclastic poet —the flamboyant Ezra Pound, one of the most influential individuals of his generation—was held in a Washington, D.C. mental institution, accused of treason. Pound had merely done what he had always done—spoken his mind. Unfortunately for Pound, however, he had made the error of criticizing the American government in a series of broadcasts from Italy during World War II. For that he was made to pay the price. The July 1995 issue of The Barnes Review told the story of Pound’s travails. Here, however, TBR presents an in-depth over view of precisely what Pound had to say in those now-infamous broadcasts. Was Pound a traitor—or a prophet? Read his words and judge for yourself.<br />
American students have been taught by scandalized educators that famed American poet and philosopher Ezra Pound delivered “treasonous” English-language radio broadcasts from Italy (directed to both Americans and to the British) during World War II. However, as noted by Robert H. Walker, an editor for the Greenwood Press: “Thousands of people have heard about them, scores have been affected by them, yet but a handful has ever heard or read them.”<sup>1</sup><br />
This ignorance of Pound’s most controversial political rhetoric is ironic, inasmuch as: “No other American—and only a few individuals throughout the world—has left such a strong mark on so many aspects of the 20th century: from poetry to economics, from theater to philosophy, from politics to pedagogy, from Provençal to Chinese. If Pound was not always totally accepted, at least he was unavoidably there.”<sup>2</sup><br />
One critic called Pound’s broadcasts a “confused mixture of fascist apologetics, economic theory, anti-Semitism, literary judgment and memory”<sup>3</sup> Another described them as “an unholy mixture of ambiguity, obscurity, inappropriate subject matters [and] vituperation,” adding (grudgingly) there were “a few pearls of unexpected wisdom.”<sup>4</sup><br />
Despite all the furor over Pound’s broadcasts—which were heard between January of 1941 through July of 1943—it was not until 1978 that a full-length 465-page compendium of transcriptions of the broadcasts was assembled by Prof. Leonard Doob of Yale University in association with aforementioned Greenwood Press. Published under the title “Ezra Pound Speaking”—Radio Speeches of World War II, the volume provides the reader a comprehensive look at Pound’s philosophy as it was presented by the poet himself in what Robert Walker, who wrote the foreword to the compendium, describes as “that flair for dramatic hyperbole.”<sup>5</sup><br />
What follows is an attempt to synthesize Pound’s extensive verbal parries. Most of what is appears here has never been printed anywhere except in the compendium of Pound’s wartime broadcasts. Thus, for the first time ever—for a popular audience—here is what Pound really had to say, not what his critics claim he said.<br />
When he was broadcasting from Italy during wartime, Pound evidently pondered the possibility of one day compiling transcriptions of his broadcasts (or at least expected—quite correctly—that one day the transcripts would be compiled by someone else). He hoped the broadcasts would show a consistent thread once they were committed to print.<br />
Pound recognized relaying such a massive amount of information about so many seemingly unrelated subjects might be confusing listeners less widely read than he. However, the poet also had very firm ideas about the need of his listeners to be able to synthesize the broad range of material that appeared in his colorful lectures.<br />
Pound was sure his remarks on radio were not seditious, but were strictly informational and dedicated to traditional principles of Americanism—including the Constitution, in particular. In response to media claims that he was a fascist propagandist, Pound had this to say:<br />
If anyone takes the trouble to record and examine the series of talks I have made over this radio it will be found I have used three sorts of material: historical facts; convictions of experienced men, based on fact; and the fruits of my own experience. The facts . . . mostly antedate the fascist era and cannot be considered as improvisations trumped up to meet present requirements. Neither can the beliefs of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Lincoln be laughed off as mere fascist propaganda. And even my own observations date largely before the opening of the present hostilities.<br />
I defend the particularly American, North American, United States heritage. If anybody can find anything hostile to the Constitution of the U.S.A. in these speeches, it would greatly interest me to know what. It may be bizarre, eccentric, quaint, old-fashioned of me to refer to that document, but I wish more Americans would at least read it. It is not light and easy reading but it contains several points of interest, whereby some of our present officials could, if they but would, profit greatly.<sup>6</sup><br />
Pound’s immediate concern was the war in Europe—“this war on youth—on a generation” <sup>7</sup>—which he described as the natural result of the “age of the chief war pimps.”<sup>8</sup> He hated the very idea that Americans were being primed for war, and on the very day of Pearl Harbor he denounced the idea that American boys should soon be marching off to war: “I do not want my compatriots from the ages of 20 to 40 to go get slaughtered to keep up the Sassoon and other British Jew rackets in Singapore and in Shanghai. That is not my idea of Ameri can patriotism,” he added.<sup>9</sup><br />
In Pound’s view, the American government alliance with British finance capitalism and Soviet Bolshevism was contrary to America’s tradition and heritage: “Why did you take up with those gangs?” he rhetorically asked his listeners. “Two gangs. [The] Jews’ gang in London, and [the] Jew murderous gang over in Mos cow? Do you like Mr. Litvinov? [Soviet ambassador to Britain Meyer Wallach, alias Litvinov, born 1876.—Ed.]<br />
“Do the people from Delaware and Vir ginia and Connecticut and Massachusetts . . . who live in painted, neat, white houses . . . do these folks really approve [of] Mr. Litvinov and his gang, and all he stands for?”<sup>10<br />
</sup>There was no reason for U.S. intervention abroad, he said: “The place to defend the American heritage is on the American continent. And no man who had any part in helping [Franklin] Delano Roosevelt get the United States into [the war] has enough sense to win anything . . .<sup>11</sup>The men who wintered at Valley Forge did not suffer those months of intense cold and hunger . . . in the hope that . . . the union of the colonies would one day be able to stir up wars between other countries in order to sell them munitions.”<sup>12</sup><br />
What was the American tradition? According to Pound: “The determination of our forbears to set up and maintain in the North American continent a government better than any other. The determination to govern ourselves internally, better than any other nation on earth. The idea of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, to keep out of foreign shindies [fights].”<sup>13</sup><br />
Of FDR’s interventionism, he declared: “To send boys from Omaha to Singapore to die for British monopoly and brutality is not the act of an American patriot.”<sup>14</sup> However, Pound said: “Don’t shoot the president. I dare say he deserves worse, but . . . [a]ssassination only makes more mess.”<sup>15</sup><br />
Pound saw the American national tradition being buried by the aggressive new internationalism. According to Pound’s harsh judgment: “The American gangster did not spend his time shooting women and children. He may have been misguided, but in general he spent his time fighting superior forces at considerable risk to himself . . . not in dropping booby traps for unwary infants. I therefore object to the modus in which the American troops obey their high commander. This modus is not in the spirit of Washington or of Stephen Decatur.”<sup>16</sup><br />
Pound hated war and detected a particular undercurrent in the previous wars of history. Wars, he said, were destructive to nation-states, but profitable for the special interests. Pound said international bankers—Jewish bankers, in particular—were those who were the primary beneficiaries of the profits of from war. He pulled no punches when he declared:<br />
Sometime the Anglo-Saxon may awaken to the fact that . . . nations are shoved into wars in order to destroy themselves, to break up their structure, to destroy their social order, to destroy their populations. And no more flaming and flagrant case appears in history than our own American Civil War, said to be an occidental record for size of armies employed and only surpassed by the more recent triumphs of [the Warburg banking family:] the wars of 1914 and the present one.<sup>17</sup><br />
Although World War II itself was much on Pound’s mind, the poet’s primary concern, referenced repeatedly throughout his broadcasts, was the issue of usury and the control of money and economy by private special interests. “There is no freedom without economic freedom,” he said. “Freedom that does not include freedom from debt is plain bunkum. It is fetid and foul logomachy [wordplay] to call such servitude freedom . . . Yes, freedom from all sorts of debt, including debt at usurious interest.”<sup>18</sup><br />
Usury, he said, was a cause of war throughout history. In Pound’s view understanding the issue of usury was central to understanding history: “Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.<sup>19</sup><br />
“The usury system does no nation . . . any good whatsoever. It is an internal peril to him who hath, and it can make no use of nations in the play of international diplomacy save to breed strife between them and use the worst as flails against the best. It is the usurer’s game to hurl the savage against the civilized opponent. The game is not pretty, it is not a very safe game. It does no one any credit.”<sup>20</sup> Pound thus traced the history of the current war:<br />
This war did not begin in 1939. It is not a unique result of the infamous Versailles Treaty. It is impossible to understand it without knowing at least a few precedent historic events, which mark the cycle of combat. No man can understand it without knowing at least a few facts and their chronological sequence.<br />
This war is part of the age-old struggle between the usurer and the rest of mankind: between the usurer and peasant, the usurer and producer, and finally between the usurer and the merchant, between usurocracy and the mercantilist system . . .<br />
The present war dates at least from the founding of the Bank of England at the end of the 17th century, 1694-8. Half a century later, the London usurocracy shut down on the issue of paper money by the Pennsylvania colony, AD 1750. This is not usually given prominence in the U.S. school histories. The 13 colonies rebelled, quite successfully, 26 years later, AD 1776.<sup>21</sup><br />
According to Pound, it was the money issue (above all) that united the Allies during the second 20th-century war against Germany: “Gold. Nothing else uniting the three governments, England, Russia, United States of America. That is the interest—gold, usury, debt, monopoly, class interest, and possibly gross indifference and contempt for humanity.”<sup>22</sup> Although “gold” was central to the world’s struggle, Pound still felt gold “is a coward. Gold is not the backbone of nations. It is their ruin. A coward, at the first breath of danger gold flows away, gold flows out of the country.”<sup>23</sup><br />
Pound perceived Germany under Hitler as a nation that stood against the international money lenders and communist Russia under Stalin as a system that stood against humanity itself. He told his listeners:<br />
Now if you know anything whatsoever of modern Europe and Asia, you know Hitler stands for putting men over machines. If you don’t know that, you know nothing. And beyond that you either know or do not know that Stalin’s regime considers humanity as nothing save raw material. Deliver so many carloads of human material at the consumption point. That is the logical result of materialism. If you assert that men are dirty, that humanity is merely material, that is where you come out. And the old Geor gian train robber [Josef Stalin—ed.] is perfectly logical. If all things are merely material, man is material—and the system of anti-man treats man as matter.<sup>24</sup><br />
The real enemy, said Pound, was international capitalism. All people everywhere were victims: “They’re working day and night, picking your pockets,” he said. “Every day and all day and all night picking your pockets and picking the Russian working man’s pockets.”<sup>25</sup>Capital, however, he said, was “not international, it is not hypernational. It is subnational. A quicksand under the nations, destroying all nations, destroying all law and government, destroying the nations, one at a time, Russian empire and Austria, 20 years past, France yesterday, England today.”<sup>26</sup><br />
According to Pound, Americans had no idea why they were being expected to fight in Britain’s war with Germany: “Even Mr. Churchill hasn’t had the grass to tell the American people why he wants them to die, to save what. He is fighting for the gold standard and monopoly. Namely the power to starve the whole of mankind, and make it pay through the nose before it can eat the fruit of its own labor.” <sup>27</sup><br />
As far as the English were concerned, in Pound’s broadcasts aimed at the British Isles he warned his listeners that although Russian-style communist totalitarianism was a threat to British freedom, it was not the biggest threat Britain faced:<br />
You are threatened. You are threatened by the Russian methods of administration. Those methods [are not] your sole danger. It is, in fact, so far from being your sole danger that I have, in over two years of talk over this radio, possibly never referred to it before. Usury has gnawed into England since the days of Elizabeth. First it was mortgages, mortgages on earls’ estates; usury against the feudal nobility. Then there were attacks on the common land, filchings of village common pasture. Then there developed a usury system, an international usury system, from Cromwell’s time, ever increasing.”<sup>28</sup><br />
In the end, Pound suggested, it would be the big money interests who would really win the war—not any particular nation-state—and the foundation for future wars would be set in place: “The nomadic parasites will shift out of London and into Manhattan. And this will be presented under a camouflage of national slogans. It will be represented as an American victory. It will not be an American victory. The moment is serious. The moment is also confusing. It is confusing because there are two sets of concurrent phenomena, namely, those connected with fighting this war, and those which sow seeds for the next one.”<sup>29</sup><br />
Pound believed one of the major problems of the day—which itself had contributed to war fever—was the manipulation of the press, particularly in the United States: “I naturally mistrust newspaper news from America,” he declared. “I grope in the mass of lies, knowing most of the sources are wholly untrustworthy.”<sup>30</sup><br />
According to Pound: “The United States has been misinformed. The United States has been led down the garden path, and may be down under the daisies. All through shutting out news. There is no end to the amount of shutting out news that the sons of blood who started this war, and wanted this war, and monkeyed around to get a war started and monkeyed around to keep the war going, and spreading. There is no end to the shutting out and perversions of news that these blighters ain’t up to, and that they haven’t, and aren’t still trying to compass.”<sup>31</sup>Pound believed press manipulation was a historic phenomenon:<br />
I ask my compatriots of my own age to note that the very high percentage of articles printed in American magazines contains a joker, that is a silent point, a basically false assumption. I don’t mean they all contain the same false assumption. I point out that there is no public medium in the United States for serious discussion. Every [one] of these publications has subjects which its policy forbids it to mention or to mention without falsification. And I ask the men in my generation to consider the effects, the cumulative effect of this state of things which does not date from September 1941, but has been going on ever since we can remember.<sup>32</sup><br />
Pound believed it was vital for the American people to circumvent the controlled press and to investigate current events—and history—for themselves.<br />
Long before anyone ever conceived of C-SPAN’s daily broadcasts of congressional activity Pound suggested one way for the American people to have a better view of what was happening in official Washington: “You could put Congress on the air. Then you would know more of what your representatives are putting on you.”<sup>33</sup><br />
The poet noted that the press was so controlled it was virtually impossible to express opinions contrary to those of the controllers of the media of the day: “You can’t talk it over with me; because none of you can get to a radio. You can’t print stuff like this in your papers, because the newspapers are not there to inform the people.”<sup>34</sup> Pound harkened back to the old Committees of Correspondence that existed in the American colonies prior to the American Revolution when he suggested: “You have got talk to each other, you have got to write letters one to another”<sup>35</sup> in order to be able to discuss the real issues of the day.<br />
Pound also noted another press phenomenon: the fact that the American press had failed to tell its readers that in Europe the Masonic order was a widely discussed issue. Pound told his listeners it ought to be news in America, but it wasn’t: “Nothing will come as a greater shock to America in general,” he said, “but in particular to honest men who compose the greater part, numerically, of American Masonry, than the view held concerning that order in Europe.”<sup>36</sup> Regarding the Masonic order, Pound had his own questions: “What are the Masons? Where do they get their money? And who controls them?<sup>37</sup><br />
As far as the all-important question of money creation was concerned, Pound also saw the controlled press—and the academic establishment —covering up the truth. He was in trigued by the fact that there was precedent, in history, for the governments of nation-states to create money rather than relying upon private, special interests to do so:<br />
For years economics professors have been lying, even going so far as to deprecate loans by the state, when the fleet that won the battle of Salamis was built with money lent by the Athenian state to the ship builders, instead of mortgaging the whole nation to . . . swine and enemies of the people as has been done in damn near every nation ever since the Stank [Bank] of England was founded. Well, states have lent money, and the Pennsylvania Colony lent it. And the French . . . are lending it. So the British fire on their late allies. And every damn possible thing is done to prevent the American in Utah or Montana from learning economics or history. And our Constitution does give Congress the right to determine prices, though it is worded, “right to determine the value of money,” which is the same thing.<sup>38</sup><br />
In Pound’s judgment, the American people had fallen down on the job and relied upon the greatest protection they had against the moneyed interests—the U.S. Constitution. “You have not kept the Constitution in force,” he said. “You have not developed it according to its own internal laws . . . The main protection of the whole people is in the clause about Congress issuing money . . . but you have not wanted to maintain the Constitution. You have not wanted, that is, you have not had a will, to maintain the Con sti tution or to maintain honest, just government.<sup>39</sup><br />
The U.S. Constitution, Pound said, was “for more than a century, in fact for 130 years, far and away the best on earth. I had always thought we could get all the social justice we need, by a few sane reforms of money, such as Adams and Lincoln would have thought honest and Constitutional. The grafters would rather throw you into a ten years war and kill off five or ten million young men than even let the discussion of monetary reform flower on the front pages of the American papers.<sup>40</sup><br />
All of these warnings by Pound about the money system have been suppressed or ignored or forgotten.<br />
Despite his international travel, his choice to live abroad, his fluency in foreign tongues, his cosmopolitan associations, Pound was very much an American nationalist and a patriot in the truest sense. American culture and history were the foundation of his thinking, and he was the first to proclaim it. At the same time, Pound felt the American people were badly misinformed about the realities of European history:<br />
“The Americans are unqualified for intervention,” he said. “They are disqualified by reason for their intense, abysmal, unfathomable ignorance of the state and past facts of Europe. Even my colleagues in the Academy of Social and Political Science have no competent perception of the difference, the basic difference between the American problem and that of Europe. And most of them have not made any adequate use of even such fragmentary fragments of knowledge as they possess.”<sup>41</sup><br />
As far as the Jewish question was concerned, Pound was never an advocate of mass extermination or of any program of discrimination against the Jews—contrary to what modern day “historians” might contend. Pound did perceive communism as an outgrowth of ancient Judaic teachings. He called communism “the left hand of Judah”<sup>42</sup>(the right hand, presumably, being international finance capitalism) and declared that, “The Bolshevik anti-morale [anti-morality system] comes out of the Talmud, which is the dirtiest teaching any race ever codified. The Talmud is the one and only begetter of the Bolshevik system.”<sup>43</sup><br />
Pound sometimes resorted to the use of ethnic slurs, but earthy expressions and salty language were integral to the poet’s style. Pound’s real target was the international banking establishment—many of whose leaders were, in fact, Jews. But he was not an enemy of the Jewish people: “Don’t start a pogrom,” he said. “That is, not an old-style killing of small Jews. That system is no good whatsoever. Of course if some man had a stroke of genius and could start a pogrom up at the top, there might be something to say for it. But on the whole legal measures are preferable. <sup>44</sup><br />
Pound traced many historical problems to the direct involvement of Jewish financiers. For example, he pointed out: “Nobody with any historical knowledge says that the French revolution occurred without Jewish assistance. Nor that since that somewhat bloody upset and series of subsequent upsets the Jew weren’t cock-a-hoop in the French capital. A knowledge of the French commune would have helped us to understand the Russian November revolution If we had had it. But handy and useful knowledge has an easy way of getting mislaid. Now what causes that?<sup>45</sup><br />
Of the much-discussed Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Pound had the following intriguing comment:<br />
If or when one mentions the protocols alleged to be of the Elders of Zion, one is frequently met with the reply: Oh, but they are a forgery. Certainly they are a forgery, and that is the one proof we have of their authenticity. The Jews have worked with forged documents for the past 24 hundred years, namely ever since they have had any documents whatsoever.<br />
And no one can qualify as a historian of this half century without having examined the Protocols. Alleged, if you like, to have been translated from the Russian, from a manuscript to be consulted in the British Museum, where some such document may or may not exist . . .<br />
Their interest lies in the type of mind, or the state of mind of their author. That was their interest for the psychologist the day they first appeared. And for the historian two decades later, when the program contained in them has so crushingly gone into effect up to a point, or down to a squalor.<sup>46</sup><br />
Pound saw the ongoing war as an enemy of culture and he acknowledged his goal was stopping the war, if he could: “Oh yes, I want it to stop. I didn’t start it. I should like to conserve a few art works, a few mosaics, a few printed volumes, I should like to shore, or bring to beach what is left of the world’s cultural heritage, including libraries and architectural monuments. To serve as models for new construction.”<sup>47</sup><br />
Contrary to his modern reputation for “racism,” Pound resented racist attacks on the Japanese by the Allies. Shortly after Pearl Harbor he remarked that: “A BBC commentator somewhere about January 8 was telling his presumably music hall audience the Japs were jackals, and that they had just recently, I think he said within living men’s lifetime, emerged from barbarism. I don’t know what patriotic end you think, or he thinks, or the British authorities think is served by such fetid ignorance.”<sup>48</sup> Pound told his audience the United States had, “with unspeakable vulgarity . . . insulted the most finely tempered people on earth, threatening them with starvation, threatening them with encirclement and telling them they were too low down to fight.”<sup>49</sup> The result, he said, was Pearl Harbor and American intervention in the war.<br />
Pound also recognized Japan’s Chi nese enemies were as much victims of the international money lenders and intriguers as were the Japanese. In colorful language evoking lively imagery that only Pound could conjure up, he declared:<br />
“There are millions of Chinamen, many of them living on very short rations in the interior and about as much interested in Chiang Kai-shek as they are in the White Socks and the Phillies, if there still are any Phillies. You could get more enthusiasm out of those Chinks for a Hot Dog Championship on the Northside than you could for Chiang’s foreign party in China. A lot of China is not pro-Kai-shek. A lot of China is not for that gang of foreign investors.”<sup>50</sup><br />
Pound was very much attuned to the nationalist instincts of other peoples. He was himself an American nationalist who knew there were nationalistic strivings all across the globe—that nationalists everywhere wanted their peoples to be free of the big money interests:<br />
Parts of the world prefer local control, of their own money power and credit. It may be deplorable (in the eyes of Wall Street and Washington) that such aspirations toward personal and national liberty still persist, but so is it. Some people, some nations, prefer their own administration, to that of Baruch and . . . the Sassoons, and the problem is: how many more millions of British, Russians, and Americans of both the northern and southern American continents, plus Zulus, Basutos, Hottentots, etc. and the lower, so-called lower races, phantom governments, Maccabees and their sequelae, are expected to die in the attempt to crush out European and Japanese independence?<sup>51</sup><br />
Pound also had a profound respect for the European contribution to civilization. He told his listeners: “Europe is an organic body, its life continues, its life has components and nearly every damn thing that has made your lives worth living up to this moment, has had its origins right here in Europe.<sup>52</sup> In Pound’s view, the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany was an exclusively European phenomenon and one that should be of no concern to America:<br />
Europe with systems of government less modern than ours, Germany and Italy with the leftovers of earlier centuries, especially Germany, saw revolutions. Worked out a new system suited to Europe. It is not our American affair. We could with honor advocate freedom of the seas. For Europe as well as for a few Jew controlled shipping firms. We could, with honor advocate natural commerce; that is, a commerce wherein each nation would exchange what it has, what it has in superfluity or abundance, with what other nations can or will spare. We could stand for that sort of commerce instead of trying to throttle it. Why do we not? Why should all men under 40 be expected to die or be maimed in support of flagrant injustice, monopoly and a dirty attempt to strangle and starve out 30 nations?<sup>53</sup><br />
Pound felt there was much to be said for the social and economic achievements of Italy and Germany and that they could prove a model for the rest of the Western World: “Every social reform that has gone into effect in Germany and Italy should be defended,” he said. “And the best men in England know that as well as I do. The time of calumny is past, and its passing should be seen very clearly.<sup>54</sup><br />
Conscious of the reforms effected in Italy and Germany, Pound saw similar possibilities for the American system. Pound believed the U.S. Constitution itself provided Americans the mechanism for change. However, he said, “You have not made use of the machinery provided in the Constitution itself, to keep the American government modern.”<sup>55</sup> Pound suggested:<br />
You could keep the Constitution, and under that Constitution every state in the Union could reorganize its system of representation. Any or every state could elect its Congressmen on trade basis . . . Any or every state could organize its congressional representation on a corporate basis. Carpenters, artisans, mechanics, could have one representative; writers, doctors, and lawyers could have one representative.<br />
You could perfectly legally and constitutionally divide up the representatives of any or every state on the basis of trades and professions and the life of that state, every man in it, would gain representation in Congress; and Congress would take on an honesty and reality no American in our time has dreamed of.<br />
Present Congressmen are mostly so ignorant that some people have thought it might be useful to have a bit of congressional education. Insist on Congressmen being able to pass an exam in at least some of the subject matters they are expected to vote on . . . I think the representation by trades and profession would be a better way out, with, if you like, different exams for the different trades and professions.<br />
That could do no harm whatsoever. Man to represent steel workers, to be able to show he knows the working of steel; miner to know the workings of mines; professional to represent his profession, really to represent his profession, the best qualities, most acute knowledge of his profession. That would certainly lead to efficiency. Health regulations would be decided by someone who knew something about sanitation. Rules for mining coal, rates per day, decided by someone who knows coal don’t just crawl out of a mine, while somebody sits round playing pinochle . . .<br />
“I am telling you how to oil up the machine,” he said, “and change a few gadgets so that it would work as the founders intended.<sup>56</sup><br />
Quick and certain to draw distinctions between U.S. and European traditions, however, Pound declared: “Class war is not an American product, not from the roots of the nation. Not in our historic process. And the racial solution, which is Europe’s solution, which is IN Europe’s process, rooted deep down, un-uprootable.”<sup>57</sup> He told his listeners it was vital they study the evolution of the American system, and why the American Revolution took place to begin with—yes, it had to do with money:<br />
Colonies, pretty much racially homogeneous, evolved. They found a solution for the problem of money, not of fields against money, not of colonists, farmers fighting money, but of fields and money working together, and they found it in Pennsylvania, and the world said, “How marvelous.” And an unjust, usurious, monopolist government shut down on the money—money handed out to the colonists to facilitate their field production, the repayment not going to a set of leeches and exploiters. And the unjust monopolist government, namely the British, was hoofed out [of] the colonies 30 years later.<sup>58</sup><br />
Full of contempt for those whom a real historian—his friend, Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes—called the “Court Historians” of the day, Pound recognized people could not make correct decisions about the course of their future if they were being lied to about their past: “You have a half-dozen historians but not all of them, by any means, are able to take out the facts and show how they hitch together.”<sup>59</sup> He wondered, however, why people could not look at recent events that took place within their own time frame and see why things were happening as they were. To the people of war-torn England he addressed this poignant inquiry:<br />
Have you no . . . eyes, no knowledge or . . . memory of events that have happened before you? Do you know only watery pools where were the cellars of London, only the material ruins, having no knowledge of . . . deeper causes, of why these things have come on you, or what you have done, or in most cases omitted, and which have caused these things to come on you, and have you no wish to know why this has happened?<sup>60</sup><br />
Pound suggested some good reading for his American listeners who might have a desire to bring back American tradition: “Two great friendships, at the base of American history. John Adams and Jefferson, Van Buren and Andy Jackson. You can pass the time reading that history. It will make the boys better citizens. Make any young man more American if he sticks to seeing American history first before swallowing exotic perversions.”<sup>61</sup><br />
Knowledge—basic historical knowledge—was vital, according to Pound. That theme—that knowledge was critical—was central to all of his wartime broadcasts. He urged his listeners to know who they were and why the world was in crisis. To his listeners, Pound urged this much: “Don’t die like a beast. If you are dead set to be sunk in the mid-Atlantic or Pacific or scorched in the desert, at least know why it is done to you. To die not knowing why is to die like an animal . . . To die like a human being you have at least got to know why it is done to you.”<sup>62</sup><br />
Pound’s graphic words could well be a warning to modern-day Americans in this age when American soldiers are being asked to fight and die in endless brush-fire wars around the globe—wars that enrich their real enemies—the very plutocrats Pound so fiercely condemned.<br />
Pound’s defense attorney, who found the transcripts of the broadcasts “dreary,” later summarized them as follows:<br />
There was no criticism of the allied war effort in the broadcasts; nothing was said to discourage or disturb American soldiers or their families. Pound’s main concern was with usury and other economic sins which he conceived were being committed by an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers who were the powers behind the throne of England and had succeeded in duping the government of the United States. The broadcasts were in essence lectures in history and political and economic theory, highly critical of the course of American government beginning with Alexander Hamilton . . . The American people were told they did not understand what was going on in Europe and if they did, the war would not have been necessary.”<sup>63</sup><br />
Was Pound a traitor—or a prophet?<br />
NOTE: The dates cited in the following footnotes refer to the dates of radio broadcasts by Ezra Pound excerpted from the volume, “Ezra Pound Speaking” —Radio Speeches of World War II, the singular source for the information appearing in this article. The page numbers which follow refer to the location of the broadcast in the published compendium.<br />
<br />
1 “Ezra Pound Speaking”—Radio Speeches of World War II. Edited by Leonard Doob. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978). p. ix.<br />
2 Ibid.<br />
3 Ibid., p. 427.<br />
4 Ibid.<br />
5 Ibid., p. ix.<br />
6 1942 (undated script), p. 393.<br />
7 November 6, 1941, pp. 16-17.<br />
8 Ibid.<br />
9 December 7, 1941, p. 21.<br />
10 March 6, 1942, p. 54.<br />
11 March 30, 1942, p. 80.<br />
12 February 26, 1942, p. 44.<br />
13 February 3, 1942, p. 30.<br />
14 February 19, 1942, pp. 42-43.<br />
15 February 18, 1943, p. 221.<br />
16 July 20, 1943, p. 370.<br />
17 April 30, 1942, p. 113.<br />
18 February 19, 1943, p. 226.<br />
19 Early 1941 (undated script), p. 382.<br />
20 May 23, 1943, p. 319.<br />
21 March 25, 1943, p. 259.<br />
22 March 2, 1942, pp. 48-49.<br />
23 March 8, 1942<br />
24 Ibid.<br />
25 March 8, 1942, p. 55.<br />
26 Ibid.<br />
27 October 26, 1941, p. 7.<br />
28 May 23, 1943, p. 318.<br />
29 May 23, 1943, p. 319.<br />
30 April 30, 1942, p.113.<br />
31 January 29, 1942, p. 24.<br />
32 February 17, 1942, p. 39.<br />
33 July 13, 1942, p. 203.<br />
34 Ibid.<br />
35 Ibid.<br />
36 April 30, 1942, pp. 114-115.<br />
37 Ibid.<br />
38 1941 (undated script), p. 390.<br />
39 June 1, 1943, p. 331.<br />
40 November 6, 1941, p. 19.<br />
41 June 14, 1942, p. 170.<br />
42 May 31, 1942, p. 155<br />
43 May 4, 1942, p. 117.<br />
44 April 30, 1942, p. 115.<br />
45 July 17, 1942, p. 207.<br />
46 April 20, 1943, p. 283.<br />
47 Ibid.<br />
48 January 29, 1942, p. 26<br />
49 February 3, 1942, p. 30.<br />
50 October 2, 1941, p. 5.<br />
51 July 17, 1943, p. 369.<br />
52 October 26, 1941, p. 9.<br />
53 November 6, 1941, p. 19.<br />
54 May 23, 1943, p. 319.<br />
55 June 1, 1943, p. 331.<br />
56 July 13, 1942, pp. 204-205.<br />
57 May 28, 1942, p. 153.<br />
58 May 28, 1942, p. 153.<br />
59 February 3, 1942, p. 30.<br />
60 May 28, 1942, p. 151.<br />
61 May 9, 1942, p. 121.<br />
62 1943 (undated script), p. 409.<br />
63 Doob, p. 427.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-80280465644800396862010-03-22T06:14:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:14:15.617-07:00Boers - The Great Trek of South Africa<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By John Tiffany</div><br />
The Great Trek or Voortrek is the central event in the history of South Africa, beginning in the mid-thirties of the 19th century and petering out in the early forties. This great northward exodus of the Afrikaner people, reminiscent of the American wagon trains to the West, involved thousands of cattle and sheep farmers who fled British tyranny. They left the frontier districts of the Cape Colony, and founded the independent republics of Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.<br />
The struggle of the Afrikaner or Boer people since the 17th century when they arrived in South Africa from Europe was, like that of Americans, a struggle for freedom from foreign tyranny, and for self-determination. In particular, the capture of the Cape of Good Hope by the invading British in 1795 and events on the frontier of the eastern Cape Colony in the early 19th century caused a dramatic spread northward and eastward by the Boers.<br />
The Boers (the word comes from the Dutch for “farmers”) were predominantly Dutch to start with, and spoke the Dutch language, but over the centuries their language changed to become a uniquely South African tongue of the Indo-European language family. Other white ethnic groups, notably the French, joined with the Boers and readily became acculturated. Many Huguenot surnames are still notable among the Boers today. Even some English speakers became Boers, but for the most part, the English settlers in South Africa formed a separate group from the Boers.<br />
It was the Napoleonic wars that brought the British to South Africa as rulers and settlers. Between 1795, when the British first occupied the cape, and the Second Anglo-Boer War (called by the Boers the Second War of Freedom) of 1899, the Boers increasingly regarded the British as meddlesome interlopers.<br />
The first event to signal the approaching discord between what were then called the “white races” of the Boers and the British occurred in 1815, four months after Waterloo.<br />
An Afrikaner named Cornelius Fred erick (Freek) Bezuidenhout, 55, living alone on a remote farm, was ordered to answer charges of ill treating a Hottentot servant. To a Boer, especially a trekboer (i.e., an individualistic Boer pioneer), such matters were outside the purview of the law.<br />
Unwilling to risk his property while traveling to the nearest village, Bezuiden hout ignored the summons. A number of locally enlisted Hottentot soldiers were sent by the British authorities to arrest him, and in the ensuing struggle he was killed.<br />
A body of armed burghers, led by his brother Johannes Jurgen (Hans) Bezuidenhout, 57, set out in pursuit of the Hottentot soldiers, bent on revenge. But they were captured by a troop of British Light Dragoons, led, rather ironically, by a loyalist from America, Jacob Cuyler, a man devoid of any idealism, who reacted with arrogant displeasure and vindictive fury to anyone who dared to oppose his will and commands.<br />
Johannes Bezuidenhout was shot dead in the capture. His wife, who helped by loading his gun, was also killed.<br />
The surviving Boers were put on trial for insurgency. All admitted their guilt, and five were hanged on March 9, 1816 at the place where they had assembled, Slachter’s Nek, an appropriately ominous-sounding name.<br />
These frontier Boers were huge and heavy men. Cuyler had taken the precaution of ordering the ropes doubled, but as the platform fell away under their feet the ropes suspending four of them snapped. As one Boer twitched in his dying spasms, the others got dazedly to their feet and rushed toward the British magistrate, begging for mercy. Their relatives flocked around, calling also for mercy. However, Cuyler, in typically British style, went ahead and ruthlessly hanged the unfortunate wretches a second time. The atrocity of the botched hangings was to become a source of permanent, festering hatred of the British by the Boer people. “Slachter’s Nek” be came a synonym for the unforgettable and unforgivable. “British” became a synonym for enemy.<br />
Memories of Slachter’s Nek, the threat of political equality for the non-whites, and other instances of what the Boers regarded as British interference in their affairs all built up a head of steam in the Boer consciousness, which finally erupted after 1834, following the abolition of slavery, with inadequate compensation for the owners.<br />
It is often forgotten by liberal writers that slavery was legal and then abruptly was not; many farmers were ruined, and the money they had borrowed to invest in their labor was, in effect, expropriated. No wonder they were fed up and ready to leave the country.<br />
Worn out by the wars against the Kaffirs (the local black tribes), the burghers were dismayed to find the British government—a government that had withdrawn, in the heat of battle, the licenses of hawkers to sell gunpowder—was now slow to pay up on military requisition notes and was firmly resolved not to hear of such novel proposals as compensation for war losses, delay in the payment of taxes, or a reduction of the amount of taxes due.<br />
News came that the eagerly awaited slave compensation would be paid out, not in the colony, but in London. And hard on the heels of that report came rumors (which soon turned out to be true) that Queen Adelaide Province was to be given back to the Kaffirs. Furthermore, the Boers were to be recalled from the Stormberg lands.<br />
The decision to pay compensation for freed slaves in London made a certain amount of sense from an exclusively British point of view: Slaves were being freed in the West Indies simultaneously, and West Indian plantation owners were generally in the habit of visiting London rather often, so for them it was no great inconvenience. But many Boers, less favorably situated, could not possibly afford to travel to London to collect the money.<br />
But what really disgusted the Boers was that they learned they were being accused of causing the war, when it was the Kaffirs who had invaded the lands of the white people, and not the other way around. Unjustifiable odium was being poured upon the Boer folk by a distant government that was spurred on by greedy and dishonest persons under the cloak of religion, whose testimony was believed in England despite all evidence to the contrary.<br />
For some time, Boer men had been allowed to go in search of pasture beyond the Orange River into the territory known as Philippolis, ruled at the time by East Griqua chief Adam Kok III. (The Griquas were a branch of Cape Coloreds, partly white and partly Hottentot.)<br />
Some of the Boer men went even farther north, into the Basuto borderlands. In the Griqua and Basuto country, their flocks increased rapidly. Moreover, hunters told of still finer land, clear of Negroes, Hottentots, Coloreds and Bush men, far beyond the Griqua territory.<br />
The interior was not entirely un known. Hunters, traders, missionaries, trekboers and others had already gone beyond the Orange, beyond the Vaal, even as far as the Limpopo River. There was good reason to believe that vast tracts of land in the north and in Natal had been swept clear of inhabitants by the ferocious Negro tribes of the Mantatis, Matabeles and Zulus.<br />
The Christian Boers were offended by the British placing of them on an equal footing with the animist blacks, “contrary to the laws of god and the natural distinction of race and religion, so that it was intolerable for any decent Christian to bow down beneath such a yoke, where for we rather withdrew in order to preserve our doctrines in purity,” as Voor trekker Anna Steenkamp expressed it.<br />
More than the men, it was the Boer women who most keenly resented the British intrusion into their affairs. Their household arrangements were upset, with Hottentot servants and slaves flitting from one mistress to another. Mantati refugees in the north, and stray Fingos in the east did not fill all the gaps and were even more incompetent than Hottentots. Besides, were these colored folks to compete with their own sons for land, to stand on an equality before the law with them?<br />
It was an outrage to that sense of racial superiority which was naturally stronger in the bearers of children than in the mere begetters of them.<br />
The migration called the Great Trek was a deliberate move by thousands of men and women, frontier farmers for the most part, who left hearth and home in their ox-drawn covered wagons, similar to the American Conestogas, at great personal sacrifice to put as much distance between themselves and the tyrannical British government as possible.<br />
Just like the Western pioneers in their wagon trains, the Boers would circle their wagons when camping in hostile territory to form laagers for self-defense against the local savages.<br />
In retrospect, we can see that the Boers might have been better off to have followed another American pattern and waged a war of revolution against their British overlords, for the British government, while it at first let them go, was soon to follow them to impose its tyranny. But there was no way at the time of foreseeing the troubles that lay ahead in the shape of the Boer wars, with all their attendant horrors.<br />
The emigrants were to launch a new military tradition for the Boers—they be came resolute, organized, and matchlessly disciplined, as they had to be in order to contend with the savage new enemies they faced: the Zulu and Ndebele, themselves fierce warriors who believed in full-face charges rather than evasive guerrilla tactics. They also did not hesitate to kill Boer women and children, given the opportunity.<br />
The reasons for the exodus included the deep and growing gulf in all religious and political questions between the British and the Boers, the liberal tendencies of the Brits toward the blacks and coloreds, the exclusion of the Afrikaners from participation in the government, and basic differences between Boer and British culture. A stubborn British contempt for anything non-British, coupled with British liberalism and power politics, contrasted with the Afrikaner’s urge for individual freedom.<br />
Between 1835 and 1843 some 12,000 Afrikaners, about one-fourth of those living in the Cape Colony, hitched their oxen to covered wagons, and, with their wives, children, servants, cattle and sheep, escaped from British control without resorting to violence.<br />
Piet Retief, destined to become a leader of the trekkers, drafted and published a manifesto promising:<br />
“Wherever we go . . . we will uphold the just principles of liberty; but, while we will take care that no one is brought by us into a condition of slavery, we will establish such regulations as may suppress crime and prepare proper relations between master and servant. We solemnly declare that we leave this country with a desire to enjoy a quieter life than we have hitherto had. We will not molest any people, nor deprive them of the smallest property; but if attacked we shall consider ourselves fully justified in defending our lives and effects. We propose . . . to make known to the native tribes our intentions, and our desire to live in peace and friendly intercourse with them . . . We quit this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves without interference in future.”<br />
The Great Trek had begun, and a goodly portion of one of the two white tribes of southern Africa was on the move.<br />
By this time, white men were familiar in Transorangia and even in the remoter parts of the high veldt. Many trekboers already lived in the vicinity of the Orange River.<br />
The four principal native groups on the high veldt at this time were the Ndebele or Matabele, whose chief was Mzilikazi, the Basotho (Basuto) nation under Chief Moshoeshoe, the Tlokwa (Btlokua) under Sikonyela, and the various bands of Griquas. After the Zulus, the Ndebele were the second most powerful black nation in southern Africa.<br />
Although the British authorities were familiar with the custom of always requesting permission to enter a chief’s territory, it does not appear that they warned the trekkers that they should do the same. The early Voortrekkers did not follow this custom.<br />
The first wagon trains managed to escape the attention of the scouts of Mzilikazi after they had crossed the Vaal River, and continued safely northward to the Limpopo. The trekkers who followed immediately after were not so lucky. The Ndebele attacked the Voortrekkers and mercilessly dispatched the women and children as well as the men.<br />
The trekkers then came together under the leadership of Hendrik Pot gie ter, 45, a man rich in cattle, and defeated the Nde bele in two battles, but Mzili kazi’s warriors drove off all their livestock.<br />
In their brief but bloody encounters with the Ndebele the trekkers under Potgieter quickly perfected the style of warfare that was to be the Boer strategy for the rest of the century, easily adaptable to fighting the British army as well as black men.<br />
In their first defense against the Ndebele, at a hill later to be called Vegkop on October 19, 1836, 40 Boer men, with their women and children, faced an onrushing army of several thousand warriors. Fifty wagons were drawn into an outer laager, lashed together end-to-end with chains, with thorn bushes jammed under and between them and between the spokes of the wheels to prevent attackers creeping through. Each man had a spare gun or two, which his wife could load for him and while they waited they cast a large supply of bullets, small so as to slip down the barrel easily and nicked across so they would split up in flight.<br />
Their horses they could bring within the laager, but the sheep and even the irreplaceable draft oxen must take their chances in the open.<br />
Women and children were placed inside an inner circle of four wagons forming a square that was roofed over with planks and rawhides. But the laager was used only as a final retreat. The men rode forward on their horses carrying their long, heavy, large-caliber muskets, called snaphaans, which they loaded and fired from the saddle with unexcelled accuracy.<br />
By riding to and fro in front of the advancing enemy, several miles from the laager, and remaining out of range of flying spears, they tried to bring down as many as possible before retiring to the wagons. These were tactics highly suitable to the open country in which they were fighting.<br />
The Ndebele fell in heaps at Vegkop. Their spears could not penetrate the quadruple layer of canvas covering the wagons, while a blast from a musket of splintering bullets could take down a half-dozen warriors. Also the muskets had twice the range of a spear toss—100 yards versus 50.<br />
When the Ndebele drew off, the Boers waited, and while they waited they picked off such warriors as lay on the ground sweating. Dead men do not sweat, so these were either the wounded or the wily waiting close to the wagon-ring for the next rush. In any case the defenders could not afford to take risks. A dead Ndebele was the best Ndebele under the circumstances. There would certainly be no Boer survivors if the warriors broke into the laager.<br />
Eventually Potgieter and half a dozen of his best men rode out and drew the enemy on again. Once more the Ndebele charged the laager, and once more they were shot down. Finally they turned and fled, taking, however, the captured beasts with them. The Boers had lost two men and none of their women and children. One in three men had been wound ed. The Ndebele losses were uncounted, perhaps a thousand or so dead.<br />
But the Boers were not satisfied. Mzilikazi must be punished and the captured beasts taken back.<br />
Just after New Year, 1837, a punitive expedition set out: 107 Boers and 40 Griquas and Korannas all mounted and fully armed, plus 60 Barolongs on foot to drive the cattle. Moving swiftly through the empty country, they fell upon the Ndebele kraals at Mosega at dawn.<br />
The Ndebele warriors fought well, but could not stand up to the guns. They lost 400 men and then fled, leaving the Win commando, the victors, to burn the kraals at their leisure and retire with more than 7,000 cattle and some wagons that had also been lost, and three forlorn American missionaries who had been among the Ndebele (and having little success in their efforts to Christianize them). The trekker losses amounted only to four of the Barolongs.<br />
By the middle of 1837, some 5,000 Boers had trekked across the Orange River; by the middle of the 1840s, an estimated 14,000, roughly one-fifth of the white population of South Africa. At Thaba Nchu, they established a provisional government for themselves.<br />
Opinions were divided among the trekkers as to where their ultimate destination should lie. A large body of them decided to follow the man they had chosen as their supreme leader, Piet Retief, across the nearly impassible Drakensberg Mountains into Natal, a beautiful province, where they would have an outlet to the sea.<br />
On February 6, 1838, a tragedy unfolded: Retief and his hundred-man treaty party were massacred by the treacherous Zulu chief Dingaan (Dingane). Here is how it happened.<br />
When the Voortrekkers showed up in his area and settled on his lands without waiting for permission, Dingaan stalled for time. Some cattle had been stolen from him, he told Retief. Get them back, and we’ll talk, he said, in effect.<br />
It was a task of Hercules, and the chief could not have expected the Voortrek kers to achieve it.<br />
But Retief knew who had taken the cattle. It was Sikonyela, the Tlokwa chief, who ruled in the upper valley of the Caledon. He was a formidable potentate possessed of a few guns and horses, son of Ma-Ntatisi, queen of the once dreaded Mantatis. Earlier, Boer scouts had reported seeing 50 of Sikonyela’s men, armed with guns and clothed more or less like white men, riding up the slopes with cattle, sheep and horses looted from Chief Dingaan.<br />
Retief did this favor with ease, handcuffing Sikonyela by trickery, holding him prisoner for three days, and showing up at the royal kraal with the stolen herd. He also carried in a satchel a document ready for the Zulu king’s signature. Arrogantly, the document demanded all of the land from the mountains to the sea and from the Tugela River to the Um zimvubu, including Port Natal. Dingaan asked that the guns and horses taken from Sikonyela be turned over to him, and this Retief refused, twice, which undoubtedly enraged the king, although he hid his feelings well.<br />
There had been several warnings that the king was up to no good, but Retief chose to ignore them.<br />
Dingaan determined to have the Retief party, under promises of safe conduct, killed, then go after the other Boers and try to wipe them out as well. He received the Retief party courteously on February 4, 1838, even putting his mark on the parchment to convince them of his good faith, and entertained them with vast amounts of beer and regimental dancing displays. After three days of this, he invited the Boers to take a parting drink with him, and persuaded them to leave their guns outside.<br />
His fiercest soldiers, a regiment of young Zulus called the Wild Beasts, had been summoned to the kraal and told to amuse the Boers by singing and dancing. Suddenly the king stood up and yelled, “Kill the wizards!”<br />
Three thousand warriors who had been hidden in the rings of huts that lined Dingaan’s great palisade rushed in and grabbed the Boers. The Retief party —some 66 Voortrekker volunteers and 30 Khoikhoi servants—were dragged to the execution hill and killed.<br />
Missionary Francis Owen described the event:<br />
“I turned my eyes and behold! an immense multitude on the bloodstained hill nearly opposite my hut. About 9 or 10 Zoolus to each Boer were dragging their helpless unarmed victim to the fatal spot, where those eyes which awakened this morning to see the cheerful light of day for the last time, are now closed in death . . . Presently the deed of death being accomplished the whole multitude returned to the town to meet their sovereign, and as they drew near to him set up a shout which reached the [mission] station and continued for some time.”<br />
On February 17, several Afrikaner laagers were savagely attacked at the Blou krans (Blaauwkrans) River. People were slain without distinction as to age or gender, and cattle were stolen. White infants had their brains dashed out against the wheels of their burning wagons. Eighty-five adult Boers and 148 children died that day, along with 250 Khoikhoi servants. Two young girls of about 10 or 12 years who somehow managed to survive were found to have 19 stab wounds in one case, 21 in the other.<br />
The killing of their wives and children, first by the Ndebele and then by the Zulu, fastened in the minds of the trekkers and their descendants an image of the black man as a brutal enemy that became permanently established in their reactions to him.<br />
However, Dingaan’s men missed the laager of Piet Retief entirely, and Gert Maritz’s group managed to fight off the attack and even dispatch a small expedition to recover some of the stolen cattle.<br />
On December 16, Andries Pretorius, 39, led 462 Afrikaners and two English men against 10,000-12,000 of Dingaan’s warriors to inflict a devastating revenge that nearly broke the Zulu power, at a small river that was appropriately re named Blood River. The Battle of Blood River has become a symbol of determined Afrikaner resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. The Day of the Covenant, as it was called, or Dingaan’s Day, became the central date in the Boer calendar and was passed down to the trekkers’ descendants as the spiritual feast day on which to repledge their national will.<br />
The battle lasted around two hours, at the end of which an estimated 3,000 Zulus lay dead around the laager. The remainder were forced to flee back into Zululand. Three Boers were slightly wounded, none killed. In addition to having a deed from the treacherous Zulu king, Natal was now theirs by right of conquest.<br />
Several thousand independent people had hauled their wagons across seemingly impassable country, established their own independent re public and defeated the powerful Zulu nation in a classic battle without a single loss to themselves. It was seen as a sign from God that they were indeed a chosen people.<br />
<br />
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY<br />
Barthorp, Michael, The Anglo-Boer Wars: The British and the Afrikaners: 1815-1902, Blandford Press, London, New York, Sydney, 1987.<br />
Mostert, Noël, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People, Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers, New York, 1992.<br />
Vatcher, Jr., William Henry, White Laager: The Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism, Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, New York, Washington, London, 1965.<br />
Walker, Eric Anderson, The Great Trek, 2d ed., Adam and Charles Black, London, 1938.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-14615854192090182592010-03-22T06:11:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:11:51.543-07:00Narcotics in Colonial and Modern Asia<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">By George Fowler</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Regarding Asia, the post-World War II West has endured decades of self-flagellation within its literature, theater, media and written history. This month Hong Kong reverts to the often untender mercies of Red China. With China’s communist government an increasingly cryptic relic of an expired era, that country’s future dealings with the West may be strongly influenced by what it claims happened in lands where incredible wealth was never far from dire poverty. There are many bitter memories handed down from events of this and prior centuries. But the influences of the West held no monopoly on cruelty, avarice and exploitation. Those in China and Asia who grasp the standard racist canard, shouting “payment for past sins,” must be brought to the table of history’s record.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In 1497, five years after Columbus had reached “the Indies” under the Spanish flag, Portugal’s Vasco da Gama set out on the first known Western sea passage to India. He was provided a letter of credence to the Rajah of Calicut and valuable presents. In 1847 Bartholomeu Diaz left Lisbon, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope in early 1488. He returned with the news that a sea route to the Indies was evidently open. Also in 1488, an Arabic-speaking Portuguese squire, Pero de Couilha, traveled overland and reached the west coast of India. By the dawn of the 16th century, the Portuguese had established a monopoly on Indian Ocean sea trade.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">C. R. Boxer wrote in The Portuguese Seaborne Empire—1415-1825 of the 13th century trips by way of the Euro-Asian land mass; from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the China Sea. In that age Mongol khans imposed their Pax Tartarica over Central Asia and beyond. Successful Western round-trip travelers such as Marco Polo “recounted the wonders and marvels of the East” to their compatriots. Either they were disbelieved, or their recollections “were too highly coloured and fragmentary to give an accurate idea of Asia to the Western world.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In his famed History of England, Vol. II, G.M. Trevelyan wrote that by the 15th century the less liberal Turks had eclipsed Tartar rule over the medieval land trade routes to the East. The Turks exacted greater tolls, and “medieval Europe was being constantly denuded” of gold and silver to pay for Asiatic spices, etc. This was largely alleviated in the post-Columbus decades by new supplies of gold and silver flowing to Europe from the Americas. But the transport by sea of the goods, particularly those of bulk, proved a vast relief relative to markets in the East.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If one entity personifies the ages of Western colonialism it is the British East India Company. In its many salad decades it was a unique enterprise, ruling nearly a fifth of the world’s population. It possessed its own Crown-allied army, and navy and civil service.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Many who would be associated with it were among the mightiest subjects of the mightiest empire—Clive of India, Lord Cornwallis following his Yorktown de feat, Lord Raffles and Arthur Wellesley prior to his becoming Duke of Welling ton. It held unchallenged sway from the St. Helena’s Island of Napoleon’s demise to Britain’s long-brightest Asian jewel, Singapore.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In The East India Company, A History author Brian Gardner recounts the 1580’s exhilaration of the English people following Sir Francis Drake’s voyage around the world—accomplished nearly a century after it was achieved by the remarkable but eventually fading maritime capacities of Portugal. With the defeat eight years later of Phillip II of Spain’s Armada (due largely to poorly prepared ships, poor seamanship and storms than to England’s superior seamanship) the England of Elizabeth I reached a youthful pride.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Elizabeth I and her advisors thought it time to launch an operation that would be instrumental in bringing England fame and fortune. Thus “Queen Bess” signed a charter granting broad monopoly rights to the Honorable East India Company. Marked with the royal seal of England, it was valid for 15 years.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The prior centuries of East Asia’s wide trade among its various kingdoms and with such outsiders as Indians, Arabs and Portuguese, would prove very interesting reading on its own. Trade between India and China involved Japan, Korea, Siam, Indochina, etc. Officially sanctioned piracy, far from extinct in today’s Asian seas, thrived. Its volume no doubt dwarfed that practiced by the buccaneers of the “Spanish Main” who have fascinated generations of Western children.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In The Traditional Trade of Asia, author C.G.F. Simkin wrote that, in the decades following Elizabeth I’s 1603 death, China “had a remarkable economic growth within the limits of its traditional methods of production.” Although faulty, census estimates of China’s population listed 64 million in the “Armada” age of 1578, over 143 million in 1741 and 432 million by 1851. These population increases were largely the result of increasingly sophisticated farming methods. New crops brought substantial benefits to all classes. Rice was of course a multi-regional staple, but in sandy south China the staple food of the poor became the sweet potato.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Simkin continued that “a less fortunate development was the spread of the opium poppy. It had been known in China for some centuries but most supplies had come from India and had been used medicinally.” Indian imports of opium had been much limited by piracy and by suppression of it by the Ming Dynasty.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Carlton Hayes points out in his History of Modern Europe that 17th century India was ruled by a dynasty of Moslem emperors called Moguls. They had entered the country as conquerors in the previous century and had established a splendid architectural complex in Delhi, off the Ganges River. Overwhelmingly, the people maintained their ancient, highly caste-structured Hindu religion.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, the year prior to Elizabeth’s death. It was composed of an amalgamation of several smaller interests in Holland. Brian Gardner notes that it “was a mighty military and naval organization, and it looked upon the English company as an impertinent but potentially dangerous intruder into a trade which it considered was a monopoly belonging to itself.” But circumstances of war and internal dynamics would eventually favor England. Al though the Britons were often stretched thin in terms of purse and military power, their alliances and their fortunes (save in relation to a newly born United States) worked toward their sea power-borne primacy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Trevelyan wrote in History of England, Vol. III that the French East India Company was “hopelessly inferior to the English in trade,” and had decided to enter into military alliances with some of the native powers; in India raising “Sepoy regiments under French officers.” French activities included pressures on “the stations of the British East India Company at Madras (a major British port-fortification) and elsewhere.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">During the early 18th century reign of George II, England’s Sir Robert Clive (Clive of India) was provided with the British and allied Indian troops to destroy French power in India. Under Clive, Bengal became the first great area of British rule within the huge peninsula. The early stages were set for the British East India Company’s use of India as China’s “supplier.” In India as in China, this deadly traffic would also mean immense to middling profits for favorably placed Indians and Chinese.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Trevelyan wrote that by “the era of Waterloo,” the ever growing British Empire had become “the characteristic representative of European trade and influence in Asia. The Industrial Revolution had given fresh speed and vigour to the outward expansion of English life which had been going on ever since the days of Elizabeth.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">But before the “era of Waterloo” and shortly after America gained her independence, the first American ships set out for China. In Americans and the China Trade, Margaret C.S. Christman notes that Robert Morris, centrally heroic in his efforts to finance George Wash ington’s perpetual-shoestring Conti nen tal Army, was instrumental in the first, and successful, American trip to China. On Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1784, the Empress of China set sail from New York. Upon her return, Morris wrote John Jay, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, that “our ship from China does tolerably well for the concerned; she has opened new objects to all America.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Trade by Americans and Europeans centered in Canton. Christman wrote that “The Emperor of China did not deign to recognize foreign trade. But he allowed a guild of some half dozen merchants, called Co-Hong, to pay [the throne] handsomely for the privilege of controlling the barbarian trade.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">From the beginning most Americans, as far as we know, dealt in non-narcotic trade. Prominent among the minority of American dope barons were the Delanos. The name had been semi-anglicized from the French (in their case Huguenot) de la Noye, following the family’s coming to America in 1621. In FDR—A Biography author Ted Morgan wrote that, like his father and his grandfather, Warren Delano Jr. “went to sea not to hunt whales but to bring tea from China. It was a profitable trade, if you had ships swift enough to get the tea to market before it lost its flavor . . . In 1851 Warren Delano bought a 60 acre farm on a point of land overlooking the Hudson near Newburgh . . . Buddhist temple bells and teakwood screens [in the home he built] indicated the origins of the family fortune.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Warren Delano Jr. was FDR’s maternal grandfather. Periodically, and for many of this century’s middle years, Westbrook Pegler was one of America’s most prominent reporter-columnists. The Hearst papers and hundreds of other newspapers carried his column. Pegler detailed the opium-based fortune that had built what would become Hyde Park, the estate of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Morgan skips over the China trade activities of Warren Delano Jr.’s father and grandfather with this explanation of Warren Jr.’s opium activities: “In 1859, aged 50, he dealt in a cargo no bulkier than tea but a hundred times more valuable: opium.” His timing could not have been better, for when the Civil War erupted in 1861, opium became a vitally needed medical supply, and opium traders were upgraded from disreputable suppliers of addicts to patriotic savers of lives. Warren Delano was under orders from the government to ship this widely used anesthetic to the Medical Bureau of the War Department. He was also named the agent of the State Department in China for the war’s duration.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Morgan added that the Lincoln administration was “a good paymaster, and within three years Delano was able to charter a ship to transport his entire family to Hong Kong” for an extended holiday. Thus an administration obsessed with “setting all men free” (as well as the vast, “incidental” profits), was expending great amounts of money that would result not only in the relief of suffering but in the enslaving to opium of many thousands of Union soldiers.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In allowing the westerners access to Canton, the foreign traders enjoyed a location offering the best trading facilities in China. Its native population had reached a million during the 17th century, and it was sheltered from the open sea by a funnel-shaped bay 30 miles long. In The East Indiamen Russell Miller wrote that, after Britain’s eventual dominance following “long and bitter power struggles with the Dutch and the French,” outward-bound British passenger traffic grew steadily. In India, what the British needed most was “not merchandise but men.” A strong civilian, civil service and military presence was needed to build an empire in India as well as in Africa. For purposes related to expansion of Her Majesty Victoria’s Empire, the largely opium-derived in come that flowed into the royal coffers—sums probably never to be disclosed—was magnificently opportune.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In 1857, at the time of the Crimean War, the reason for rebellion of the Sepoy regiments in India may sound humorous to Western ers but not to the religious sensibilities of the natives. Although there was no intent to insult, it was realized that issued cartridges had been greased with the fat of cows (sacred) and pigs (repulsive). A mutiny at Bengal the same year was prompted by excessive severity toward Indian troops by British officers. The hardest fighting to regain control took place in the upper Ganges region of Central India. Gallant British defenses, some as magnificent as those of the Thin Red Line at Rorke’s Drift in South Africa that saved several British garrisons from annihilation. Loyal Indian troops complemented the excellent fighting on the part of reinforcements (disproportionately Scottish) from England.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">By the summer of 1857 India was quieted, and its Native States would remain pillars of the Raj until the Gandhi-immediate post World War II years, when Lord Mountbatten, the last Raj, lowered the Union Jack.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In his book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Alfred W. McCoy noted that “China’s political situation changed dramatically toward the end of the 19th century.” Humiliating defeat by Japan in their 1894-1895 war led to demands for reform. Retaliations suffered by China following the 1899-1900 Boxer Rebellion against the European presence saw China again beaten and even more strapped financially. McCoy wrote that “opium was a clear-cut symptom and symbol of foreign intrusion and national decay.” Of course the Chinese, who could affect a sanctimoniously righteous stance as imposing as that of the Indians, would not admit that the generations of drug-induced internal problems would have been impossible without generations of collusion on the part of thousands of Chinese; from humble smugglers to imperial insiders.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In 1906 the Chinese government launched an opium suppression campaign. An imperial edict of that year stated plans for the elimination of China’s opium problem within 10 years. McCoy wrote that “the officially sponsored British contribution was finally eliminated, and domestic cultivation was temporarily, yet drastically, reduced.” In compromise, “His Majesty’s Government signed an agreement that went into effect in 1908, committing itself gradually to reduce the export of Indian opium intended for Hong Kong and China. However, many British officials, particularly those ruling India, were less than wildly enthusiastic about this decision,” expressing skepticism regarding both China’s determination and capacities to effectively suppress opium.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">McCoy recounts from cable traffic carried on by Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary then and during World War I. Grey stated that His Majesty’s Government stood prepared to resist any effective Chinese efforts that would “discriminate” against foreign opium. McCoy wrote that “this meant that the British, who had perfected the technique of opium monopoly for government profit, strenuously objected . . .” British documents for the first years of the suppression campaign are full of accounts of incidents in which Chinese attempts to restrict opium sales provoked outraged cries from opium merchants, who were almost invariably backed up by British officials. A subsequent book by a Chinese named Ch’en, Opium and Anglo-Chinese Relations, found that imports of Indian opium actually increased slightly during the years 1907-1911.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">However, by 1911 Britain’s official and practical positions began to change; no doubt largely due to the bad publicity Britannia was receiving. In that year Britain and China signed a strong anti-opium agreement. By 1915 most of China’s provinces were declared closed to foreign opium. During the early period of suppression, morphine began to grow in popularity with Chinese. Not long after morphine’s derivative, heroin, was used with increasing frequency by ever greater numbers.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Clearly, an immense demand for dope had long been cultivated in China and elsewhere in Asia. In The Peking Bomb —The Psychological War Against America, author Gerd Hamburger noted that from the beginning of the 19th century, 2,000 boxes and chests of opium were exported from India each year. And “it was planned that by 1837 more than 40,000 boxes would be shipped every year.” The value of this export (in 1830s pound sterling value) was more than four million pounds.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In recent decades the story of the international narcotics problem is so vast and so worldwide that it has been a major component in world power struggles. Narcotic substances were used by the Asian Reds and the Soviet Reds, and they were a clandestine funding device of Republican administrations faced with the anti-anti-Communist balkings of Dem ocratic Congresses. Few would deny that large amounts of narcotics were moved in Asia by Air America, the CIA’s airline, by unscrupulous station chiefs making deals with anti-communist drug runners, some with substantial military might of their own.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As Hong Kong reverts to still-Red China, a country with ever widening strips of private enterprise luxury crossing its coastal underbelly, what will be its future relative to narcotics? Granted, it has other, very big economic fish to fry. And Beijing shows no immediate indication (for what that is worth) of putting away its frying pans. But Hong Kong and narcotics have long been as close as pastrami and rye.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">McCoy’s book pointed out that Hong Kong bears many physical similarities to Marseilles, France’s polyglot sin port. Marseilles locations long served as the heroin labs for Turkish opium, a largely Corsican Mafia operation. But “Hong Kong chiu chau chemists have a longer tradition, produce a higher grade of heroin . . . It was not until American GIs serving in Vietnam began using alarming quantities of No. 4 heroin refined in the Golden Triangle region that any attention was focused on the Asian heroin trade.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Despite the West’s recent years’ “financial news” emphasis regarding Hong Kong’s future, it must be realized that capitalism’s favorite Disneyland has the world’s highest per capita addiction rate, and remains a Mecca for high rolling dealers and Triad syndicate operators. Therefore, quo vadis Hong Kong?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">BIBLIOGRAPHY</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The East India Company—A History, Brian Gardner, The McCall Publishing Co., New York, 1971.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, C.R. Boxer, Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., London, 1969.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Americans and the China Trade 1784-1844, Margaret C.S. Christman, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., 1948.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">FDR—A Biography, Ted Morgan, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1985.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Traditional Trade of Asia, C.F.G. Simkin, Oxford University Press, Ely House, London, 1968.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The East Indiamen, Russell Miller, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Va., 1980.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">History of England (Volumes II & III) , G.M. Trevelyan, Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., London, 1926.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Ways That Are Dark, Ralph Townsend, P.G. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1936.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A Political and Cultural History of Europe , Carleton J. H. Hayes, The MacMillan Co., New York, 1947.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred W. McCoy, Harper & Rowe, New York, 1972.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Peking Bomb, Fred Hamberger, Robert B. Luce, Inc Washington—New York, 1975.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">http://www.barnesreview.org</div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-38884822617361316482010-03-22T06:07:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:07:36.720-07:00The Mysterious Megaliths of New England<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" nof="LY" style="width: 487px;"><tbody>
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</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By Paul Tudor Angel</div><br />
In the heart of New England stand inexplicable sites of great antiquity—sites so sophisticated and enigmatic, serious archeologists have declined their study because of their monumental implications: It would force them to throw their preconceived notions about the achievements of ancient man into the historical garbage can. The uncomfortable evidence indicates that these monuments were constructed by Europeans who settled on these shores more than 1,500 years before even the Vikings arrived.<br />
According to the Establishment prehistorians, these sites are impossible—they are not supposed to be there. But Mystery Hill, the Upton Cave, Calendar I and Calendar II, Gungywamp and Druid’s Hill are just a few of the incredibly important, yet archeologically inexplicable, ancient New England sites of which many have never heard a whisper. The existence and the importance of these sites is becoming harder and harder to hide as more are discovered and as interested folk become exposed to their majesty and mystery.<br />
Sometime in the late 1600s or early 1700s, early American colonists began discovering and utilizing underground “root cellars” made of large, but manageable pieces of dressed stone as storage houses for foodstuffs. Colonists were also finding numerous stone buildings, usually of “one story, circular or rectangular in form, and up to 30 feet in length and up to 10 feet wide and eight feet high or more.” Many included roof slabs or lintels of several tons. Many also had carefully crafted openings in their roofs which allowed a small amount of light to pass through to the interiors. The colonial newcomers were convinced that these so-called root cellars had been constructed by the former Amerindian inhabitants of the area—regardless of the fact that their Indian neighbors showed little hint of an ability to work in large stone or the desire to do so.<br />
Before long, the inheritors of these properties thought their own American ancestors had built these cellars—some which were eighty feet deep and lined the entire way with roughly hewn stone.<br />
Simultaneously, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of oddly inscribed flagstones were being found in the surrounding New England woods, carted off by farmers for use in stone walls or in larger stone structures in the settlements of the growing Northeast. The angular cuts on these stones looked much like the marks a plow makes when it strikes a submerged piece of stone—at least they looked that way to most of the simple country farmers of the day. Others believed the markings appearing in rocks all across New England were “the action of the roots of trees.” For decades nothing at all was thought of them. As any New Englander can tell you, the entire Northeast is strewn with large chunks of striated stone material left from the last era of glacial recession.<br />
But a local Puritan clergyman, Cotton Mather, was not convinced. In 1712 he discovered some strange incisions on an exposed seaside rock face in Dighton, Massachusetts—far from where any plow could have marked it. Winter ice and constant submergence at high tide under the Taunton River began obliterating some of the older markings and Mather was concerned the inscriptions—as he believed them to be—would be lost to posterity.<br />
He immediately wrote to the Royal Society in London, England, to inform them of his find and to convey his belief that the rock carvings were in fact an ancient scriptural alphabet—perhaps several differing ancient alphabets. Unexpectedly, his letter generated little interest. The scientists of the Royal Society were already busy exploring newly discovered rock inscriptions in neighboring Ireland. These European inscriptions were later given the name of Irish hinge Ogam, a form of Gaelic Keltic writing forgotten for centuries and stubbornly indecipherable. It is referred to as “hinge” Ogam because a central dividing line or a facet edge was used to separate the subtly different individual characters. Little did anyone know at the time, that the inscriptions found on both sides of the Atlantic were firmly connected.<br />
Yet how could vowelless Keltic writing, a style reminiscent of that from the first millennium B.C., be in America? Who were the authors of the many rock engravings? How could the carvers possibly have gotten to America a thousand years before the birth of Christ? Why had they come and what evidence is there to support such a far-fetched notion? And what of the large stone structures found across the American Northeast, eerily similar to types found in Europe? The answers were being spoken loudly and clearly if someone could only listen to what the rocks and buildings themselves had to say. But time seemed to be running out. Thousands of the inscribed rocks were being broken up for building material and the larger stone structures were being dismantled or vandalized, destroying the monumental works of these mysterious builders.<br />
For a solution to this puzzle, we first turn to an odd stone arrangement found in the hills of New England. In 1823 a stone complex in North Salem, New Hampshire known as Mystery Hill became the property of a settler named Jonathan Pattee. An ardent abolitionist, Pattee was said to have turned the stone “caves” and structures of Mystery Hill into a way-station for the Underground Railroad, hiding slaves in the ancient edifices found there. Pattee, an insurance millionaire, built a home directly upon several of the most important ancient buildings of the site. Experts estimate that during the next 50 years, contractors bought and removed over 40% of the stone structures found at Mystery Hill. To this day, many of the older churches, stone fences and stone houses in the area contain bits of stone from the site (although most of the stones were used as street curbing and for the construction of the nearby Lawrence Dam). Ancient inscriptions can still be found on the stones used to build these more modern-day edifices.<br />
Even as the Mystery Hill site was being hauled away by quarrymen, other sites like it were not going unnoticed by more learned men. In 1893, Professor Hugh Morrisson, Chairman of the Architecture Department of Dartmouth College and Daniel Fiske, an interested author, wrote about the impossibility of the megalithic structures at Mystery Hill and the surrounding New England area being the work of Amerindians or American settlers. They each focused on an extraordinary building known as the Upton Chamber, one of the many of what they called “unexplained stoneworks” of the area.<br />
The Upton Chamber is one of the largest and most perfectly built stone chambers in New England and is all underground. It is mammoth—a six-foot-high and fourteen-foot-long tunnel leading into the side of a hill with an inner chamber of small quarried stones. The chamber is topped with several large oval stones weighing several tons as a roof and measures 12 feet in diameter and 11 feet high. The Upton chamber has been dated by experts to 710 A.D.<sup>1</sup><br />
Even with the publicity generated by the Upton Chamber, it took until 1936 to find an owner for the Mystery Hill property who truly appreciated the importance of the site and the structures within. In that year William Goodwin purchased the property and erected a high fence around much of the site, ending, for a time, the rampant vandalism. He was the first owner to begin the restoration and study of Mystery Hill. Goodwin believed, erroneously, that the site was built by the Culdee monks. He spent the rest of his life trying to find evidence to support his theory. Irish monks did in fact arrive and settle in the New World, but over a thousand years after construction of the mysterious megalithic sites had begun. (See TBR, October 1995.)<br />
In 1950 Mystery Hill was leased by a far-sighted and open-minded man named (appropriately enough) Robert Stone. He purchased the property in 1956 and began in earnest the restoration, study and preservation of the area around Mystery Hill. Stone’s informed (still-ongoing) restoration of the site has yielded some astonishing finds.<br />
The Mystery Hill complex, the largest and most sophisticated of its kind in North America, covers more than 30 acres and is composed of monolithic standing stones, stone walls and underground chambers, most of which are aligned to obvious astronomical points. Even now the site can be used as an accurate yearly calendar utilizing the stones set up over two thousand (perhaps as long as 5,000) years BP. The lack of household artifacts and grave goods leads one to believe the site was a ceremonial center and neither living quarters nor a village.<br />
Over the years the more interesting features and structures on-site have been given unscientific names that insinuate inferred function. The “Watch House” is the name given to a chamber structure located outside the main complex at Mystery Hill. The entryway of the structure is not easily accessible. After passing through a small entrance hole, one finds a narrow stone passageway leading into a large interior space. An existing glacial boulder was used for one of the walls of the chamber and smaller quarried stones make up the other walls. The roof is a quarried slab of granite several tons in mass. On the back wall of the chamber the stones contain a high percentage of white quartz, a stone found in its pure form in many of the Neolithic structures over the world and treasured by ancient peoples for its reflective qualities.<br />
This particular chamber is aligned to the February first sunrise and lunar minor south. At sunrise on this date the rays of the Sun enter the entrance of the chamber and slowly move along one wall until they illuminate the quartz crystals at the back wall, making the semiprecious gems sparkle noticeably. February first, it turns out, was one of the eight most important divisions of the Keltic year.<br />
The “Oracle Chamber” is one of the most interesting and important structures located at Mystery Hill—or anywhere for that matter. It is significantly larger than any other chamber found at the site and contains unique characteristics found nowhere else in any of the other megalithic sites in New England.<br />
The Oracle Chamber has two entry passageways that form a “T,” with one of the arms forming another unique chamber under a five-foot-thick wall/ceiling of stonework. One enters the Oracle Cham ber through a vestibule, once capped by large roof slabs. A 42-foot stone-lined drain exits from the wall and still keeps the underground excavation free from flooding. The bedrock floor of the Oracle Chamber was channeled for drainage as well and the corbeled roof, made without mortar, does not leak, the interior staying remarkably dry. A “secret bed,” a niche cut carefully into the wall that is 6 feet 4 inches long by 22 inches wide by about 12 inches high, is just the right size for a man to lie within it and be completely hidden from view but still able to monitor activity within the chamber.<br />
A 4 inch by 6 inch shaft, lined with thin facing stones, runs from the exterior and enters through the interior wall at about chin level. A stone step is below the hole in the wall this shaft makes, ostensibly for the comfort of a speaker. The “Speaking Tube,” as it is called, emerges above ground, yet concealed underneath a sacrificial altar with runnels. It would seem that the speakers within the Oracle Chamber could talk into the tube, their voices warped and amplified, carrying up to the altar above and creating quite an impressive sound to a group of worshippers who might be gathered around the altar—in effect making the altar talk.<br />
There is also an opening in the roof that once had stone louvers that could open and close. A large slab slid on stone tracks and could be adjusted to allow smoke to be released and would keep the interior smoke-free yet warm. Two great cornerstones were used to solidify the entire structure. These have been determined NOT to be glacial stones and were moved with great effort to create the structure. The weights of the two stones have been estimated at 45 tons and 70 tons. A stone bench, comfortable seating for three, has been carved into one wall and a finely made “closet” exists in one wall above a 21-ton worked stone.<br />
It is obvious from the layout of the Oracle Chamber that each of the features found within had a particular ceremonial or functional purpose in this incredibly well thought-out and masterfully crafted edifice.<br />
Also found across the Mystery Hill site are huge monolithic standing stones (some now fallen) all of which line up to Sun, Moon or star alignments as seen from a central viewing slab located by one of the earlier researchers at the site. From this slab, monoliths align to the Midwinter Solstice sunrise and sunset, the November 1 sunrise and sunset, the Spring and Fall Equinox sunrises and sunsets, the May 1 sunrise and sunset, the Midsummer Solstice sunrise and sunset, the August 1 sunrise and sunset and true north (this stone is aligned to the star Thuban, the pole star of 2,000 B.C.). On these days the Sun will either rise or set above worked monolith stones. Exact alignments coincide, according to astron omers and other scholars, with a date of 2499 B.C. to 1900 B.C.<br />
Stone walls throughout the site also provide over 200 astronomical alignments with the Moon, 45 different stars and important geographic points. One long stone wall aligns with true south. Another alignment wall allows one to observe the southernmost standstill of the Moon on its 18.61-year metonic cycle. This cycle reflects the imperfect elliptical orbit the Moon takes around the Earth. Gravitational forces may sometimes take the Moon away from a perfect ellipse by a relatively subtle 5 degrees north or south of the southern limit of the Sun. A period of 18.61 years is required to carry the Moon to all of its possible positions in respect to the Sun. This event is marked at Mystery Hill as the Moon passes above the Winter Solstice stone and then aligns with the terminal of this wall. This Moon cycle was supposedly discovered by the Greek astronomer Meton in 433 B.C. although this astronomical phenomenon would now seem to have been understood much earlier than originally believed.<br />
The purpose of other walls is less clear to scholars. Two walls made of quarried bedrock (not the field stones of colonial walls) delineate a long path whose starting point is bathed by the May first sunrise. It would appear this was a processional way through which worshippers would pass to enter sacred areas, much like at several of the megalithic sites in the British Isles, most notably the much larger, mile-long stone-lined Kennet and Beckhampton avenues of the huge megalithic complex at Avebury, England built sometime between 3,000 B.C. and 2,500 B.C.<br />
Other impressive constructions on the site offer a number of underground cham bers with clear astronomical alignments including a south-facing chamber made of large quarried rocks and covered by several multi-ton lintel slabs and a clas sic V-hut chamber, above ground, wedge shaped and adjacent to a large basin cut into the bedrock which was a starting point for a network of sophisticated drains that extends to the east. This chamber is oriented to the southwest as are many similar European Neolithic structures and bears a striking resemblance to those found in the British Isles. The east-west chamber, a three-sectioned chamber also made with massive roof lintels and entry stones of several tons, is on the site as well. This chamber, like others in Europe, is located on an old fault line, some say, because of the discernible magnetic phenomena that occur near geological sites of this kind.<br />
The calendrical orientations of the slab-roofed chambers, it would seem, would rule out these structures being constructed as root cellars by early American colonists or the woodlands Indians of the Northeast as neither were concerned with alignments that coincide with the most important of yearly Keltic celebrations. Further, noted archeo-astronomer Byron Dix has determined that New England is replete with underground chambers. He says, “[T]here are some 105 astronomically aligned chambers in Massachusetts, 51 in New Hamp shire, 41 in Vermont, 62 in Connecticut, 12 in Rhode Island, and 4 in Maine.”<sup>2</sup> Suffice it to say, it is obvious the solar alignments found at Mystery Hill, and other sites are not random.<br />
According to Charles Pearson, who surveyed the complex in 1987,<br />
[T]he number of very large and prominent stones is limited and those very large stones happen to be the ones that make up the significant astronomical alignments. To state that this site is a calendar by statistical probability or by “accident” and not by design demonstrates a complete misinterpretation of the obvious physical evidence at the site, and a misrepresentation of the facts located at the site. Comments were made indicating that with over 100 standing stones and the freedom to adjust the observation center of the site to any location desired, that purely by chance one could demonstrate a calendar site at any location. This is obviously not the case at Mystery Hill.<sup>3</sup><br />
There are many other exciting and surprising features at the Mystery Hill complex. These include an ancient on-site well lined with paving stones and providing the site with fresh water. Ac cording to author Peter Berresford Ellis in his book The Druids, water and wells were a major factor in pre-Christian Keltic religion and almost always accompanied their religious sites.<br />
There is also a megaron court area which may have been an entry area to the complex or a gathering place for large groups of worshippers to meet before entering, a tool sharpening stone and a mining shaft for the extraction of pure quartz crystals.<br />
According to archaeologist Warren Dexter, “[Q]uartz [like copper] was a very valuable commodity to the ancient peoples, but quartz was equally, if not more, important for spiritual reasons and mystical science.” Quartz, in fact, was purposely embedded in triangular chunks at the back of many New Eng land and European chambers, positioned to be illuminated by the Sun as it shone through roof openings only on those very few days, usually the equinoxes, when the sunlight could pass through the roof opening. Quartz can be found not only in areas where it naturally abounds, but in areas where it is scarce, having been brought there for ceremonial purposes by ancient peoples.<sup>4</sup><br />
One of the central features of the Mystery Hill site is the so-called sacrificial table/altar. It is a 4.5-ton grooved slab whose purpose is still under debate by scholars. In the words of archeologist and Mystery Hill curator Robert Stone: “[O]thers believe it was used for sacrifices, not only because of its central location, its size, but also because the oracle speaking tube was beneath it, as well as the carved channel [possibly for the draining of blood] on the top surface. It is positioned on four worked stone legs and is located at the center of the site in a large courtyard.”<sup>5</sup><br />
It too bears a striking resemblance to altar stones found at megalithic sites in Europe.<br />
The builders of Avebury, the Iberian Phoenicians and the Vatic druids are believed to have conducted human sacrifices. The bodies of small children or “strang ers” (referred to as strangers because the artifacts found with the skeletal remains did not match the cultural objects of the builders of the sites) have been found near many megalithic monuments. This stems from the ancient Indo-European belief that human blood, sprinkled on a construction site, ensured safety and stability for the building. Victims were many times interred with the remains of specific animals—a boar in one or an ox in another—inferring a totem or clan relationship to the site. Many of these bodies showed obvious forensic signs of ritual murder. It was said in Ireland, a land with over 2,000 megalithic sites, that the greatest enemy of St. Patrick was manifest in a standing stone “addicted” to human sacrifice.<sup>6</sup><br />
And the Carthaginian Phoenicians are also famous for their child sacrifices, attested to by the ancient, massive, sacrificial children’s graveyards of Tophet.<br />
But even more than mere physical resemblance to European sacrificial altars and megalithic sites, it was radiocarbon dating, carried out under the supervision of respected scientists from Geochron Laboratories in 1971 that supported the disputed claims of researchers who were being ridiculed for insisting that Mystery Hill was a site of extreme antiquity. Carbon tests conducted on charcoal found alongside a stone pick and a hammer stone unearthed at an excavation near one of the underground chambers reveal a date of 2,000 B.C. The artifacts were clearly related to Neolithic pieces of the same era in the British Isles and Iberia. The excavation pit carbon tested had been undisturbed before digging, and layers of strata above were perfectly intact. Charcoal dating of tree roots penetrating one of the other chambers revealed a date of 1690 B.C. (Could it be that this complex was started by the same culture who built Stonehenge? The Stonehenge builders must have possessed sturdy ships if scholars are correct about their ability to haul the multi-ton monoliths hundreds of miles along the rivers of England to their resting sites on the Salisbury Plain.)<br />
Artifacts found near another charcoal pit included a hammer stone, spallings and a scraper. Its carbon date was determined to be later—995 B.C. Obviously this complex had been constructed, and these tools left, by people, possibly the ancestors of some of us today, thousands of years ago.<br />
Unfortunately, many of the other structures at the site were carted away, vandalized or destroyed—yet what re mains should be viewed as one of the most important historical sites in the Western Hemisphere. And Mystery Hill is far from being the only megalithic site in New England whose origins are somewhat clouded.<br />
Megalithic constructions known as dolmens can be found all across New England, the western part of Europe and even into Syria and South Africa. “Dolmen” comes from the Breton word for “stone table” as the dolmens in many instances are three, four or five smaller boulders topped by an immense, flat-topped boulder than can weigh anywhere from several tons to 90 tons. Many of these capstones, however, are roundish, dressed stones, and not flat topped.<br />
The dolmen may have been erected to commemorate the death of a chieftain or another event of great importance, and scriptural incisions usually accompany the dolmen on stone markers. Dolmens are frequently occurring structures in the American Northeast. There are in fact over 200 examples of dolmens in New England alone and some very impressive examples can be found in our country as far away as California.<br />
Of the dolmen found at Salem, Massachusetts, author Robert Ellis Cahill asks, “How did these men, without the assistance of proper tools, lift and balance boulders weighing from 30 to 90 tons squarely on top of three little boulders?”<sup>7</sup> And noted ancient sites expert and archaeologist James Whittall adds, “I find it difficult to distinguish the North American examples from the European ones and I believe that both sets were produced by ancient builders who shared a common culture.”<sup>8</sup><br />
Another frequently occurring megalithic structure familiar to all readers is the stone circle. We know of the great Stonehenge complex in England with its huge Sarcen (meaning “heathen” and derived from the word “Saracen”) stones and the many calendrical alignments they delineate. But there are ancient stone circles in New England as well.<br />
Probably the most intriguing archaeological site in Connecticut is located in Groton and is called “Gungywamp,” once thought to be an Indian name, but actually ancient Gaelic, meaning, “church of the people.”<br />
Besides containing beehive chambers and petroglyphs, the Gungywamp site has a double circle of stones near its center, just north of two stone chambers. Two concentric circles of large quarried stones—21 large slabs laid end to end—are at the center of the site. Extensive fire burning on some of the slabs is apparent which leads many to believe it was an ancient altar configuration. Nearby there are several large pillar stones and one boulder slab that have been carefully positioned along astronomical site lines.<br />
Visiting the Gungywamp site on the afternoon of September 21, Dave Barron, the head of the Gungywamp Society, saw a sight that he would never forget. He said:<br />
The setting Sun had cast a beam of light through the vent shaft at the back of the chamber. This beam of light slowly moved down the east wall and spotlighted into the small beehive crypt near the entrance. This stone-lined tube was designed precisely to permit the Equinoctial sunset to fully penetrate the chamber’s dark interior on only two days during the year—March 22nd and September 21. The high density of garnet in the stones magnified the intensity of the sunlight entering the chamber. It certainly acts as a predictable calendar. [The Gungywamp site has been carbon dated to 600 A.D. as is accompanied by Christian Keltic rock carvings.]<sup>9</sup><br />
James Whittall had this to say about an astonishing megalithic stone circle he viewed at LeBlanc Park in Lowell, Massachusetts: “There I saw a sight I had not seen since my travels in the British Isles. Situated on a mound were weathered megalithic stones. I was filled with disbelief—it just couldn’t be—western Europe, yes, but here in Massachusetts, no. The reality of the scene was astonishing.”<br />
This oval mound was measured at 112 feet long by 56 feet wide. And the stones, as Whittall predicted, provided astronomical alignments. The monoliths were oriented east to west, and bearings of the sight indicated that it had been used to observe solar events. The first observation was made on September 22nd, the Fall Equinox, from the highest stone on the western side from the peak of the eastern most stone. The Sun set behind stone number four just as Whittall had surmised.<br />
“On November 1 we returned to the site, primarily because it was the ancient Keltic ritual day of Samhain, [October 31—November 1] and we got a perfect alignment of Stone Nine over Stone Six and we had a setting alignment. At the Winter Solstice observations were made again and stone one and stone ten aligned. The red disk of the Sun slowly descended in a long arc toward the point on the monolith until it split the disk. This site had been known for generations as Druid Hill.”<sup>10 </sup>Previous to this, the site had been called Bridget’s Hill, Bridget being one of the goddesses of the Keltic pantheon.<br />
Taken all together, the megalithic carvings, buildings, monoliths, calendar circles, stone phalli, fertility fetishes and other striking stone monuments, all so reminiscent of those in Europe, might be enough to infer an ancient European culture had built them—but was it possible that the Amerindians had in fact constructed them? After all, scientists are now realizing that an invention, such as pottery or weaving, can be invented in two places by two different cultures at the same time. So what did the numerous rock carvings strewn across New England have to tell us, if anything at all? This matter will be explored in depth in my next installment, The Mysterious Inscriptions of Megalithic New England.<br />
<br />
FOOTNOTES<br />
1. Robert Ellis Cahill, New England’s Ancient Mysteries. (Salem, Massachusetts: Old Saltbox Publishing House, 1993), p. 41.<br />
2. Barry Fell, America, B.C.—Ancient Settlers In the New World. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 215.<br />
3. Joanne Dondero Lambert, America’s Stonehenge—An Interpretive Guide. Kingston, New Hampshire, Sunrise Publications, 1996), p. 83.<br />
4. Warren Dexter and Donna Martin, America’s Ancient Stone Relics—Vermont’s Link to Bronze Age Mariners. (Rutland, Vermont, Academy Books, 1995), p. 88.<br />
5. Joanne Dondero Lambert, America’s Stonehenge—An Interpretive Guide. Kingston, New Hampshire, Sunrise Publications, 1996), p. 45.<br />
6. Maive and Conor Cruise O’Brien, A Concise History of Ireland. Kingston. (New York, Beekman House, 1972), p. 29.<br />
7. Robert Ellis Cahill, New England’s Ancient Mysteries. (Salem, Massachusetts: Old Saltbox Publishing House, 1993), p. 22.<br />
8. Ibid., p 29<br />
9. Ibid., p. 41<br />
10. Ibid., p. 26<br />
Bibliography<br />
A Concise History of Ireland, Maive and Conor Cruise O’Brien, Beekman House, New York 1972.<br />
America, B.C.—Ancient Settlers in the New World, Barry Fell, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1976.<br />
America’s Stonehenge—An Interpretive Guide, Joanne Dondero Lambert, Sunrise Publications, Kingston, New Hampshire, 1996.<br />
America’s Stone Relics—Vermont’s Link to Bronze Age Mariners, Warren Dexter and Donna Martin, Academy Books, Rutland, Vermont 1995.<br />
Ancient and Modern Quarry Techniques, Dr. David Stewart-Smith, Gamesmasters Publishing Association, Nashua, New Hampshire, 1989.<br />
Keltic Connection, Michel-Gerald Boutet, Gloria Farley and Others, Stonehenge Viewpoint, Santa Barbara, California, 1990.<br />
Keltic Secrets, Donald L. Cyr, Stonehenge Viewpoint, Santa Barbara, California, 1990.<br />
Native American Myths and Mysteries, Vincent H. Gaddis, Borderland Sciences, Garberville, California, 1976.<br />
New England’s Ancient Mysteries, Robert Ellis Cahill, Old Saltbox Publishing House, Inc., 1993, Salem, Massachusetts.<br />
Prehistoric Avebury, Aubrey Burl, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979.<br />
Ruins of Great Ireland In New England, William B. Goodwin and Malcolm D. Pearson, Meador Publishing Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1946.<br />
Scotland Through the Ages, Michael Jenner, Michael Joseph Publishers, Ltd., London, England, 1987.<br />
Spain at the Dawn of History—Iberians, Phoenicians and Greeks, Richard J. Harrison, Random House, New York, 1987.</td><td></td></tr>
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</tbody></table><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-44023339063397302662010-03-22T06:00:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:00:12.928-07:00Sunrise at Campobello: Sundown at Yalta<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" nof="LY" style="width: 487px;"><tbody>
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</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By Harry Elmer Barnes</div><br />
In 1959 Harry Elmer Barnes reviewed a book detailing World War II summitry. His appraisal of those meetings, and of the leaders involved in decisions so consequential to the West, remain today a vivid primer. It offers the already in formed a reminder of how much a few individuals on “our side”—most particularly a president now eulogized in our nation’s capital—cost this country and world freedom. For the uninformed, it serves as a study guide to what might be called “the unending consequences of two great wars of self destruction.”<br />
The main theme of a new book by George N. Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia (Chicago, Henry Regnery Co.), here reviewed, is the manner in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill enabled Soviet Russia to win both the war and the peace and to become the dominant power in the Old World, if not on the whole planet. Incidentally, it reveals how this was concealed from the Anglo-American publics, who innocently believed that they were pouring out their blood and money in an idealistic Holy War, designed to bring freedom, perpetual peace and economic prosperity to the world. But the volume also includes an exposition and analysis of the more important actions and trickery by which Roosevelt and Churchill involved the United States in the war, and exposes the deceptions and the serious and irretrievable political and military blunders which were involved in all this. In short, it is a substantial revisionist history of the causes, merits and results of the second World War, in addition to its unrivaled presentation of the fatal Anglo-American surrenders to Soviet Russia and Marshal Stalin.<br />
In light of the fact that the more important concessions to Russia occurred at the great Summit Conferences from New found land to Potsdam, much of the book is given over to the exciting but dolorous story of what happened at these calamitous meetings. The material highlights the outstanding events and accomplishments of each of these great conferences, which is what is needed in such a book. This task is performed with great clarity and proper emphasis. Readers will carry away a vivid and lasting impression of what went on and of the characters present and operating. Those who wish more of the diplomatic details will do well to consult William L. Neumann’s Making the Peace, 1941-45, John L. Snell’s The Wartime Origins of the East-West Dilemma Over Germany, and more voluminous books of the kind.<br />
Mr. Crocker wisely does not accuse President Roosevelt of any deliberate espousal of communist ideas or policy as such. Nor does he remotely allege that Roosevelt consciously sought to betray the interests of the United States to the benefit of Soviet policy and ambitions. Indeed, he does not even make any such charges against Harry Hopkins who was Roosevelt’s “Man Friday” in devising and promoting the policies and actions which played into the hands of Stalin and Russia. It was a gradual process, compounded of political and historical superficiality, and ever mounting ambition, pride, vanity and megalomania on the part of Roosevelt which Hopkins nursed along, General Marshall defended on the military level, and Stalin successfully exploited. In the light of the prominent role of Harry Hopkins in inspiring and promoting Roosevelt’s pro-Russian policies—in fact acting as Roosevelt’s chauffeur on the road to Russia—Mr. Crocker’s book may well be regarded as another volume on Roosevelt and Hopkins. It will do much to reinterpret the vast amount of material in Robert E. Sherwood’s voluminous work and to correct the misleading statements and conclusions therein.<br />
The increasingly pro-Soviet orientation of Roosevelt policy was a natural development arising from the trends of 1937 to 1941—from the Chi ca go Bridge Speech to Pearl Harbor. Anti-interventionists in the United States be fore Pearl Harbor charged that it was British propaganda, Democratic New Deal self-interest, Roosevelt’s ambition to become a war president, Jewish hatred of Hitler, and other factors, which involved the United States in the war. But more thorough study has amply proved that, although the above factors and influences played a powerful role in the total result, it was primarily the communist line as developed by [Maksim Mak si mo vich] Litvinov [real name Meyer Wallach or, according to some authors, Meyer Finkelstein] at Geneva, inflated by the Popular Front.<br />
Harry Hopkins, a left-wing sympathizer with Soviet Russia but certainly not a communist, inspired and softened up Roosevelt for the Soviet kill. Roosevelt soon discovered that collaboration with Stalin offered the easiest and most direct road to caressing his own power complex, even if this road was a dead-end one, the terminus of which was to be piled full with the wreckage of most of the ideals for which the Allies were supposed to be fighting. Roosevelt was captivated and absorbed in the glamour and glory of the moment and gave little consideration to the long-range implications and results of the events and experiences of the day. As even his most enthusiastic and persistent historical defender, Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., admits, Roosevelt was a man who played by ear in his public life, much like Churchill and in sharp contrast to Stalin, who carefully planned both domestic and foreign policy.<br />
As we have noted, the development of Roosevelt’s fatuous and fatal honeymoon with Russia, passing beyond his exploitation of the communist war-line in helping to get this country into war, was a gradual trend, marked by ever more obvious and impressive stages or steps.<br />
On June 22, 1941, the very day that Hitler launched his ill-advised invasion of Russia, Harry Hopkins went to New York and told a Russian war relief rally in Madison Square Garden that Roosevelt had already sent word that the United States would aid the Russian war effort and would see that it did not fail. A few weeks later, Hopkins was sent to Russia to confer with Stalin and tell him of the plans of the United States, which was still officially at peace, to send Russia vast military supplies. Stalin was gratified to hear all this, and Hopkins was electrified by his first contact with Stalin: He came home enthralled and wrote a magazine article in which he showed a childlike reverence for Stalin’s every word, gesture and mannerism. He obviously thought him a great man who talked “straight and hard.” He was charmed when Stalin, in saying goodbye, “added his respects to the President of the United States.” During the next months, Roosevelt went to absurd lengths in trying to stretch or distort the terms of the Atlantic Charter so as to envisage and include Russia as a legitimate ethical and political ally in a Holy War.<br />
Within only a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had developed the illusion that he was the man most capable of dealing with Stalin and handling him in the interest of Allied aims and policies. He wrote to Churchill that: “I know you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you that I think I can handle Stalin personally better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so.” Stalin did so continue, but at his own price and soon was doing the handling rather than Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s subservience to communist aims and policies began to be revealed at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, through the proclaiming of Unconditional Surrender as the Allied slogan for victory, and the first presentation of the Allied military strategy as envisaged by Stalin.<br />
To the first Quebec Conference in August 1943, Harry Hopkins brought a secret document approved by Roosevelt. It stated that: “Since Russia is the decisive factor in the war, she must be given every assistance and every effort must be made to obtain her friendship. Likewise, since without question she will dominate Europe on the defeat of the Axis, it is even more essential to develop and maintain the most friendly relations with Russia.” This formally opened the policy gate to what followed on the road to Russia. Roosevelt’s quest of pomp, power and glory, and Stalin’s flattery, cajolery and shrewdness, filled in the preliminary blueprint.<br />
By the time of the Cairo Conference in November 1943, Roosevelt’s personal delusion of grandeur began to overpower him: His conceit now took on a new dimension. For beginning with the Cairo meeting with Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt began to fall victim to the messianic complex that had destroyed Wilson in 1919. He began to envisage himself as the Master Builder of the shiny new postwar world. It was a role he was pathetically unsuited to attempt.<br />
The Casablanca Conference had been held in Northern Africa on January 14-24, 1943, and was attended by Churchill, Roosevelt and their entourages, and by representatives of the Free French. The most notable product of this meeting was Roosevelt’s casual but fateful enunciation of the doctrine of Unconditional Surren der as the only terms the Allies would accept from the members of the Axis. Generated in Roosevelt’s historical ignorance, this was the greatest political blunder of the war and a tremendous boon to Russia and Stalin. It prolonged the war by at least a year and a half, led to vast destruction on the Continent, meant the ruin of Germany, removed all barriers to Soviet occupation of Central Europe, and opened the way to Communist expansion westward. It was here, also, that Stalin’s program to concentrate the Allied military campaign on the invasion of France from both the North and the South was first presented by Roosevelt and Hopkins and warmly supported by General Marshall. It challenged the British plan to invade Europe through Italy and the Balkans—what Churchill graphically but erroneously called the soft underbelly of Europe. The Roosevelt plan ultimately won out and was another victory for Russia, since it meant that no Allied troops would turn up later on to oppose the Russian advance to Bucha rest, Budapest, Prague and Berlin.<br />
It has already been pointed out that the first Quebec Conference held on August 11-24, 1943, established the primacy of Russian needs and interests in Allied wartime strategy and policy. It also tied down to reality still further the Stalin strategy of an invasion of Northern and Southern France and doomed Churchill’s soft underbelly program. Stalin did not need to attend, since his plan was ably presented and successfully pushed through by Roosevelt, Hopkins and Marshall.<br />
The Cairo Conference, held on November 22-26, 1943, was attended by Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, and their entourages. The main decision taken at Cairo was implementing Roosevelt’s demand that Chiang Kai-shek must take the Chinese Communists into his Nationalist Government. Roosevelt also suggested that Chiang give Russia the use of the important port of Darien. In this he did not succeed at Cairo but shortly afterward he handed it to Russia at Teheran. Promises of systematic and substantial military aid were made to Chiang, but these were largely scrapped at Teheran. Once more, Stalin did not need to attend the Cairo Conference. Lauchlin Currie and other Communists and Communist sympathizers at the White House had worked out Roosevelt’s plan for China, as set forth at Cairo, and it could hardly have suited Stalin better if it had been fashioned in the Kremlin.<br />
The Teheran Conference was held on November 28-December 1, 1943, immediately after the meeting at Cairo. It was here that Roosevelt first met Stalin. He quickly succumbed to Stalin’s flattery and liquor. Stalin soon found that Roosevelt was a pushover and proceeded to give him the works. He took Roosevelt, and it has already been shown that it was at Teheran that Stalin assumed control of Allied military and political strategy during the war and, inevitably, in the political arrangements which followed. But this was so carefully concealed from the American public that Roosevelt felt safe in assuring them that he took Stalin at Teheran.<br />
The Atlantic Charter was further, almost fully, consigned to the ashcan. The Baltic States, East Poland, and eastern Germany were to be consigned to Russia at the end of the war. Allied forces would be held up so that Russia could occupy eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia. The invasion of France was now made a certainty.<br />
After his return from Teheran, Roosevelt told the American people on Christmas eve that: “He [Stalin] is a man who combines a tremendous, relentless determination with a stalwart good humor. I believe he is representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people—very well indeed.”<br />
The second Quebec Conference came on September 11, 1944. The main matter on the agenda was a barbarous scheme to accomplish the economic ruin of Germany and the incidental starvation of ten to twenty million Germans. This plan came to be known as the Morgenthau Plan because its supposed author and most strenuous public champion was Henry Morgenthau, the largely figure-head Secretary of the Treasury whose anti-Germanism had attained the proportions of a psychopathic obsession.<br />
Stalin did not need to come to Quebec for he knew that his wishes relative to postwar Germany would be effectively presented and pushed through by Roosevelt and Morgenthau. The news of the Morgenthau Plan leaked out and was added to Unconditional Surrender as another factor in encouraging German resistance to the last ditch and needlessly prolonging the war.<br />
The famous Yalta Conference was held on the Crimean shore of the Black Sea on February 4-11, 1945. Because some of the more obvious evils accomplished were soon leaked out, the Yalta Conference has been the most publicized and pilloried of all the wartime Summit Con fer ences, but most of its deeds had been foreshadowed or prepared for at Teheran.<br />
Yalta confirmed the Teheran decisions or proposals relative to Europe: handing over the Baltic States, East Poland, and eastern Germany to Russia, and the ceding of German territory to Poland as compensation for the Russian annexation of East Poland. The disastrous zoning of Germany was confirmed and more precisely determined. Some two million Russian nationals in German hands were to be rounded up and returned to Russia for execution or slave labor. The latter was approved for Russia, although very soon at Nuremberg German leaders were either executed or given long terms in prison on the charge of permitting slave labor.<br />
The main novel disaster at Yalta was the making of great concessions to Stalin and Russia in the Far East. These gave Russia invaluable cessions of territory, railroads, and ports on the Pacific and played the decisive role in the victory of the Communists in China, thus adding over 500 million persons to the Com mu nist orbit. All this was done without the slightest military need, in the effort to bribe Stalin to enter the war against Japan. Stalin wished to enter this war in order to pick off the spoils which he knew would be readily accessible to him. He had promised to enter several times previous to the Yalta Conference.<br />
Before he left for Yalta, Roosevelt had learned through General MacArthur that the Japanese were ready to make peace on exactly the same terms that were accepted in August after months of bloody fighting in the Far East and the atom bombing of the Japanese cities. All of the chief American army, navy and airforce leaders except the Russophile Marshall agreed that the Japanese were hopelessly beaten and would eagerly surrender if given any reasonable terms. There was no need whatever for Russian aid in winning victory over Japan. The formal Russian entry just before the Japanese surrender gave no real assistance whatever to victory, but it did succeed in turning over the Far Fast to Communist hegemony.<br />
Crocker indulges in some brief comments on Germany, Italy and Japan which will be eagerly seized upon by partisans of Roosevelt as evidence that Mr. Crocker must approve of the Second World War and American entry therein, although the reviewer knows that he does not. The Second World War cannot logically draw the approval of any Revisionist, and least of all of a Revisionist who believes that the aggrandizement of Russia was the most disastrous result of the war. The great crime of our age was the British plotting and launching of the war, and the American support of and entry into that war. The only adequate bulwarks against Communist expansion were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan. When they were destroyed or defeated there was nothing left of sufficient power to contain Communism.<br />
Roosevelt’s road to Russia was a subordinate and secondary product of the war itself and would never have been open for travel if the United States had remained out of the war, as eighty per cent of the American people wished to do until Roosevelt succeeded in provoking the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. If one believed in 1941 that European dictatorship must be crushed by military force, then the logical procedure was for Britain to accept Hitler’s incredibly generous peace terms after June 22, 1941, and let Germany and Russia beat out each other’s brains until they had reached a disabling military impasse and there could no longer be any menace of dictatorship by either the Right or the Left. This was what was recommended by former President Hoover and Senators Taft and Truman at the time.<br />
In the second place, Mr. Crocker is altogether too kind to Churchill. His irresponsible Germanophobia and war-mongering from 1936 to 1939 did much to help on the war that put Russia where she was at Potsdam in July 1945. He was responsible for the failure to make peace with Germany on most favorable terms in both June 1939, and a year later. Nobody did more to force the war to continue to the bitter end that left Stalin the dominant personality in Europe. While Roose velt produced the phrase at Casablanca early in 1943, the British had adopted the principle of unconditional surrender as early as September 3, 1939, and stuck doggedly with it until V-E and V-J Days: Roosevelt was only the semantic author of this ghastly blunder: Halifax and Churchill were the real authors.<br />
Finally, it is rather amazing that Mr. Crocker does not bring forward the fact that, before Roosevelt had even left for Yalta, he had received from General MacArthur the same peace offer from Japan that was accepted in August, 1945, as the basis for the Japanese surrender. This is the most important fact that can be used to expose the preposterous nature of the flagrant betrayals at Yalta. It undermines all the fictitious claims of General Marshall and other Russophiles that Russian aid was essential to defeat Japan and that, even with this aid assured, it was also necessary to burn Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders by atom bombs. It is all the more surprising that Mr. Crocker omitted this material because the reviewer furnished him with these Japanese peace plans and with their authentication by no less important figures than former President Herbert Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur. This material is as indispensable for a full understanding and indictment of the Yalta Conference as that on Harry Dexter White, so admirably assembled by Mr. Crocker, is with respect to the second Quebec Conference.<br />
Perhaps the best conclusion to this review would be the citation of appraisals of the results of the policy of Roosevelt and Churchill in the Second World War. One of the leading American scholars and publicists, and no Roosevelt-baiter, had this to say in the way of an epitaph on Roosevelt’s foreign policy: “He left the civilized world in ruins, the entire East a chaos of bullets and murder, and our own nation facing for the first time an enemy whose attack may be mortal. And to crown the summit of such fatal iniquity, he left us a world which can no longer be put together in terms of any moral principles.” The English journal, The European, said of Churchill: “In terms of personal success, there has been no career more fortunate than that of Winston Churchill. In terms of human suffering to millions of people and destruction to the noble edifice of mankind there has been no career more disastrous. In that sad paradox lies the tragedy of our time.”<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-71718374908886177512010-03-22T05:58:00.001-07:002010-03-22T05:58:24.061-07:00Blonds in the Far East and American Northwest<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By Prof. Phillip Bonner</div><br />
The idea that Caucasians inhabited both China and the North American continent thousands of years ago has never been acceptable to the anthropological establishment. But the discovery of blond mummies in China has caused a re-evaluation of this thesis, and whole new patterns of migration between the continents are now considered distinct possibilities.<br />
<br />
In April 1994 the science magazine Discover published an epoch-making article called “The Mummies of Xinjiang.” Later advertisements for the magazine were to read “What are 4,000-year-old blond mummies doing in China?”<br />
The article contains pictures of blond and red-haired mummies up to 4,000 years old from the Chinese province of Xinjiang.<br />
The world-famous geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford University, author of History and Geography of Human Genes, speculated that these were a few stray Europeans who somehow wandered thousands of miles east into China.<br />
In the popular press there were a number of articles expressing astonishment that blond people had somehow wandered so far east so early.<br />
Actually, some scholars who had taken the trouble to learn Chinese, Mongolian, Sogdian and other Oriental languages, as well as explorers and archeologists who had done research in Central Asia and China, had long ago figured out that white people from Europe played a major role in China since the beginning of civilization.<br />
In 1939, Oxford University Press put out a book called Early Empires of Central Asia by William McGovern which goes into great detail about the role of white people in China and Central Asia. He quotes repeatedly from Chinese, Turkish and other historical records.<br />
The blond mummies of Xinjiang are only the tip of the iceberg. There are skeletons, mummies, face masks, paintings, sculptures and vast historical records proving that white people have played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning.<br />
Around 4,000 B.C. the horse was first domesticated by blond Indo-Europeans living in and around what is now Ukraine. They left the valleys and started a new way of life, that of the steppe nomad. These people had vast herds of cattle, goats, sheep and horses. They invented wagons and carts around 3,000 B.C. This nomadic group made the world’s first mobile homes, later called kibitkas, a huge wagon with far-apart wheels that carried a home constructed of wood and felt. These were pulled by up to 20 oxen.<br />
From the riverbanks of Ukraine and Russia, this wandering tribe now spread out over the virtually uninhabited steppes, or grassland prairies. Their herds of animals provided them with meat, milk, clothing and felt. Their wagons provided them with mobility. They quickly spread in every direction through the steppes. Of note is a band of steppe between 50 and 600 miles wide and 6,000 miles long which stretches all the way from Central Europe to Manchuria, near the Pacific Ocean. Blond people speaking Indo-European languages quickly occupied this vast area.<br />
Every several hundred years or so the steppe belt was hit with a drought. Animals and people started dying of hunger and thirst. This caused massive migrations out of the steppes. The first recorded time this occurred was around 2,000 B.C., when vast numbers of nomads poured out of the steppes and invaded Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, India and northwestern China.<br />
Nordics just east of the Ural Mountains had invented the chariot just a hundred years earlier. This gave them a huge advantage in warfare. The similarities between chariots from the Caucusus Moun tains and China are astonishing. Chariots were associated with the ruling class in China as in Egypt, the Middle East, India and elsewhere.<br />
In Gansu province, China, there has been found painted pottery, almost identical to pottery artifacts found in Tripolye, Ukraine and other places in between these locales. Pottery from Anau, Turk menistan, Susa, Iran and Trialeti, Romania are almost identical to pottery from the Honan and Gansu provinces of China.<br />
Many words in ancient Chinese were borrowed from Indo-European, including words for chariot, horse, warrior, prince, spear, axe and ruler/emperor. Even the Chinese character for king comes from the west. In modern Chinese it is “wang,” but scholars tell us that the ancient Chinese pronounced it “gwang.” If we add the character for “white” to the character for “king” we get a character that is the symbol for “emperor.” If we add the character for “man” to the character for “white,” we have a character which means “duke.” In other words, a white man is a duke, and a white king is an emperor. The common people were called “the black-haired people.”<br />
Chinese history is an endless repetition of the same pattern. In vad ers from the steppes conquer China, become Sinicized, intermarry with Chi nese, and become weak. Then they are conquered by a new wave of invasions from the steppes.<br />
Even today frescoes of white people can be found in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. They have blue eyes and are said to be “arhats” or followers of Buddha.<br />
The Mongols who conquered China and much of Eurasia in the 1200s were led by men who sometimes had red hair and blue or gray eyes. Marco Polo, who met Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan in person, describes him as being “white and ruddy.”<br />
From 1644 to 1911, China was ruled by a Eurasian people called the Manchus. There were only one million Manchus. They spoke a language related to Turkish and Mongolian. They usually had white skins. Their features were a mixture of white and mongoloid. Boris Yeltsin, Lenin, Kemal Ataturk and the WWII Japanese Prime Minister Tojo are examples of this Eurasian type. The Manchus took Chinese wives and concubines. Large numbers of Chinese slaves and farmers immigrated to Manchuria. Today there are hardly any Manchus left, even in Manchuria. Under the Manchus the Chinese Empire reached its greatest territorial expansion, and included Man churia, Mongolia, Tibet, Xijiang as well as Taiwan and parts of Kazakhstan, Siberia, Korea, Burma and Vietnam at various times.<br />
There are traces of the Caucasian race among the elite all over northeast Asia. The famous Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who committed hara-kiri in a right-wing protest, relates in his autobiography that when he was a child he had blond hair. “My hair was blondish for a long time, but they kept putting olive oil on it until it finally turned black.”<br />
Chinese metallurgy was derived from the Andronovo Indo-Europeans of the Minusinsk area of Siberia and from the copper experts of the White Indo-European Yueh-Chih of the Qichia culture of Gansu and Qinghai provinces.<br />
Casual observers have long commented that American Indians appear to occupy an intermediate position between the white race and the Mongoloid race. Some tribes could pass for Chinese. Others seem to resemble Caucasoid peoples in Western Asia.<br />
The general rule is that all American Indians have blood type O. However, there are two exceptions which point to the former presence of Caucasians. One is the blond and red-haired mummies from Peru, some of whom are A, B or AB. The other is among speakers of Na-Dene languages, who originated in the American northwest and western Canada.<br />
Na-Dene speakers often are type A, which is very common in western Europe.<br />
Amazingly, evidence has recently surfaced of Caucasoids having lived in the same vicinity, in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Nevada, around 7,000-2,500 B.C.<br />
The magazine Archaeology, in its January/February 1997 edition, featured an article on Kennewick Man, a Caucasian who lived along the Columbia River in Washington State about 8,400 years ago. Anthropologist James Chatters told the New York Times, “I’ve got a white guy with a stone point in him . . . That’s pretty exciting, I thought I had a pioneer.” But then Catherine J. Mac Millan, professor emeritus of physical anthropology at Central Washington University, looked at the bones. “He’s a Caucasian,” she said, “but this type of arrowhead went out of use over 4,000 years ago.” It was dated to what is called the Cascade Phase, 7,000-2,500 B.C.<br />
Some of the bones were sent to R. Ervin Taylor Jr. of the University of California, Riverside, for radiocarbon dating. The amazing result of the tests was that the bones dated to around 6,400 B.C.<br />
Then, the federal government stepped in. Because of the age of the bones they were declared to be American Indian remains. Federal law prohibits desecration of American Indian remains, so the Corps of Engineers declared that the bones must be turned over to local Indian tribes for reburial. Scientists were ordered to stop all tests. Kennewick Man is now locked up under armed guard at the old Hanford, Washington nuclear waste depository. No one is allowed to study the bones or even look at them.<br />
It’s ironic that Hanford, Washington, was chosen, as it once housed what was rumored to be the largest atomic bomb factory in the world. Perhaps Kennewick Man has explosive potential as well. On October 16, 1996 eight scientists filed suit against the Army Corps of Engineers in Federal District Court in Portland, Oregon, where the corps’ North Pacific division is headquartered, seeking access to the skeleton and to bar its reburial. Among those suing were Dennis J. Stanford, chairman of the Smithsonian’s anthropology department. He has seen the remains and knows them to be Caucasian.<br />
A 1994 study by D. Gentry Steele and Joseph F. Powell, physical anthropologists at Texas A & M University, compared European, East Asian and American Indian skeletons. They concluded that American skeletons dated before 6,500 B.C. were somewhat like European skeletons, and more recent American Indians were somewhat like East Asians.<br />
The federal government has prohibited scientists, reporters and even state legislators from having access to two other ancient Caucasians, one from Pyramid Lake and the other from Spirit Cave in Nevada. Scientists wanted to do DNA tests on 10,000-year-old reddish human hairs dug up in Montana, but, instead, the hair was turned over to local Indians for reburial. Another priceless treasure recovered in Buhl, Idaho was recently secretly buried by Indians, closing off forever any chance for scientists to study it. It was one of the best preserved skeletons on earth from around 6,000 B.C. In a letter published in the March/April 1997 edition of Archaeology, George A. Agogino, distinguished research professor emeritus at Eastern New Mexico University, wrote, “In the instance of another set of remains, from Buhl, Idaho; here was a rare paleoindian, very ancient American skeleton, of which only roughly a dozen are known, that the local Indian group secretly buried under state law . . .<br />
“Had I murdered Jimmy Hoffa, one good way of disposal of the remains, after having them reduced to a skeleton, would be to tell some Indian group that the remains were definitely Indian and should be disposed of by them under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).”<br />
Spirit Cave Man was found in 1940 by two Nevada state archaeologists. State Museum Curator Donald R. Tuohy writes, “This find represents the adaptation to desert oases which led to agriculture in several places on earth just after this time and may be significant in understanding the emergence of civilization.<br />
“Complex textiles in Spirit Cave demonstrate a degree of sophistication in material technology that rivaled any on the planet at the time, and the preservation of these textiles exceeds any of comparable age.<br />
“This is a world class discovery of significance to the understanding of humanity’s origins on a planetary scale.”<br />
Carbon dating puts the Spirit Cave mummy at 9,415 years old. Dr. Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution examined both Kennewick Man and the Spirit Cave mummy and determined that both were Caucasians.<br />
According to the legends of the Paiute Indians, when they arrived in the Spirit Cave area, it was inhabited by white giants with red hair. The Paiute “outsmarted” them by luring them into a cave and then setting fire to brush stacked around the entrance, burning or suffocating them to death. Nonetheless, the Paiute insist that the Spirit Cave mummy is one of their ancestors, and they want him buried without any more scientific tests whatsoever. Scientists are eager to do DNA tests to determine to what people the mummy is really related.<br />
The hair on the Spirit Cave mummy is reddish brown. All of these ancient Americans resemble the modern white inhabitants of the American Northwest more than they do American Indians.<br />
Amazingly, the latest research among the most advanced linguists in the world also points to unexpected connections between some languages spoken by white people and others spoken by American Indians. Merritt Ruhlen, of Stanford University, in a recent book called On the Origin of Languages, describes a new language super-family called Dene-Caucasian. “Dene” is the Navajo word for “Navajo.” This super language family includes Basque, the Athabaskan languages of Canada, Chechen and other Caucasus Mountains languages, a Siberian language called Ket, Tibetan, Chinese, the Alaskan language Tlingit, and Navajo.<br />
The Dene-Caucasian people moved east from Spain all the way to Idaho around 8,000-6,000 B.C. Their ancestors could have been the people who painted bison in the caves of France and Spain around 30,000 B.C. In most areas they were replaced by later invaders. But isolated pockets of Dene-Caucasian re mained in northern Spain, the northern Caucusus, Siberia, China, and North America.<br />
One of the earliest proofs of the existence of Caucasians in the Far East is in China, northeast of Beijing. In 1906 Japanese archaeologist Ryuzo Torii dug up a clay head at Niu Ho Liang. The head has Caucasian features, and is pink, with blue stones for eyes.The Japanese date it at 5,000 B.C. Everyone else dates it to around 3,500 B.C. Artifacts of similar cultures have been found all across far northern China, Mongolia, southern Siberia and northern Xinjing. It is speculated that these people spoke Altaic languages, the ancestors of Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu, and to some extent Korean, Japanese and Ainu.<br />
Over 100 years ago an Englishman, A.H. Savage Landor, visited the lands of the Ainu in northern Japan and islands farther north now belonging to Russia. He wrote a book called Alone With the Hairy Ainu. He says that on the island of Shikotan, “one or two of the children had very fair hair.” Along the northeast coast of Yezo I came across several Ainu adults who had reddish hair and beard; and in the Kurile Islands, at Shikotan, several of the children had light auburn hair hanging in large loose curls and rather flaxy in texture . . .” Further, “Red hair, or hair with red shades in it, is common among the Ainu of the northeast coast of Yezo [now called Hokkaido], and also among the Kurilsky Ainu of Shikotan [Kurile Islands]. I saw some Ainu who, contrary to the rule, had red hair.”<br />
Soviet anthropologist Levin also reported reddish hair and blue eyes among the Ainu and some natives of nearby parts of Siberia.<br />
There was a tribe related to the Manchus called the Oroch, who lived in the vicinity of what is now Vladivostock, a Russian city on the Pacific Ocean near the North Korean and Chinese borders. The Chinese called these people Ch’ih Mao Tze, which means Red Hair People.<br />
Strange as it may seem, the people of Mongolia were once non-Mongoloid. McGovern writes, “Thus, for example, in southern Siberia, in the region now inhabited by the Buriat Mongols, all of whom are now typically Mongoloid in appearance, archaeological work has brought to light a number of skeletons dating from an early period. All of these skeletons were markedly long-headed, in striking contrast with the modern Mon gol skulls, the great majority of which are round-headed. It is therefore, definitely established that in the very heart of Mongolian domain the characteristically round-headed race of the present day was preceded by a race of a very different type.<br />
“So far archaeology has thrown little light on the problem of the coloration of this early long-headed race; but the Chinese records would lead us to believe that this early population had ‘red hair, green eyes, and white faces,’ and we have every reason to believe that this description is not greatly inaccurate. In this connection, however, it must be borne in mind that this long-headed and presumably blond type is known to have inhabited not Mongolia proper, but southern Siberia immediately north of Mongolia. It is quite possible, in fact probable, that this early, blond, long-headed type spread into northern Mon golia, and it is not at all impossible that in very early prehistoric times this type was predominant all over the Mongolian Plateau.”<br />
Speaking of another people of the Chinese borderlands, McGovern states, “It so happens, however, that the Chinese have a tradition that the ancient Kirghis were decidedly blond in appearance, or, as the Chinese say, were tall with white skin, red hair and green eyes.”<br />
Writing of the area where the blond mummies were found, he remarks, “To the west of Lake Lopnur was the ‘country of thirty-six principalities,’ or of the numerous city states. As we know al ready, the inhabitants of this region were practically all Indo-Europeans, the Wusun (which is Chinese for ‘descendants of the Crow’), and the Yueji (Moon People), and from the Turanian Huns in that they practiced agriculture and lived in walled towns and villages . . .<br />
“To the north of Kashgaria lay the Tien Shan or Celestial mountains and beyond this Zungaria or the Ili Basin, still occupied by the Wusun.” According to Chinese legends, the first emperors, called “sons of heaven” originally came from the Tien Shan, or Mountains of Heaven, “which were surrounded by red-haired Indo-Europeans.”<br />
He continues, “From the statement in Han Shu, 96a, 18b, that ‘From Dayuan westwards all the inhabitants have deep set eyes and are hairy,’ it is obvious that all the inhabitants of Turkestan at this period were predominantly Caucasoid in race.”<br />
“Of far greater interest than either of the two above mentioned legends are the stories told concerning the intimate relationships existing between the ‘Northern Barbarians’ and the ancestors of the Chinese Emperors of the House of Jou (two periods—1122-770 and 770-256 B.C.) The Jou dynasty is generally regarded as the most glorious of all the Chinese ruling houses. Not only did the monarchs of this house rule over China for a far longer period than the members of any other dynasty, but it was during this period that the Five Classics were compiled. Also at this time the great sages, such as Confucius, Mencius and Laodse (Lao-tse) lived and wrote their works.” Portraits of Confucius usually show him as having Caucasian features.<br />
“Considering this fact, it is rather surprising to find that the House of Jou owed its early fame to its connection with the wild barbarians of the north and west. When the ancestors of the Jou dynasty first definitely emerge upon the horizon of history, we find them to be feudal lords of a small community in the extreme northwest portion of China. In this region they were surrounded on all sides by various tribes of Northern Barbarians (who are called on this occasion Rung and Di).<br />
“It will be remembered that the Yueji were nomads speaking an Indo-European language and living in Northwestern China [the present province of Gansu] and Northeastern Kashgaria.”<br />
We find Mencius speaking of Wen Wang, the real founder of the Jou dynasty, as ‘a western barbarian.’ ”<br />
A Hunnish general who took the Chinese capital Loyang in 311 A.D. was a hairy albino named Liu Yao, and Shi Huang Di, the emperor who built the Great Wall of China, was of western barbarian origin.<br />
He writes: “. . . the second emperor of the Wei dynasty (386-535 A.D.), of Sienbi origin, had a long, yellow beard.”<br />
The Chinese chronicles specifically state that the emperors came from a land “where the women’s skins were white.”<br />
In his book Central Asia: Turk menia Before the Achaemenids, Vadim Masson tells us that there was a culture called the Tien Shan Culture. He explains that this is a variant of the Andronovo Culture, which was composed of white Indo-Europeans. It occupied a large area of Kazakhstan and parts of Siberia.<br />
Jessica Rawson writes in a 1980 book called Ancient China, Art and Archae ology, about the incredible similarity between chariots in China and the Caucas. We now know that the chariots from both places came from the Ural Mountains area. From page 49: “Chariot burials: communications with western Asia: There is one further type of site excavated at Anyang and other parts of north China that provides important evidence for the late Shang period, the chariot burial. The chariot itself and two bronze items associated with it, a ‘jingle’ and a particular knife or dagger raise the question of outside influence. Although contacts between China and western Asia were rare in the early period, the introduction of the chariot suggests that the issue cannot be ignored.<br />
“Chariots were apparently not known in China before the beginning of the Anyang phase of the Shang dynasty, circa 1300 B.C. The chariots of that date, which were evidently buried in connection with royal funerals, bear some resemblance to those found in burials in the Caucasus. They are similar in three distinctive respects: both types have a low, open-fronted box in which to ride, wheels with a large number of spokes, and felloes, or wheel rims, made of two bent pieces of wood. Even the burial of the chariot is a shared practice.”<br />
The September 1996 issue of Antiquity had an interesting article about white people who lived just north of Beijing (Peking) in ancient times.<br />
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen of UC Berkeley studied the scholarly literature in Chinese, Turkish, Russian, German and English and reports to us about Caucasians in China: “Europoids in East Asia”:<br />
“As the account of the massacre of the Hsiung-nu Chieh in Chao in 349 A.D. shows, the great majority of that people were Europoids. When Jan Min made himself lord of Chao in northern Honan, which until then had been ruled by the Chieh, he ordered the extermination of all Chieh. In and around Yeh more than 200,000 were slain. The Chieh soldiers were recognized by their high noses and full beards.<br />
“Uchida Gimpu and I, independently of each other, adduced this characterization of the Chieh as proof of the existence of a Europoid group among the Hsiung-nu in the fourth century.” At any rate, by the middle of the fourth century there were Europoids among the Hsiung-nu.<br />
“ ‘Liu Yuan, the Hsiung-nu conqueror of Lo-yang [the capital of China] in 311, was 184 centimeters tall; there were red strains in his long beard. An anecdote in the Shih-shuo hsin-yu, compiled by Liu Yi-ch’ing in the first half of the fifth century, shows that the Hsien-pei, who are supposed to have spoken a Mongolian language, were racially not Mongoloid. When in 324 Emperor Ming, whose mother, nee Hsun, came from the Hsien-pei kingdom of Yen, heard about the rebellion of Wang Tun, he rode into the camp of the rebels to find out their strength. He rode in full gallop through the camp. His puzzled enemies thought he was a Hsien-pei because of his yellow beard.<br />
“The T’ang period falls outside the framework of the present studies. I mention only in passing the Europoid ‘Tokharians,’ depicted with their red hair and green eyes on the wall paintings in northern Hsin-chiang . . . The barbarian horsemen from Yu-chou in a poem by Li Po, probably Turks, had green eyes. Even later the Chinese know of Mongol Huang t’ou Shih-wei, ‘Shih-wei with the yellow heads,’ and Genghis Khan and his descendants had blond or reddish hair and deep-blue eyes.<br />
“Yen Shih-ku’s often quoted descriptions of the Wu-sun, neighbors and hereditary enemies of the Hsiung-nu, seems to prove that at one time the Wu-sun were preponderantly Europoid: ‘Of all the barbarians of the western lands the Wu-sun look the most peculiar. Those barbarians who have cerulean eyes and red beards and look like Mi monkeys are their descendants.’<br />
“Already at a time when only a small number of skulls from the territory held by the Wu-sun were known, they were recognized as Europoid . . . As late as the third century some Wu-sun were almost purely Europoid.<br />
“The paleoanthropological work in Hsin-chiang has barely begun. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable that some of the skulls collected by the Sino-Swedish Expedition in 1928 and 1934 and studied by C.H. Hjortsjo and A. Walander point to Europoids of the northern type in the ancient population. Around the beginning of our era, Europoids of the Nordic type lived, thus both in the Semirech’e [Kazakhstan-China border region near the Tien Shan] and Hsin-chiang.”<br />
Writing about the Mongols, Harold Lamb says of Genghis Khan (p. 37): “His ancestors, it is true, had been Borjigun, Blue-eyed Men, legendary heroes of the steppes.” Genghis Khan had red hair and gray eyes. Ogadai had gray eyes. Subotai, who conquered Cathay (China) had a long, reddish beard. Marco Polo described Kublai Khan as being very ruddy. The Arab writer Rashid ed Din wrote that people were surprised Kublai Khan had dark hair and eyes, because most of Genghis Khan’s descendants had reddish hair and blue eyes.<br />
Professor Eberhard, an expert on ethnic groups in China, has this to say: “In 1980 Chinese archaeologists found in a tomb in the eastern part of Sinkiang province a female with red-blond hair. The tomb was dated from approximately 3,200 years before our time . . . Indo-Europeans . . . according to investigations of several sinologists, even reached the heart of north China sometime around 2000 B.C. or somewhat later . . . Archeological findings from the time of the Shang dynasty (1600-1050 B.C.) give us a different picture. Excavations of royal tombs at An-yang, a site that perhaps was the last capital of the Shang or at least the burial place of their leaders, have brought out many skeletons, some of which seem to belong to non-Mongol races. Although the excavations were done around 1935, the anthropological results are still not fully published, perhaps because the findings were somewhat embarrassing, just as Europeans would feel embarrassed if remnants of a black race were found in the midst of Europe (and there is a possibility that people with dark skin once inhabited parts of Europe). There are also rumors concerning excavations in Korea during the time of Japanese rule, namely that remains of non-Mongol people were discovered there, who were related to races found in Siberia.”<br />
<br />
Until recently, Chinese archeologists had a bad habit of throwing away skeletons and looking only for artifacts.<br />
<br />
BIBLIOGRAPHY<br />
Archaeology Mar-Apr 1995; Anthony, David W. and Vinogradov, Nikolai B. “Birth of the Chariot: Excavations east of the Ural Mountains reveal traces of the first two-wheeled high-performance vehicles.”<br />
Archaeology, Sept./Oct., 1996, “Oldest North American Mummy,” by Lara J. Asher. This reddish hair was carbon dated at 7420 B.C. It was stored at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City until it was confiscated by the federal government.<br />
Feddersen, Martin, Chinesisches Kunst gewerbe, Berlin, Klinkhardt & Bierman Verlag, 1939; Ridley, Michael, Treasures of China, N.Y., Arco Publishing Co., 1973; and Childe, V. Gordon, The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins, N.Y., Barnes & Noble, 1993.<br />
Karlgren, Bernhard, Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese, N.Y., Dover, 1991.<br />
Eberhard, Wolfram, China’s Minorities: Yesterday and Today, Belmont, Calif., Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1982; Eberhard, Wolfram, A History of China, Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press, 1977; and Ssu-ma, Ch’ien, Shih Chi Hsuan, Hong Kong, 1976.<br />
Jisl, Lumir, Mongolei, Kunst und Tradition, Praha, Artia, 1960.<br />
Bellonci, Maria, The Travels of Marco Polo, N.Y., Facts on File Publications, 1984.<br />
Matson, R.G. and Coupland, G. The Pre-History of the Northwest Coast, Academic Press, Toronto, Canada.<br />
Mishima, Yukio, Confessions of a Mask, N.Y., New Directions Publishing Co., 1958.<br />
Jettmar, Karl, Art of the Steppes, N.Y., Crown Publishers, 1967; and Chung, Kwang-chih, The Archaeology of Ancient China, London, Yale University Press, 1986.<br />
Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. and Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution, Sidney, Addison-Westley Co., 1995.<br />
The Courier, 1-16-97, Finley, Tim, “Feds Blocking Research: Kennewick Man Was Not Alone.”<br />
Mao, P’ei-ch’i, Sui Yueh, Ho Shan, Taipei, 1978.<br />
Akademia Nauk SSSR, Institute Etnografi; edited by Levin, M.G. and Potapov, L.P., The Peoples of Siberia, Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964.<br />
Czaplicka, M.A., Aboriginal Siberia, A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1969.<br />
Sekai Zenshi, Tokyo, Kodansha, 1994; 1953 Encyclopedia Britannica, “Confucius.”<br />
Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J., The World of the Huns, Studies in Their History and Culture, Berkeley, University of Calif. Press, 1973.<br />
Polo, Marco, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, translated and edited, with notes, by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, London, John Murray, 1929; also Michel’s Joinville; D’Ohsson, II; Erdmann.<br />
Eberhard, China’s Minorities . . . , op. cit.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-42292139594792374642010-03-22T05:56:00.001-07:002010-03-22T05:56:42.260-07:00Ferdinand and Isabella—Their Remarkable Reign<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By George Fowler</div><br />
The grand and glorious epic of Ferdinand and Isabella is the stuff of which great novels, plays and movies are made; yet there have been none. After you read this you will understand why the media hates these great monarchs, whose place in history and their accomplishments cannot be discussed and honestly evaluated anywhere else other than in the pages of The Barnes Review.<br />
We can understand something of the intrepid folk struggle for Spain’s sovereignty, five and more centuries ago, by way of a better perception of that nation’s 1936 to 1939 “civil war.” From contemporary academic lectures on campus to the voice-overs of frequently presented television documentaries, the impression is given that the Communist dominated forces of “Republican Spain” were those of a true Spain, overwhelmed by fascist might from outside. Largely dismissed, together with the massive outside assistance given the Red bannered leftist coalition as well as to that received by the Nationalists, was the incredible dedication, under awful circumstances, of Spain’s nationalist millions. Without that folk demand for national freedom from alien perversities, neither the earlier nor the more recent struggle would have known triumph.<br />
Today, growing millions of French people push aside their storied cynicism and long affected cosmopolitan veneer to shout Fin to the prospect of a Gaul divided into perpetually antagonistic parts. Even in a still largely white America, drenched in generations of Statue of Liberty veneration, people are now openly expressing their outrage at the prospect of a 21st century U.S. Motleyland.<br />
Spain is a country that many of us have visited. It would be hard to imagine that many have departed, assuming a degree of contact with Spain’s people, without a sense of that nation’s strong inner being. At the heart of it, this inner being of the people, not the royal knights, armor and splendid horses of old, nor the Condor Legion planes of a much more recent eruption, in the final, held Spain for the Spaniards. This is not to say that the sunny Iberian nation was not blessed, in that most eventful and crucial year of 1492, with decent and wise sovereigns who harkened to the people’s will.<br />
The 1467 marriage of Isabella of Cas tile (1451-1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (1452-1516) was a momentous one for the Iberian world east of Portugal on the North Atlantic, which was then a powerful and adventuresome sea power. Their joint rule of these two vast portions of Spain commenced in 1474. It would also prove a most positive union relative to the Western world. What is Spain today was composed of four principalities. Castile stretched wide from the Bay of Biscay down to the Straits of Gibraltar. Aragon (below Spain’s much smaller Navarra and France) bordered Castile to its west and ran several hundred miles down the coast of the Balearic Sea to where it met Castile on the northern Mediterranean. Stretching across much of southern Castile, and meeting it in the west-central tip at Gibraltar, was lightly populated Granada.<br />
The term “marriage of convenience” runs throughout the history of higher civilization’s thrones, but the story of Ferdinand and Isabella began and endured as a magical dream in reality, that which is so rare between kings and queens, sovereigns and their consorts. In the perpetually popular but fictional <i>Prisoner of Zenda</i>, Princess Flavia forsakes her deep love for Rudolph Rassandy, the look-alike distant English cousin of King Rudolf V. This because duty demands that she marry the king.<br />
In the real-life extraordinary couple, we have a <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>who lived, to bind their love in marriage, as they would eventually wed the two great houses of Iberia. Isabella was a lovely and intelligent 16 in 1467 when her half-brother, King Henry IV of Castile, commanded that she marry a middle aged baron called the Master of Calatrava; the head of a powerful order of knights. Retiring to her quarters, Isabella fell to her knees seeking divine deliverance, praying a full day and night without food or sleep. As if providentially, word soon reached King Henry’s castle that “The Master,” travelling to Madrid for the marriage, had died in a village inn.<br />
Soon, Henry pressured Isabella to marry his ally Dom Affonso V, the King of Portugal [r. 1438-1481]. But Isabella’s heart yearned for the marital embraces of Prince Ferdinand of Aragon, whose family was close to Castilian nobles dedicated to Isabella. Although but 17, Ferdinand had already gained repute as a gallant lover and a supurb warrior. The princess had never seen Ferdinand, but her chaplain told her that he was “handsome in face, body and person.”<br />
Isabella was staying at Ocána when she received word that Henry was planning to kidnap her; to detain her in Madrid until she agreed to marry the Portuguese king. Isabella immediately sent word to the King of Aragon, stating that she wished to marry Ferdinand. Aragon’s ruler was overjoyed. However, he was bankrupt following a war with France. He therefore sent his crown jewels to Isabella. In the meantime, she fled to Valladolid; the bishop of Toledo and 600 knights having hastened to her defense.<br />
King Henry had issued a decree banning Ferdinand from the kingdom of Castile. After several tense weeks, Ferdinand entered Castile disguised as a scruffy servant boy. Under cover of night, Ferdinand moved warily through the streets of Valladolid to Isabella’s mansion. There they embraced, under the kind gaze of Toledo’s bishop. On October 19, 1469, following a romantic adventure that would defy the finest pens of fiction, the eloped couple sealed their love in matrimony—a marriage that would give birth to Spain.<br />
Ferdinand and Isabella’s employment of Christopher Columbus would prove an exceptionally fortuitous decision. With the Genoan sailing so successfully under the colors of their recently forged nation, it would signal that Spain was within near horizons of eclipsing the seafaring fame of its Iberian neighbor, Portugal.<br />
In <i>The Portuguese Seaborne Empire</i>, C.R. Boxer dates the beginning of Por tu gal’s Atlantic Ocean discoveries to about 1419. They essentially “ended with the return of Vasco da Gama to Lisbon in July, 1499, some six years after the completion of Christopher Columbus’ epic voyage of discovery to the Antilles.” Columbus had honed his high seas navigation capacities on Portuguese ships. By bringing Columbus under the Spanish banner, by showing confidence in a man who had known personally unfathomable rejection, the dual monarchs had set Spain toward a near century of maritime domination [the destruction of Spain’s Armada, 1588] that would gain the recently united county considerable wealth and respect. Spain would not always be great. But the romantic union of the boy from Aragon and the girl from Castile was instrumental in ensuring that Spain would always be a world entity rather than a semi-isolated backwater.<br />
If the “signing” of Columbus was a combination of timely masterstroke and highly consequential historic luck, so too was the taking of Granada from the Moslems; adding that internal land on the Mediterranean to the nation while allowing those who chose to stay to do so. Granada’s full significance to Europe as well as to Spain would become evident within three decades. During Ferdinand and Isabella’s time, the Moslem Ottoman Empire had comprised virtually the same territory as had the East Roman Empire. But under Sultan Sulieman II [ r.1520 to 1566] the Moslem gaze turned toward Europe and against Christendom.<br />
Sulieman, striking into the Balkans, captured Belgrade in 1521. He crossed the Danube in 1526. Although the Moslem seige of Vienna failed, they forced a partitian of Hungary; the smaller portion going to Austria. Under Ottoman law, only Moslems could be “citizens,” while Christians and Jews were “subjects.” Had Ferdinand and Isabella not consolidated Christian Spain to the sea, it does not seem unlikely that a strategically situated Moslem base in Iberia would have further whetted the Ottoman appetite.<br />
This remarkable and historically vital story of love and destiny was adopted into a great novel, nor did it ever reach the world’s screens as one of the great all time motion pictures. One might attribute this to the anti-Western bias of the great publishing houses and movie studios.<br />
Medieval Spain had largely been prepared for its capacities to withstand martial and spiritual siege by the well advanced Visigoths, who had conquered that land and established the Visigothic Kingdom in the 470s. They were a west Germanic people who had lived within the confines of the Roman Empire for a century. In the course of this they had adopted many of the positive qualities of that then-declining civilization, including Christianity.<br />
In his The Quest for El Cid, Richard Fletcher wrote of “the Goths’ determination to maintain the apparatus of Roman civilization. Fletcher observed: “In matters of government, economy and culture broadly conceived, there was a much greater degree of continuity from Roman to post-Roman in Visigothic Spain than there was in Frankish Gaul or Anglo-Saxon England.”<br />
For better or worse, the Visigothic in fluence would fade after making permanent structural imprints within Spain. Archaeologists and monastic records both indicate the onset of an economic malaise, from about the year 600. This, apparently, can be traced not only to the failure to establish a stable Visigothic succession but to the arrival of bubonic plague along Europe’s Mediterranean shores; a severe debilitation that would last some two centuries.<br />
The late Professor William L. Langer, Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard, dated the advent of Moslem Spain to Iberian incursions that commenced in 1037. A number of small Moslem (Arabic-Berber) dynasties rallied under the most distinguished of them, the Abbasids, to war against Alfonso VI. The Moslem presence in western North Africa emanates from the growth of Islam under Moham med in the seventh century. By the time of his death in 632 the faith that he had established in Mecca had spread through many of the Arabic tribes to what is now Algeria and Morocco.<br />
Between 1056 and 1147 a (white North African) Berber dynasty, founded by the Berber prophet Abdullah ibn Tashfin, conquered Morocco and part of Algeria. They were then called upon by the Abbasids to strengthen the Moorish gains in southern Spain against the Chris tians. In 1085 Alfonso VI wrested the northern prize of Toledo from the Moors.<br />
Alarmed at this success, the Moslems called from North Africa Yusufibn Tashfin, the powerful leader of the newly dominant sect of Berber fanatics, the Almoravids. With the support of strong Moorish forces at Seville, Tashfin began a successful counteroffensive against the Christians. In a most significant struggle, these allies established Moorish Spain, with the exception of Toledo and Saragossa.<br />
Christian reconquest ef forts began under Alfon so VI, with the aid of Spain’s revered legend, El Cid (Rodrigo Diaz). In his The Quest for El Cid Richard Fletcher points out that the title derived from the Arabic sayyid, meaning “lord” or “master.” He was of noble Cas til ian birth and died in 1099. In Spain it was conferred on Rodrigo Diaz as meaning “commander” or caudillo, as Fran cisco Fran co would be referred to following the 1936-1939 struggle. Over the centuries El Cid has re mained Spain’s premium folk hero. He was in fact a warrior for hire, although his most effective services were under the royal banners. He also found time to fight and lead effectively at the head of the Granada standards.<br />
Self-enriched mercenary Diaz did perform mightily in Spain’s behalf regarding the winning or holding of key points, such as Valencia. Fletcher states that the record establishes Alfonso VI as “one of the greatest rulers of the age” who served Spain well. El Cid did become a trusted and martial vital servant to Alphonso, a monarch without a son.<br />
Upon the death of Alphonso VII in 1157, his dominions were divided into the separate kingdoms of Leon and Castile. In 1212 Alfonso VIII won a decisive battle against the Moors at Las Navas de Tolosa.<br />
Alphonso VIII died in 1214 and Henry I became King of Castile. Fernando (Ferdinand) III reunited the crowns of Leon and Castile in 1230, upon Henry’s death. The Spaniards built upon this strength, pushing a crusading reconquest deep into Spain’s southern regions. In 1236 Ferdinand III conquered Cordoba, and retook Seville the following year. The time had arrived when the Christian fortunes were not again to be reversed. But who, in effect, did constitute this once-surging but now reduced Moorish presence?<br />
As articulated in the July 1995 issue of The Barnes Review (“The Untold Story of Othello” by John Tiffany), “the Moors” were indeed tribes of Arabs and tribes of white Berbers. They were not in any way “blackamoors,” as William Shakespeare (his reasons being continually argued) chose to portray the famed but fictional Othello.<br />
The white-Arabic Moorish holdings in Spain, often mercurial and piecemeal in their territorial nature as implied above, lasted for almost four centuries. Their cultural and artistic legacy would be as permanent as it is undeniable.<br />
In Farewell Espana—The World of the Sephardim Remembered, author Howard M. Sachar noted that within the Moslem-Berber Moorish communities of both North Africa and southern Spain there were a significant minority of Jews. Across the thin Mediterranean divide from Spain, these Jews were concentrated mostly in the Atlas Mountain range of Morocco and Algeria. In the 14th century, particularly after Spain’s widespread 1391 folk outbursts against the Jewish presence, a large number of the more affluent Jews from Castile, Aragon and the Balearic Islands made their way back to the above Jewish enclaves.<br />
In The Expulsion of the Jews—500 Years of Exodus author Yale Strom wrote that the name Sephardim had its origins in reference to a country to which Jews exiled from Jerusalem moved. He continued: “Consequently, following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1496, the Jews from the Iberian peninsula—and their descendants—were called Sephardim.”<br />
As stated in The Spanish World by J. H. Elliott, by the late 14th century, “growing hostility against Jews exploded in the Hispanic kingdoms, where they already suffered from legal disabilities” that barred them from many official positions. Toward the middle of the 15th century another, and quite bloody wave of anti-Jewish violence on the part of the people (whether instigated, spontaneous or both), began in Andalusia.<br />
The 1391 risings against the Jews had led to a unique Spanish development. Large numbers of Jews, at the instigation of the clergy, became converts to Chris tianity—conversos. Those embracing the Church (although the majority did so in a most pragmatic spirit) enjoyed social and professional relief. These rather massive play-act conversions were evidently well meant as both a conversion vehicle and a social discord dampener. However, the Spaniard in the street, Juan Q. Sanchez, if you will, was largely unimpressed, and not at all respectful of the country’s “instant Christians.” In 1449 major rioting against them erupted once more, in Toledo. Part of the problem, as seen by some contemporary Spaniards, may have been that, conversos or not, their numbers were far too many.<br />
In Isabel the Queen, author Peggy K. Liss points out that during the centuries of the Roman Empire (thus prior to the Moorish incursions), Spain’s Jewish pop ulation had become the largest in Europe. Evidently the largely agrarian Spaniards did not require the immediate prompting of churchmen or noblemen (although such was dispensed to varying degrees) to perceive these aliens as aliens of a most particular stripe. Among the overwhelmingly sympathetic post-World War II authors addressing questions relative to the Jews in earlier Spain, Liss wrote that, in the time of Alfonso X (r. 1252-1284), the Spanish folk perception was that “Jews only existed because they had refused to be freed (from Satanic influences); thus they were still in thrall to the Devil, indeed prominent among those sinners who positively aided him and swelled his army in the battle for souls.”<br />
Many have theorized through the centuries that an at least partial factor relative to societal anti-Semitism in Spain and elsewhere is the general sense that Judaism constitutes large parts of tribal cultism and contains minimal spiritual qualities. In The Early History of God, author Mark S. Smith (assistant professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University) concludes that ancient Israelite monotheism was not an outright rejection of foreign, pagan gods. Judaism was, Smith concluded, “an internal evolution toward the establishment of a distinctly separate Israeli identity and the recognition of a single, if vague, universal deity.”<br />
Smith quotes Lydus, a sixth century AD Greek philosopher: “There has been and is much disagreement among theologians about the god honored among the Hebrews.” Smith found that the view expressed by Lydus is as current today as when the Greek wrote it. Thus, in earlier Spain as in subsequent societies, respect for a generally accepted faith (the West’s own no-quarter religious wars being noted) did not act as even a partial shield for those within the fold of what, in recent years, has been referred to insensitively as a “gutter religion.” In any event the Moorish era swelled considerably a Jewish presence already long established.<br />
As stated above, the Visigoth political structure virtually vanished from Spain. But the monastic network they had largely emplaced continued to serve in areas that had come under Moorish domain. They stood somewhat in the manner of cavalry posts on our 19th century western frontier, as points of strength amid an often hostile landscape.<br />
The link between the Spaniards and the monkish enclaves was temporal and practical as well as spiritual. The monasteries, often well endowed, served as non-interest charging banks to Spaniards of means, as advanced teachers of farming methods to the peasantry, and as breeders of fine equestrian stock. For these as well as for spiritual reasons, they became centers of hatred within the breasts of Spain’s antagonists. It was an animosity that would not ebb with time, as witnessed by the unspeakable outrages committed against monasteries, churches, and their religious personages by the “Republican” forces in the latter 1930s.<br />
Since the reign of Alfonso X, Jewish communities were treated as royal protectorates; separate in matters of taxes, administrative matters and culture. By the early 15th century royal regents issued or reissued stringent ordinances regarding Jews and Moslems. This severity reached a point where Jews were obliged to wear red clothing patches, and were forbidden to sell food, clothing or medicine to Christians.<br />
They were not to give their children Chris tian names nor to employ Christians as tenant farmers or day laborers. This latter inconvenience was particularly severe from a functional standpoint, as were the merchant trade restrictions. In addition, from Rome, Pope Benedict XIII issued a bull prohibiting Jews from having Talmuds or Hebrew books. The sum of it prompted many Jews to move from Spain’s Christian environs to Moor-held Granada, North Africa and various non-Spanish European locales.<br />
In his The Spanish Centuries, Alan Lloyd offers two quotes attributed not to individuals, but as the summations of widely held Spanish sentiments:<br />
“They possess the fat of the land and live in greater prosperity than the natives, though neither tilling and sowing, nor building and fighting, nor engaging in honest labor.”<br />
“By incessant scheming, they carry off the fruits of every man’s toil, enjoying power, favor and riches.”<br />
Lloyd wrote it was also perceived that “learned and highly placed” Christians who frequented the company of the Marranos (another term for actual or feigned Jewish converts) became “gluttons and big eaters, never losing their Jewish tastes in food . . . and their houses smelled foul in consequence, while they themselves developed the same malodor as the Jews.” There was then, even following the device of conversion, a popular animosity, the intensity of which has been reached in other ages and in other societies.<br />
Most historians see the 1492 decree of Jewish expulsion as primarily motivated by Ferdinand. In 1486, a member of the Inquisition that had been structured largely to effect conversions of both Moors and Jews was murdered in Zara goza by Jewish conversos. Popular riots against the Jews ensued, and Ferdinand ordered the Jews of Zaragoza expelled. Thus, even under benevolent monarchs who had both Jews and converso Jews in positions of high trust, the Jewish population did not feel secure.<br />
<b>T</b>he Jews, whose suspicion, disdain and even hatred of nationalism would grow through the centuries, had welcomed the 1469 Castile-Aragon union that would, in effect, create Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella became joint sovereigns in 1474. Jane S. Gerber wrote in her The Jews of Spain that the Israelites in Iberia felt that the sum effect would prove stabilizing in their behalf: “From their tragic past experience as a small, vulnerable minority in medieval Europe, they learned that their best hope for security lay with a strong central power that could keep order.”<br />
Here, in so many words, was an attempt in Spain to repeat a pattern employed before and since: To bring the royal or governing parties of a particular nation into a situation of reliance and indebtedness, thereby assuring (or hoping to assure) official protection against seemingly perpetual folk uprisings.<br />
When Ferdinand and Isabella came to power, such figures as the queen’s personal physician, the learned Lorenzo Badoc, were Jewish. Beyond this, the new sovereigns had made clear their displeasure regarding any violence or expressions of negative sentiment aimed at Jews. Time, experience, and the counter-influences of prominent anti-Jewish figures within and outside the Church would temper this initial royal sentiment.<br />
No doubt many uncelebrated minor incidents, now lost in history’s dust, contributed to Spain’s final decision to expel. But occasional major flare-ups were to continue. Cordoba was a city with a large population of conversos that not only tended toward wealth but were plentiful in that city’s government. They were under the protection of that city’s lord, Alonso de Aguilar, a man belonging to one of Spain’s proudest families. During the Lenten period of 1473, the Cofradia de la Caridad, a fraternity composed essentially of artisans, held a procession through Cordoba’s streets.<br />
From an upper window of a converso home, a person said to be a young girl tossed a bucket of liquid. Whether or not it was simply dirty water, it splashed over a statue of the Blessed Mother. Within moments, it spread through the street congregation that a Jewess had thrown a bucket of urine on the processional statue. From peasants to knights and squires, the populace rose against the conversos, sacking and burning their houses and killing a number of them.<br />
In 1973 (two years before the death of Francisco Franco, which would signal the “modernization” of Spain under a quasi-socialistic government and a very liberal King Juan Carlos) Pedro de Escavias wrote of the Cordoba uprising in his book Repertorio de principes de Espana: “And from the uprising a fiery spark leaped out from the city to all the neighboring places.” Isabella was certainly more hopeful than her husband of quelling the growing animosity, by way of persuading conversos to convert in fact. The queen was instrumental in having the archbishop of the vast province of Seville circulate pastoral letters relative to the sacraments, Church observances and the principles of Christian life.<br />
In Spain and the Jews Haim Beinart, a professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, wrote that “the first steps to solve the converso problem were taken by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1477 . . . the Spanish Inquisition, like its forerunner the Papal Inquisition founded by Pope Gregory IX in the thirties of the 13th century, was a Church instruction whose purpose was to solve a socio-religious problem within the framework of the state . . . its objective being to extirpate what was considered by Church and State as a heresy and to put a stop to the conversos’ relapse and [their] return to the faith and ways of life of their forefathers.”<br />
The extent and intricacies of this situation—problem were so vast and complex within Spain, with both contemporary and subsequent sources pointing spotlights of guilt in the direction of all involved, that it is beyond extended discussion in an article. It is enough to observe that, for all the cruelties and tragedies that pertained, there is a sense of the ridiculous. Attempts toward wholesale Jewish conversion, both benevolent and vindictive, assumed a capacity to remake a people with unique mores and characteristics. No doubt blinded by the hope of spiritual intercession, those who would effect true mass conversions neglected to consider the realities of mortal beings. The chances of success were no greater than would be an attempt to turn Koreans into Danes.<br />
Thus the year 1492 arrived. Ferdinand and Isabella would set history onto new paths. In 1483 the Genoan Cristoforo Colombo had appealed to King John II of Portugal for financing the expedition to the west. Portugal had already financed expeditions to the Azores. For whatever reasons, Columbus was rejected following apparently serious consideration. In 1486, through the mediation of Fran ciscan monks, he submitted his project to reach Asia to Ferdinand and Isabella.<br />
In 1492, the initially discouraged Genoan was resummoned to the Spanish court. His first voyage under the colors of Spain to the Caribbean lasted from August 3, 1492 to March 15, 1493.<br />
In 1492 the final siege of Granada commenced when its Moslem leader Boabdil recanted his promise to turn over the city when the Moor-held eastern provinces fell to the crown. In 1491 the monarchs had called up their nobles and knights for the final push. All men of Castile aged 18 to 60 were ordered to enlist in military companies. As the Spanish encamped before Granada, Ferdinand knighted his son, Juan, who had just turned 13. The young man was now a caballero, who would accompany his father on future expeditions and who had the power to knight the young sons of grandees.<br />
The Venetian ambassador to Spain, Andrea Navagiero, was present at the actual fighting. Killed in action was always, and always will be, killed in action. But at Granada the personal aspects, the color, romance and chivalry were in magnificent contrast to the modern age “Desert Storm” tech-sterility of war by unisex military persons. Navagiero wrote:<br />
There were daily encounters, and every day there was some fine feat of arms. All the nobility of Spain was there, and all were competing in the conquest of fame. The Queen and her court urged each one on. There was not a lord present who was not enamored of one of the ladies of the Queen, and these ladies were not only witnesses to what was done upon the field, but often handed the sallying warriors their weapons, granting them at the same time some favor, together with a request that they show by their deeds how great was the power of their love. What man so vile, so lacking in spirit, that he would not have defeated every powerful foe and redoubtable adversary . . . one can say that this war was won by love.<br />
The Moors signed the final documents of surrender on November 25, 1492, and those wishing to return to North Africa were granted 65 days in which to depart. To those who remained in Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella guaranteed their lives, property and a promise to respect, under a Castilian governor, their right of religion and of education under Moslem doctos and alfaquies. In 1502 the Moors would be expelled from Castile.<br />
Earlier, in March 1492, the terms of the Jewish expulsion had been relatively lenient. But their parting situation, de facto, was less kind. Their goods and properties were relinquished at cut rates, as they hastened to meet a July 1492 departure deadline. Some Spaniards of higher caste, no doubt the Queen herself, sympathized considerably with their situation. Others felt that the Jews had, over the centuries, taken from Spain and befouled Spain to such a degree that they were exiting under most lenient terms.<br />
The contemporary Jewish writer Yale Strom wrote that the “expulsion sent 200,000 [other estimates run as high as 250,000.—Ed.] Sephardim along perilous paths to uncertain futures. They formed a new dispersion within a dispersion. Not only did they long to be in the land of Israel someday, but, because of their long sojourn in Spain, they wished to continue their Sephardic culture.”<br />
The Sephardim assimilated other Jews, living along the Aegean coast and in the Balkans. The bulk of the exiles from Spain spread largely throughout the then-Ottoman Empire. They would, of course, enter England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, etc. But their trials and those of other Jews living within Christian and Moslem civilizations would be plagued by national and local animosities not unlike those they had experienced in Spain.<br />
<br />
Selected Bibliography<br />
Boxer, C. R., The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825, Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., London, 1969.<br />
Elliott, J.H., editor, The Spanish World, Thames and Hidson Ltd., London, 1991.<br />
Fletcher, Richard, The Quest for El Cid, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, 1990.<br />
Gerber, Jane S., The Jews of Spain—A History of the Sephardic Experience, MacMillan, Inc., New York, 1992.<br />
Hayes, Carleton J., A Political History of Modern Europe (Vol. I), The MacMillan Co., New York, 1932.<br />
Kedourie, Elie, editor, Spain and the Jews—The Sephardi Experience 1492 and After, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1992.<br />
Langer, Prof. William L., compiler and editor, An Encyclopedia of World History, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1940.<br />
Liss, Peggy K., Isabel the Queen, Oxford University Press, New York/London, 1992.<br />
Sachar, Howard M., Farewell Espana: The World of the Sephardim Remembered, Alfred A. Knopf, Incl., New York, 1994.<br />
Strom, Yale, The Expulsion of Jews—<br />
500 Years of Exodus, Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., New York, 1992.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-34041352746769592972010-03-22T05:54:00.001-07:002010-03-22T05:54:40.066-07:00Who Ordered the Death of French Admiral Darlan?<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By Alec de Montmorency</div>The “one man, one gun, no conspiracy” explanation of assassinations, used in the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin L. King, was nothing new. It was employed in the assassination of a leading French nationalist in Algeria during World War II. Following are the reminiscences of a journalist who knew Adm. Jean François Darlan and who questions the circumstances of his death.<br />
<div align="LEFT"> Check any American or British encyclopedia and you’ll learn that French Adm. Jean François Darlan was gunned down in his Algiers headquarters on Christmas Eve 1942. The assassin was described as “a young French royalist named Bonnier de la Chapelle” who “apparently was enraged by the bargain that put Darlan in charge of civil affairs in French North Africa in return for his assistance during the Allied invasion.” Chapelle was executed, shutting his mouth forever. But questions remained.</div>I have been trying to supply some of the answers—and ask some of the questions that were neglected—for more than 50 years. My book, The Enigma of Admiral Darlan (E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1943), was “medicated” before going to print by the Office of War Information in January of 1943. The U.S. government excised parts of the work to make it “better.”<br />
There was nothing I could do at the time. I was in the United States under sufferance of the government. The editors at Dutton made it clear that Washington had the power to suppress the entire book and even the publishing house itself, if it wished.<br />
Among the suppressed parts was why Adm. Darlan decided to leave for North Africa when he did. Here is the truth, a story reported nowhere else.<br />
The voyage of Adm. Darlan to Algiers was decided on suddenly after a report from Senator Berard, the French ambassador in Rome, was received in Vichy. In it, the French envoy related how he had been called to the Vatican, together with other foreign envoys, including the British minister to the Holy See who later became the last Duke of Leeds and the German envoy, father of a future president of his country—Ernst von Weizsäcker.<br />
Pope Pius XII had summoned them to hear a phonograph record of an address by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the people of French North Africa, inviting them to greet the U.S. forces who came to rescue them at the last moment from the Nazi invasion which had been due to start at any moment.<br />
The situation explained itself. FDR had recorded his address several months earlier and sent a canned copy to Gibraltar to be broadcast at the opportune moment. How the Vatican acquired a copy was never revealed, but it was said in intelligence circles at the time that, “What the Vatican doesn’t know is hardly worth knowing.”<br />
In the background was the continuing demand by Josef Stalin that the Allies open a second front to relieve German pressure on Russia, where it was costing him a million men a month to delay the advance of the German forces. The U.S. Army was not ready for such an operation; Winston Churchill had refused to go it alone with UK and Dominion forces.<br />
And so it was decided to invade French North Africa to clear the southern sea route for supplies to the Soviet Union. With the information on the coming U.S.-led Allied invasion, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the leader of the French government at Vichy, and Adm. Darlan had held a council of war and it was decided that Darlan should go to French North Africa and take charge.<br />
Churchill in those days had a secret envoy in Vichy, a French Canadian official who was attached to the Canadian Trade Commission in France; a man named Jean Dupuy. He had a diplomatic passport and was shuttling between Vichy and London, taking a train to Lisbon in neutral Portugal, and being picked up there by a British aircraft.<br />
In Vichy he had access to the French defense establishment and he photocopied maps and documents mostly related to military installations in France, which would prove important to the Allied war effort against the Axis.<br />
The relations between Darlan and Churchill had been greatly improved when the Frenchman learned that the British attack on the French fleet at Mers-El-Kebir, near Oran, had been engineered by agents of FDR, and included the Bolshevik spies in Whitehall. They had been instructed by their opposite numbers in the U.S. State Department. British Adm. Somerville had acted on orders from the Whitehall bunch.<br />
Meanwhile, it was agreed between Petain and Darlan that the latter would offer Churchill a deal similar to the one struck between King Christian of Den mark and Hitler in the spring of 1940: Germany could militarily occupy Den mark without opposition, but would not interfere with Danish internal policy. Relative to France, the British Navy and other units, led by Admiral Cunningham, an old friend of Darlan, would be allowed into Algiers. In turn, Churchill would press FDR for a Danish-like deal, avoiding French bloodshed.<br />
FDR refused. He had already made his deal with Stalin. Casablanca, the point at which the U.S. forces were to invade, was left out of the deal. It was there that Robert Murphy, Roosevelt’s man, who circulated freely through French North Africa as U.S. Consul General in France, had reached General Bethouart, who commanded the French army in Morocco. The latter was going to take power and facilitate the landing of U.S. forces.<br />
But the French Navy had been tapping the telephones of important North African officials, military and civilian. The telephone intercepts proved useful. Through them, the French Navy had learned of the deal. Gen. Bethouart was arrested.<br />
Presently a force of U.S. warships steamed toward Casablanca. It had been dispatched in conjunction with the U.S. deal with General Bethouart, and a broadcast of FDR’s message referred to above.<br />
The U.S. naval force commander had been told that the deal had been made. All he had to do was to sail into Casablanca’s harbor, be welcomed by the French, and establish an American presence. The approaching Americans had no way of knowing that the French Navy wasn’t in on the deal, and had in fact arrested Gen. Bethouart. Darlan’s decision was to resist the Americans.<br />
As the U.S. naval force approached, the French Navy was put on ready status. Jean Bart, an unfinished but heavily armored battleship of the Richelieu class, outmatched the ships in the U.S. squadron. Jean Bart was fitted with eight 15 inch guns and nine six inch guns; her full load displacement set for 47,500 tons.<br />
Although unable to put to sea under her own power, the Jean Bart’s 15 inch, ton-and-a-half shells played havoc with the approaching U.S. ships. This proved quite a surprise to the U.S. commander who, after his ships took some hits, decided upon a strategic withdrawal until he could consult with headquarters. That short but memorable naval battle, a U.S. defeat administered by the Vichy French, is another story never told in history books. (Regarding this engagement, Allied headquarters stated on November 11th, “A major naval battle has taken place along the Moroccan coast between American and French naval units.” It further stated that the French resistance was mainly in the area of Casablanca and that “the French battleship Jean Bart directed heavy gunfire against units of the U.S. Navy until the battleship was set on fire by [dive] bombers or artillery fire.”-Ed.)<br />
It was at this time that the Darlan-Clark Accords, crafted on the Danish model, were signed.<br />
The Clark of the agreement was U.S. Gen. Mark Clark, a tall, stoop shouldered, long nosed, not-too-bright individual. Following the war Clark contacted the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) to serialize his diary of the war years. John Wheeler, the owner of NANA, knowing of my interest and involvement, let me have a look at the stuff. Two entries in it attracted my attention.<br />
First was a deposition by the chief of police of Algiers in which he stated that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had OKed $38,000 to finance the assassination of Adm. Darlan. Second, according to Clark’s entries: “We put out a press release . . . that we would spare no effort in finding out whether it was the Nazis or the Fascists who did it [assassinated Darlan.—Ed.].”<br />
The New York Times ran that wartime diary. I looked carefully through the series as printed, but could find no trace of those two entries. Evidently a government censor had put the kibosh on anything which would embarrass Ike and/or his aides for their part in the Darlan assassination.<br />
Sometime in January of 1943 I met the chaplain of the battleship Richelieu, which had come to New York, while the cruiser Montcalm docked at Philadelphia. The gentleman had been the chaplain assigned to the battleship Bretagne when the Royal Navy fleet under Admiral Somerville had attacked the French fleet of Admiral Gensoul at Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, sinking the disarmed Bretagne. The chaplain was ashore at the time. He told me he had officiated at the funeral services for 978 French sailors who perished on the Bretagne.<br />
More to the point, he gave some interesting details regarding the murder of Adm. Darlan. It seems the chief of police of Algiers had come to see Darlan and had told him that Gen. Eisenhower had OKed $38,000 to finance the latter’s murder. With that information, Darlan had gone to see his old World War I friend, Admiral Cunningham. The latter told Darlan to write a letter to Churchill, giving the details of the plot, which Cunningham sent in British naval code to the UK’s wartime leader.<br />
Upon receipt of this message, Churchill called a special secret session of the British Parliament—the only such event in the two wars—and read the French admiral’s letter to the assembled members. Then he said a few words about Darlan. He mentioned how, at the time of the evacuation of Dunkirk, he (Churchill) had agreed with the French government that the French and British combatants would board the evacuating sea craft arm-in-arm.<br />
Then, at the last moment, Darlan had sent a supplemental order to Admiral Abrial, who was in charge of the evacuation. The order said that the British would embark first. As a result, more than two-thirds of the British forces were landed in England by the rescuing vessels and only one-seventh of their heroic French comrades.<br />
The rescuing of the veteran British troops left Britain better prepared for the anticipated German attempt to invade the island kingdom. Churchill also added other praises of Darlan. Then, in a speech that reads like an obituary, Churchill also spoke of Gen. Charles De Gaulle, calling him a “mean character, devoured by ambition,” who had sent a team of assassination experts to North Africa to eliminate Darlan.<br />
Churchill knew that Stalin demanded the removal of Darlan and that Roosevelt had acquiesced. This was the opinion of everyone in power in Vichy France and North Africa: Stalin ordered the hit; Roosevelt gave the OK and Churchill was unable to prevent it.<br />
Following the playing of the canned speech of President Roosevelt to the French-speaking populace of North Africa, Pius XII told the assembled diplomats: “Note the accent of sincerity.” The Pope had come to admire FDR’s speaking power.<br />
The aforementioned Robert Murphy, who had come to North Africa to prepare for the Allied invasion, was in charge of assassination arrangements. He had traveled to Spanish Morocco to see the Count of Paris, the French Pretender to the throne (who had many fanatical supporters in North Africa) and had inveigled him into the operation, bringing him back to Algiers. Thus, the “French royalist” description of the assassin was set in place.<br />
The Count of Paris was the reputed son of the Duke de Guise. The Duchess of Guise had a lengthy disagreement with her husband, during which time she had an affair with a Comte de Bernys. Later, after Bernys was killed in a duel, she had become reconciled with her duke, who agreed to recognize her son and made him Count of Paris.<br />
I got this story from Commandante (Major) Acuna y Guerra and his wife when I worked for the New York Times in Spain. Acuna y Guerra had been stationed in Larache, in Spanish Morocco, when that happened.<br />
In regard to my original manuscript on Darlan: I had originally typed three copies and had submitted two of them to noted publishers in New York and had heard no more about them. The third and last one I gave to a friend who worked for a publisher. That was in late spring of 1942. In December 1942 Darlan was murdered. In January 1943 I got word from E.P. Dutton that they were interested, and I visited their offices.<br />
George Acklom, the editor, who was about to retire, asked me if I could bring my story to an end—Darlan’s death. He said the publisher, a Mr. MacCrae, had been very impressed by the fact that the personnel had been eager to read my manuscript, even to using their lunch hour to do so.<br />
Within 20 days I had the story finished, having added what the chaplain of the Richelieu told me, and we signed the contract: I was going to get $500 when the story went to the printers. I met Mr. MacCrae, who shook hands with me.<br />
He soon fell ill and died the same year. In the interregnum, things happened: The Office of War Information (OWI) branch of the State Department intervened. Its people were less than diplomatic. They told E.P. Dutton’s editors that changes had to be made in my text to make it acceptable. They told the editors that I was evidently a French legitimist (i.e., nationalist) and had anti-democratic views and background. The OWI turned out to be wrongly named: It was really the Office of War Misinformation.<br />
The OWI operated like a Mafia, in great secrecy. They did not want to do the alterations themselves, for fear that it would get out and precipitate a hue and cry about government censorship. There was, after all, freedom of the press in this country. Muzzling the press was something the Nazis and Fascists did. Benito Mussolini had been reported saying that, “the press will be free when the journalists who attack me are not.”<br />
And in Germany, there was Paul-Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, but there was none of that in this country. What E.P. Dutton had to do, if they did not want to have their vital quota of paper (rationed due to the war) cut or eliminated entirely—a death warrant for a publishing house—was to hire someone to go over the manuscript and make the proper changes. They were to pay this person themselves, so as not to involve the U.S. government in such skullduggery.<br />
They were very angry about what I had written about Eisenhower. They were grooming him as a future president. In reality, of course, Ike was a smooth and efficient desk officer and uniformed diplomat, only too willing to carry out any career advancing schemes hatched from above. Ike had been enlisted by FDR for a special job—to help carry out the president’s agreement with Stalin.<br />
From a legal standpoint, I knew that the U.S. military, as a matter of wartime security, could remove the names of any U.S. warships from any description of war operations that was to be published in this country. They had already done so, removing the names of the USS Texas and other U.S. ships that I mentioned having been hit by the Jean Bart in the Battle of Casa blanca—a sea battle that, to most of the world, never occurred.<br />
What the government did was illegal and I pointed that out to the editors at E.P. Dutton. I still believed the American propaganda about freedom of the press. I am no longer so naive.<br />
After the war I learned that the Germans had a different spin on the Darlan assassination. According to Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo, it was Churchill who arranged the assassination, even as he was crying crocodile tears for Darlan in the Parliament. As described in the remarkable book Ges tapo Chief by Gregory Douglas,<sup>1</sup> which contains the edited transcript of the 1948 interrogation of Müller, Ger many intercepted a number of radiophone conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill. In one of those, Darlan is discussed.<br />
FDR, in fact, accuses Churchill of the assassination in one of two conversations intercepted on July 29, 1943. Following is part of that transcript. “A” stands for “America,” meaning FDR, and “B” stands for “Britain,” meaning Churchill.<br />
A: I had in mind that, should we find ourselves in agreement here [on what should be done about Benito Mussolini, that we could have him removed while still in their [the anti-Mussolini Italians. —Ed.] custody. At the same time, we could make very public de mands for his surrender for a trial. This would be a little smoother than the Darlan business . . .<br />
B: I cannot but take exception to that reference, Franklin. That’s over and done with now and our people certainly are not at all interested in the well-justified fate of a notorious Nazi bootlicker.<br />
A: I am well aware of your views on the Darlan business and I know you are aware of mine. It’s well known to my intelligence circles and elsewhere that you had the man murdered. We have the assassination weapon and the use of American shells has not been appreciated.<sup>2</sup> The point here is that the death of Darlan has been laid at our doors, or at least yours, and all the denials have had very little effect. If Darlan had been shot by a Frenchman . . . while still in France, we would have no lingering doubts. If Mussolini were disposed of while still in Italian custody, there would never be a doubt as to who killed him. And this doubt would not arise later to disturb the Italian voters here . . .<br />
In the mid-1950s, Life magazine published the previously mentioned secret speech given by Winston Churchill to the British Parliament about Adm. Darlan. In it (the Life version), there was a note by the editors of the magazine to the effect that, for “important reasons,” they were omitting one passage of the secret speech. It was what Churchill had said about De Gaulle.<br />
According to what Adm. Cunningham had told Darlan—and the latter had re peated to the chaplain of the Rich elieu—Churchill had informed Parlia ment about De Gaulle sending some of his subordinates to Algiers to help arrange the murder of Darlan. And he told the British legislators about the dangers to the Allied cause if Darlan were to be assassinated—plus what he thought of De Gaulle himself, as detailed above.<br />
Some time later, at Casablanca, where FDR and Churchill met to decide who was going to lead the Free French forces, there were two official candidates for the job. One was Gen. Giraud, who had made a sensational escape from a Ger man fortress; the other was Gen. De Gaulle.<br />
Adm. Darlan had remarked about Giraud, who was serving under him in Algiers, “brave as his saber and stupid as his boots.” De Gaulle was the front runner.<br />
Then an aide of De Gaulle’s came on the scene, confronting Roosevelt and Churchill and telling them in tremolo voice:<br />
“ . . . De Gaulle . . . he’s a new Joan of Arc . . .”<br />
Churchill remarked in weary tones: “I know it, but I can’t get my damn bishops to burn him.”<br />
FDR roared with delight. But De Gaulle had the inside track and won the job.<br />
<br />
FOOTNOTES<br />
1. Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas, hardback, 288 pages with index and notes, is available for $35.95, postage paid, from Liberty Library, 300 Independence Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. 20003.<br />
2. According to Douglas, Roosevelt supported the use of Vichy administrators for newly-captured, former French territory, but Churchill strongly supported De Gaulle, who was opposed to the use of Vichy people. The struggle between FDR and Churchill culminated in the murder of Darlan by a young Frenchman who, Douglas asserts, had been trained by the British. The murder weapon, a British-made Welrod pistol, came into American hands and was last known to be at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-66034307879400096702010-03-22T05:42:00.001-07:002010-03-22T05:42:15.317-07:00Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By Robert John</div>Eighty years ago, the British government—through international bankers—brokered away the land and the future of the people of Palestine in order to create a national home for the Jewish people. The president and Congress of the United States underwrote the World War I deal, which would cost Britain mightily and which continues to cost American taxpayers well over $4 billion dollars each year. But in terms of what it will cost in the future, in terms of both U.S. treasure and blood, is incalculable.<br />
<div align="LEFT">As a result of a British government pledge to international Zionists in 1917, millions of Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes and lands and their descendants are today refugees. They have suffered eight decades of the most severe and oppressive military occupation. Thousands have been killed and untold numbers tortured to death. Dozens of Arab towns and villages have been obliterated; replaced by Jewish settlements financed by American taxpayer dollars. The lands, farms, homes and moveable property of Palestinians have been confiscated.<sup>1</sup> Water for their farms is diverted to Israeli communal farms, leaving Palestinians literally high and dry, their crops withered and their fields turned to dust.</div>American airplanes paid for by American taxpayers, piloted by Israelis, have bombed Palestinians and dropped American napalm on Palestinian civilians. During the Palestinian uprising (intifada, literally, “throwing off”), hundreds of children and young people were beaten to death, while thousands more suffered permanent damage from head injuries as a result of clubbings and shootings with “rubber” bullets. A deliberate policy of breaking their legs and arms was instituted by the late General Yitzhak Rabin.<br />
In area wars resulting from the British pledge and its implementation, millions of the Palestinians’ neighbors have been involved. In 1995, retired Israeli Brigadier General Arieh Biroh spoke of Egyptian prisoners taken by his unit in 1956: “We did not know what to do with them. There was no choice but to kill them . . . This is not such a big deal if you take into consideration that I slept well after having escaped the crematories of Auschwitz.”<sup>2</sup><br />
These endless atrocities and violations of human rights, and more, have occurred with the military and political support of the government of the United States of America, and $100 billion from American taxpayers. The ease with which huge military and other Israeli appropriations (monies not expended in the interests of this nation) pass through Congress shouts volumes regarding the cupidity of lawmakers and the media; not to mention the ignorance and indifference of vast numbers of U.S. citizens footing the bills.<br />
The pledge of the British government—the brief Balfour Declaration—ranks with the most extraordinary documents produced by any government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the Foreign Secretary of the government of His Britannic Majesty King George V, the largest empire the world has ever known, to Lord Rothschild, the leader in Britain of that international banking house.<br />
The noted Jewish author Arthur Koestler wrote that in the letter “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.” More than that, the land was still part of the empire of a fourth, namely Turkey. It read:<br />
Foreign Office,<br />
November 2nd, 1917<br />
Dear Lord Rothschild,<br />
I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:<br />
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement [sic] of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”<br />
I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Elders.<br />
<div align="RIGHT">Yours sincerely,</div><div align="RIGHT">Arthur James Balfour</div>Seven months had passed since America entered the war. The text of the Balfour Declaration, seemingly so simple, had been prepared over more than a year. It was composed by some of the craftiest of legal draftsmen, including Louis D. Brandeis, a leading advocate of Zionism, who had been confirmed as an associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court in June 1916. Justice Brandeis had been recommended by Samuel Untermyer (sometimes spelled Untermeyer; it’s the same man), a leading Zionist attorney, to whom President Woodrow Wilson was indebted for political services rendered.<br />
On October 16, 1917, after a conference with “Colonel” Edward M. House, Wilson’s closest adviser, British Ambassador Wiseman had telegraphed to Foreign Secretary Balfour’s private secretary: “Colonel House put the formula before the President, who approves of it but asks that no mention of his approval shall be made when His Majesty’s Government makes formula public, as he had arranged that American Jews shall then ask him for approval, which he will publicly give here.”<br />
Years of scheming were behind the letter’s three paragraphs. Now there were certain courtesies to be effected in moving to the next stage of top-level manipulation. On November 12, 1917, Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of a Jewish state in 1948, wrote a letter of thanks to Brandeis:<br />
I need hardly say how we all rejoice in this great event and how grateful we all feeI to you for the valuable and efficient help which you have lent to the cause in the critical hour.<br />
Once more, dear Mr. Brandeis, I beg to tender to you our heartiest congratulations not only on my own behalf but also on behalf of our friends here and may this epoch-making be a beginning of great work for our sorely tried people and also of mankind.<br />
The other principal Allied governments were approached by the Zionist representative, Nahum Sokolow, with requests for pronouncements similar to the Balfour Declaration. The French simply supported the British government in a short paragraph on February 9, 1918. Italian support was contained in a note dated May 9, 1918 to Sokolow by its am bas sador in London, in which he stressed the religious divisions of communities, grouping “a Jewish national centre” with “existing religious communities.”<br />
On August 31, 1918 President Wilson wrote to Rabbi Stephen Wise “to express the satisfaction I have felt in the progress of the Zionist movement since Great Britain’s approval of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Brandeis joined in Zionist delight at the president’s endorsement and wrote: “Since the president’s letter, anti-Zionism is pretty near disloyalty and non-Zionism is slackening.” Non-Zionist Jews now had a hard time if they wanted to disseminate their views; if they could not support Zionism they were asked to remain silent.<br />
On June 30, 1922 the following resolution was adopted by the United States Congress:<br />
Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.<br />
The Resolution was introduced by Hamilton Fish (R-N.Y). His interpretation of this action was clarified 38 years later, when the World Zionists held their 25th Congress in Jerusalem. David Ben Gurion, as prime minister of Israel, stated in his address: “Every religious Jew has daily violated the precepts of Judaism by remaining in the Diaspora.” Citing the authority of the Jewish sages, Ben Gurion added: “Whoever dwells outside the land of Israel is considered to have no god.”<br />
He continued: “Judaism is in danger of death by strangulation. In the free and prosperous countries it faces the kiss of death, a slow and imperceptible decline into the abyss of assimilation.”<br />
Mr. Hamilton Fish replied: “As author of the first Zionist Resolution patterned on the Balfour Resolution, I denounce and repudiate the Ben Gurion statements as irreconcilable with my Resolution as adopted by Congress, and if they represent the government of Israel and public opinion there, then I shall disavow publicly my support of my own Resolution, as I do not want to be associated with such un-American doctrines.”<br />
The Balfour Declaration is a model of manipulation of people in power, of leverage, of the subvention of national policies to serve special interests that is demonstrated repeatedly, and often clandestinely, in public affairs.<br />
Leaflets containing the World Zionist Congress message were dropped by air on German and Austrian towns and widely distributed through the Jewish belt from Poland to the Black Sea. It was an epochal triumph for Zionism and, some believe, for Jews.<br />
It was decided by the World War I British commander in Palestine, Lord Allenby, that the “Declaration” should not then be published there, as his forces were still south of the Gaza-Beersheba line. They were not published until after the establishment of the Civil Administration in 1920.<br />
Why was the “Declaration” made a year before the end of what was called the Great War? The study of this event provides models of the insider influence that is behind many major policies of governments up to today. Only a sample of the details which I documented in The Palestine Diary (New World Press, revised ed. 1972, 2 vols.) can be given here.<br />
The British people were told at the time that their government’s promise to Lord Rothschild was given as a return for a debt of gratitude which they were supposed to owe to the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, a Russian-born immigrant to Britain from Germany.<br />
This literal horse chestnut propaganda is still carrying on its mission of deception. A review of Bernard Dixon’s book Power Unseen in Scientific Amer i can (Aug. 1994), repeats the author’s recounting of the old canard that the wartime prime minister put to rest long ago. It maintained that Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration to support the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine was extended in gratitude for Weizmann’s bringing to Britain from Germany a process of fermentation of horse chestnuts he was said to have invented. Its purpose was to produce acetone for guncotton, used in enormous quantities in WWI by the Ministry of Munitions.<br />
This story was offered to the press because the real motivation could not be revealed at the time. After World War One, Prime Minster Lloyd George wrote in his Memoirs of the Peace Conference (where, as planned many years before, the Zionists were strongly represented):<br />
There is no better proof of the value of the Balfour Declaration as a military move than the fact that Germany entered into negotiations with Turkey in an endeavor to provide an alternative scheme which would appeal to Zionists. A German-Jewish Society, the V.J.0.D., was formed, and in January 1918, Talaat, the Turkish Grand Vizier, at the instigation of the Germans, gave vague promises of legislation by means of which “all justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to meet their fulfillment.”<br />
Another most cogent reason for the adoption by the Allies of the policy of the Declaration lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had become the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda in Russia. By 1917 they had done much in preparing for that general disintegration of Russian society, later recognized as the Revolution. It was believed that if Great Britain declared for the fulfillment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the Entente [European Allies].<br />
It was believed also that such a declaration would have a potent influence upon world Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Allies the aid of Jewish financial interests. In America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. Such were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British government towards making a contract with Jewry (p. 726).<br />
The government had been headed by Lloyd George, an ambitious and aggressive Welsh politician, since December 1916, when his predecessor Herbert H. Asquith was ousted by a coup de main. George had been legal counsel for the Zionists, and while Minister of Munitions, had assured Chaim Weizmann that “he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine.” George’s choice as his foreign secretary was Arthur Balfour, already known for his Zionist sympathies.<br />
Was the Balfour Declaration made by the British people through their elected Parliament? Parliaments and Congresses may cobble some of the fabric of history, but its designs and the big decisions, even of “democracies,” are made by a very few people with special interests.<br />
Winston Churchill said:<br />
“The Balfour Declaration must, therefore, not be regarded as a promise given from sentimental motives; it was a practical measure taken in the interests of a common cause at a moment when that cause could afford to neglect no factor of moral or material assistance.” Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 July 1922, Winston Churchill asked rhetorically, “Are we to keep our pledge to the Zionists made in 1917? Pledges and promises were made during the war, and they were made, not only on the merits, though I think the merits are considerable. They were made be cause it was considered they would be of value to us in our struggle to win the war. It was considered that the support which the Jews could give us all over the world, and particularly in the United States, and also in Russia, would be a definite palpable advantage. I was not responsible at that time for the giving of those pledges, nor for the conduct of the war of which they were, when given, an integral part. But like other members I supported the policy of the War Cabinet. Like other members, I accepted and was proud to accept a share in those great transactions, which left us with terrible losses, with formidable obligations, but nevertheless with unchallengeable victory.”<br />
If these statements were true, could Germans blame “the Jews” for their defeat in the Great War? What had the Zionists done for Britain? Were there grounds for Lloyd George’s allegation that Germany was considering a bid for Jewish support by a pro-Zionist declaration? These are matters of opinion for further historical analysis. But a Jewish national entity in Palestine was a goal planned by Zionists years before.<br />
From the beginning of the war, the German Ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, was provided, by the Komitee für den Osten, with an adviser on Jewish Affairs (Isaac Straus). When the head of the Zionist Agency in Constantinople appealed in the winter of 1914 to the German Embassy to do what it could to relieve the pressure on the Jews in Palestine, it was reinforced by a similar appeal to Berlin from Bernstorff.<br />
In November 1914, therefore, the Ger man Embassy in Constantinople received instructions to recommend that the Turks sanction the re-opening of the Anglo-Palestine Company’s Bank—a key Zionist institution. In December the embassy made representations which prevented a projected mass deportation from Turkey of Jews of Russian nationality. In February 1915 German influence helped to save a number of Jews in Palestine from imprisonment or expulsion, and “a dozen or twenty times” the Germans intervened with the Turks at the request of the Zionist office in Turkey. The German representations reinforced those of the American ambassador in Turkey (Henry Morgenthau Sr., father of FDR’s treasury secretary). Moreover, both the German consulate in Palestine and the head of the German military mission there frequently exerted their influence on behalf of the Jews.<br />
As the reader will ascertain, a competition for Jewish support between Britain and Germany was being played out. We see its likeness in American politics, as candidates and office holders are pressured to commit themselves to ever-higher levels of support of Israel or other Jewish interests.<br />
The traditional Judaic position, still faithfully followed by some interpreters of the Talmud, is that the Messiah will establish his kingdom in Jerusalem and Jews are forsworn by the Almighty “not to use human forces to bring about the establishment of a state, not to rebel against the nations but to remain loyal citizens, not to leave exile ahead of time. Even if the land be given to us by all of the nations, we are not allowed to accept it. To violate the oaths would result in your flesh made prey as the deer and the antelope in the forest” (Talmud Tractate Ksubos III).<br />
Free thought, peasant liberation and constitutional reform were in the air of mid-19th century eastern Europe, and in 1861 serfdom was abolished in Russia. The spread of emancipation, in cluding auto-emancipation, spread across Europe from west to east.<br />
It was in Minsk, a city of 30,000 inhabitants of whom the great majority were Jews, known among the eastern Jews as “a city and mother in Israel,” that Chaim Weizmann went to school. And in the ferment which Weizmann called a “folk awakening” of the Jewish and Russian masses, the Jewish nationalist dream competed with the Jewish internationalist idea. One led to “Zionism,” a term coined by Dr. Nathan Birnbaum about 1893. The other to the formation in 1897 of the pre-communist “The Jewish Revolutionary Labor Organization (Der Algemeyner Idisher Arbeter Bund). Both movements had in common an idea of “the dignity of manual labor.”<br />
Though “Zion” referred to a geographical location, it functioned as a utopi an conception in the myths of traditionalists, modernists and Zionists alike. It was the reverse of everything rejected in the “Dispersion,” whether oppression or assimilation. The emphasis was on agricultural settlement. Phi lan thropist Baron Edmond de Roths child supported settlement in Palestine, while Baron de Hirsch sponsored settlement mainly in agricultural colonies in Argentina, and also in the United States.<sup>3</sup><br />
The dichotomy between Jewish nationalism and internationalism was addressed by Theodore Herzl (1860-1904). He was of Hungarian Sephardic descent on his rich father’s side, and published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in Vienna in 1896. His anti-assimilationist dictum that “Zionism is a return to the Jewish fold even before it is a return to the Jewish land,” was an expres sion of his own experience. It was extended into the official platform of Zionism as the aim of “strengthening the Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness.”<br />
In his diary Herzl describes submitting his draft proposals to the Rothschild Family Council, noting “I bring to the Rothschilds and the big Jews their historical mission.” The policy for supporters and opponents would be, “I shall welcome all men of goodwill—we must be united—and crush all those of bad.”<br />
Herzl read his manuscript addressed to the Rothschilds to a friend, Meyer-Cohn, who said: “Up till now I have believed that we are not a nation—but more than a nation. I believed that we have the historic mission of being the exponents of a universalism among the nations and therefore were more than a people identified with a specific land.”<br />
Herzl replied: “Nothing prevents us from being and remaining the exponents of a united humanity, when we have a country of our own. To fulfill this mission we have to remain literally planted among the nations who hate and despise us. If in our present circumstances, we wanted to bring about the unity of mankind independent of national boundaries, we would have to combat the ideal of patriotism. The latter, however, will prove stronger than we for innumerable years to come.”<sup>4</sup><br />
It was Herzl who created the first Zionist Congress, held August 29-31, 1897 at Basel, Switzerland. There were 197 “delegates,” including orthodox, nationalist, liberal, atheist, culturalist, anarchist, socialist and some capitalist. “We want to lay the foundation stone of the house which is to shelter the Jewish nation,” and “Zionism seeks to obtain for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally secured homeland in Palestine,” declared Herzl.<br />
Another leading figure who addressed the Congress was Max Nordau, a Hungarian Jewish physician and author, who delivered a polemic against assimilated Jews. “For the first time the Jewish problem was presented forcefully be fore a European forum,” wrote Weiz mann. But the Russian Jews thought Herzl was patronizing them as Ashkenazim. They found his “western dignity did not sit well with our Russian-Jewish realism; and without wanting to, we could not help irritating him.”<br />
In conversation with a delegate at the First Congress, Herzl said (as reported more than 20 years later in the <i>American Jewish News</i> of March 7, 1919):<br />
It may be that Turkey will refuse or be unable to understand us. This will not discourage us. We will seek other means to accomplish our end. The Orient question is now the question of the day. Sooner or later it will bring about a conflict among the nations. A European war is imminent—the great European War must come. With my watch in hand do I await this terrible moment. After the great European war is ended the Peace Conference will assemble. We must be ready for that time. We will assuredly be called to this great conference of the nations and we must prove to them the urgent importance of a Zionist solution to the Jewish Question. We must prove to them that the problem of the Orient and Pales tine is one with the problem of the Jews—both must be solved together. We must prove to them that the Jewish problem is a world problem and that a world problem must be solved by the world. And the solution must be the return of Palestine to the Jewish people.”<br />
A few months later, in a message to a Jewish conference in London, Herzl wrote that “the first moment I entered the Movement my eyes were directed towards England, because I saw that by reason of the general situation of things there it was the Archimedean point where the lever could be applied.” Herzl showed his respect for London as the world’s financial center by causing the Jewish Colonial Trust, which was to be the main financial instrument of his movement, to be incorporated in 1899 as an English company.<br />
In Turkey, as in Germany, some native Jews were resentful of the attempt to segregate them as Jews and were opposed to the intrusion of Jewish nationalism in their domestic affairs. Yet some of those engaged in the work, notably Vladimir (Zev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), came to despair of success so long as the Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine. They henceforth pinned their hopes on its collapse.<br />
At the 10th Congress in 1911, David Wolffsohn, who had succeeded Herzl, said in his presidential address that what the Zionists wanted was not a Jewish state but a homeland. Max Nordau denounced the “infamous traducers,” who alleged that “the Zionists wanted to worm their way into Turkey in order to seize Palestine. It is our duty to convince [the Turks] that they possess in the whole world no more generous and self-sacrificing friends than the Zionists.”<br />
The mild sympathy which the emerging Young Turks had shown for Zionism was replaced by suspicion as growing national unrest threatened the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Balkans. Zionist policy then shifted to the Arabs, so that they might think of Zionism as a possible counter balance against the Turks. Zionists soon observed that their reception by Arab leaders grew warmer as the Arabs were disappointed in their hopes of gaining concessions from the Turks, but cooled swiftly when these hopes revived. The more than 60 Arab parliamentary delegates in Constantinople and the newly active Arabic press kept up “a drumfire of complaints” against Jewish immigration, land purchase and settlement in Palestine.<br />
The Turks were doing all they could to keep Jews out of Palestine. But this barrier was covertly surmounted, partly due to the venality of Turkish officials, (as delicately put in a Zionist report—“it was always possible to get ’round the individual official with a little artifice”); and partly to the diligence of the Russian consuls in Palestine in protecting Russian Jews and saving them from expulsion.<br />
But if Zionism were to succeed in its ambitions, Ottoman rule of Palestine must end. Arab independence could be prevented by the intervention of England and France, Germany or Russia. The Eastern Jews hated Czarist Russia. With the entente cordiale in existence, it was to be Germany or England, with the odds slightly in Britain’s favor in potential support of the Zionist aim in Palestine, as well as in economic and military power.<br />
On the other hand, Zionism was attracting some German and Austrian Jews with important financial interests. It had to take into account strong Jewish anti-Zionist opinion in England. The concern of the majority of rich English Jews was not allayed by articles in the Jewish Chronicle, edited by Leopold Green berg, pointing out that in the Basel program there was “not a word of any autonomous Jewish state.” In Die Welt, the official organ of the movement, an article by Nahum Sokolow (then the general secretary of the Zionist Organization) protested that there was no truth in the allegation that Zionism aimed at the establishment of an independent Jewish state.<br />
Even at the XI Congress in 1913, Otto Warburg, speaking as chairman of the Zionist Executive, gave assurances of loyalty to Turkey, adding that in colonizing Palestine and developing its re sources, Zionists would be making a valuable contribution to the progress of the Turkish Empire.<br />
Jewish opposition to political statist Zionism came not only from religious sources, but from many Jews of great wealth in Europe and the U.S.A. The Jewish national idea foreshadowed an alienation from the societies in which they were exercising great economic and political power. From Scandinavia, where the Wallenbergs were looking to eventual control of industry through leverage, to Baron Sonnino in Italy, Europe was open to Hof Juden—Court Jews who lived like princes. Benjamin Disraeli had been British prime minister and Lord Cassel was part of the circle of Edward VII. Prince Otto von Bismarck, founder of the Second German Reich and German chancellor, had appointed Jewish banker Gerson von Bleichröder as his confidential agent, giving him power of administration of the Bismarck properties. The international banking houses of Lazard Freres, J.&W. Seligman, Speyer Brothers and M.M. Warburg, Schiff, were all conducting major operations in the United States. In 1908 Paul Warburg had come to the United States from Germany, abetted the setting up of the Federal Reserve System of banking in 1913, and became one of the bank’s first board members. Only in Russia were Jews blocked from the top echelons of power, although Jews controlled the grain trade from Ukraine.<br />
Through their banking houses in London, Paris, Naples and Vienna the Rothschilds were able to cause crises for governments, and make money.<sup>5</sup> Do these facts support Lloyd George’s explanation for his government’s pledge to Lord Rothschild? The influence of the 3,000,000 Jews in America was important to the question of the country’s intervention or non-intervention in the war, and in regard to the provision of military supplies. The great majority of Jews in the U.S. represented the one-third of the Jews of Eastern Europe, including Russia, who had left their homelands and come to America between 1880 and 1914. Many detested the alliance composed basically of Britain, France, and Czarist Russia, and wished to see it destroyed. But of these Jews, not more than 12,000 were enrolled mem bers of the Zionist Organization at the time of the First World War. For the (German) Jewish banking elite in America, the evidence points to the 1917 Russian revolution as being the most weighty factor relative to their support.<br />
For some Germans and others after World War I, the weight given the Balfour Declaration by British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and other powerful figures relative to critical Jewish support toward Allied victory, lent credence from the highest authority to anti-Jewish feeling. Is this a way of understanding subsequent German susceptibility to discrimination against Jews following the Great War? The integrating relationship between German Jews and non-Jews was disrupted, a relationship that had been so firm that many German Jews could hardly accept that it had been jeopardized.<br />
For the Jews, there has been what the Jewish Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm calls “the invention of tradition” in Israel; Zionist periodization of Jewish history. Specifically, the 2,000-year period when Jews were a small religious minority in Palestine was suppressed and denigrated. The nationalist movement in modern times was linked with ancient periods of political sovereignty.<br />
“Zionist commemorative narrative constructs a symbolic bridge between Antiquity and the modern period, emphasizing their affinity and distancing both from Exile [Zerubavel, p.32].”<sup>6 </sup>The vast majority of Jews have not immigrated to Israel, but it is used as a fulcrum for the application of international power.<br />
Arnold Toynbee, who probably drafted the document on British commitments for the inner group at the Versailles Peace Conference, went on to become one of the century’s outstanding world historians. He wrote in Vol ume VIII of his great A Study of History: (pp. 289-290):<br />
The Jews’ immediate reaction to their own experience was to become persecutors in their turn for the first time since A.D. 135, and this at the first opportunity that had arisen for them to inflict on other human beings who had done the Jews no injury, but who happened to be weaker than they were, some of the wrongs and sufferings that had been inflicted on the Jews.<br />
In A.D. 1949, the Jews knew from personal experience what they were doing, and it was their supreme tragedy that the lesson learned by them from their encounter with the Nazi Gentiles should have been not to eschew but to imitate some of their evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews.<br />
This judgment made him the target for attacks familiar to anyone who has dared to tell the truth on these issues. The attacks were ad hominem rather than relevant to his subject matter. In 1960 he wrote in Volume XII (p. 267):<br />
The seizure of the houses, lands, and property of the 900,000 Palestinian Arabs who are now refugees is on a moral level with the worst crimes and injustices committed, during the last four or five centuries, by Gentile Western European conquerors and colonists overseas. This is still my judgment on the Zionist movement’s record in Palestine since it began to resort to violence there.<br />
As for Britain, Oxford historian Eliza beth Monroe’s study, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East (Chatto & Windus, 1963, p.43), concludes, “Measured by British interests alone, the Balfour Declaration was one of the greatest mistakes in our imperial history.” William Yale was the U.S. State Department’s special agent in the Near East during World War I. He told this writer on May 12, 1970 that Woodrow Wilson had asked him in 1919 to interview persons who might be influential to the future of the area.<br />
Yale interviewed Chaim Weizmann, and asked him what he would do if the British did not support the Balfour Declaration for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Weizmann pounded his fist on the table and the teacups jumped. “If they don’t,” he said, “we’ll smash the British Empire as we smashed the Russian Empire.”<br />
And the Rothschilds? They have led from behind and through “fronts,” as first dictated to the family by patriarch Meyer Amschel Rothschild, nearly 250 years ago. The late Ben Freedman showed me a report on the estimated value of the mineral deposits of the Dead Sea<sup>7 </sup>prepared for Lord Rothschild in 1917. This was at a time when Lord Mond controlled nickel, the Guggenheims controlled copper, Lord Montague controlled Anglo-Dutch oil, and Oppenheimer monopolized De Beers diamonds and South African gold.<br />
President Franklin Roosevelt’s son-in-law, Colonel Curtis Dall, who had been with Wall Street’s Lehman bankers in the 1930s, refers to this geological report, made public in 1923, in his book which he gave me, Israel’s Five Trillion Dollar Secret, published privately in 1977. “The well-veiled objective of the Zionists backed by the Rothschilds’ financial interests was to acquire valid title to the Dead Sea and its vast, inexhaustible deposits of potash and other valuable minerals, estimated by experts to be worth several thousand billion dollars”(p11).<br />
A letter from Lord Rothschild in support of Israel and against the Palestinian Liberation Organization was published in the New York Times of September 13, 1970 and for 20 years no U.S. government would “talk” to the PLO.<br />
Coinciding with the 1,200th anniversary of Frankfurt am Main, members of the Rothschild family empire gathered there in February 1994 in a building that belonged to them in the 19th century and that is now a Jewish museum. Ger man Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited and paid tribute to them. Their importance was recognized in 1917 at great power levels.<br />
Now, in the twilight of this awesomely destructive 20th century, are they the unseen directors of the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission that set the major extra-parliamentary and extra-congressional decisions regarding our present and future?<br />
<br />
footnotes<br />
1. Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem by Issa Nakhleh, N.Y. International Books, 1991, vol. 1, Ch. 11.<br />
2. New York Times, August 21, 1995, A5.<br />
3. Jewish Agricultural Colonies in New Jersey, 1882-1920, by Ellen Eisenberg, Syracuse University Press, 1995.<br />
4. The Diaries of Theodore Herzl. Ed. M. Lowenthal, N.Y. Grosser & Dunlap, 1962, p. 63.<br />
5. An example between the World Wars is given by Frederic Morton in his 1961 book, The Rothschilds (N.Y., Atheneum, p. 251). Extreme currency fluctuations in 1925 were managed by the Rothschilds. “With the French house in the lead (Baron Edouard was director of the Bank of France), they had organized an international syndicate that stretched from J.P. Morgan in New York to the Baron-Louis-controlled Creditanstalt in Vienna. Everywhere, at a pre-arranged signal, the Rothschild syndicate began to depress pounds and push up francs. As in the past, nobody could withstand such wealth juggled with such split-second skill.”<br />
6. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, by Yael Zerubavel, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995.<br />
7. In 1996 a German company signed a contract in Israel for extraction of magnesium from the Dead Sea.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-83217319401644488832010-03-22T05:38:00.000-07:002010-03-22T05:38:46.256-07:00Leon Degrelle—Warrior for the West<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER">By W.A. Carto</div><br />
Here is the inspiring yet tragic story of an idealistic, indomitable and fear less leader who survived the worst that World War II had to offer, only to be struck down by treason in the twilight of his life.<br />
<br />
Leon Degrelle died in Malaga, Spain on April 1, 1994 at 87.<br />
Before World War II, Degrelle had been Europe’s youngest political leader and the founder of the Rexist Party of Belgium. During the war he was a hero on the Eastern Front, fighting to save Europe from communism.<br />
As statesman and soldier he was acquainted with Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Franco, Laval, Pétain and many other European leaders during the titanic ideological and military clash that was World War II. Alone among them, he survived across nearly five decades to remain a personal witness of that historical period.<br />
Degrelle was born to a family of French origin in the small Ardennes town of Bouillon in Luxembourg on June 15, 1906. He was the son of a prosperous brewer who had immigrated to Luxembourg from France five years earlier, provoked by a French “anti-clerical” government’s expulsion of the Jesuit order. It was said so many of the Degrelles had become Jesuit priests that the Degrelles were “Jesuits from father to son.”<br />
Young Leon studied at the University of Louvain, where he acquired a doctorate in law, but he also immersed himself in other academic disciplines such as political science, art, archeology and philosophy. As a student, his natural gift of leadership became apparent. By the time he reached 20 the young prodigy had already published five books and operated his own weekly newspaper.<br />
Out of his deep Christian conviction, Degrelle joined Belgium’s Catholic Action Movement and naturally soon became one of its leaders. Leon’s passion was people. He wanted to win the crowds, particularly the Marxist ones. He wanted them to share his ideals of social and spiritual change for society. He wanted to lift people up; to forge for them a stable, efficient and responsible state, a state backed by the good sense of people and for the sole benefit of the people. No wonder Degrelle often said: “Either you have the people with you, or you have nothing with you.” Degrelle, in short, was a populist.<br />
During his involvement with the Rexist party, he addressed more than 2,000 meetings. His books and newspaper were read everywhere because they always dealt with the real issues. Although he was not yet 25, people listened to him avidly.<br />
In a few short years he had won over a large part of the population. Belgium’s corrupt political establishment took serious note of this upstart. Al though Degrelle had initially been working with Belgium’s Catholic Party (one of the nation’s three ruling parties, the others being the Liberals and the Socialists) he ultimately began to be come disillusioned with the party’s ruling clique and began focusing his efforts on building his Rexist movement.<br />
Demanding radical political reform and the establishment of an authoritative “corporative” state of social justice and national unity, Degrelle launched a hard-driving and brilliant propaganda campaign against the ruling parties, which he came to describe as the <i>pourris</i>—that is, “the corrupt,” and the Rexist movement made great political capital out of the cynical financial manipulations of the parties and their henchmen. Degrelle called them “the banksters.”<br />
Degrelle’s movement recognized that the ruling parties, so cooperative when it came to dividing the spoils that accrue to politicians, fostered division and strife throughout Belgium. Historian Allan Cassels points out that “gradually, Degrelle became more and more anti-capitalist—a shift that was not so much a response to the Great Depression as it was a growing awareness of the ties between business and government revealed in several Belgian scandals.”<sup>1</sup><br />
The platform of the Rexist party reflected the populist tilt. “First and foremost, it opposed the dictatorship of super capitalism in Belgium and the Congo and then went on to dismiss Belgian parties and the parliamentary system itself as mere extensions of the rotten business world . . . Banks were to be controlled in an unspecified way and unemployment solved by some sort of national planning. Workers were to be protected by a corporative system ‘based on the solidarity of the classes,’ and the organizational structure for Rexist confederations was formulated on paper for trade, industry, agriculture, the artisans, the professions and even the party’s administration of the Belgian Congo. Yet, much of the old order would remain; there was room for the monarchy, and even Parliament in truncated form would share legislative authority with the corporations.”<sup>2</sup><br />
On May 24, 1936 Degrelle’s Rexist candidates won a smashing electoral victory against the established parties by capturing a total of 34 House and Senate seats.<br />
However, the ruling parties of Belgium soon rose to meet the Rexists’ threat to their power by uniting in a solid phalanx against the young populist leader. Even the Catholic hierarchy condemned the church’s most ardent son in the interests of “moderation.” As a consequence, the Rex movement’s fortunes began to decline. Although his party began to disintegrate under the establishment’s applied pressure, Degrelle himself was re-elected to the Parliament with the largest majority of any deputy.<br />
The Europe of Degrelle was still split into little countries, each jealous of its past glories and closed to any contact with neighboring peoples. In the late 1930s, as war loomed, Degrelle devoted his attention to assuring Belgium’s neutrality in order to prevent his nation from again being used as a buffer be tween Germany and France in the event of hostilities.<br />
But, even as he labored for the short-term integrity of Belgium’s borders, the far-sighted Degrelle was also looking toward the future of the continent. In his student days he had traveled across Latin America, the United States and Canada. He had visited North Africa, the Middle East and, of course, all of the European countries. He felt that Europe had a unique destiny to fulfill and must unite behind its common cultural heritage.<br />
Mussolini invited Degrelle to Rome. Churchill saw him in London, and Hitler received him in Berlin. Putting his political life on the line, he made desperate efforts to stop the railroading of Europe into another war. But old rivalries, petty hatreds and suspicion be tween the French and the Germans were cleverly exploited. The established parties and the Communist Party worked on the same side: for war. For the Kremlin it was a unique opportunity to communize Europe—after it had first been weakened and bled white.<br />
Thus, war started. First in Poland, then in Western Europe in 1940. This was to become World War II in 1941. Soon the flag of the swastika flew from the Arctic Ocean to the shores of Greece to the border of Spain.<br />
When Belgium was dragged into the war in 1940, Degrelle’s political enemies saw an opportunity to strike down the Rexist leader. He was arrested by government loyalists on May 10, 1940, accused of being a “fifth columnist,” and was imprisoned, beaten and tortured. Given up for dead by his family, Degrelle ended up at a concentration camp in southern France commanded by a French man named Bernheim.<br />
When German officials favorably inclined toward Degrelle learned of his whereabouts, he was released and returned to Belgium, where, in fact, he initially avoided collaborating with the German occupation forces, unlike, ironically, many of his opportunistic foes in the prewar “democratic” Belgian political establishment.<br />
But the European civil war continued. And the rulers of communism got ready to move in and pick up the fractured pieces. Learning of Josef Sta lin’s plan to invade the heart of Western Europe through Soviet occupied Poland and then Germany, Hitler beat him to the punch by launching a preemptive invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. For Europe it was now to be heads or tails; Hitler wins or Stalin wins.<br />
The most important political and military phenomenon of World War II is also the least known: the Waffen SS (literally “weapons Schutztaffel,” or “armed defense unit”). And Leon Degrelle was one of the most famous Waffen SS soldiers. The Waffen SS were the ideological and military shock troops of a planned New Order for Europe. After the Germans began their assault against the bastion of international com munism, from every country in Europe thousands of young men came forth, their minds resolved that the destiny of their native countries was now at stake.<br />
These men volunteered their lives in the fight against the Soviets believing that, after first destroying the Bolshevik threat, they would work together to create a united Europe. Volunteers swelled the ranks of the Waffen SS, which grew to include almost 400,000 non-German Europeans fighting on the Eastern Front. Scores of new divisions were added to the Waffen SS order of battle. The German troops numbered 600,000.<br />
Despite the past efforts of Napol eon, the one-million-strong Waffen SS represented the first truly pan-European army to ever exist. As envisioned, after the war each unit of this army was to provide their people with a political structure free of the petty nationalism of the past. All the SS fought the same struggle. All shared the same world view. All were comrades in arms and suffered the same wounds.<br />
When Hitler struck against the Soviet Union, Degrelle offered to raise a volunteer battalion of his Walloons to ensure a place of honor for French-speaking Belgians in Hitler’s new Eur ope. After joining as a private he earned all stripes from corporal to general for exceptional bravery in combat. He engaged in 75 hand-to-hand combat actions. He was wounded seven times. He was the recipient of the highest honors and was, quite notably, one of the first non-Germans to be awarded the coveted Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, personally bestowed upon Degrelle by Hitler during a ceremony held in Berlin on August 27, 1944.<br />
Yet, it should be noted that when, in 1941, Degrelle first departed for the Eastern Front he was 35 years old and had never even fired a gun. And al though he had been offered high rank—in tribute to his stellar prewar accomplishments with the Rexist party—Degrelle, in the same manner as Peter the Great, chose to start out as a private, sharing the burdens of his comrades, rising by his abilities alone through the ranks to the position of commander of the unit he raised: the SS Brigade “Wallonia.”<br />
It is thus no wonder that his fellow volunteers jokingly called their comrade-turned-leader, “Modest the First, duke of Burgundy.” But, of the first 800 Walloon volunteers who left for the Eastern Front, only three survived the war—one of them Degrelle. Some 2,500 of his fellow Walloons died, wearing the uniform of the Waffen SS, while fighting the Soviets during that period.<br />
Of the SS Degrelle has said, “If the Waffen SS had not existed, Europe would have been overrun entirely by the Soviets by 1944. They would have reached Paris long before the Ameri cans. Waffen SS heroism stopped the Soviet juggernaut at Moscow, Cherkov, Cherkassy and Tarnopol. The Soviets lost more than 12 months. Without SS resistance the Soviets would have been in Normandy before Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower. The people showed deep gratitude to the young men who sacrificed their lives. Not since the great religious orders of the Middle Ages had there been such selfless idealism and heroism. In this century of materialism, the SS stand out as a shining light of spirituality. I have no doubt whatever that the sacrifices and incredible feats of the Waffen SS will have their own epic poets like Schiller. Greatness in adversity is the distinction of the SS.”<br />
After four nearly continuous years in the inferno of battle, his legion was one of the last to retreat from Russia. This titanic struggle against the combined forces of communism and the “Allied democracies” is described in his famous epic, <i>Campaign in Russia</i>, which earned him renown in Europe as “the Homer of the 20th century.”<br />
And when Degrelle returned to Brussels after fighting communism for four years on the Eastern Front, he was given the largest mass welcome in Belgian history. Tens of thousands of Belgians lined the streets of Brussels to cheer the returning general only two months before the Allies invaded their country. However, De grelle knew that he, as one of the fiercest foes of communism who had survived the war, was targeted for extermination. He would not bow to the conquerors.<br />
As Germany collapsed, Degrelle made his way to Norway (still under German control at that time), where he boarded a transport airplane and flew over Allied-occupied portions of Europe. He and the crew endured constant anti-aircraft fire all along the way, and crash landed on the Spanish border when the plane ran out of fuel. Degrelle suffered multiple injuries in the forced landing including several broken bones. He spent a year in the hospital recuperating, most of it in a plaster cast, unable to move. Typically, as soon as his right arm became free, the SS general began writing his masterwork,<i>Campaign in Russia</i>, which appeared in two French editions.<br />
Soon after the cessation of hostilities, the Allies threatened to invade Spain unless Degrelle and wartime French Prime Minister Pierre Laval were im mediately turned over for execution. Franco compromised. He turned over Laval but kept Degrelle on the grounds that he could not be physically removed from the hospital.<br />
A year later Degrelle was given refuge in a monastery. However, back home members of his family and many friends and supporters were arrested and tortured to death by the “democratic liberators” of Belgium. His children (seven girls and a little boy) were forcibly shipped to detention centers in different parts of Europe, after their names were changed in order to frustrate any effort to reunite the family or ascertain their fate. The Belgian authorities ordered that they were never to be permitted contact with one another or with their father.<br />
The new Belgian government condemned Degrelle to death <i>in absentia</i> on three separate occasions. A special law was passed, the<i>Lex Degrellana</i>, which made it illegal to transfer, possess, or receive any book by or about Degrelle. <i>Campaign in Russia</i> was thus banned in Belgium.<br />
Completely alone, Degrelle went on to rebuild his shattered life. With the energy and burning spirit that had never left him, he worked as a manual laborer in construction. And just as he had risen from private to general on the battlefield, Degrelle rose to build a ma jor construction company with important contracts. The quality and efficiency of his company became so well known that the U.S. government commissioned him to build major defense projects, including military airfields, in Spain. Mean while, Degrelle’s loyal emissaries searched Europe for his kidnapped children. All were found and returned to their father’s loving care.<br />
On 12 separate occasions over some 40 years Degrelle challenged the Belgian government to put him on public trial with a jury. His repeated demands to be tried in a legitimate court of law (as opposed to an inquisitional Nuremberg-style show trial) were met with embarrassed and guilty si lence. However, there were high-level attempts to “liquidate” Degrelle during his exile in Spain. On July 5, 1961 the Spanish police arrested two individuals attempting to cross into Spain from a small village in the Pyrenees Mountains on the French border. Traveling in a Lincoln Contin ental were an Israeli citizen using the name Zuis Alduide Idelon and another person with a French passport under the name Suison Jake De Mon.<br />
In their possession were weapons, ammunition, foreign currency valued at approximately $500,000 (U.S.), an anesthetic kit, the detailed plans of a Spanish villa and, lastly, a box shaped like a coffin. The two eventually confessed that they were in a commando team working for Israeli intelligence, charged with the mission of kidnapping Gen. Degrelle. Their plan was as follows:<br />
Part of the team (composed in total of 10 men) was to arrive in a helicopter at Degrelle’s estate, grab and sedate him and bring him to Tarragona. There, the unconscious Degrelle would have been put in the box and taken aboard a small boat at night and taken to a French Mediterranean port where he would have been transshipped on a large vessel bound for Israel. Upon arrival Degrelle would have been put on display and then delivered to the Belgian government or simply murdered.<br />
Subsequently the Spanish police succeeded in arresting the leader of the commando team, a Spanish communist, Rubio de la Goaquina, as well as six of his men. The police learned that the kidnapping plot had been arranged, in part, through the assistance of Soviet agents.<br />
In 1983 the Spanish socialists, in league with international Jewish pressure groups, began a loud clamor to have Degrelle deported from Spain, but the effort failed. This, however, did not stop those same Jewish pressure groups from launching yet a second offensive against Degrelle. Leading the pack was Rabbi Marvin Hier (called, by his critics, Rabbi “Liar”) and his colleague, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, both leaders of a very profitable fund-raising venture known as the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, a Los Angeles-based operation named after the controversial self-described “Nazi hunter.”<br />
Since it had been finally admitted that the most infamous “Nazi fugitive,” Dr. Josef Mengele, was actually dead and gone and not “hiding in Argentina” (or Bolivia or Paraguay or Panama or some such place), Hier and Cooper evidently decided that Gen. Degrelle was an ideal new “Nazi beast” to have as their fund-raising “poster boy.”<br />
The two put up a $100,000 bounty for the “capture” of Degrelle, but that in itself was a farce, since Degrelle lived freely and openly in Spain, where he was a popular figure in cafe society, often dining with a host of friends, including many international admirers who came to call on the retired military leader and former statesman.<br />
The Hier-Cooper gang hysterically and vocally demanded that Degrelle be tried for “war crimes” and, of course, urged donors to help finance their public relations campaign against the general. Interestingly, several years previously, Jean Charlier, a prominent French television producer who was preparing a documentary on Degrelle, approached both the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and Simon Wiesenthal asking for information he could include in his planned project as to the nature and brutality of the “war crimes” Degrelle might have committed. They informed Charlier that there was no evidence against Degrelle and that the Belgian general was not wanted for war crimes by any international tribunal as such. However, now that it was in the (financial) interest of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to have a new “war criminal at large,” the story changed.<br />
At the time, Degrelle commented on the affair in an exclusive interview published in <i>The Spotlight</i> on October 28, 1985. Degrelle told <i>The Spotlight</i>: “Dr. Abraham Cooper knows very well that he does not possess the least argument against me. He confesses himself that he can only base himself on suppositions.” Degrelle pointed out that Cooper had said, for example: “It would not surprise me but that he [Degrelle] has committed blood crimes.”<br />
“Can you imagine that?” asked Degrelle. “As if during 40 years they have made countless investigations against me, all of which have proven fruitless for the simple reason that there was nothing against me. Cooper does not stand on ceremony when he admits that what he wants to make me pay for are not any reprehensible acts, but ideas, my ideas. To avenge himself on the ideas of a person who thinks differently than himself, the Jewish dignitary mounts a manhunt abroad with a $100,000 prize for whoever brings in the beast alive.<br />
“‘Leon Degrelle,” Dr. Abraham Coo per has declared, ‘is guilty of promoting Nazi ideas among the young people of the whole world. We shall follow him closely, and we will see to it that he pays for his misdeed.’<br />
“You have read right: ‘ideas,’” added Degrelle. “One cannot any longer have ideas other than those approved by Rabbi Abraham. Such intolerance is unheard of, especially coming from a country such as the United States, where the freedom of thought is proclaimed to be sacred. This manhunt, organized by private people, has something monstrous about it.<br />
“These hunters have at their disposal very considerable funds. Those funds, this modern river of gold, until this summer were earmarked to kidnap Josef Mengele. But now it has been established that Mengele has been dead for more than five years, while Wiesenthal was announcing to the world that he was following Mengele’s track—that he was about to capture him at any moment. He was describing every phase of his pursuit, every hideaway Mengele had just vacated, moments before Wiesenthal’s arrival—places where Men gele had never been.”<br />
Degrelle said, though, that he was not afraid of the “contract” that the Jewish leaders had put out on him: “I’ve seen other stuff, on the eastern front. I continue to live my life exactly as before, going to buy my newspapers myself in the street, drinking a glass quietly by the seashore. I am not going to poison what is left of my life with problems of security. I believe in my luck, and I believe in God. He will sort out the hunters of millions of dollars and the persecuted. I rely on His protection and on His justice.”<br />
Although Degrelle was able to foil the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s campaign against him, his sworn enemies made one last attempt to dispose of the general. <i>Hebdo</i> magazine, published by the French National Front, revealed on December 27, 1985 that some 10 persons carrying Venezuelan passports and most likely connected with the Mossad arrived in Madrid for the purpose of once again attempting to kidnap Degrelle. Their plot, however, was again foiled by ever-vigilant Spanish authorities.<br />
There may well have been other schemes launched against Degrelle, but the old general continued to live freely and to carry out his own personal crusade for truth in history.<br />
Despite his advancing years, Gen. Degrelle embarked during this period on an ambitious project that would be his crowning triumph as a prolific wordsmith, befitting one once described as “one of the outstanding writers in the French language.” In his lifetime De grelle had published more than 40 books and essays ranging from poetry to economics, from architecture to history, but the new project was one of massive scope.<br />
The Belgian statesman began working relentlessly on a projected 14-volume series to be collectively titled <i>The Hitler Century,</i> focusing (obviously) on the role of Adolf Hitler in the 20th century and his influence beyond.<br />
Degrelle relished the opportunity to be able to speak freely and valued the chance to be able to have his thoughts expressed in the English language to audiences that certainly never had the unique opportunity to hear “the other side of the story” expressed in such vibrant, heartfelt language from one who was there.<br />
The general wryly noted at the time that “Whenever I hear the Allied side of history, I am often reminded of the re porter sent to report on a brawl. He scrupulously recorded all the blows delivered by one side and none from the other. His story would truthfully bear witness to the aggression of one side and the victimization of the other. But he would be lying by omission. I do not deny anything that Hitler did, but I also point out what the communists and their Western allies did, and I let the public be the judge.”<br />
Degrelle was guaranteed that he would receive all the necessary funding for the project, and in short order, Degrelle turned out the first volume, a handsome book published by the Insti tute for Historical Review (IHR), then based in Torrance, California, which this writer had founded in 1978 and which had become the driving force behind what has come to be known as the historical revisionist movement.<br />
Degrelle’s first volume—an indisputable masterpiece—was <i>Hitler: Born at Versailles</i>. Based upon the premise that “there would never have been a Hitler without the Versailles Treaty” and that the history of Hitler and Germany can be understood only within the context of the Versailles Trea ty and the harsh subjugation of Germany by its implacable enemies, Degrelle’s 535-page volume surveyed the Franco-British intrigues in the af fairs of Central Europe, the systematic betrayal of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the secret treaties that doomed Wilson’s mission from the start, and the cynical dividing up of vast territories by the major powers concluded without regard to the will of the millions of hapless inhabitants—the mutilation of Ger many and Austria-Hungary that par celed out many millions of Germans (and German Austrians), Hungarians and others like cattle to the hostile rule of alien neighboring countries.<br />
Widely hailed upon its release, Degrelle’s first volume laid the foundation for the forthcoming series of books to follow. The proposed additional volumes were: <i>Hitler, Democrat; Hitler and the Germans; Hitler and the Church; Hitler and the United States; Hitler and Stalin; Hitler and England; Hitler and France; Hitler and the Banks; Hitler and the Communists; Hitler and the Jews; Hitler the Politician; Hitler the Military Strategist</i> and <i>Hitler and the Third World.</i><br />
The general was enthusiastic about the new project and threw himself into his work with a devotion that was remarkable. At 79 years of age, Degrelle had tackled a project that few men of any age would ever even dream of attempting to undertake. By 1993 Degrelle had completed six additional volumes.<br />
How then does one conclude what is admittedly an insufficient assessment of this remarkable man? Perhaps the defiant words of Gen. Degrelle himself sum it up best. Once, when asked by a journalist if he had any regrets about World War II, Degrelle responded: “Only that we lost.”<br />
<b>BIBLIOGRAPHY</b><br />
There is very little published in the English language today about Leon Degrelle except essentially what has appeared in this issue of<i>The Barnes Review</i> and other issues of this magazine and, of course, Degrelle’s own writings that have been translated and published. However, in 1993 there was a lengthy English-language study of Degrelle published by the Yale University Press. <i>Collaboration in Belgium: Leon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement (1940-1944)</i> by Martin Conway, a lecturer in history at the University of Oxford, is a highly detailed survey of Degrelle’s activities during the war years, but its value is limited by its heavy-handed bias.<br />
<b>FOOTNOTES</b><br />
<sup> 1</sup> Alan Cassels. <i>Fascism</i>, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1975, p. 247.<br />
<sup>2</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 247.<br />
http://www.barnesreview.orgΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-48214837552808013192010-03-22T05:32:00.001-07:002010-03-22T05:32:38.814-07:00The Amazing Great Pyramid of Egypt<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" nof="LY" style="width: 487px;"><tbody>
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</b></span></div><div align="CENTER"> By Tom Valentine</div><br />
No other structure on earth defies our comprehension as thoroughly and impressively as does the Great Pyramid of Egypt. When was it built, by whom, why and how? Said to have been constructed by people who are claimed by establishment historians to have been little more than one step removed from the Neolithic, this magnificent edifice and the entire Giza complex contain many a “how in the world did they manage to do that?” puzzle. For hundreds of years, archeologists, mathematicians and historians have only compounded the mystery as they discovered more questions—but never answers.<br />
The Great Pyramid is almost beyond comparison with all the other structures in both ancient Egypt and Central America. In fact, nothing else made by man, including the Great Wall of China, can compare in the precision of construction, the size and placement of stones.<br />
However, to deepen the mystery, before we even begin to consider the incredible stone construction features, let’s pause for a simple exercise. Get a piece of string and approach a globe of our world. Run the string down from the north pole through the meridian at Cairo and on down to the south pole. You will see that this particular meridian appears to travel through more land mass than any other line of longitude on the globe. Now, outline the latitude of the Great Pyramid around the entire globe with the same piece of string. Does it not ap pear that you once again pass over more land mass than at any other latitude on earth?<br />
There are those who say the builders of the Great Pyramid selected that particular building site because they were aware it marked the “central point” of the earth’s continental mass.<br />
That’s a delicious conversational oddity, isn’t it? But it proves nothing and only adds to the intrigue. We are now traveling the yellow brick road of all who try to place the Great Pyramid neatly into the accepted view of ancient history.<br />
First of all it is a 40-story building on a base of 13 <sup>1/2</sup> acres. The huge cathedrals of Milan and Florence, plus St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome and West minster Abbey in England could all be fitted within the confines of the Great Pyramid’s base. Were we to grind the estimated 2,300,000 blocks of limestone into gravel we could lay a roadbed 16 feet wide and a foot thick all the way from New York City to San Francisco, a distance of 3,000 miles.<br />
The smallest of the 2.3 million building blocks weighs about three tons. Virtually all of these “plain” limestone blocks were quarried from nearby rock and transported somehow to their present site. We don’t know by whom, when or how.<br />
The square base is aligned almost perfectly to the four cardinal points of the compass, which is a remarkable accident of orientation, or else historians are thousands of years in error about the beginnings of navigation and the first compass. Later we shall see that the unidentified builders evidently knew a great deal more about planet earth than the cardinal points of the compass. It is also said that the design provides a practical way for “squaring the circle” and the Great Pyramid actually defines (pi), the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle.<br />
Although scholars today prefer to ignore the advanced geometric de sign and the apparent unit of measure favored by the unknown designer and builder, the facts have been etched in stone for thousands of years, so to speak.<br />
The four-sided exterior (22 acres total) was covered by magnificent white Tura limestone casing stones, weighing an estimated 15 tons each. These stones were cut from a quarry on the other side of the Nile River. They had to be cut, polished into a glistening finish, transported across the Nile and up to the plateau site, where they were placed with astounding precision. Some of the casings are still in place today. You cannot fit a business card into the space between the stones, as less than a fiftieth of an inch separates the blocks.<br />
How were these blocks cut? Leaving aside the miraculous precision of the cuts, the smoothness of the surface, the tightness of the fittings, what tools were used to fashion these gigantic stones? According to today’s scientists, when the pyramid was constructed, “primitive man” had no steel and perhaps not even bronze, and would have had to use stone and soft copper to quarry and craft these building blocks.<br />
The cement used to join the casing stones is so fine and so amazingly strong that it boggles the minds of stone masons today. Most of the polished limestone casing blocks were looted centuries ago, but it is known that the stone will fracture before the adhesion of the cement will give.<br />
The Great Pyramid is located at the apex of the Nile delta and part of the mythology that has built up around the structure is that the polished, pure white Tura limestone casings covering the exterior would catch the sunlight and reflect a “glorious light” that served as a massive sundial allowing Nile delta residents to note the passing of the days as well as the time of the day.<br />
Turn-of-the-century pyramidologist David Davidson demonstrated that the exterior surface was actually very precisely concave or indented slightly from top to bottom right down the middle of each exterior face. Many years later, an aerial photograph verified this fact by catching the outline of the shadow cast across the indentation. This feature is not incorporated into any of the other pyramid structures in the vicinity. The precise indentations were obviously not accidental. It simply serves to heighten the mystery surrounding the great structure, its builders and its purpose.<br />
Even without such detailed refinements, there isn’t a construction company in the world today that could bid and complete this job. The change orders and cost overrides would doom the project to failure even if it were backed by the Federal Reserve.<br />
For example, an Indiana limestone quarry expert was once asked to estimate delivery time for just the 2 million or so rough limestone blocks of about three tons each. He estimated that the 33 Indiana quarries could deliver the stone FOB their own rail siding in 27 years, providing nothing went wrong.<br />
With that in mind, remember, we were once told by conventional historians that Pharaoh Khufu (called Cheops by the Greeks) had the pyramid built, probably with slave labor, during his historically alleged (best guess) reign of 23 years around 2600 B.C. Apparently, establishment scholars chose to accept the notion that disgruntled slaves can quarry and move stone blocks with primitive tools far more efficiently than modern quarry operations.<br />
Frankly, along with the casing stones, the really impressive part of the Great Pyramid’s construction is the interior chambers. Any visitor to the “first wonder of the ancient world” today may clamber inside to visit the “King’s Chamber,” which is located well up near the geometric center of the huge structure. The actual entrance, hidden be neath the Tura limestone surface blocks, was finally located by Muslim explorers sometime in the middle ages. Today there is a gaping hole about 55 feet up the north face of the structure, but not quite in the center of the face. The entrance was deliberately offset to the east of dead center by about 24 feet—more precisely, offset by exactly 286.1022 “pyramid inches” to the east, a displacement factor we will discuss later.<br />
Originally, the entrance descended at approximately a 26 degree angle for about 60 feet before an “ascending passage,” going upward into the interior at the same angle, could be reached. In another of those magnificent mysteries, the original ascending passage is plug ged with three, tightly fitting, five-ton granite blocks. These blocks are still in place.<br />
Since it is considered a physical impossibility to simply slide a heavy square block of solid granite down a 26-degree incline made of softer limestone while having less than a quarter-inch clearance all the way around, it seems apparent the builders plugged the passage during construction. Therefore, if a pharaoh’s mummy were going to inhabit the chamber, it and all its associated paraphernalia would have to be placed in the chamber before the rest of the structure was finished.<br />
Is it possible that the pyramid was not intended as a tomb, as conventional Egyptology would have us believe?<br />
History teaches us that the first people to crack the casing and enter the structure after it was sealed ages ago worked for the caliph of Dar-al-Salam (Baghdad), a highly educated and competent ruler known as Abdallah al-Mamun (c. A.D. 786-833). His father was Harun Er-Rashid, hero of many of the stories in <i>A Thousand and One Arabian Nights </i>(in which, as you will recall, Sheherazade told tale after spellbinding tale to the Sultan Shariar to avoid having her head chopped off the next morning, as was his wont with his numerous one-night wives). Mamun himself was a very accomplished lea der—so much so that his work on the Great Pyramid is only a minor part of his contributions to science and the arts.<br />
The eighth- and ninth-century Arabs, however, were inferior stonemasons compared with whoever built the pyramids, and they could not penetrate the smooth limestone casings with metal drill bits. So they simply bashed and ground a tunnel through the limestone in the center of the north face by heating the casings with bonfires, then pouring vinegar on the hot limestone to make it crack. They missed the en trance by about 24 feet, and tunneled for about 100 feet into the structure before a stroke of luck signaled a possible hollow place to the east of them, which turned out to be the descending passageway, discovering the subterranean chamber called by some mystics “the chamber of chaos.” Through another bit of luck and several weeks of backbreaking labor, they finally broke into the narrow ascending passage and thence to the two best-known interior rooms, the Queen’s and King’s chambers.<br />
Today when you visit the Great Pyramid, you can see the granite plugs; and then to go up into the interior you must crawl on your hands and knees 129 feet up the 26 degree incline inside a claustrophobically narrow square passageway.<br />
Suddenly you may stand upright in a “grand gallery,” 28 feet in height and 153 feet in length, ascending upward at the same 26 degree angle, to a point where it ultimately reaches the floor level of the so-called “King’s Chamber.” Visitors also pass the floor level of a chamber known arbitrarily as the “Queen’s Chamber,” which is impressive enough, but not quite as impressive as the main room, somewhat higher up, the equally arbitrarily named King’s Chamber.<br />
There is also a curious antechamber to the King’s Chamber, a subterranean chamber, and a small “grotto” in the “Well Shaft,” so-called, as well as five “air spaces” above the King’s Chamber, and some so-called air shafts emanating from the King’s and Queen’s chambers. There may well be other passageways and chambers that have yet to be discovered. The actual function of any of these features cannot be said to be known to modern man.<br />
The “King’s Chamber” remains an utterly unexplained mystery. The walls, floors and ceilings of both interior chambers are made of huge blocks of a rose-colored granite. However, it is the massive size of nine granite blocks making up the ceiling of the King’s Chamber that boggles the engineering mind. These blocks weigh more than 85 tons apiece.<br />
To get an idea of how heavy 85 tons is, consider this: In order for modern construction teams to lift and place a piece of equipment weighing a mere 65 tons, the crane capable of lifting it would need to be broken down and trucked in on 15 semi trailers and then reassembled. So how on earth did the pyramid builders move a stone of such mass? Ropes and log rollers? Were there that many trees available to the ancient Egyptians, or that much hemp? Maybe that’s what happened to all the trees in that desert; clear-cutting, to get enough logs for rolling all those stones. Of course, such an “explanation” is preposterous.<br />
The only explanation seems to be that the ancient builders were in possession of a knowledge of levitation, or anti-gravity, a knowledge avidly sought today by scientists who construct space vehicles.<br />
It is known that the huge granite blocks were quarried more than 200 miles from the site of the Great Pyramid and floated down the Nile. These perfectly cut blocks of granite were hauled up the plateau, then up the steep sides, or up a ramp covering the steep sides, and gently, perfectly, neatly and precisely placed as the walls, floors and ceilings of the interior chambers.<br />
Did you ever try to place a rectangular block of stone between or into a position next to other rectangular blocks? How do you get your fingers out of the way? How do you get the ropes out of the way? How do you do it without chipping or rounding the perfect edges? Remember, each stone weighs 85 tons.<br />
The King’s Chamber, built entirely of finished granite blocks, is 34 feet 4 inches from east to west and 17 feet 2 inches from north to south. Near the west wall rests a huge, open, lidless rectangular granite “sarcophagus” or coffer. It is claimed by the establishment that this was the resting place of the mummy of Pharaoh Khufu. But while this is possible, there is no evidence to support the theory.<br />
The once finely hewn stone has been vandalized over the centuries since the pyramid was opened, but it remains an impressive piece of masonry nonetheless. The sarcophagus is bigger than the ascending passage, so it had to have been placed in the room during construction. Experts have been unable to identify the area from which the sarcophagus rock might have been quarried.<br />
Here is a detailed description of this chamber’s ceiling structure from<i>The Pyramids of Egypt </i>(by I.E.S. Edwards):<br />
<br />
<b>The roof of the King’s Chamber has no exact architectural parallel. Above its flat ceiling, which is composed of nine slabs weighing in aggregate about 400 tons, there are five separate compartments, the ceilings of the first four being flat and the fifth having a pointed roof. The purpose of this construction, it appears, was to eliminate any risk of the ceiling of the chamber collapsing under the weight of the superincumbent masonry. Whether such extreme precautions were required by the character of the building may be debatable; they have, however, been justified by subsequent events. Every one of the massive slabs of granite in the ceiling of the chamber and many of those in the relieving compartments [has] been cracked—presumably by an earthquake—but none has yet collapsed.</b><br />
Now, if we are to believe our modern scholars, the slave laborers had to first build the structure up about one/third of its finished height in order to construct the inner chambers in the center of the mass of stone. It was tough enough for relatively fresh bronze age humans to lug and perhaps roll the million or more limestone blocks into place to reach the chamber level—now they had to haul and exactly place those massive blocks of granite, without damaging them in the process. Was this possible?<br />
The truth is, professors of Egyptian antiquity don’t have a clue about who built the Giza pyramids, or how, or what their exact purpose was in building these particular structures, despite the fact scholars have a pretty good data bank regarding all other pyramids, which were evidently tombs for rulers.<br />
The accepted theory that the Great Pyramid was built by Khufu about 2600 B.C. has no good evidence behind it at all. In fact, the hard evidence points to Khufu “adopting” the grand structure that was already there by building his family tombs around its base. The speculation about Khufu stems from a roughly painted “cartouche” found on the back side of one of those big granite slabs making up the ceiling. What scholars aren’t telling is that the cartouche for Khufu could just as easily, if not more so, been interpreted “<i>khuti</i>,” which translates as “glorious light,” which may have been the name of the Great Pyramid, which glistened in the desert sun like a glorious light when all four sides were coated with those polished white limestone blocks fitted precisely together.<br />
The painted cartouche on the back of a finished block is most logically interpreted as a worker’s mark stating something like “take this one to the pyramid.” Thus, the obvious facts of the construction make the anointed version of ancient Egyptian history difficult to accept.<br />
The designer and builder of the Great Pyramid knew much more about physics, mathematics, geometry and astronomy than can be attributed to the ancient Egyptians. We know this be cause of a great debate that raged about 150 years ago in the hallowed halls of England’s Royal Society. One group of scholars came to believe God had to design and direct the construction of this remarkable monument, because ancient Egyptians surely could not have done so.<br />
At the dawning of the 19th century, one of Napoleon’s savants suggested that whoever the builders of the Great Pyramid were, they apparently knew a great deal about the size and shape of the earth and may have embodied an “earth-commensurate” unit of measure. French scholars tried and failed to make the “meter” fit their thesis.<br />
However, across the channel were a people using the inch as a unit of measurement, and no one could explain from whence this practical unit derived. Well-educated fundamentalists in Lon don and Scotland, faced with the sweeping changes being brought about by the writings of Charles Darwin, tried to prove that God designed the Great Pyramid and that His faithful living on the British Isles had inherited His perfect unit of measure.<br />
John Taylor, a London journalist was the first to question the unique slope of the angle from the Great Pyramid’s base to its apex—51 degrees, 51 minutes of arc. A 60 degree angle would have been <i>a priori</i> more sensible, he reasoned, because that is the angle of an equilateral triangle. This curiosity propelled Tay lor to be the first to discover that the Great Pyramid monumentalizes the fabled relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle.<br />
Fascinated by this geometric discovery, Taylor had an idea that the number of “British inches” in the published per imeter of the structure (36,600) somehow related to the number of days in a year. He took his concepts to C. Piazzi Smyth, astronomer royal of Scotland, who was renowned as a mathematician. Smyth did not make fun of Taylor but began to tinker with the geometry of the structure. When Taylor died, Smyth made a trip to Cairo and measured the remains of the edifice. He published his findings in a book titled<i>Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid.</i><br />
Smyth had determined that the ancient Egyptians could not have built the Great Pyramid, so he gave the credit to God and the Bible. He claimed his measurements of the structure showed that the “sacred cubit” of the Bible and the pyramid builders, virtually 25 modern British inches, was used deliberately by the builders.<br />
After he published his “findings,” Smyth was suddenly hailed as “the world’s biggest pyramidiot,” and Sir Flinders Petrie, acknowledged as the father of modern archeology, decided to visit Egypt and measure the Great Pyramid himself. Petrie also had to admit his own amazement at the precision of the ancient building.<br />
A later reconstruction by David Da vid son, verified by a British government-sponsored survey in 1925, provides the following statistics:<br />
1. The Great Pyramid’s height (projected for the missing apex) to its base plus the interior design would, indeed, monumentalize the geometry of a circle.<br />
2. The polar-diameter inch, which is a hair larger than the present inch, was postulated by Astronomer Royal Sir John Herschel as one ten-millionth the distance from the center of the earth to the surface at the north pole. It could very well have been a “basic unit of measure used by the Great Pyramid designer,” and a “cubit” of 25 pyramid inches appears to have been used as well.<br />
3. A precise measuring of the “original design” will give 365.242 cubits as the length of each side at the base from corner to corner, without accounting for the indentation. The number 365.242 is precisely the number of days in a solar year—which is determined by measuring the exact time between two successive vernal or autumnal equinoxes. Using the “indentation” in each face, the geometrical design also gives the exact number of days in the sidereal or star-time year, which is 365.256 the time of earth’s orbit as measured by a fixed star. And the anomalistic year of 365.259 is also monumentalized. The difference of about 20 minutes each year is due to the earth’s axial wobble.<br />
4. A special “displacement factor” of 286.1022 pyramid inches is monumentalized in the design in three distinct ways. That is the exact difference in height between the ascending passage and the grand gallery; it is the precise offset to the east of the entrance and interior passage system and it is the height that would be covered by the missing apex stone. The factor 286.1022 has a number of special mathematical uses, one of which is calculating the rate of astronomical precession.<br />
5. Precession refers to the apparent motion caused by the earth’s “wobble” as it spins on its axis. Projecting imaginary lines (the path of the earth’s ecliptic, the equator and a meridian at a particular time of day each day) into space can mark the “precession of the equinoxes” traveling through the constellations (signs of the zodiac), starry symbols which man has used since ancient times—another “how did they know that?” mystery.<br />
Additionally, the sum of the base diagonals of the Great Pyramid equals 25,826.5 pyramid inches; modern astronomy confirms that the complete cycle of precession is 25,826.5 years. It is amazing to note that the perimeter measurement of the 35th course of masonry, which was constructed at a greater width than all the other courses of block, thus calling attention to it, also measures 25,826.5 pyramid inches.<br />
It is no more mind-boggling to contemplate the incorporation of solar astronomy, geometry and earth-commensurate measure into this huge stone monument than it is to merely consider how they managed to construct it.<br />
The Great Pyramid has always fascinated man and always will—until some future generation unravels its final mysteries. It is fitting to note the words of David Davidson, the agnostic architect, engineer, astronomer and mathematician who set out to disprove the “zany notions” of the Bible-based pyramidologists and then later embraced them:<br />
These ancient pyramid builders used a system of geometry in a graphical demonstration of natural law, defining the linear and angular measurements of the earth and its orbit; defining the annual rates and periods of the cyclical motions of the earth and its orbit; and defining a system of astronomical chronology that can be the basis of related reference for every period or highly developed stage of civilization in the world’s history.<br />
It seems that a former civilization was more highly skilled in the science of astronomy—and therefore in the mathematical basis of the mechanical arts and sciences—than our modern civilization. And what does this mean? It means it has taken modern man thousands of years to piece together his discoveries (via experiments) facts he had originally come to know by another surer and simpler method. It means, in effect, that the whole empirical basis of our modern civilization is a makeshift collection of hypotheses compared with the knowledge of natural laws which governed an advanced civilization of the past.<br />
Davidson’s science was quite sound, but logic later forced him to attribute the Great Pyramid to some divine or supernatural intervention, and thus he became as fanatical in advancing his own theories as the fundamentalist thinkers he originally set out to disprove.<br />
It all boils down to this: there are few things more humbling than to consider the mortals who lived and toiled to de sign and construct the Great Pyramid.</td><td></td></tr>
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</tbody></table><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-18148157612707804052010-03-22T05:30:00.001-07:002010-03-22T05:30:58.653-07:00The Soviet ‘Discoveries’ In Auschwitz<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black;">By Udo Walendy</span><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">T</span><span style="color: black;">he following has been excerpted from issue No. 31 in the series of brochures (now over 70 in number) entitled Historische Tatsachen (“historical facts”) in which German history in the first half of the 20th century has been accorded the most thorough revisionist reexamination achieved by any contemporary German historian. For several decades, Udo Walen dy was permitted to freely publish the results of his research and analysis without undue harassment. However, in the wake of the recent environment of anti-revisionist laws, and much to the disgrace of the German judiciary and the entire German nation, Mr. Walendy has been arraigned, found guilty of “inciting racial hatred” and is currently incarcerated.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">On February 1 and 2, 1945, the Soviet propaganda organ Pravda published lengthy initial accounts of the findings of the Red Army upon its occupation of the Auschwitz camp sites on January 27, 1945. These initial reports and the treatment accorded them are of particular significance for historical analysis, because they had not yet been adapted to Allied propaganda of the time, at least not in detail. The lengthiest first-hand report was published in the issue of February 2, 1945, and began in this manner:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">City of Auschwitz—An impartial committee will investigate the accurate number of people killed or tortured to death . . . After the Red Army disclosed the horrible and disgusting secrets of Majdanek [another concentration camp—Ed.] before the world, the Germans in Auschwitz began to remove the traces of their crimes. They leveled the burial mounds of the so-called “old graves” in the eastern part of the camp. Likewise they removed and destroyed all traces of the electric conveyor system, where hundreds of people at one time were electrocuted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The bodies fell onto a slow-moving transport belt, taking them to a blast furnace. There they were burnt completely, the bones ground in a roller mill and the remains spread on the fields as fertilizer. The special mobile devices to kill children were relocated to the back fields.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The stationary gas chambers in the east side of the camp were remodeled. They were ornamented and decorated with little towers, placed on top of the roof, so they looked like harmless garages.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But it is still possible to assemble traces of the murder of millions. Based upon descriptions by prisoners liberated by the Red Army, it is not difficult to verify everything the Germans tried so carefully to keep secret. This huge death mill was equipped with the latest style of fascist technology and supplied with all those testing devices which only the German brutes are able to invent.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In the first years of the camp the Germans still performed [inefficiently]. They simply led the prisoners to a pit and ordered them to lie face down in the pit and shot them in the neck. After the first row was murdered, the second was forced to lie on top of the first one and was shot; then the third row and so forth. When the grave was full, they shot again at the whole pile of dead people with automatic rifles, just to make sure. The people who did not find room in the graves were also shot and buried [sic]. In this way hundreds of huge graves were filled in the eastern part of the camp. Customarily, these were termed the “old graves.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Then the Germans recognized this procedure as being primitive and decided to increase the productivity of the murder process. It was mechanized; gas chambers, and electric conveyor systems were installed, they built blast furnaces for cremation and so-called “chimneys.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But the most terrible thing for the prisoners in Auschwitz was not even death. The sadistic Germans let them starve in the cold, while working 18 hours and punished them most cruelly. I was shown steel cudgels, covered with leather, on the handles of which the factory brand “Krupp Dresden” was engraved. These torture tools were manufactured in mass production.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">To the south of the adjoining section, I saw compartments with benches, covered with tin and leather strips attached. On these, people were beaten to death. Tin covering was used, so the blood of the victims could be washed off. Fastidious henchmen caring about sanitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">I saw a specially constructed chair with steel teeth to break the back of the victim to be killed. I saw massive rubber cudgels, all marked with the brand name “Krupp,” with which the heads and genitals of the prisoners were beaten.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">I saw thousands of ghost-like wretches in Auschwitz, so emaciated they staggered like shadows in the wind. They praised the Red Army who had saved them and tore them away from the hell, bringing revenge to the fascist henchmen for Majdanek, Auschwitz, and for all the tortures and sufferings caused to the people of Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="right" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: black;">–Polewoj<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="right" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: black;">(via telegram)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">T</span><span style="color: black;">he Soviet “reporters” knew what was expected of them regarding their communiqués after taking the concentration camps. Anybody naïve enough to believe that the Soviets, in performing this “duty,” were concerned with “honesty and truth in reporting,” should be reminded of the Soviet record of always trying to avoid culpability for any misdeeds.<sup>1</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">It is therefore not at all surprising that the Soviet reports on Auschwitz were strictly in line with wartime atrocity propaganda, and that they later, in spite of the obvious falsity, clung to them with relentless perseverance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Note that neither of the two Pravda articles examined here brings out a single detail of what the Red Army really discovered when occupying the camp. In the first article, only the account of one former prisoner from Auschwitz, identified as “Lukaschew, from the Woronesch area,” was offered; and this contained nothing but unprovable statements—this is, at best, hearsay. Furthermore, this prisoner was not even able to describe how and when the Germans performed these various alleged atrocities.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In connection with this second article of Pravda from February 2, 1945, we do not want to forget to quote the United Press correspondent, Henry Shapiro, who obediently echoed the Soviets. Referring to the Pravda articles, he wrote on February 2, 1945, in the Washington Daily News, the following:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“Ghosts” with undefinable age or sex freed from the death mill [quote marks added–Ed.]. The semi-official [Soviet] newspaper Pravda reports today that the Red Army has saved several thousand tortured, emaciated inmates of the largest German murder factory in southwest Poland. They all were of ghostlike appearance, nearly undefinable in their age or sex, thrown to the ground at the slightest wind, as Pravda correspondent Boris Polewoj reports.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Fragmentary reports say that at least 1.5 million people were killed in Auschwitz, says Polewoj. During 1941, 1942 and early 1943, he says, daily, five trains reached Auschwitz with Russians, Poles, Jews, Czechs, French and Yugoslavs, forced into sealed cars. The trains always left Auschwitz empty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The first shock in Auschwitz is its size. Dozens of square miles are soaked with human blood and literally blanketed with human ashes. This was a huge industry with many departments and arrangements, each one specially designed for its function. The victims were classified according to age and ability to work before deciding on execution. The main station was the smelter where the victims were burnt after sophisticated tortures.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Not satisfied with the earlier methods of killing with automatic guns in pits, the Germans themselves “increased the production” and mechanized the murder machinery, he said. The most perfected equipment was an electric conveyor where hundreds of people could be electrocuted at one time and then conveyed into the smelter furnace. They burned up at once and subsequently were spread as fertilizer on the nearby cabbage fields, says Polewoj.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But the released prisoners say death almost was merciful, compared with the tortures of hunger, cold, and physical drudgery the victims were exposed to before execution, he added.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">[Apparently paraphrasing Pole woj:]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">I saw leather-covered cudgels that were mass produced in the “Krutz” [sic] factories in Dresden, for the sole purpose to beat prisoners. I saw tin-covered benches with leather strips, where the victims were beaten to a [pulp]. I saw heavy oak chairs, where the victims were killed, after the backbone was broken. I saw rubber cudgels with the trade name “Krutz” [sic] for beating the head or genitals.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Polewoj said the Germans had tried to remove the traces in Auschwitz. They destroyed the conveyors, leveled the high grave mounds, full of skeletons, removed the mobile equipment for killing children, and rebuilt the gas chambers to make them look like harmless garages, he said. But the evidence for the destruction of a million people could not completely be wiped out, he said. A special committee of investigation will need several weeks of careful, intensive study, to understand the meaning of these atrocities to the fullest extent.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In the early June of 1944, the British Ministry of Information had issued a directive to the Anglo-American press to intensify horror propaganda. Auschwitz in particular was to be singled out to personify the evil of everything German. The British knew that propaganda stories were most effective when promptly released after whatever event initiated it. Or, expressed the other way, if there was a long delay, the story lost most of its impact. The British were, therefore, curious as to why the Soviets did not immediately supply photos, film material and other evidence after they occupied Auschwitz. The British government had already sent two inquires to Moscow for such information. Now the reason for the lack of evidence is clear.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The first two articles of Pravda—February 1 and 2, 1945—were pure atrocity propaganda.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Soviets who overran the camp and made the accusations published in Pravda failed to produce any concrete evidence such as the alleged mobile apparatus to kill children, let alone the “disguised gas chambers.” There are vague hints about various delegations arriving at the camp and inspecting the traces of the crimes, but no reports or pictures. Most of what the Soviets purport to have found does not appear in contemporary Auschwitz literature; on the other hand, and most importantly, what we read in today’s books, was not found by the Soviets—a grotesque situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Now let’s check the Pravda articles in detail:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">T</span><span style="color: black;">he implication of extreme murderousness during 1941, 1942 and early 1943 is remarkable. No mention was made by Pravda of 1944, when according to the various establishment “holocaust researchers” the real climax of mass annihilation occurred, with the killing and cremation of up to 20,000 prisoners per day. Of this, the Pravda fabricators did not know anything. If they had, it is certain they would have reported it immediately.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">It is quite true that from 1941 till spring 1943, many persons arrived at Auschwitz. It was at this time that its huge industrial installations were built. Toward the end of the war the work force had increased to about 100,000—some of it contracted, but mostly forced labor.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Besides German foremen and technicians there were Poles, Czechs, French, Russians, Yugoslavs and Jews. It is strange that nowhere in the Pravda article is there any mention of these ongoing industries, nor did the Poles point this out when later questioned. The “huge expanse of the Auschwitz complex” is ascribed by the allegedly astonished Polewoj entirely to the “murder machine.” There is not a single word that indicates that the camp is a part of the German armament industries, as we now know it clearly was.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">T</span><span style="color: black;">he Germans are said to have begun to remove the traces of mass murder in Auschwitz when the Soviets occupied Majdanek concentration camp, which occurred on July 24, 1944. This means the Germans had barely six months left to destroy evidence, including three months of winter, with the ground frozen solid. In this short time, they supposedly removed “the old graves in the eastern part of the camp” and dismantled the mechanisms of the murder of millions of individuals.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">These were said to have included hundreds of huge grave pits and high mounds above them with countless layers of bodies. The graves are said to have been quickly “leveled” by the Germans, and this means that, therefore, the bodies would still have been present, especially those bodies that were originally in the pits. However, anyone familiar with the matter knows that in Auschwitz no grave sites were ever found, and in particular none of the alleged mass graves.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The contemporary version, published for several decades, is that the Germans burned all the bodies and ground the remains into dust and then dumped everything into the Vistula River, where it floated away, an impossibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Mass graves in the Auschwitz area were not possible, due to the high level of the water table. Even individual grave sites in the area had to be removed later because of ground water contamination. As early as 1942 there were extended periods of typhus epidemics because of ground water contamination.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Mass graves simply could not be tolerated near the Monowitz (Auschwitz III) site, without serious risk to the operations of the armament industries.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Also, it is a delusion to think such clues can be removed that easily.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Even if graves had been cleaned out and refilled, any soil expert could easily verify the excavations by cutting across with trenches. Such findings, witnessed by independent Swiss or Swedish observ ers, would constitute irrefutable proof that something had happened at the site. But there is no such evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">What else did the Germans “remove”? The traces of the “electric conveyor system.” That is to say, not just the supposed electric conveyors, but all accessories, the power plant, the electric power lines, the one or several “blast furnaces” or “smelter furnaces.” How credible is the story that all of this heavy apparatus was removed at the last moment by the Germans?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The vanished facilities must have been of such a “high fascist technology” that even today similar hardware has yet to be reinvented, which could facilitate the cremation of, as stated by Polewoj, “hundreds of people completely . . .”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Also the grinding mills for bones, the huge conveyor belt, the piles of coal or other fuel. Are we to believe that everything was wiped off the face of the earth in less than six months, including three months of winter, and nothing was ever found? Not even any construction blueprints?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In other words, the Soviets did not find traces of any of that, or else they would have said so. All this was an invention masquerading as historical truth, to be used against a prostrate German nation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Even the most German-hating agitators have long ago distanced themselves from these fantastic stories. They did not believe them from the first day.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The fact remains, however, that the Allied power that alone conquered and occupied Auschwitz (the USSR) at the same time shielded the camp from any inspection by foreign observers for many months afterward, and this same ally was the only one to publish stories about what it claims to have found in Auschwitz.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The eastern part of the camp was Monowitz. However, not one of the “holo caustorians” has ever insisted that there were gas chambers in Monowitz. Instead, they all speak of a gas chamber within the main camp only in the beginning—surprisingly, in the immediate neighborhood of the camp kitchen and in the center of the whole complex. It is said to have served later as an air raid shelter. But the holocaust experts all talk about Birkenau, a part of the camp far to the west of the huge industrial complex. And here again the gas chambers supposedly were in the western part. This is quite different from where the “liberators” claim they found them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But then the story becomes even more complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Soviet “liberator” has supposedly found the gas chambers, decorated with ornaments and little turrets, to look like harmless garages. All the holocaust experts, however, seem to agree that the Soviets did not find the gas chambers, because (allegedly) they all were completely destroyed in advance of the Soviet “liberation” by the Germans.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Why, after all, should the Germans have spared just these gas chambers from destruction? The Germans otherwise were so obsessed with removal of all traces of the alleged genocide, and yet they decorated them with ornaments and little turrets for the reception of the Soviets.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Not once did the Soviets provide illustrative evidence of these “gas chambers, looking like harmless garages,” to the outside world. Not even a photo was taken of these remarkable structures, despite their obviously tremendous importance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;">I</span><span style="color: black;">n a Soviet film on the liberation of Auschwitz, shown on West German television on November 16, 1986, of course, these “gas chambers” were not shown. More surprisingly, the Soviets did not even search for gas chambers, though the film’s contemporary background narration did talk about them constantly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">As to the allegation that refers to the killing by shots into the neck as found in the mass graves in the first years of Auschwitz, at once one is reminded of the Katyn Forest and other Soviet crime scenes, where the NKVD executed thousands of Polish officers in April-May 1940, using exactly the methods they charged against the Germans. And it is typical that people such as Polewoj, a Pravda reporter, and other Soviet organs of publication, were involved in the manipulation of the Katyn case for propaganda.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">A Soviet document later produced by the Soviets in Nuremberg, “Doc. USSR-008,”<sup>2</sup> carries the signatures of people such as Mytrolitos Nikolaus and Lyssenko, who, in spite of their knowledge of the true perpetrators of the mass murder at Katyn, lied and assigned blame for this genocidal act on Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;">T</span><span style="color: black;">he compartments with benches, torture chairs to break backbones, steel cudgels from Krupp, etc. were never “shown to the world,” though Polewoj has “found and seen them.” Not even a photograph was made. United Press staff correspondent Henry Shapiro did not believe this deception, but changed the brand name Krupps into the fantasy product Krutz—exchanging one lie for another.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Polewoj saw “thousands of martyrs in Auschwitz, so emaciated that they staggered like shadows in the wind.” Whoever looks at the physical condition of the prisoners in the Soviet film shown recently on the West German television cannot help feeling that—besides really sick ones—the prisoners looked well fed. These pictures have been known throughout the holocaust literature. One gets the impression that these prisoners appeared in better physical condition than the German soldiers of January 1945.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In this context we remember the British inquiries of February 15 and of April 25, 1945 to Moscow, to request release of the information as to what they really did find in Auschwitz.<sup>3 </sup>So far none of the holocaust experts has taken the meager Soviet answer of May 7, 1945 seriously, and so did not publish it. And this in spite of the fact that they accepted the Soviet figure of 4 million Auschwitz dead without hesitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;">I</span><span style="color: black;">t is worth noting in the Pravda article of February 2, 1945 what Polewoj did not state and did not find: He did not find piles of eyeglasses; he found no piles of dentures, no piles of human hair, no piles of shoes, no piles of worn clothing. Such photos were later published officially by the Soviets but these were mostly faked—some drawn or painted as collages, composed of various parts, which were exhibited as being actual photos.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Pravda reporter, who spent several days at Auschwitz to search for material with which to make accusations against the “German fascists,” had seen nothing of underground “gas chambers and dressing rooms,” not even heard of them. More surprisingly yet, he had not even singled out “Birkenau,” or found anything worth mentioning about the camp to pass on to the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">He had not seen or heard anything of the alleged “farmhouses, remodeled already in 1942” to become gas chambers west of Birkenau, and supposedly in operation until October 1944. Not one of the liberated prisoners in the euphoria of liberation reported about them, none mentioned Birkenau, none talked of what had been going on there in 1944.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">This is surprising.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">He did not see the station platform strewn with suitcases and worn clothing or pilfered freight cars; he saw no mass graves, no rivers (Vistula and Sola) clogged with human ashes, no fields covered with human ashes and bone fragments used as fertilizer, no “mobile gallows.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In summary it can be said that Polewoj was the first Soviet reporter on the scene; what he saw and reported, was not seen and reported by the subsequent Extra ordinary Soviet Commission.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">What the later commission saw and what their cameramen filmed and recorded, was not seen by Polewoj, the first reporter on the spot.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">What they did have in common was a devotion to atrocity propaganda.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Footnotes<o:p></o:p></span></sup></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">1</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> Soviet responsibility for many massacres has been well established, as at Lemberg (Lwow), 1941; in the Baltic states, in 1939-40 and again in 1945-48; Vinitsya, Ukraine; Katyn Forest near Smolensk, where the Germans in 1943 found the bodies of 4,253 Polish officers in several mass graves. These are the only remains yet uncovered from a known group of 15,000 men who disappeared while in Soviet captivity after the communist takeover of Eastern Poland in April and May of 1940. The new government of the Russian Federation has yet to dig into the former Soviet NKVD archives and disclose the location of the mass grave sites where the remaining 10,000 men rest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">2</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Nov. 14, 1945 to Oct. 1, 1946. Nuremberg, 1947, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 241-261.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">3</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz und die Allierten, Munich, 1982, pp. 395-396. Com pare Historische Tatsachen No. 15, p. 35.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-1754705434714987002010-03-22T05:26:00.000-07:002010-03-22T05:26:54.142-07:00Admiral Yamamato & The Battle of Midway<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER"> By Vaughn Greene</div><div align="CENTER"><br />
</div>The appropriately named Battle of Midway (June 4-5, 1942) was the turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. Before Midway, Japan was on the offensive, quickly taking Hong Kong, Wake, Guam, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, Burma and Indonesia. After Midway, the Japanese empire was forced onto the defensive and was finally crushed. This catastrophe for Japan was in large part the responsibility of one man: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.<br />
<br />
Had Isoroku Yamamato been in the U.S. Navy, Yamamoto would have been immediately relieved of command and court-martialed. Instead, he was glorified by the military dictatorship, until the admiral was killed in an ambush by 18 P-38 fighters almost one year later.<br />
The Japanese navy’s chief admiral was considered a sort of boy wonder and an object of worship to many. He had been an ensign in the Battle of Tsu shima Straits, in 1905. This loss by the Russian navy was the first defeat of white, European men by Asiatic mongoloids in recent history and caused the white race to “lose face” worldwide.<br />
Yamamoto later attended college at Harvard, and he was, naturally, regarded as somewhat of an expert on the United States. He planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, yet knew this was insanity. He was aware that America had twice the population and 10 times the area of Japan. It was the world leader in production of cars, trucks, steel, and airliners. All these civilian factories could quickly turn to wartime production.<br />
To give just one example: In 1942, Japan produced 8,800 planes, while the United States turned out over 49,000. America was totally self-sufficient in oil, food, iron and wood, while Japan had to import most of these goods by ship. The admiral’s muddled thinking cost Japan the war. Since he was never brought up on charges, this author would like to conduct a sort of <i>post mortem</i> court-martial and present six “indictments”:<br />
1. Wrong target.<br />
2. Wrong disposition of the combined fleet.<br />
3. Wrong attack strategy.<br />
4. Wrong intelligence gathering.<br />
5. Wrong training, officers and equipment.<br />
6. Wrong philosophy.<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER"><b>Charge No. 1: Picking the Wrong Target</b></div>When 16 B-25 U.S. Army bombers flew over Japan on April 18, 1942 the Japanese high command was flabbergasted. Not only could the planes have bombed the emperor’s palace, the B-25s got clean away. Due to a strange coincidence, April 18 had been chosen as air raid drill day for the country. As a result, no one paid any attention to the strange-looking planes flying overhead. This was in spite of the warning sent out by an offshore picket ship. This was a serious mat ter.<br />
Yamamoto agreed to avenge this insult, and came up with a plan that left many senior officers unenthusiastic. Since Midway Island was the closest U.S. air base, the admiral proposed to seize it. By so doing, he reasoned, what was left of the American Navy would counterattack, and he could easily destroy the entire remaining Pacific Fleet.<br />
There was a serious flaw to this strategy: The Americans had let Wake, Guam and the Philippines be taken after they were hit. Therefore, why would they make a life-and-death issue out of a miserable, two-mile-long sand spit, out in the middle of nowhere?<br />
Furthermore, if Japan were to occupy the island, a large part of the Japanese navy would be permanently tied up supplying and protecting the isle. Japanese bombers could not reach Hawaii, but long-range U.S. B-17s could constantly bombard Midway from Hawaii.<br />
The target Yamamoto should have attacked was Hawaii itself. His commander of the six-carrier fleet that hit Pearl Harbor had done a miserable, half-finished job. While sinking or damaging the nine battleships at Pearl, Adm. Chuichi Nagumo had, in a manner of speaking, actually done the Americans a favor (although the next-of-kin of those slain there would not see it that way): Most of these sunken or damaged ships, among the 93 vessels that were at Pearl Harbor that day, were obsolete and ready for the scrap yard.<br />
The timid Nagumo had retreated without hitting the vital dry-docks, repair yards and, above all, the oil tank farms. If these logical targets had been destroyed, American ships could not have gotten oil anywhere between the U.S. mainland and Australia. This would have meant that the three remaining U.S. aircraft carriers could not have conducted operations in the Pacific for many months. In consequence, peace terms might come: With the United States also fighting Germany and Italy, the Pacific war might have been quietly settled and forgotten.<br />
<div align="CENTER"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER"><b>Charge No. 2: Wrong Disposition Of the Japanese Fleet</b></div>Yamamoto was given the largest fleet in history to attain the Midway victory. He had at his disposal nearly 300 ships and a year’s supply of oil. With such a massive force, he could not possibly have failed to defeat the Yankees. In spite of this, the chief admiral managed to seize defeat from the jaws of victory by splitting up his battle fleet into nine different parts. He had ships scattered from Alaska to the Marianas, so as to “confuse” the enemy.<br />
This was an old, outdated strategy, going back to samurai times, when deception was more important than strength. Time after time, Japanese forces had used this same, worn-out theory, and had been defeated. In contrast, MacArthur’s chief of air operations, Gen. George C. Kenney, scraped up every last possible airplane and put them into battle, dealing the enemy one hammer blow after another.<br />
Thus Guadalcanal and New Guinea were lost to smaller forces. Yamamoto had 10 carriers at his disposal, versus the American three, one of which was damaged. He had the largest battleship in the world, the <i>Yamato</i>, whose nine 18-inch guns could each hurl a 3,000-pound shell over 23 miles. He had the best heavy cruisers of the war, and the most experienced crews. His pilots had years of combat flying over China. They had trained for months for the upcoming am bush.<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER"><b>Charge No. 3: Wrong Attack Strategy</b></div>This was the worst mistake, and the most inexplicable. The admiral sat in comfort aboard the <i>Yamato</i> while he sent his four aircraft carriers 100 miles ahead, virtually unprotected. The carriers, accompanied by a few cruisers and destroyers, were to alone defeat Midway so that yet a third fleet could bring in invasion troops. Little thought was given to the carriers being attacked by shore-based aircraft, to say nothing of submarines.<br />
The proper thing to do would have the main battle fleet of heavy cruisers and battleships provide a protective shield around the vital carriers. Both Japanese and American carriers had insufficient deck armor plating. Some U.S. carriers had, in fact, wooden decks. None of the carriers had proper antiaircraft guns. At the least, Yamamoto should have been 100 miles in front of the carriers. His 18-inch guns could have quickly reduced Midway Island to sea level, without losing a single airplane.<br />
The reasoning behind this bizarre action was based on a contradiction. Yamamoto wanted total secrecy so that his carriers could seize the island. Yet, he also wanted the Americans to know he was coming, so as to lure out the remaining carriers and finish them off. Most of the enemy battleships, of course, had already been destroyed or put out of action.<br />
The admiral should have learned from his own successes. Aircraft had destroyed these Yankee battleships. Japanese air power also had destroyed England’s main hopes in the Pacific. Within a few minutes, “obsolete” Japanese torpedo bombers had sunk the heavy British cruiser <i>Repulse</i> and the brand-new battleship <i>Prince of Wales.</i> With almost 1,000 lives being lost, they both went down on December 10.<br />
Churchill later said it was the worst day of the war for him. Before Pearl Harbor, he bragged about how the two British warships, plus the American fleet, would frighten the Japanese government into not declaring war. But Japanese carriers had sunk a British carrier at the Battle of Ceylon and an American carrier at Coral Sea. This should have alerted the Japanese admiral to the folly of attacking an unknown enemy without carrier protection. It should have also told him that battleships were a thing of the past.<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER"><b>Charge No. 4: Wrong Intelligence Gathering</b></div>To put it mildly, Yamamoto took a lackadaisical approach to gathering intelligence. After the Pearl Harbor attack, he had no idea what was going on in Hawaii. He did not know the world’s largest salvage operation was under way, and many supposedly lost ships were rebuilt better than new. He did not know the Americans had a third carrier, the hastily repaired <i>Yorktown.</i> Contrary to many misinformed people, none of the Americans of Japanese ancestry were involved in spy activity. (This did not prevent one Filipino-American Hawaiian from murdering 10 of his Japanese-American neighbors.)<br />
In point of fact, the 442nd regimental combat team, composed of Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) earned more medals than any other unit in the U.S. Army’s history.<br />
The imperial government did have several white undercover agents, but they provided little help. Yamamoto should have sent ashore, during the Pearl Harbor attack, a team of spies. Certainly later he could have landed one or more by submarine. Instead, he sent flying boats over Hawaii twice, at night in March.<br />
Since it was dark, there was little to see. One of the “Emily” flying boats dropped bombs, which hit a golf course. (It wasn’t until months later, when bomb fragments were analyzed, that the groundskeepers realized they had not been hit by American practice bombers.)<br />
The admiral sent in a fleet of subs to monitor Hawaii, but they arrived late, on June first. Two carriers had already left on the 28th, and the<i>Yorktown,</i> still being repaired, went to sea on the 30th. Thus Yamamoto had no inkling that three (not two) enemy carriers were heading for Midway.<br />
In addition, he planned to have an “Emily” refueled at French Frigate Shoals, about 500 miles west from Hawaii, by submarine. It was to have gathered last-minute data above Pearl. Unfortunately, the Americans had stationed a repair ship at the reefs, and the operation was canceled. Why wasn’t the refueling simply done at sea? Yamamoto also sent in a cordon of 12 submarines to survey Midway, but they arrived too late and did little. The Americans had already placed a fleet of 26 submarines and 30 PBY patrol planes on constant long-distance patrol for almost a month.<br />
<br />
There was an equally severe problem in the admiral’s intelligence gathering. The Japanese army and navy were fiercely competitive, and rarely exchanged intelligence information. If the admiral had had closer ties with the army warlords in Tokyo, he might well have learned vital news that would have caused him to change his plans. This fault went back to the late 1800s during the so-called “Meiji Revolution” when the samurai warrior class was disbanded, and a modern army, based on European lines, was formed.<br />
As a result, many naval officers came from well-to-do, well-educated former samurai families. Most army officers were former peasants. The navy had seen much of the world and was quite sophisticated. The crude army officers were more narrow minded, having been fooled by their own Shinto propaganda, which proclaimed them sons of the sun god. As a result, the army got bogged down in 1937 with a no-win war in China, just as the Americans did in Vietnam, decades later. The army was humiliated, and seethed that they were considered second best to the navy. While army tanks, artillery and equipment were obsolete, the navy always got the best and newest. The army wanted to expand operations to Burma and completely shut off supplies reaching China. For this reason, they decried the navy’s lack of support, due to the impending Midway operation.<br />
<div align="CENTER"><b>Charge No. 5: Wrong Training and Officers and Equipment</b></div>While the Japanese navy in 1942 was the best trained and equipped in the world, there were serious shortcomings. The shipboard fire fighting teams had poor training. As a result, all four carriers that were bombed burned out of control and had to be abandoned. In contrast, when the <i>USS Yorktown</i> was hit twice, damage control teams quickly put out fires and got the ship under way.<br />
Furthermore, the observation planes were obsolete biplanes, with inferior pilots. As a result of sloppy observations, Yamamoto and his chief of carriers, Nagumo, had no idea of the American battle force until it was too late. Even after the two-day battle was over, Yamamoto was getting reports there were as many as seven American carriers in the area.<br />
And while the combat pilots were superbly experienced, only 125 per year were trained. Many of the pilots Yamamoto prized were aggressive, but were also drunkards and womanizers. They tended to be unpredictable. Like most of the military, his pilots were trained in bushido.<br />
Bushido was the code of ethics the medieval Japanese knights, known as samurai, followed. Often, when in a seemingly impossible situation, a samurai would commit suicide, an ancient Japanese way of “saving face.” During the Battle of Guadalcanal, shot-down Japanese pilots would sometimes deliberately unfasten their parachutes and fall to their death. It is a fact that three of the four Midway carrier commanders committed suicide. Yamamoto should have forcefully forbidden such useless and counterproductive behavior.<br />
Furthermore, Yamamoto often disregarded the advice of talented officers who offered criticism. He would sometimes ignore the advice of his seniors in Tokyo. Twice he threatened to resign when the chief of the Naval General Staff, Adm. Osami Nagano, differed with him. [Faced with such a reply, the Naval General Staff officers capitulated, and the Battle of Midway was on.—Ed.]<br />
The admiral made a major mistake in keeping the overcautious Nagumo on as head of carriers after the Pearl Harbor blundering. When the morning Battle of Midway began, Nagumo became totally confused as he was attacked by PBY patrol planes, Army B-26s, three different kinds of torpedo bombers, two kinds of fighters, two kinds of light bombers and Army B-17s. As a result, Nagumo kept dithering around, switching back and forth between bombs and torpedoes, until the flight decks were awash with them. At this most critical moment, the American dive bombers appeared.<br />
<br />
What Nagumo should have done, once he learned U.S. carriers were in the area, was to have immediately headed for the protection of the main Japanese battle force, 100 miles to the west. There he could have safely refueled and rearmed at leisure. In stead, Nagumo lost three carriers within a space of five minutes.<br />
Yamamoto should, then and there, have relieved Nagumo of command. Rather than doing that, however, he waited until 2200 hours (10 P.M.) to do this. (Ironically, the most capable commander at Midway, Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi of the undamaged fourth carrier <i>Hiryu,</i> had sent a message to Nagumo, criticizing his lack of drive. This was a most courageous and unusual thing for an officer of lower rank to do. Had Yamaguchi been in charge, the battle would, almost un doubtedly, have been won by the Jap anese.)<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER"><b>Charge No. 6: Wrong Philosophy</b></div>Yamamoto was of the old school, trained in battleship clashes during the Russo-Nipponese war of 1905. He was also trained in bushido, and he had learned poker while at Harvard. All of these factors produced a dangerous philosophy of taking great chances but being cautious at the same time.<br />
When Nagumo’s three carriers were hit, Yamamoto should have immediately radioed the remaining carrier <i>Hiryu</i> to retreat west, while he brought up the main battle force at full speed. As it was, Yamamoto did not consider using his battle force until after midnight.<br />
Yamamoto had not notified Nagumo the occupation-force fleet had been hit by aircraft the evening before. This was to maintain radio silence but left Nagumo in the dark. The admiral disregarded the Americans’ new weapon: radar. Japanese divers had salvaged radar gear from the sunken <i>Prince of Wales,</i> but Yamamoto felt his highly trained visual observers were superior.<br />
After this terrible defeat, in which half of Japan’s carriers were sunk, Yamamoto had the survivors isolated and announced Midway had been a great victory. It took the army over four months to find out what really happened.<br />
This desire to “save face” was to dog Japan all through the war. Time after time, senior commanders were given false information, which resulted in unnecessary defeats. Tokyo military dictators did not want the general population, brainwashed with ancient Shinto propaganda, to hear of defeats. It would have been far better for Japan if the admiral had told the truth, and thus prepared all for the harder days to come.<br />
Yamamoto was further negligent in, surprisingly, not realizing that the carrier warfare he himself had invented made battleships untenable. His insistence on bushido bravery, instead of common sense, doomed the carriers. When the main Midway battle began, all overhead patrol fighters came down to sea level. There the pathetic American suicide torpedo pilots were plodding along at the mandatory release speed of 110 mph. (The Japanese “long lance” torpedo could be released at a higher altitude and at 260 mph. Also, the American torpedoes did not explode 50 percent of the time.) The undisciplined Zero pilots were gleefully zipping around at sea level, slaughtering the outmoded U.S. planes. Squadron leaders, who surely must have known better, joined in. Meanwhile, the sky above the carriers was totally ignored. Then the American dive bombers arrived unseen.<br />
It was Yamamoto’s arrogance which finally doomed the Japanese Midway operation. With eight carriers, 22 heavy cruisers, and 11 battleships, he should have wiped out the puny, inexperienced American task force. Instead, despite his interest in the use of deception, he did not even consider the first axiom of war: The enemy might know your secret plans. The American code breakers did. The admiral didn’t expect they could play cat-and-mouse as well as he could.<br />
U.S. Adm. Raymond Spruance and Rear Admiral Frank “Jack” Fletcher proved him wrong. Yamamoto did not think Americans were as brave as his bushido-trained warriors. The 41 U.S. torpedo planes that flew into certain death disproved that. So too did Marine Capt. Richard Fleming.<br />
While Fleming was attacking the heavy cruiser <i>Mikuma</i> on the battle’s last day, his engine was hit. He then deliberately crashed onto the after turret. Gasoline fumes from the obsolete Vindicator (called “wind indicators” by their crews) were sucked into the <i>Mikuma</i>’s engine and exploded, killing the entire engine room crew. The<i>Mikuma</i> shortly thereafter went under.<br />
It is a final irony that the only American carrier that was sunk (the<i>Yorktown</i>), was sunk not by Yamamoto’s vaunted aerial samurai, but by the lowly submarine <i>1-168.</i><br />
<i><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></i>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-64635082894143160412010-03-22T05:21:00.000-07:002010-03-22T05:21:10.892-07:00Who Were the Original Native Americans?<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black;">By John Nugent<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Politicians and bureaucrats, along with some Indian tribesmen, are trying to cover up the scientific evidence. But ancient bones do not lie, and they seem to prove that Caucasians may have been in the Americas before Mongoloids arrived from the Old World. Is America “white man’s country” after all?</span><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>C</span><span style="color: black;">BS’s interviewer Leslie Stahl said it best on <i>Sixty Minutes</i>: “It was one of those things no one ever doubted. The first people on this continent were the Indians, period. No one had any reason to doubt it. Until now.”<sup>1</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The town of Kennewick, Washington, population 44,000, says its name means “winter heaven” in an Indian language. But, as a recent<i>Wall Street Journal</i> article points out,<sup>2</sup> a prehistoric skeleton known as “Kennewick Man” or “Richland Man” has caused a culture-war hell.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In July 1996, two college students stumbled on a human skull and a nearly complete skeleton along a shallow area of the Columbia River in southeastern Washington state. Initially, the county coroner saw it as a classic murder scene, but something didn’t fit. He called in an archeologist, James C. Chatters, who assembled the skeleton on a table. “He looked immediately like a white European [19th century] settler”—as he later told <i>Sixty Minutes</i>—except for one thing: a Clovis spear head stuck in his hip. (Clovis stone technology involves the creation of “bifacial,” i.e., two-sided, blades or flakes of a high degree of sophistication. A similar type of stone weapon is found in France and Spain, where it is known as the Solutrean culture. Some archeologists believe the American Clovis may actually be derived from the European Solutrean.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Out Kennewick Man went for radiocarbon dating—and came back the 9,400-year-old man. Chatters exulted to CBS’s Leslie Stahl: “It is one of the oldest human skeletons ever found in North America, a scientific treasure.” The political problem: Kennewick Man may have been Caucasian.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Unsurprisingly (if he was white), Kennewick Man was much taller than most Indian skeletons. At 5’8” he even stood an inch taller than the average American Revolutionary War soldier.<sup>3</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">He was also rather long-lived for his era, between 40 and 55 years old. Using established forensic techniques, which show how muscle use could shape bone growth over the years, Chatters determined that Kennewick Man must have “had quite a bit of poise, although he was so beat up, more than anyone I’ve ever seen before.” He had definitely been injured many times, like a battered old quarterback but worse, yet bone growth shows he had probably refused to limp or favor one side as he walked. “He carried himself evenly; there was no grimacing either which affected his facial musculature.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Chatters suggests that Kennewick Man, based on his skull shape and facial bones, may have resembled macho British actor Patrick Stewart.<sup>4</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>B</span><span style="color: black;">ut reconstructions based on mere bones and skulls are always risky; such things as thickness of lips, shape of nose etc. are largely guesswork, and no one can say what sort of skin and hair pigmentation such a fossil man might have had, nor the form and color of his eyes, nor whether his hair was straight or curly. We will never know what language he spoke, or whether his wound was by accident or intentional, nor what his religious beliefs, if any, may have been. We cannot be sure if he was anyone’s ancestor, or if he was the ancestor of all of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Chatters is not necessarily claiming that Kennewick Man is white. He says:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“The man lacks definitive characteristics of the classic mongoloid stock to which modern Native Americans belong. The skull is dolichocranic (cranial index 73.8) rather than brachycranic, the face narrow and prognathous rather than broad and flat. Cheekbones recede slightly and lack an inferior zygomatic projection; the lower rim of the orbit is even with the upper. Other features are a long, broad nose that projects markedly from the face and high, round orbits. The mandible is v-shaped, with a pronounced, deep chin. Many of these characteristics are definitive of modern-day Caucasoid people, while others, such as the orbits, are typical of neither race. Dental characteristics fit Turner’s (1983) Sundadont pattern, indicating possible relationship to south Asian peoples.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Not everyone was pleased with the skeleton, from Indians to the Clinton White House. Armin Minthorn, an Umatilla tribal religious leader, demanded that the scientific find immediately be buried. “We regard human remains as sacred, period.” The Umatilla spokesman said Kennewick Man must be one of their ancestors, thus triggering a 1990 federal law<sup>5</sup> that mandates giving any newly found Indian remains or skeletons not being actually used by museums back to the Indians for their own burial procedures.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">A total of five Indian tribes and bands claim the remains, and the Indian groups do not agree on what should be done with the skeleton. “The Coleville tribe wants to see that it be studied,” says Chatters, “but the Yakimas, Umatillas and the Nez Perce are demanding to put it right back in the ground.” Chatters did not state how the Wanapum Indian group feels about the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>A</span><span style="color: black;">t this point archeologist Chatters felt constrained to drop his “atomic bomb.” Kennewick Man was not an Indian. “This means Indians may not have been the first people in North America.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The CBS report shows Chatters on the right, examining a typical Indian skull, which was described as “very round.” On the left was Kennewick Man. It was stated that he “would stand out instantly in any Indian group, with his long skull.” Even an amateur physical anthropologist can see that Kennewick Man had a Nordic-type, elongated, narrow-faced skull.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The next expert Stahl interviewed was Douglas Owsley from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who had agreed with Chatters that the find was “terribly significant.” The scientists agreed to fly Kennewick Man from Washington state to Washington, D.C., without further delay.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Fully four prehistoric skeletons, Owsley told <i>Sixty Minutes</i>, have evinced similar non-Indian characteristics, especially the one found in Nevada called “Spirit Cave Man.” An Indian tribe is also trying to bury that skeleton. Leslie Stahl put the issue to Owsley: “Everyone is so nervous about this: Were the Native Americans [i.e., Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts] here first?” Owsley’s reply as a scientist: “He challenges this.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Says another scientist, paleoanthropologist Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian: “It’s really critical that we be able to capitalize and study the few very rare remains we have. There are just so many questions that can be resolved on the peopling of the Americas if we have a full-scale study of each and every one of these specimens that are found.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: #c90000;">U</span></b><span style="color: black;">nfortunately, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the land where Kennewick Man was found, and the Clinton White House controls the corps. It refused the Smithsonian’s re quest to ship Kennewick Man eastward for further study and ordered the bones turned over to the Umatillas for instant burial. “Owsley was beside himself,” Stahl reports. The scientist filed a lawsuit against the politically correct Corps of Engineers. Owsley: “Otherwise the Umatillas would have buried him in a secret grave a long time ago.” U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks rebuked the corps in June 1998 by putting the case on hold and ordering the defendant (the Corps of Engineers) to re evaluate the skeleton. The corps gave the job to the Department of the Interior, which, seven months later, still had not even announced who would be doing the study of what may be the most significant find of American prehistory.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span>B</span></b><span style="color: black;">urying the rest of the scientific site was still another Clinton idea. Dutch Meier, press officer for the Corps of Engineers in Walla Walla, Washington, acknowledged the “participation and interest at the executive level” in the Kennewick Man issue. In a December 19, 1997 letter from William Stelle, Jr., regional administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle to the local commander of the Corps of Engineers, Stelle stated:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“A White House inquiry resulted in the formation of an advisory group made up of representatives from the De partment of Justice, Department of the Interior, and the corps. This advisory group requested that the Walla Walla District corps stabilize roughly 350 feet of shoreline to preserve the archeological site.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">As shown on the <i>Sixty Minutes</i> tape, helicopters and dump trucks suddenly appeared, just hours before a congressionally mandated order to protect the site would have gone into effect, and dumped 2,000 tons of gravel and plant material directly on the dig. Now, trees and plants are growing throughout the site, with their roots penetrating into the scientifically priceless materials, where archeologists had planned to continue their painstaking dig.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“All hope is lost for recovering any more bones of the Kennewick Man skeleton or information relating to his context [tools, campfires etc.] at the site,” said Cleone Hawkinson, a Portland archeologist.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Desecration not being enough, now bone fragments from Kennewick Man, being held by court order at the Burke Museum in Seattle, are disappearing. Of a dozen femur (thigh bone) fragments originally recovered, only two remain. Owsley calls the apparent theft “a deliberate act of desecration” but does not name suspects.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In the <i>Sixty Minutes</i> tape,<sup>6</sup> Leslie Stahl cannot resist asking medicine man Minthorn: “You don’t even see what the curiosity is?” “No.” “If you don’t let the studies go forward, how can we find out?” “We don’t want to find out,” was the answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><sup><span style="color: black;">FOOTNOTES<o:p></o:p></span></sup></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">1 </span></sup><span style="color: black;">Oct. 25, 1998.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">2</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> Jan. 8, 1999.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">3</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> The most ordered uniform size in the Continental Army was for a five-foot, seven inches tall male.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">4</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> Stewart is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is also known as “Jean-Luc Picard,” the captain of the star ship <i>Enterprise</i> in the seven-year series <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">5</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">6</span></sup><span style="color: black;">Available for $35 from CBS.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-76755146709011067752010-03-22T04:51:00.000-07:002010-03-22T04:51:25.158-07:00The Puzzling Origins Of Ancient Sumer<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 36pt;"> </span><span style="color: black;">By Vera Stark</span></div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">This amazing group of ancient city-states turns out to be a missing link among the great early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus.</span><span style="color: #c90000;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">T<span style="color: black;">he Sumerians had seemingly a very joyful society. The arts were well developed. The cuneiform writing is a combination of pictograms: a fish, a bird, a leaf for instance (which can be understood in any language or dialect spoken), and phonetic signs. L.A. Waddell shows that many other writing systems have developed out of the Sumerian one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Among these systems are: Akkadian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Phrygian, Carian, Lydian, Persian, Indo-Asoka, Simbel, Hindi, Greek, Etruscan, Iberian, Brito-Phoenic, Runic, Ogamic, Welsh Bar dic and Lantwit, and British/Gothic.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Besides writing, the calendar and a surprising wealth of literature, we are indebted to the Sumerians for their “sexagesimal” mathematical system, which gave us the division of the day into 24 hours, that of the minutes and seconds into 60 units each and that of the circle into 360 degrees.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Sumerians had a developed mythology; they saw the world as having been created by a god. Moreover, this god had established the standards by which people must live. We will come across the “law” and “law givers” several times in this article.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Their beliefs passed into the tradition of following generations and peoples in Mesopotamia; similar beliefs have also existed since ancient times in other parts of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">We shall now expound on Waddell’s findings, going back to shortened portions of his preface:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“Picking up the neglected records of India’s great epic of the Ancient (Aryan) Heroes, the Paranas, this writer found that the leading kings bore substantially the same names with the same achievements and occupied the same relative chronological position as leading kings of the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“Further comparative scrutiny disclosed that all the kings’ names and their chronological order were identical in both . . . [the] Indo-Aryan and [the] Sumerian [lists].<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“In former works I have demonstrated with full scientific proofs the identity of the Sumerians with the Aryans— ancient and modern—in Europe, Asia Minor, Syrio-Phoenicia, Indo-Persia and also as regards the ruling race in ancient Egypt—in physical type, language and writing, art and science, traditions, religion, mythology and symbolism.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">“After publication of my first work announcing and establishing the Sumerian origin of the Indo-Aryans and their civilization, and of the Indian language and writing, this was confirmed some four months later by unearthing the ruins of two Sumerian cities in the Indus Valley in northwestern India. There were several sacred seals and burial amulets inscribed with the old Sumerian cursive writing, which were chiefly those of ancient Sumerian government officials and priests of this Sumerian colony of about 3100 to 2300 B.C.”<sup>1</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was derived from the Sumerian picture writing and possessed essentially the same forms, phonetic values and meanings. The radical [root—Ed.] elements in the ancient Egyptian language were discovered to be Sumerian and Aryan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">This disclosed the unity of these three oldest civilizations and their authors: the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Indian, each of which had hitherto been supposed to have originated wholly independently, in separate, isolated centers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">This should be enough introduction as to how Waddell reached his conclusions. Now discover with us highlights of the most famous of the ancient rulers of Mesopotamia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><span>T</span><span style="color: black;">he first “Sumerian” king, a sun worshipper, traditionally pictured in Goth dress, was the historical original of the later deified legendary culture hero, known and recorded under his different titles and personal names: Dur, Ar-Thur, In-Dur, Indra, Sagg (or Sig), Zeus, Pro-Metheus, Odinn, Ad, Adamus or “Adam.” In the Copper Age this “Arthur” built in Asia Minor the first city, used “Sumerian” writing, established agriculture, monogamous marriage and brought with him a ready-made “first civilization.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">His reign (3378 to 3349 B.C.) is de rived from the date for the foundation of the first Babylonian dynasty (2023) plus other data by “dead reckoning” backwards. The connecting link between the first Babylonian dynasty and the Sumerian mainline list was the capture of the city of Isin by “Sin Muballit” (father of Khammu-Rabi or Hammurabi who reigned 2023 to 2004 B.C.<sup>2</sup>).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In the Kish Chronicle, which has been fully translated, we find for the first king, Ukusi, of Ukhu (Eagle or Sun-Hawk city) also the names Udin, In duru, Pur Sakh, Adar and others, some appearing in the Indian list with slightly different spelling. Interesting confirmation is found in the bilingual Sumer ian and Babylonian glossary tablets, where the Hawk-Lord is called Ukuzu’i, deified as the Lord (God) Sakh. And in Egyptian records it is Atmu (Atum), the deified sun as Father God of early dynastic Egypt and tutelary of Heliopolis.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">His personality and achievements are preserved in Sumerian literature, in the Indian chronicles and Vedas and in the great epics of the Norsemen, the Eddas.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">These records celebrate him as a supremely gifted, tall, fair and bearded hero chief of Nordic or Gothic racial type; an invincible warrior and wise statesman, who, with great creative gen ius, improved the culture of his time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">With the aid of his hardy sons and men of the same Gothic breed, he raised it up in one generation and established it firmly on a higher plane as a “civilization,” which the tides of time can never wash away.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The second Sumerian king, the son and successor of the first, was the historical original of the culture hero Azam, Bakus (Bacchus), Nimrod, Mar duk, Mukhla (Michael), Gan or Conn, Sir Gawain or “Cain,” or Enoch (connected with the city of Erech—Ed.).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In 3335 B.C., Azam descended from Cappadocia into Mesopotamia and founded his new capital Kish on the Euphrates. Except for the slight discrepancy in the dates, this confirms the tradition cited by Strabo that the god Bacchus reigned from 3373 to 3348 B.C. (approximately 74 years), an exceptionally long time, which is in agreement with his title “Ayus” in the Indian records, meaning “the Aged [One].”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Greatly extending agriculture, Bacchus, named also Lord of the Grain, vastly increased the food supply of the ancient world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">He built Nippur and Unuk or Erech and many other cities and settlements, whereby he made industrious town life possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In those ancient times of high cultural developments, city-states were established, complementing as well as competing with each other in moral and living standards, trade, arts and expansion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">It appears logical—and is proven to some extent—that more primitive people of scattered, nomadic tribes were originally living there.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>B</span><span style="color: black;">ut the ruling caste of the successive dynasties evolved from the racial new comers, the “Sumerians,” who ascended to kingship by family ties and marriages, yet occasionally decided their predominance in battle. The first dynasty, as seen by Waddell, was founded in 3378 B.C. by Ukusi of the city of Ukhu (“Adam”), which his son and heir Azaf Ama Basum (“Cain”) continued until 3337. Then this kingdom became part of the second dynasty which was founded by that same Azaf-Azag Bakus in Kish and lasted 300 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The last king of that line was Gishax or Issax of Uruk or Erech (Enoch), with the title of Gamesh, “Lord of Oxen,” the fifth king of the great gap in the Kish Chronicle, who reigned c. 3120 B.C. (Gilgamesh—Ed.).<sup>3</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">He is celebrated as an invincible hero of tremendous strength, slaying lions and wild bulls with his bare hands or taming them under his will. By victoriously overcoming trials and perils, he has set the stage and may well be the original of the half-god Herakles (Her cu les) of later cultures. (Scholars say the Flood story of the Bible is derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh.—Ed.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Preserved parts of the Epic of Gil gamesh are still telling his story. So are innumerable Sumerian seals from around 2500 B.C., depicting him in combat with wild beasts or watering his buffaloes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Haryashwa was the founder of the great dynasty of sea kings, the ancestors of the “Phoenicians,” well explained by Waddell, which is spoken of in the Indian Chronicles as “the able or excellent Panch (Panch-åla), who mustered ships of a hundred oars” and built the seaport of Lagash on the Persian Gulf.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Haryashwa and his descendants held the titles of king of Lagash and king of Kish, the recognized title at that time for Emperor of Mesopotamia. He also maintained the official title of Gut or Goth, expressed by the bull or head of an ox in their seals, standing for “warrior” or “restorer” (of order).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Under his reign were built granaries as insurance against famine, embankments, canals for irrigation and other outstanding improvements. He and his oldest son Magdal founded the great over seas colony of Edin in the Indus Valley. Cultivation, fruits, orchards, flocks and herds of cattle and horses as well as gold and other metals gave it the name of Su-bati (“the Good Abode”) by the Sumerians and Su-vata (“Full of Pleasure”) in Sanskrit.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Uruash or “Panch” dynasty lasted c. 350 years, until 2751 B.C., the last king of that line being Bara-Gina or Puru-Gin, or Uruka-Gina, the father of “Sargon,” as we will see shortly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Bara-Gina was a great and enlightened statesman and reformer. Several de tailed copies of his law codes have been unearthed from the ruins of Lagash. In one of his edicts he describes rampant aggression and corruption which had befallen the state. As a remedy he abolished a great number of tax-inspectors and cut down the fees of the extortionate priests and lay officials. All who had taken money (shekels) in place of tribute, and who had used bribery, were dismissed. He successfully sought to protect the poorer classes of his subjects against the oppression of their richer and more powerful neighbors.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">This last king of the Great Gap of the Kish Chronicle was dethroned by Zaggisi, who had been local governor and priest-king at the city of Umma, to the north of Lagash, and was the son of the former governor there by the name of Ukush.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Zaggisi, who was evidently considered a usurper by the Indian annalists, as they do not mention him in the Indian main-line lists, became emperor and transferred his capital to Erech. From his votive inscriptions at Nippur we learn that he claimed to have conquered the land “from the rising of the Hargis to its setting.” This was presumably the same extent of empire over which Sargon’s father ruled. Like the latter also he claimed to be “King of Uri.” He also claims to have rebuilt during his 25 years of reign the chief temples in the land and that “he caused the lands to dwell in security, he watered the lands with the waters of joy.” (2750 to 2726 B.C.)<sup>3</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Zaggisi forms by himself the so-called “Third Dynasty” in the Kish Chronicle. The term “dynasty” is used by modern writers for a change of capital. Zaggisi was dethroned by “Sargon,” and the fourth dynasty then follows as “Sargon’s” dynasty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><span>T</span><span style="color: black;">he name “Sargon” is merely a Semi tized version (adopted by Assyriologists) of this great Sumerian emperor’s real name, Sagara. In the Indian List he is also called Sha-Kuni, in the Sumerian Guni or Shar-Guni (2725 to 2671 B.C.). He is not to be confused with the relatively late Semitic Assyrian King Sargon (722 to 705 B.C.), who (according to legend) sent the Jews into captivity. In the Indian Chronicle we are informed that Sagara’s father Bara-Gina or Bahuka died in exile at the hermitage of the Aryan sage and priest, where his son and heir was born. There he was tutored by Aurva in the Vedic religion and in science and the art of war (similar to Alexander the Great being tutored by Aristotle).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Emerson wrote: “The days were ever divine for the first Aryans,” and so were Aurva’s ethical teachings based on an enlightened sun-religion, in which na ture’s god, the lord of the universe, was a beneficent, vitalizing force resident in the sun. That great luminary light of the world is still recognized as the ultimate source of all mundane life. It was the source also of the Aryan ethical code, which was established more than 1,500 years before Moses:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The sun-lord is most pleased with him who does good to others; who never utters calumny or untruth; who never covets another’s wife or another’s wealth; who bears ill will to none; who neither beats nor slays any living thing; who is ever diligent in the service of God; who is ever desirous of the welfare of all creatures, of his children and his own soul; whose heart derives no pleasure from the passions of lust or hatred. The man who conforms to these duties is he who best worships the sun-lord.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">On reaching manhood, Sargon wrested back his patrimonial kingdom and became a “world monarch.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The extent of Sargon’s empire in the ancient world has hitherto been greatly underestimated. Now it is seen as having included, besides Mesopotamia, the greater part of Asia Minor and Syrio-Phoenicia; also Egypt and the Mediterranean basin, Persia and the Indus Valley with the Arabian Sea, and (perhaps) extending beyond the Pillars of Hercules to Britain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In Sumerian “<i>Sa-gar</i>” is the title for “Lord of Lords.” Under this title Sargon is the father of Asa-Manja or “Manja the Shooter,” identical with “Manis the Warrior” or Manis-Tusu.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">From the Indian Chronicles we deduce that King Manis-Tusu revolted against his father Sagara in his early manhood, c. 2704, when he was about 21. As crown prince of the Sumerian em pire, Manis was governor of the Indus Valley colony. As such he had control of the local Sumerian army and of the merchant fleet, which presumably also voyaged to Magan [possibly modern Oman—Ed.] and Egypt via the Arabian coast and the Red Sea. As all the “Lands of the Lower Sea” were under Sumerian rule, he would not have encountered much opposition by the local governors. It is recorded that 60,000 of “the fed sons” of the emperor followed the crown prince in his revolt, which enabled him to unite Upper and Lower Egypt and become the<i>prabhu</i> (pharaoh) as Menes, the founder of the First Dynasty in Egypt. He may have entered Upper Egypt by the Red Sea east of Koptos and Abydos, where his “tomb” with his inscriptions lies. Menes did vastly increase the elements of sporadic Sumerian civilization, al ready introduced by his father and other predynastic kings in Egypt, and established it firmly. It can now be seen to be of the same general kind as the Su merian of the Sargonic period in Meso potamia and in the Indus Valley.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Disinherited by his father, Manis still became emperor of Mesopotamia after the death of his brother, (Uru-) Mush, in 2655 B.C. From 2640 to 2585 B.C., the reins of both mighty empires were put into the hands of his son, the grandson of “Sargon,” with the Sumerian name of “Naram-Sin” or Naram Enzu and the Egyptian name of Narmer or Narmar. In both combined empires his emblems are “the wild bull” and “the fish monster.” Manis reconquered vast areas and defeated King Manum Dan of Magan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Notice should also be taken of two of the widely known rulers of Mesopota mia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>K</span><span style="color: black;">ing Gudea or Gudia, Gothic priest-king of Lagash, 2374 to 2368 B.C., was a very refined priest-king of high standing, the builder of numerous, large and spacious temples, for which he chose the most exquisite materials by traveling far and wide for them. Many statues of him were erected in public places and temples and are now in museums worldwide.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Sumerian art and literature reached its zenith under Gudea, and he lived in a period of profound peace and prosperity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The language of Lagash as used by Gudea, whose voluminous records have been unearthed, is always in pure Sumerian, while bilingual glossaries were to inform Semitic-speaking subjects of events, edicts etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Khaminu Rabi or Great Lotus is best known as Hammurabi (Lawgiver). His name Khamu means Lotus and Rabi (dialectic for Sumerian Raba) means Great. Hammurabi established a great renaissance in Mesopotamia; exquisite examples survive to this day.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-66378014209516212892010-03-22T04:48:00.000-07:002010-03-22T06:21:44.361-07:00The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 in USA<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" nof="LY" style="width: 512px;"><tbody>
<tr align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><td colspan="4" width="442"><div align="CENTER">By Michael Collins Piper & Ken Hoop</div><b><i> </i></b><br />
According to historian Harry Elmer Barnes—this magazine’s namesake— who was one of FDR’s leading critics from the academic arena, the purpose of the Great Sedition Trial was to make the Roosevelt administration “seem opposed to fascism” when, in fact, the administration was pursuing totalitarian policies. Too few Americans today know of this travesty, a shameful blot on U.S. history.<br />
<br />
Judges and lawyers alike will tell you the mass sedition trial of World War II will go down in legal history as one of the blackest marks on the record of American jurisprudence. In the legal world, none can recall a case where so many Americans were brought to trial for political persecution and were so arrogantly denied the rights granted [guaranteed—Ed.] an American citizen under the Constitution.”<sup>1</sup><br />
This is how the <i>Chicago Tribune</i>, then a voice for America First in a media world already brimming with internationalism, described the infamous war time “show trial” and its aftermath.<br />
“The Great Sedition Trial” formally came to an unexpected halt on November 30, 1944, having been declared a mistrial upon the death of the presiding judge. Yet, the case continued to hang in limbo with Justice Department prosecutors angling for a retrial.<br />
However, on November 22, 1946, Judge Bolitha Laws of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, dismissed the charges against the defendants, saying that to allow the case to continue would be “a travesty on justice.”<sup>2</sup><br />
Although the Justice Department prosecutors appealed the dismissal, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Judge Laws’ ruling and, as a consequence, the saga of the Great Sedition Trial at long last came to a close. This brought to an end five years of harassment that the defendants had suffered, including—for some—periods of imprisonment.<br />
Judge Laws had thus called a halt to this Soviet-style attack on American liberty. Sanity had prevailed and the case was shelved forever. The war was over and the one individual who was the prime mover behind the trial—Franklin D. Roosevelt—was dead.<br />
According to historian Ronald Ra dosh, a self-styled “progressive” who has written somewhat sympathetically of the pre-World War II critics of the Roosevelt administration, “FDR had prodded Attorney General Francis Biddle for months, asking him when he would indict the seditionists.”<sup>3</sup> Biddle himself later pointed out that FDR “was not much interested . . . in the constitutional right to criticize the government in wartime.”<sup>4</sup><br />
However, as we shall see, there were powerful forces at work behind the scenes prodding FDR. And they, more than FDR, played a major role in pushing the actual investigation Biddle was not enthusiastic to undertake.<br />
Although there was a grand total of 42 people (and one newspaper) indicted—over the course of three separate indictments, beginning with the first indictment, which was handed down on July 21, 1942, the number of those who actually went on trial was 30, and several of them were severed from the trial as it proceeded.<br />
Roosevelt’s biographer, James McGregor Burns, waggishly called the trial “a grand rally of all the fanatic Roosevelt haters.”<sup>5</sup> But there’s much more to the story than that.<br />
In fact, there were a handful of influential figures among the indictees. Among them included:<br />
• Noted German-American poet, essayist and social critic, George Sylvester Viereck (a well-known foreign publicist for the German government as far back as World War I);<br />
• Former American diplomat and economist Lawrence Dennis, an informal behind-the-scenes advisor to some of the more prominent congressional critics of the Roosevelt administration;<br />
• Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling of Chicago, an outspoken and highly articulate author and lecturer who was well re garded and widely known nationally as a leader of the anti-communist movement and a fierce opponent of the ad ministration;<br />
• Rev. Gerald Winrod of Kansas. With a national following and wide-ranging connections among Christian ministers and lay leaders throughout the country, Winrod had emerged as a force to be reckoned with. In 1938 he ran a strong race for the U.S. Senate. (One of Winrod’s protégés was none other than evangelist Billy Graham, who is said to have “learned much but kept quiet publicly about what he learned privately”<sup>6</sup> as a young man traveling with Winrod.) And:<br />
• William Griffin, a New York-based publisher with strong connections in the Roman Catholic Church. Many American Catholics were strongly anti-communist, and Irish-American Catholics, in particular, were generally skeptical of FDR’s war policies at a time when, it will be remembered, the government of Ireland remained neutral in the war being waged against Germany by the United States and England, Ireland’s traditional enemy.<br />
However, most of those who finally went to trial were little known and hardly influential on a national level, other than the few exceptions just noted. Among the defendants were: a sign painter who was 80 percent deaf, a Detroit factory worker, a waiter and a maid.<br />
In short, they were at best “average” Americans, without the means or the opportunity to be able to conduct the kind of seditious and internationally connected conspiracy that the government had charged, nor were they in any position to defend themselves against the unlimited resources of the central government. In many cases, the defendants were paupers, virtually penniless. Many of them were “one-man” publishers, reaching small audiences—hardly a threat to the mighty forces that controlled the New Deal. Several were very elderly. Few of the indictees even knew each other before the trial, despite the fact that the indictments charged them with being part of a grand conspiracy, orchestrated by Adolf Hitler, to undermine the morale of the American military during wartime.<br />
Lawrence Dennis commented later that: “One of the most significant features of the trial was the utter insignificance of the defendants in relation to the great importance which the government sought to give to the trial by all sorts of publicity-seeking devices.”<sup>7</sup><br />
Unfortunately, in this brief study of the tangled circumstances surrounding the great sedition trial, we will be un able to provide all of the defendants the recognition they deserve. But by virtue of having been targeted for destruction by the Roosevelt administration and its behind-the-scenes allies for their patriotic anti-war stand, this handful of otherwise insignificant Americans became folk heroes.<br />
Thanks to their more vocal compatriots, such as, perhaps most notably, Lawrence Dennis, we are able to commemorate the details of their plight today.<br />
According to Dennis, it was the design of the sedition trial to target not the big-name critics of the Roosevelt war policies, but instead to use the publicity surrounding the trial to frighten the vast numbers of potential grass-roots critics of the intervention in the Eurasian war into silence, essentially showing them that, they, too, could end up in the dock if they were to dare to speak out as the defendants had in opposition to the administration’s policies.<br />
Wrote Dennis:<br />
<b>The crackpots, so-called, or the agitators, are never intimidated by sedition trials. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.</b><br />
<b>The people who are intimidated by sedition trials are the people who have not enough courage or enough indiscretion ever to say or do anything that would get them involved in a sedition trial. And it is mainly for the purpose of intimidating these more prudent citizens that sedition trials are held . . .</b><br />
<b>A government seeking to suppress certain dangerous ideas and tendencies and certain types of feared opposition will not, if its leaders are smart, indict men like Col. [Charles] Lindbergh or senators [Burton] Wheeler [D-Mont.], [Robert] Taft [R-Ohio] and Gerald Nye [R-N.D.], who did far more along the line of helping the Nazis by opposing Roosevelt’s foreign policy as charged against the defendants than any of the defendants.</b><br />
<b>The chances of conviction would be nil, and the cry of persecution would resound throughout the land.</b><br />
<b>It is the weak, obscure and indiscreet who are singled out by an astute politician for a legalized witch-hunt. The political purpose of intimidating the more cautious and respectable is best served in this country by picking for a trick indictment and a propaganda mass trial the most vulnerable rather than the most dangerous critics; the poorest rather than the richest; the least popular rather than the most popular; the least rather than the most important and influential.</b><br />
<b>This is the smart way to get at the more influential and the more dangerous. The latter see what is done to the less influential and less important, and they govern themselves accordingly. The chances of convicting the weaker are better than of convicting the stronger . . .”</b><sup>8</sup><br />
<b> </b>One of the defendants—one of the weaker, less influential and less important, insignificant Americans targeted by FDR—was Elmer J. Garner of Wichita, Kansas. This elderly American patriot died three weeks after the trial began.<br />
Sen. William Langer (R-N.D.), an angry critic of the trial, described the victim in a speech on the floor of the Senate. Garner, he said, was:<br />
“A little old gentleman of 83, almost stone deaf, with three great-grandchildren. After he lost the mailing permit for his little weekly paper, he lived with his aged wife through small donations, keeping a goat and a few chickens and raising vegetables on his small home plot.<br />
“Held in the [Washington, D.C.] jail for several weeks, for lack of bond fees, and finally impoverished by three indictments and forced trips and stays in Washington, he died alone in a Washington rooming house early in this trial, with 40 cents in his pocket. His body was shipped naked in a wooden box to his ailing, impoverished widow, his two suits and typewriter being held, so that clothing had to be purchased for his funeral. That is one of the dangerous men about whom we have been hearing so much.”<sup>9</sup><br />
According to attorney Henry Klein, an American Jew who defied the ADL by boldly serving as defense counsel for another of the defendants, Garner—who was a first cousin of FDR’s first vice president (1933-1941), John Nance Garner—died at his typewriter in a tiny room in a Washington flophouse, typing out his defense.<sup>10</sup><br />
Who was it, then, that brought about the series of events that led to the indictment of Elmer Garner and his both more distinguished and perhaps even less distinguished fellow “seditionists”?<br />
It was, of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt who ordered the Justice Department investigation. Attorney General Francis Biddle (who opposed this blatantly political prosecution), followed the president’s orders. And Assistant Attorney General William Power Maloney handled the day-to-day details of the investigation that won the indictments before a federal grand jury in Washington. But behind the scenes there were other forces at work: the power brokers who dictated the overall grand design of the Roosevelt administration and its foreign and domestic policies.<br />
In <i>A Trial on Trial</i>, his sharply written critique of the trial, which is a veritable dissection of the fraud that the trial represented, Lawrence Dennis and his co-author, Maximilian St. George (who was Dennis’ counsel during the trial, although Dennis—not an attorney—did most of the legal work himself), concluded—based upon very readily available evidence in the public record—that the three prime movers behind the trial were—in his words—extreme leftists, organized Jew ish groups, and internationalists in general, all of whom were loud and persistent advocates of the trial, editorializing in favor of the investigation and indictments in their newspapers and through media voices such as radio personality Walter Winchell.<br />
However, Dennis pointed out, “the internationalists behind the trial are not as easy to link with definite agitation for this prosecution as are the leftists and the Jewish groups.”<sup>11</sup> Den nis stated unequivocally: “One of the most important Jewish organizations behind the sedition trial was the B’nai B’rith [referring, specifically, to the B’nai B’rith adjunct known as the Anti-Defamation League or ADL].”<sup>12</sup><br />
According to Dennis: “Getting the federal government to stage such a trial, like getting America into the war, was a ‘must’ on the agenda of the fighters against isolationism and anti-Semitism.<sup>13</sup><br />
“What the people behind the trial wanted to have judicially certified to the world was that anti-Semitism is a Nazi idea and that anyone holding this idea is a Nazi, who is thereby violating the law—in this instance, by causing insubordination in the armed forces—through his belief in or advocacy of this idea.”<sup>14</sup><br />
This was not just Dennis’s conclusion, by any means. One of the other defendants, David Baxter, later pointed out that a United Press report published in 1943 said:<br />
<b>Under pressure from Jewish organizations, to judge from articles appearing in publications put out by Jews for Jews, the [indictment] . . . was drawn to include criticisms of Jews as “sedition.”</b><br />
<b>It appeared that a main purpose of the whole procedure, along with outlawing unfavorable comments on the administration, was to set a legal precedent of judicial interpretations and severe penalties which would serve to exempt Jews in America from all public mention except praise, in contrast to the traditional American viewpoint which holds that all who take part in public affairs must be ready to accept full free public discussion, either pro or con.</b><sup>15</sup><br />
“In a word,” commented Dennis, “the sedition trial as politics was smart. It was good politics.”<sup>16</sup><br />
Baxter himself determined in later years that certain Jewish groups, specifically the ADL, had been prime movers behind the Justice Department investigation that resulted in the indictments of the defendants in the sedition trial. According to Baxter, commenting many years later:<br />
<br />
<b>I demanded, through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI turn over to me its investigation records of my activities during the early 1940s leading up to the Sedition Trial. I learned that the investigation had extended over several years and covered hundreds of pages . . . The FBI blocked out the names of those who had given information about me, much of it as false as anything could be. I was never given a chance to face these people and make them prove their accusations. Yet everything they said went into the investigation records.</b><br />
<b>Oddly enough, in a great many cases, it wasn’t the FBI that conducted the investigation, but the Anti-Defamation League, with the FBI merely receiving the reports of the ADL investigators. One can hard ly tell from the reports whether a given person was an FBI or an ADL agent. But at the time all this was so hush-hush that I didn’t even suspect the web-spinning going on around me. I hadn’t considered myself that important.</b><sup>17</sup><br />
<br />
For his own part, commenting on the way that the FBI had been used by the ADL, for example, Lawrence Dennis pointed out: “The FBI, like the atomic bomb and so many other useful and dangerous tools, is an instrument around the use of which new safeguards against abuse by unscrupulous interests must soon be created.”<sup>18</sup><br />
[To our shame, Americans did not learn that lesson, in light of FBI intrigue alongside the ADL, later exposed in the course of such controversies as the holocaust at Waco, the slaughter of the Wea ver family members at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and the mysterious Oklahoma City bombing.—Ed.]<br />
Writing in his 1999 book, <i>Mon tana’s Lost Cause </i>(see review on page 27), a study of Sen. Burton Wheel er and other members of Mon tana’s congressional delegation who opposed the Roosevelt administration’s war in Europe, historian Roger Roots also points out another fascinating cog in the be hind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to the sedition trial:<br />
<br />
<b>The Jewish-owned <i>Washington Post</i> assisted in the detective work of the Justice Department from the beginning. Dillard Stokes, the [<i>Post</i>] columnist who was most conspicuous in his insider reporting of the sedition grand jury proceedings, actually became part of the Justice Department’s case against the isolationists when he wrote requests to numerous of the defendants to send their literature to him under an assumed name. It was this that allowed defendants to be brought from the farthest reaches of the country into the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C.</b><sup>19</sup><br />
David Baxter elaborated on the role played by the <i>Post</i> columnist Stokes, who used the pseudonym “Jefferson Breem,” in order to obtain some of the allegedly seditious literature that had been published by some of the defendants:<br />
<b>In order to try us in Washington as a group, it was necessary to establish that a crime had been committed in the District of Columbia, thus giving jurisdiction to the federal courts there. So the grand jury, which was obviously con trolled by the prosecutor, charged us with the crime of sedition, and then established District of Columbia jurisdiction to try us on the grounds that a District of Columbia resident, “Jefferson Breem,” had received the allegedly seditious literature. Thus was the alleged “crime” committed in the capital. The defendants were charged with having conspired in the District of Columbia, despite the fact that I had never been in Washington in my life until ordered there by the grand jury.</b><sup>20</sup><br />
Kirkpatrick Dilling, now an attorney in Chicago but then a young man in uniform and the son of one of the more prominent defendants, Elizabeth Dilling, pointed out in a letter to <i>TBR</i> publisher Willis Carto that: “My mother was indicted with many others, most of whom she had never had any contact with whatsoever. For example, some of such co-indictees were members of the German-American Bund. My mother said they were included to give the case a ‘sauerkraut flavor.’ ”<sup>21</sup><br />
Later, during the trial itself, the afore mentioned Sen. Langer, scored what he described as: “the idea of bringing together for one trial in Washington 30 people who never saw each other, who never wrote to each other, some of whom did not know that the others existed, with some of them allegedly insane and the majority of them unable to hire a lawyer.<br />
“And remember,” Langer pointed out, “[the defendants] were brought to Washington from California and [Illinois] and other states a long way from Washington, placed in one room and all tried at the same time, with the 29 sitting idly by while the testimony against one of them may go on for weeks and weeks and weeks, the testimony of a man or woman [whom the] other defendants never saw before in their lives. That is what is taking place in Washington [the District of Columbia] here today.”<sup>22</sup><br />
As mentioned previously, there were actually three indictments handed down. The first indictment came on July 21, 1942. The indictments came as a surprise to more than a few people, including the defendants. As David Baxter said: “Actually, at that time I was simply a New Deal Democrat interested in what was going on in the country politically.”<sup>23</sup> But as a consequence of the indictment, he was being accused of sedition by the very regime he had once supported.<br />
Elizabeth Dilling learned of her indictment on the radio. The nature of one of the charges against Mrs. Dilling exposes precisely how trumped up the sedition trial was from the start. The indictment charged that Mrs. Dilling had committed “sedition” by reprinting, in the pages of her newsletter, a speech in Congress by Rep. Clare Hoffman (R-Mich.), an administration critic, in which the congressman quoted an American soldier in the Philippines who complained his outfit lacked bombers because the planes had been given to Britain.<sup>24</sup> This ostensibly was dangerous to military morale.<br />
But Mrs. Dilling’s many supporters around the country rose to her defense, raising money through dances, dinners and bake sales. Mrs. Dilling, ever courageous, would not let even a federal criminal indictment silence her. She still continued to speak out.<br />
On August 17, 1942 Sen. Robert A. Taft spoke out against the indictment:<sup>25</sup> “I am deeply alarmed by the growing tendency to smear loyal citizens who are critical of the national administration and of the conduct of the war . . .<br />
“Something very close to fanaticism exists in certain circles. I cannot understand it—cannot grasp it. But I am sure of this: Freedom of speech itself is at stake, unless the general methods pursued by the Department of Justice are changed.”<sup>26</sup><br />
Taft noted that the indictment, in his words, was “adroitly drawn”<sup>27</sup>and said it claimed that groups such as the Coalition of Patriotic Societies were linked to the accused conspirators. The coalition, Taft noted, included among its member organizations such groups as the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and the Sons of the American Revolution, among others.<br />
On the basis of the way in which the indictment was written, Taft said, a considerable number of members of both the House and the Senate could also be indicted, along with a considerable number of the nation’s newspaper editors.<br />
The second indictment came on January 4, 1943. Lawrence Dennis summarized the nature of the indictments: “The first indictment charged conspiracy to violate the seditious propaganda sections of both the wartime Espionage Act of 1917 and the peacetime Smith Act of 1940, sometimes called the Alien Registration Act. This indictment . . . was that the defendants had conspired to spread Nazi propaganda for the purpose of violating the just mentioned laws. The government case consisted of showing the similarity between the propaganda themes of the Nazis and the defendants.”<sup>28</sup><br />
However, as Dennis pointed out, for a conviction on such an indictment to stand under the law, it is necessary to prove similarity of intent of the persons accused rather than similarity of content of what they said.<br />
“The weaknesses of these first two indictments were that they fitted neither the law nor the evidence. The government’s difficulty was that, to please the people behind the trial, it had had to indict persons whose only crime was isolationism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism when there was no law on the statute books against these ‘isms.’ The two laws chosen for the first two indictments penalized advocacy of the overthrow of the government by force and of insubordination in the armed forces.”<sup>29</sup><br />
Several new defendants were added with the second indictment. Among them was Frank Clark. Considering the charge that Clark (and the others) had been conspiring to undermine the morale of the American military, it is worth noting that Clark was “a highly decorated veteran of World War I, who was wounded eight times in action. Clark had been an organizer of the famous Bonus March of World War I veterans to Washington in the 1920s. He had lobbied for early payment of veterans’ bonuses that had been promised to the war’s veterans, returning home a hero. When arrested, he lacked enough money to hire a lawyer.”<sup>30</sup><br />
All of this, however, meant nothing in the course of the ongoing effort by the Roosevelt administration to silence its critics and to prevent more and more Americans from speaking out.<br />
Throughout this period, the major media was rife with reports of how a group of Americans, in league with Hitler and the German National Socialists, were trying to destroy America from within and how the Roosevelt administration was bravely taking on this conspiracy. However, the Justice Department had made a misstep and the second indictment, like the first, was thrown out.<br />
As Roger Roots notes, “The indictment was unlawful. It was discarded due to the obvious absence of evidence for conviction, among other flaws. Past Supreme Court decisions clearly showed that a conviction for advocating the overthrow of the government by violent force must include some evidence of actual plans to use violence, not just political literature. Again, the indictment was never dismissed formally but simply retired.”<sup>31</sup><br />
Sen. Burton Wheeler, in particular, was a harsh critic of the Justice Department and publicly made clear his intention, as new head of the Senate Judiciary Committee following the 1942 elections, to keep a close watch on the affair as it unfolded. As far as the legal procedures used in the first two indictments, he declared: “If it happened in most jurisdictions of this country, the prosecuting attorneys would be held for contempt of court.”<sup>32</sup><br />
Thus, despite all the determined efforts of the Justice Department and its allies in the Anti-Defamation League and at <i>The Washington Post</i>, the first two indictments were indeed thrown out as defective.<br />
On March 5, 1943 Judge Jesse C. Adkins dismissed the count in the indictment that accused the defendants of conspiring together “on or about the first day of January 1933, and continuously thereafter up to and including the date of the filing” of the indictment since, as the judge held, the law which the defendants were accused of conspiring to violate had not been enacted until 1940.<sup>33</sup> At this juncture, under pressure from Sen. Wheeler, Attorney General Biddle agreed to remove prosecutor William Power Maloney as the chief “Nazi-hunter.”<br />
Thus, a new Justice Department prosecutor entered into the case, O. John Rogge. As defendant David Baxter pointed out, Rogge was a fitting choice for the administration’s chief point man in this Soviet-style show trial:<br />
<br />
<b>It later turned out that Rogge had been a good friend of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, was involved in numerous communist front groups, and had visited Russia, where he spoke in the Kremlin and laid a wreath at the grave of American Communist Party co-founder John Reed in Red Square. His wreath was inscribed: “In loving memory from grateful Americans.” . . . Rogge was an American delegate to a world communist “peace conference” in Paris and was a lawyer for many communists in trouble with the law. He was the attorney for David Greenglass, the atomic spy who saved his own life by turning state’s evidence against his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg [who] went to the electric chair for turning over U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets. [Rogge] was thus eventually exposed for what he was. No wonder he was so fanatical in his hatred against the Sedition Trial defendants, all of whom were anti-communists.</b><sup>34</sup><br />
<br />
Rogge was an ideal choice for the Roosevelt administration and its allies, who were determined to pursue the prosecution, one way or the other. He moved forward relentlessly.<br />
As Roger Roots points out: “Not wishing to waste momentum, the government reconvened another grand jury, resubmitted the same pamphlets, publications, and materials that the previous grand jury had already seen, re-called the same testimony of the witnesses, and once again pleaded the grand jury to return yet another indictment.”<sup>35</sup><br />
The third (and final) indictment was handed down on January 3, 1944. In fact, Rogge and his Justice Department allies had decided to take a new tack and added eight new names (including Lawrence Dennis, who had not been named in the first indictments) and dismissed 12 defendants who had been named.<br />
Among those whose names were dismissed were influential New York Catholic lay leader William Griffin and his newspaper, <i>The New York Evening Enquirer</i> (the only publication indicted) former American diplomat Ralph Town send of San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and Paquita (“Mady”) de Shishmareff, the well-to-do American-born widow of a former Russian czarist military figure.<br />
Townsend, who had enraged the Roosevelt administration by opposing its anti-Japanese policies in the Pacific, had written an explosive book, <i>Ways That Are Dark</i>, highly critical of imperial China.* But although he was now “free,” he and his family had been broken financially by the indictment, and, according to his late wife, Janet, many of their close friends deserted them in this time of crisis.<br />
“It was a very difficult period in our lives,” she later recalled. “But it didn’t prevent Ralph from continuing to speak out.”<sup>36</sup> Townsend did continue to speak out, and in later years he became a friend of Willis A. Carto, publisher of <i>The Barnes Review</i>, and, today, portions of Townsend’s personal library are a part of TBR’s archives.<br />
Tony Blizzard, who is now research director for Liberty Lobby, the Washing ton-based populist institution, was a protégé in the early 1960s of Paquita de Shishmareff (who wrote as L. Fry) and he recently commented on the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the indictment against her—along with some fascinating, little-known details about this remarkable woman. In Blizzard’s in formed estimation:<br />
<b>One of the reasons they dropped the indictment against Mady was precisely because they knew they were dealing with a very sharp lady with a great deal of brain power. A woman of the old school, Mady would never put herself in the forefront, but she knew how to use the strengths of the men around her. She also was a woman of some means—unlike most of the other defendants—and was a formidable opponent.</b><br />
<b>The government clearly decided that it was in their best interests to dismiss the case against her. There was no way they could ever make “Nazis” out of all of these defendants, whose only real “crime” was exposing Jewish pow er as long as Mady was on the dock with the rest of them.</b><br />
<b>The prosecutors knew quite well, although it was not widely known then nor is it widely known today, that it was Mady who had supplied Henry Ford virtually all of the information that Ford had published in his controversial series about Jewish power in <i>The Dearborn Independent</i>. With her wide-ranging, high-level connections, Mady was an encyclopedic storehouse of inside in formation about the power elite.</b><br />
<b>The last thing the prosecution wanted was for Mady to take the stand. By releasing her as a defendant, they eliminated, to them, what was a very frightening possibility.</b><sup>37</sup><br />
But there were 30 others who were not so lucky as Paquita de Shishmareff, Ralph Townsend and the others who had been released, and their trial commenced on April 17, 1944 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colum bia.<br />
Kirkpatrick Dilling, son of defendant Elizabeth Dilling, captured the essence of the indictment. According to Dilling, “The indictment was premised on an alleged ‘conspiracy to undermine the morale of the armed forces.’ Thus criticizing President Roosevelt, who was armed forces commander in chief was an alleged overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. Denouncing our ally, communist Soviet Russia, was a further alleged overt act. Opposing communism was an alleged overt act because our enemy Hitler had also opposed communists.”<sup>38</sup><br />
Ironically, while his mother was on trial for her alleged participation in this “conspiracy to undermine the morale of the armed forces,” Kirkpatrick Dilling was promoted from corporal to second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.<sup>39</sup><br />
Other defendants, including George Sylvester Viereck, George Death er age, Robert Noble and Rev. Gerald Winrod, also had sons in the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.<sup>40</sup> Viereck’s son died in combat while his father was on trial and in prison (see the memorial poem on these pages).<br />
Presiding as judge at the trial was ex-Iowa Democratic Congressman Edward C. Eicher, a New Deal stalwart who had served a brief period as chairman of FDR’s Securities and Exchange Com mis sion (SEC) after being defeated for re-election to Congress. After Eicher’s term at the SEC, FDR then appointed Eicher to the judgeship. And serving as prosecutor was Eicher’s former legal counsel at the SEC, the aforementioned O. John Rogge. <sup>41</sup><br />
It seemed that the case was “fixed” from top to bottom.<br />
Albert Dilling, the attorney, who represented his wife Elizabeth Dilling, called for a congressional investigation of the trial on the grounds that it was impossible for such a trial to be fair during wartime.<sup>42</sup> But that was not enough to stop the trial juggernaut.<br />
Although proving “sedition” was the ostensible purpose of the prosecution, Lawrence Dennis reached other conclusions about the actual political basis for the trial: “The trial was conceived and staged as a political instrument of propaganda and intimidation against certain ideas and tendencies which are popularly spoken of as isolationism, anti-communism and anti-Semitism. The biggest single idea of the trial was that of linking Nazism with isolationism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism.”<sup>43</sup> How ever, as Dennis pointed out:<br />
<br />
<b>American isolationism was born with George Washington’s Farewell Address, not with anything the Nazis ever penned. As for “anti-Semitism,” it has flourished since the dawn of Jewish history. It is as old and widespread as the Jews . . . As for anti-communism, while it was one of Hitler’s two or three biggest ideas, it is in no way peculiar to Hitler or the Nazis, any more than anti-capitalism is peculiar to the Russian communists.</b><sup>44</sup><br />
To add shock value to the indictment, the government—in an accompanying bill of particulars, which was basically a rehash of the history of the Nazi Party in Germany—named German Chancellor Adolf Hitler as a “co-conspirator.”<br />
During the trial, the prosecutor, Rogge, charged that Hitler had picked the defendants to head a Nazi occupation government in the United States once Germany won the war.<sup>45</sup><br />
What the prosecutor was essentially trying to do, according to Lawrence Dennis, was “to perfect a formula to convict people for doing what was against no law. It boiled down to choosing a crime which the Department of Justice would undertake to prove equaled anti-Semitism, anti-communism and isolationism. The crime chosen was causing insubordination in the armed forces. The law was the Smith Act,”<sup>46</sup> which had been enacted in 1940.<br />
As Dennis pointed out: “One of the many ironies of the mass sedition trial was that the defendants were charged with conspiring to violate a law aimed at the communists and [of using] a communist tactic—that of trying to undermine the loyalty of the armed forces. What makes this so ironic is the fact that many of the defendants, being fanatical anti-communists, had openly supported the enactment of this law.”<sup>48</sup><br />
Defendant David Baxter later re called:<br />
<b>After Hitler and Stalin concluded a treaty, American communists enthusiastically endorsed those of us who opposed getting into the European war between Germany and the British-French alliance. The communists even stomached the Jewish issue that some of us raised, and many Jewish communists, who wanted the United States to join the war against Hitler, left their party. All that changed overnight, however, when war broke out between Germany and Russia. The communists then turned against us with a vengeance and eagerly backed FDR and American participation in the war to save the Soviets.</b><sup>48</sup><br />
Lawrence Dennis’s assessment of the government’s case is reminiscent of that of Kirkpatrick Dilling: “The pattern of the prosecution gradually emerged something like this: Our country is at war; Russia is our ally; the Russian government is communist; these defendants fight communism; they are therefore weakening the ties between the two countries; this is interfering with the war efforts; this in turn is injuring the morale of the armed forces. The indictees should therefore be sent to prison.”<sup>49</sup><br />
Henry H. Klein, an outspoken Jewish anti-communist, was the attorney who represented defendant Eugene Sanctuary, and he took issue with the very constitutionality of the trial.<br />
“This alleged indictment,” thundered Klein in his opening address to the jury, “is under the peace-time statute, not under the wartime act, and the writings and speeches of these defendants were made when this nation was at peace, and under a Constitution which guarantees free press and free speech at all times, including during wartime, until the Constitution is suspended, and it has not yet been suspended. These people believed in the guarantees set forth in the Constitution, and they criticized various acts of the administration.”<sup>50</sup><br />
About his own client, Klein noted: “He is 73 years old and devoutly religious. He and his wife ran the Presbyterian foreign mission office in New York City for many years, and he has written and published several hundred sacred and patriotic songs.”<sup>51</sup> One of those songs, Klein noted, was <i>Uncle Sam We Are Standing by You</i> and was published in June of 1942, well after the war had begun—hardly the actions of the dangerous seditionist that the prosecution and the sympathetic press painted Sanctuary to be.<br />
As far as Lawrence Dennis’s purported sedition was concerned, “the prosecution had attempted to prove its case exclusively by placing in evidence seven excerpts from his public writings, reprinted in the publication of the German-American Bund rather than as originally published.”<sup>52</sup> In other words, the “evidence” that Dennis had committed sedition was because he had written something (published and freely available to the public) that was later reprinted by a group sympathetic to Nazi Germany—not that Dennis himself had actively done anything to stir dissension among the American armed forces. According to Dennis:<br />
<b>The government’s prosecution theory said, in effect: “We postulate a world conspiracy, the members of which all conspired to Nazify the entire world by using the unlawful means of undermining the loyalty of the armed forces. We ask the jury to infer the existence of such a conspiracy from such evidence as we shall submit about the Nazis. We shall then ask the jury to infer that the defendants joined this conspiracy from the nature of the things they said and did. We do not need to show that the defendants ever did or said anything that directly constituted the crime of impairing the morale or loyalty of the armed forces. Our thesis is that Nazism was a world movement, which, by definition, was also a conspiracy to undermine the loyalty of the armed forces and that the defendants were members of the Nazi world movement.”</b><sup>53</sup><br />
<b>There was no more reason to bring out in a charge of conspiracy to cause military insubordination the facts that most of the defendants were anti-Semites, isolationists or anti-communists than there would have been in a trial of a group of New York City contractors on a charge of conspiring to defraud the city to bring out the facts that the defendants were all Irish or Jews and had always voted the Democratic ticket.</b><sup>54</sup><br />
Eugene Sanctuary’s attorney, Henry Klein, pulled no punches when he laid out the defense, declaring:<br />
<b>We will prove that this persecution and prosecution was undertaken to cover the crimes of government—remember that.</b><br />
<b>We will prove that it was undertaken by order of the president, in spite of the opposition of Attorney General Biddle.</b><br />
<b>We will prove that Mr. Rogge was selected for this job of punishing these defendants because no one else in the Department of Justice felt that he could find sufficient grounds in to spell out a crime against these defendants.</b><br />
<b>We will prove that the communists control not only our government but our politics, our labor organizations, our agriculture, our mines, our industries, our war plants and our armed encampments.</b><br />
<b>We will prove that the law under which these defendants are being tried was enacted at the repeated demands of the heads of our armed forces to prevent communists from destroying the morale of our soldiers, sailors, marine and air forces [and that this prosecution] was undertaken to protect communists who were and are guilty of the very crimes charged against these defendants who are utterly innocent and have been made the victims of this law.</b><sup>55</sup><br />
Klein minced no words when he told the jury that Jewish organizations were using the trial for their own ends:<br />
<b>We will prove that this persecution was instigated by so-called professional Jews who make a business of preying on other Jews by scaring them into the belief that their lives and their property are in danger through threatened pogroms in the United States [and that] anti-Semitism charged in this so-called indictment, is a racket, that is being run by racketeers for graft purposes.<sup>56</sup></b><br />
Klein also forcefully made the allegation that FBI agents had been acting as <i>agents provocateurs</i>, attempting to stir up acts of sedition:<br />
<b>We will show that the most vicious written attack on Jews and on the Roosevelt administration emanated from the office of the FBI by one of its agents, and that the purpose of this attack was to provoke others to do likewise. We will show that this agent also drilled his underlings in New York with broom sticks preparatory to “killing Jews.”</b><sup>57</sup><br />
Klein also put forth a rather interesting allegation about the source of certain funds purportedly supplied by Nazi Germany to no less than Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. According to Klein: “We will show that large sums of Hitler money helped finance Mr. Roosevelt’s campaign for re-election in 1936 and that right at this moment, British, American and German capital and industry are cooperating together in South America and other parts of the world.”<sup>58</sup><br />
What Klein alleged about international collaboration of high-finance capitalism has been part of the lore of the populist right and the populist left for over a century and is a theme that has been analyzed in scores of books, monographs and other literature, but largely ignored in the so-called academic mainstream.<br />
According to Lawrence Reilly’s ac count of the sedition trial, Klein’s speech was a critical turning point in the defense: “Klein did much in his brief speech to torpedo Rogge’s case by bringing to light the hidden agencies responsible for its existence.”<sup>59</sup><br />
However, noted Reilly, even many of the daily newspapers which opposed the trial editorially were afraid to discuss this hidden aspect of the case that Klein had dared bring forth in open court. Reilly said that readers were often left “confused”<sup>60</sup> because the papers never touched on the real factors involved. Some of these “friendly” papers, Reilly noted, insisted on referring to the defendants as “crackpots.”<br />
But the fact is that, as a direct consequence of his offensive against the ADL and the other Jewish groups that had played a part in orchestrating the trial, Klein was targeted, specifically because he was Jewish, by organized Jewish groups that resented Klein’s defense of the purported “anti-Semites” and “seditionists.”<br />
For his own part, Lawrence Dennis stood up in court to take on his own defense and delivered what even liberal writer Charles Higham was inclined to acknowledge was “a high-powered ad dress”<sup>61</sup>calling Rogge’s outline of the government case, “corny, false, fantastic, untrue, unproveable and unsound [and describing the trial as] a Roosevelt administration fourth-term conspiracy [and] another Dreyfus case [in which the government was] trying to write history in the heat of battle.”<sup>62</sup> To the loud applause of his fellow defendants, Dennis declared: “Pearl Harbor did not suspend the Bill of Rights.”<sup>63</sup><br />
A critical juncture in the case came when one of the defense attorneys, James Laughlin (a public defender representing Ernest Elmhurst) said in open court that it would be impossible for the trial to continue unless the private files of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith could be impounded and introduced as evidence.<br />
It was clear that much of the prosecution was based on the ADL’s “fact finding” and Laughlin concluded that it would be necessary to determine precisely what the ADL had provided the government if the defendants would be able to put on an effective defense.<br />
The judge seemed prepared to ignore Laughlin’s motion, but the clever attorney had already prepared copies of his motion in advance and distributed copies of the motion to the press. As a direct consequence, Washington newspapers reported that the ADL files had been made an issue in the case. As Reilly summarized the situation: “Laughlin had placed the spotlight upon the big secret of the case.”<sup>64</sup> This, according to Reilly, was “a bomb, which, some have said, had more to do with demoralizing [the prosecution’s] case than any other single [factor].”<sup>65</sup><br />
At that point, there seemed to be a strange turnabout in the way that the press supporting the trial began looking at the case. Even <i>The Washington Post</i> (which had played a part in orchestrating the trial by lending the services of its reporter, Dillard Stokes, to the joint ADL-FBI investigation) “completely reversed itself,” according to Reilly, “and started demanding that the case be brought to a quick conclusion.”<sup>66</sup><br />
In short, <i>The Post</i> wanted to keep “the big secret” of the case—behind-the-scenes orchestration of the case by the ADL—under wraps and now seemed to be calling to bring the trial to a rapid conclusion before the truth came out.<br />
<i>The Post</i> even commented editorially that: “We fear that, whatever may be the outcome of this trial, it will stand as a black mark against American justice for many years to come.”<sup>67</sup> As David Baxter later remarked: “Such were the remarkable words of the very paper whose own reporter had plotted with the original prosecutor to entrap the defendants and bring them to trial in Washington.”<sup>69</sup><br />
Despite these concerns, Rogge seemed to intensify his efforts. There was clearly a great deal of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the prosecutor and his backers as to how to deal with the challenge that had been presented. Since the judge never ordered the ADL’s files impounded, Rogge was free to move forward. He was determined to carry the trial through to conclusion, and he had many more witnesses to present.<br />
Author Roger Roots describes the course of events as follows:<br />
<b>Day after day, the trial wore on. Page after page of publications authored by the defendants was introduced into evidence, giving rise [among] all in attendance to the idea that it was their writings which were really on trial. The government announced that it intended to introduce 32,000 exhibits. It became obvious that what the defendants were really being prosecuted for was “Jew-baiting” which gave an indication of one principal source of the prosecution’s support. It became one of the longest and most expensive trials in U.S. history. In essence, the trial was little more than an assault against free speech.</b><sup>69</sup><br />
As the trial proceeded, outspoken trial critic Sen. William Langer visited defendants in jail and defied the media and its allies in the prosecution by publicly escorting defendant Elizabeth Dilling in and out of court and around Washington while she was on bail.<sup>70</sup><br />
Said Roots: “The government worked with unlimited funds, unlimited personnel, and unlimited access to intelligence information. The defense had to work with mostly court-appointed lawyers who were unacquainted with the defendants and the arguments of the case.”<sup>71</sup><br />
What is particularly interesting, as pointed out by liberal historian Glenn Jeansonne, is that: “Many of the defense attorneys were liberals unsympathetic with the clients’ beliefs. But they came to see the defendants’ side on a human basis, and instead of conducting a perfunctory defense, as many observers had expected, they put up a vigorous de fense.”<sup>72</sup><br />
Even Charles Higham, who, writing retrospectively, was an enthusiastic advocate of the trial, pointed out that “after two and a half months, neither defendants nor prosecution had managed to present a satisfactory case,”<sup>73</sup> and, ultimately, “both press and public were beginning to lose interest in the case.”<sup>74</sup><br />
At the same time, according to Paquita de Shishmareff, the defendants had managed to survive and develop their own way of dealing with their predicament: “Their physical lives were made almost impossible. They got little to eat and were hamstrung in every way possible. But when they got into court, it was such a farce they really just enjoyed themselves.”<sup>75</sup><br />
At one point, when the prosecutor was solemnly reading off a list of names of individuals—allies of the Roosevelt administration who had been attacked in some way by the defendants—defendant Edward James Smythe shouted out, “and Eleanor Roosevelt,” resulting in laughter from the courtroom.<sup>76</sup> Smythe didn’t want Mrs. Roosevelt’s name to go unrecorded in the pantheon of villainy.<br />
This, by the way, was only one of many amusing events that took place during this circus. In many respects, the sedition trial could be the basis for a Hollywood comedy, the serious and scandalous violation of the rights of the defendants notwithstanding.<br />
But this is not to suggest that the sedition trial was all a lot of merriment for the attorneys or for the defendants. Far from it. Two of the attorneys had a shot fired at them as they drove in their car. One of those attorneys lost a 12-year law association. Another was beaten by five thugs and hospitalized for five days.<br />
Henry Klein was harassed relentlessly, held in contempt of court for his defense of his client, and, then, ultimately, driven from the case altogether (although the contempt of court charges were eventually overturned).<br />
In addition, strenuous efforts were made to keep the defendants who were out on bail from holding jobs during the course of the trial, a particular problem for those who were not of independent means (and that was most of them).<br />
One defendant, Ernest Elmhurst, got a job as a headwaiter in a Washington hotel in order to make ends meet during the trial, but the ADL’s leading broadcasting voice, Walter Winchell, learned of Elmhurst’s employment and agitated on his widely heard radio show for Elmhurst’s firing, resulting in Elmhurst’s dismissal.<sup>77</sup><br />
As the trial dragged on, however, the government began to realize that its efforts were going nowhere. Roger Roots points out: “The prosecution had undoubtedly expected one or more of the defendants to break and testify against the others . . . [Yet] not one defendant gave any indication of such an inclination. Though they disagreed and some even disliked each other, they came together as a cohesive unit.”<sup>78</sup><br />
David Baxter had the pleasure to learn that he was going to be severed from the trial and the charges dismissed. His increasing deafness made it impossible for Baxter to have a fair trial. Baxter recalls that Judge Eicher called Baxter into his chamber, smiled, held out his hand, and said: “Go back to California and forget about it, Dave.”<sup>79</sup><br />
The judge reportedly told Baxter that if Baxter and his wife wanted to buy a car to return to California, he would help and handed Baxter a roll of gasoline coupons (which, during wartime, were severely rationed). Despite everything, it seems, even the judge realized what a farce the trial really was.<br />
It was something totally unexpected that brought the trial to a halt: Judge Eicher’s sudden death on November 29, 1944. The judge’s demise came at a point where Rogge was not even halfway through the prosecution’s case. At this point he had brought 39 witnesses to the stand, and expected to present 67 more. The defense had not even yet begun.<sup>80</sup><br />
Defendant David Baxter later commented (reflecting on his own friendly personal experience with the judge): “That trial could have killed any judge with a Christian conscience and any semblance of fairness. I felt genuinely sorry about Judge Eicher’s death.”<sup>81</sup> Rogge accused the defense of having effectively killed the judge by having put up such a defense that it made the judge’s life (and that of the prosecutor) uncomfortable. Under the circumstances, it was apparent that there was no way that the case could continue on a fair basis.<br />
As a consequence, after a period of legal haggling on both sides (with one defendant, Prescott Dennett, actually asking for the trial to continue, determined to present his defense after having been tried and convicted in the media), a mistrial was declared.<br />
Prodded primarily by Jewish groups, Prosecutor Rogge hoped to be able to keep the case alive and set a new trial in motion. But by the spring of 1945, the trial’s chief instigator, President Roos velt, was dead, and the war had come to a close. Rogge, however, continued to ask for delays in setting a new trial date. Since Germany had fallen, Rogge claimed, he was confident that he could find “evidence” in the German archives that the sedition trial defendants had been Nazi collaborators. However, according to historian Glen Jeansonne, no friend of the purported seditionists, “nothing Rogge found proved the existence of a conspiracy”<sup>82</sup> between the Ger man government and the defendants.<br />
Undaunted, Rogge launched a na tion wide lecture tour that was, not surprisingly, conducted under the auspices of B’nai B’rith. The combative and loquacious Rogge, prodded by his sponsors, could not contain himself in his enthusiastic recounting of the events of the trial and of the personalities in volved and, in the end, was fired by the Justice Department on October 25, 1946, for leaking information to the press.<sup>83</sup> At that time Rogge was ordered to hand over all Justice Department and FBI documents in his possession. The Justice Department had apparently decided that Rogge had outlived his usefulness.<br />
Less than a month later, District Judge Bolitha Laws dismissed the charges altogether, declaring that the defendants had not received a speedy trial as guaranteed by the Constitution. Although the Justice Department ap pealed, the dismissal was upheld on June 30, 1947 by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The “Great Sedition Trial” thus came to a close.<br />
As even defendant Lawrence Dennis was moved to comment:<br />
<b>Some or all may even have been guilty of conspiring to undermine the loyalty of the armed forces, but not as charged by the [government] . . . Nothing in the evidence brought out during the trial proved or even suggested that any one of the defendants was ever guilty of any such conspiracy, except on the prosecution theory. And on that theory, opponents of President Roosevelt’s pre-Pearl Harbor foreign policy and steps in foreign affairs, such as Col. Lindbergh, Sen. Taft, Sen. Nye or Sen. Wheeler, and Col. McCormick, publisher of <i>The Chicago Tribune</i>, would be equally guilty.</b><br />
<b>Indeed, the prosecution case, according to the prosecution theory, would have been much stronger against these prominent isolationists than it ever could be against the less important defendants in the Sedition Trial.</b><sup>84</sup><br />
Many years later it is grimly amusing to note that organized Jewish groups and Jewish newspapers attacked the attorney general, Francis Biddle, for having failed to see the sedition trial through to the bitter end and achieve the conviction of the defendants. Lawrence Dennis wryly commented that all of this showed a great deal of ingratitude on their part.<br />
According to Dennis: “It shows what a public servant gets for attempting to do dirty work to the satisfaction of minority pressure groups. Biddle did the best anyone in his position could do to carry out the wishes of the people behind the trial. They simply did not appreciate the difficulties of railroading to jail their political enemies without evidence of any acts in violation of the law.”<sup>85</sup><br />
Dennis added a further warning for those who would allow themselves to be caught up in promoting “show trials” such as that which was effected in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944: “What the government does today to a crackpot, so-called,” Dennis said, “it may do to an elder statesman of the opposition the day after tomorrow.<sup>86</sup><br />
“The trial made history,” Dennis said, ”but not as the government had planned. It made history as a government experiment, which went wrong. It was a Department of Justice experiment in imitation of a Moscow political propaganda trial.”<sup>87</sup><br />
There are at least five definitive conclusions which can be drawn about this trial, based upon all that is in the historical record:<br />
1) The defendants charged were largely on trial for having expressed views that were either anti-Jewish or anti-communist or both. The actions of the defendants had little or nothing to do with encouragement of dissension or insurrection within the U.S. armed forces. In short, the “sedition” trial was a fraud from the start.<br />
2) The prime movers behind the prosecution were private special interest groups representing powerful Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith that were closely allied with the Roosevelt regime in power.<br />
3) As a consequence, high-level politicians (including the U.S. president) and bureaucrats beholden to those private interests used their influence to ensure that the police powers of the government were used to advance the demands of those private pressure groups agitating for the sedition trial.<br />
4) Major media voices (such as <i>The Washington Post</i>), working with the ADL and allied with the ruling regime, were prime players in promoting and facilitating the events that led to the trial.<br />
5) The police powers of government can easily be abused, and innocent citizens, despite Constitutional guarantees of protection, can be persecuted under color of law, their innocence notwithstanding.<br />
About a decade after “The Great Sedition Trial” had come to a close, the major media in America began devoting much energy to denouncing so-called anti-communist “witch-hunts” by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and others, the media (not to mention “mainstream” historians) never drew the obvious parallel with the precedent for such witch-hunting that had been set by the activities of the ADL and its allies in the Roosevelt administration who had orchestrated the sedition trial.<br />
The events of “The Great Sedition Trial” are a black page of American history (and little known at that). Civil libertarians should take note: It can happen here, and it did.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-14634108595305550892010-03-22T04:42:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:20:36.195-07:00Ivan IV ‘The Terrible’ — A New Look<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;"><br />
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By M. Raphael Johnson, Ph.D.</div><br />
Should Russia’s famous or infamous Czar Ivan the Terrible really be known as Ivan the Terrific (as in “Awesome”)? A closer look at the man shows he was certainly not a monster like Josef Stalin or Vladimir Lenin. While some executions did take place under his rulership, it was by no means a reign of terror, as the liberal establishment would like you to believe.<br />
There are two countries where officially propagated mythology has held sway over Anglo-American historical writing for centuries, and these are Germany and Russia. Now, as the Revisionist movement has attempted to set the record straight as concerns the former, this writer turns his guns on the latter.<br />
For generations, the Anglo-American establishment referred to Russia as that “backward Oriental despotate,” worthy only of contempt. Presently, despite much improved methods of historical analysis, nothing has changed concerning this officially sponsored myopia and ideological arrogance. History from the jaded and corrupt Anglo-American historical establishment is far too often the domain of liberal prejudice and justifications of the social, cultural and political power of the leftist and cosmopolitan elite.<br />
Few other nations have received the dishonest and contemptful treatment as has imperial and Orthodox Russia. The major contributions in the contemporary field from Russian scholars James Billing ton, Michael Florinsky, Joel Carmichael, Basil Dmytryshyn and Richard Pipes do little to combat the stereotypical and bigoted depictions of pre-Marxist Russia. In fact, most of them happily regurgitate identical myths and venom against her.<br />
The causes of this myopia are rather simple. The Russian nation, for various reasons, has simply refused to replicate the famous Anglo-American model of “development” that has been taken as normative for “civilized society.” Such a model is simply that “traditional” forms of government and religion must develop into “modern” modes of government and religion. Thus, feudalism, monarchy and natural law ethics gradually come to reflect an “enlightened” consciousness by evolving in to utilitarianism, bureaucrat ism and capitalism. Out side of this development, Anglo-Americans have claimed for years, there is no civilization: goodness, progress, happiness, enlightenment and justice have been consistently identified with this theory of development (which is liberalism’s philosophy of his tory), and such claims have been made by nearly all Western theorists of the political system, excluding Burke and de Maistre.<br />
Outside of this model of development, which has completely become part of the subconscious apparatus of the Anglo-American historical, social scientific and political establishment, “backwardness” and “boorishness” results. Up on and from this series of assumptions is most contemporary history written. This ideological backdrop must be kept in mind when reading establishment histories of Eastern Europe and, specifically, imperial Russia. In fact, this backdrop is nearly omnipresent in all areas of inquiry currently coming out of the court flatterers of the liberal elite, including a major prop in their ideological hegemony—modern, tenured academics.<br />
When viewing imperial Russia, then, the Anglo-American establishment is nothing other than appalled. It cannot fathom the institutionalization of the agrarian life rather than the life of the cities, factories and mental health clinics. It cannot fathom, and is rather threatened by, an entire national ethic that maintains its roots to Orthodoxy, monarchy and agrarian simplicity, and thus re fuses to accept the dominant Western ethical systems of emotivism, relativism and utilitarianism. The An glo-American establishment is appalled by anyone so “boorish” as to reject the idea of liberal democracy and serve instead a representative monarchy.<br />
Some of the most contemptible commentary on Russian history derives from James Billington, the former librarian of Congress, whose contempt for Russian institutions is made manifest by such unreasonable and prejudiced passages such as this, reflecting faithfully the cosmopolitan liberal ideology which is <i>a priori</i> built into the present method of writing history:<br />
<b>There was so much activity in and around churches that one might have had the impression of an unprecedented blossoming of religious ardor. In truth, however, it represented more the sagging overgrowth of Indian summer than the freshness of springtime. The ornate brick churches with Dutch and Persian features, which sprang up at the rate of one every two years in Yaroslavl, appear today as a kind of unreal interlude between the Byzantine and Baroque styles: heavy fruit languishing in the hazy warmth of October, unaware that the stem linking them with the earth had withered and that the killing frost was about to descend. Innumerable icons of local prophets [<i>sic</i>] and saints clustered on the lower tier of the iconostases, rather like overripe grapes begging to be picked; and the rapid simultaneous singing of paid memorial services . . . resembled the agitated murmur of autumn flies just before their death. </b>(<i>The Icon and the Axe</i>, 126).<br />
Such severe prejudice against a Russia that Billington despises—Orthodox imperial Russia—serves as an excellent example of how not to write history, if this can even be considered history. The clumsy attempt at poetry simply masks an unreasonable prejudice against the institutions of Russia unanimously shared amongst the bulk of Anglo-American commentators. Further more, the passage, much like the bulk of Billington’s rather famous book, deals with imperial Russian history as a horrifically alien organization of human beings, understood only through the comfortable prism of a smug, contemporary bourgeois Anglo liberalism. It is a classic example of the modern academic condemning “conformity” and “authoritarianism” while slavishly following every accepted ideological and pedagogical bias and convention of the day; the jaded urban intellectual viewing country living as the life fit only for bumpkins and ignoramuses.<br />
Now, of course, there is far more at work here than mere abstract and ideological historical theorizing. There are political and class-related reasons as to why the Anglo-American establishment has developed the bitter and hate-filled view for all that does not follow its idiosyncratic mode of development, leading, of course, to the enlightened oasis of liberal democracy and moral emotivism. A nation governed by a powerful monarch and church is not ripe for colonial domination or capitalist exploitation, either directly or indirectly. Many in the Jewish-dominated finance establishments hated the imperial Russian czar for refusing to set up a central bank (the only powerful state in Europe to so re fuse; it took the Marxists to set up a banking system). Thus, an agrarian, traditionalist, monarchical, Christian Rus sia faces a decadent, urbanized, alienated, relativistic and meddlesome West. It is from this dichotomy, and the ideological gulf it creates, that the overwhelming preponderance of Western “history” de rives as to pre-revolutionary Russia.<br />
Nowhere is this more evident than in the institution of monarchy. For the relativistic West, any institution that supports moral and social absolutes as found in the nation’s tradition is automatically suspect, and likely to be oppressive, violent and certainly anti-Semitic (certainly the worst epithet, as well as the last, of liberal history). Specifically, the lengthy reign of Ivan IV (1533-84)—erroneously called “the Terrible”—the longest in Russian history—is treated with the absolutely minimal grasp of reality, and manifesting a deep seated psychological hatred of national custom, tradition and religion. If rumors exist, for example, that a traditionalist, Orthodox monarch is “psychotic,” “murderous” or just plain “evil,” then it must be true, because such “backward, Oriental despotates” are based on such things, as every good liberal knows. Suddenly, all relativism and utilitarianism disappears, and one of the few absolutes the West believes in—the dominance of liberal ideology—comes to the forefront, informing all research, thought and writing on the subject. Without exception, the major works on Russian history refer to Ivan IV as “enjoying perverse acts” (Dmytryshyn), cruel and ruthless (Billington), “mentally ill” (Pipes), and a host of epithets by Carmichael (though Ivan IV is not the only target of this particular author’s venom).<br />
Largely, Ivan IV is a target because, not only was he one of the more traditional Orthodox and absolutist monarchs of Russian history, but he was also an enemy of the West, despising its “rationalism” and “relativism” throughout his long reign. Due to his battles against the Poles and Swedes as well as the Livonian Knights, and additionally his successful campaigns to expand the Russian kingdom to the east and south, Ivan IV immeasurably strengthened the Russian nation. Western politicians and intellectuals were quite willing to believe more or less anything negative about imperial Russia and specifically Ivan IV. One of the most obvious signs of this prejudice is the translation of Ivan IV’s title as “the Terrible.” Simply put, the Russian word “<i>grozny</i>” is far more often translated in English as “awesome” rather than “terrible.”<br />
This essay, then, seeks to provide a Revisionist analysis of Ivan’s reign, one considered by Western historians (particularly the avowed Russia-hater, Joel Carmichael) as merely one long “bloodbath” or “orgy,” in the common insults of Western historical research. Ivan’s reign most certainly was not any of these things, particularly when compared with the standards of the time, and compared with the historical record of the Anglo-American political system in particular, whose blood lust is legendary. The historical record shows Ivan IV to be rather stable, a good statesman, and one who sought to centralize power for his most vulnerable and exposed country, and who eliminated much of the aristocracy, which sought to divide and weaken the country in the process. Indeed his methods were not always pretty, but were certainly nothing spectacular when compared to the mass murders that defined the history of the 20th century and the triumph of liberalism and utilitarianism. Ivan IV’s political reign was rather moderate given the time period and the historical circumstances in which Russia found herself.<br />
If one was to go through all the major works in Russian history considered standard, only in a single work, written in 1884 by a Frenchman named Alfred Rambaud (<i>History of Russia</i>, translated by L.B. Lang, three vols., Boston: Estes and Lauriat), chief of the cabinet of the minister of public instruction and fine arts in Paris and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, posits a different understanding of Ivan’s time period. This three volume set contains a radically differing view from the mainstream on most things, but most striking is his treatment of Ivan IV, a treatment almost completely ignored by the establishment.<br />
This essay does not, of course, seek to sanction every single policy or individual act of Ivan IV’s extremely long reign. It is true that the mysterious death of the saintly Metropolitan Philip of Moscow, for example, was a crime of which Ivan IV bears much of the responsibility, and such things this essay shall in no way defend. However, the commonplace idea of the “bloodbath” that allegedly was Ivan IV’s reign is pure fiction and desperately requires Revisionist analysis.<br />
For instance, the enigmatic death of Ivan’s son has always bedeviled historians. No one saw his death, and whether he was killed by his father or it was an accident is unknown. The putative Ivan V was healthy in mind and body, and there is no known reason for his father to have murdered him.<br />
Rambaud’s understanding of Ivan IV’s reign begins, properly, with an understanding of Moscow herself, a provincial town just recently crowned as the centerpiece of Russian life and her political capital. Previously, Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod held this title at one time or another. Russia, one of the world’s most vulnerable and militarily exposed countries, fresh from a two-century occupation by the Mongol hordes, was slowly coming to realize that a tight, centralized monarchy was the only rational means of defending the nation from further attacks from both East and West. Beginning a century earlier with Basil II (the prince of Moscow was not at that time calling himself “czar”), Moscow was warring on and off with the greater landowners (the major Boyars) so as to centralize taxing and military power in Moscow, rather than revert to the decentralized system of noble land holders (the “apanage” system) that had failed so miserably to defend Russia against the Mongols three centuries before. How ever, as Russia became more centralized, the forces against that centralization (centering around the land-owning nobility of significance) became more powerful and focused.<br />
Such is the general political backdrop of Ivan IV’s reign. By the time of Basil III’s death (Ivan was only four years old and was Basil’s son), large and powerful groups of land owners had continued to conspire against Moscow, setting the stage for a major confrontation that no doubt would simply have given a green light for Russia’s enemies to divide her up (the Swedes tried something like this during the early stages of the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, but they were defeated by the famed St. Alexander Nevesky). The major conspirators were from the most powerful noble families of Russia: the Shuiskys (the most powerful), the Belskis, the Kurb skis, the Vorotinskis and a gaggle of others, who, normally fighting each other, found a common enemy in Moscow and her centralizing tendencies.<br />
Thus the historian finds Russia surrounded by enemies (the Mongols, Sweden, Poland and Turkey), having just recovered from a grueling occupation by the Mongol hordes, and driven to near ruin by the profound internal divisions in Russian society. Into this Ivan IV was born and came to the throne. As a boy, the czar apparent was placed in what was essentially solitary confinement. The scions of the noble families of Russia would come to his room and mock him, taunting him with the power they had and were soon to acquire at the expense of his family; such was their contempt for the monarchy and Moscow in general (Rambaud, 247).<br />
During this time and after, Ivan showed an extraordinary love of learning, and became the best educated monarch of Russia up until that time. Specifically, Ivan developed a rather exalted idea of monarchy and its function in a fragile society such as 16th-century Moscow (Rambaud, 249). Such a view be came necessary as the state system in Western Europe became more centralized, secular and belligerent, and Russia, since at least the time of Ivan III and Basil III, found herself required to justify her own unique institutions to the world. As it turned out, Ivan IV was perfectly placed and educated to do this properly for the first time.<br />
At the age of 13, Ivan took the throne and immediately executed one of his chief tormentors and subversives, the scion of the extremely powerful Shuiski family, Andrei. For four years, however, Ivan ruled Russia in tranquillity and peace, until a major event in Ivan’s life took place: the famous Moscow fires of 1547. After much destruction and death, the noble and now outright subversive families began to blame one another, in the hopes of placing a stigma upon their rivals.<br />
Thinking the fires were from sabotage (a question we as yet do not have the answer for), the Muscovite citizenry rioted. Ivan realized that the situation within the Muscovite political class was becoming intolerable.<br />
From this, Ivan took on a spiritual advisor, the priest Sylvester. Ivan wished to continue to improve his life and personal morals after realizing his survival had been in danger after the riots subsequent to the fires. Unfortunately, with his duplicitous and trusted confidant Adashef, many of Ivan’s intimates were to desert him when the winds seemed favorable to aristocratic agitation and fragmentation. This is the true genesis of Ivan’s “paranoia” that was to stay with him for the remainder of his reign.<br />
Under Ivan, the Russian empire grew, fueled by many factors, the chief of which was security from foreign invasion, a daily reality of Russian life. Further, the expansion east and south was also fueled by the need to reward brave and powerful soldiers with land grants, in exchange for which the recipient was required to perform various services to the state, largely of a military nature. One must keep in mind that the desperate need for manpower against Russia’s endless list of enemies made this sort of arrangement, and later, serfdom, imperative). During the siege of Kazan (a Mongol holdout), Ivan IV offered the fortified city generous terms for surrender (far less than the Mongols had offered the Russians two centuries before), which were rejected. After the battle and the carnage that followed, Ivan was heard to utter in remorse, “they were not Christians, but they were still men” (Rambaud, 254).<br />
In searching for ports and trade with Germany, Ivan fought the Livonian wars for access to the Baltic Sea. Ivan’s victories convinced much of the West that Russia had arrived on the European scene, and the Livonian Knights had made certain none of the goods in trade, nor German tradesmen, ever made it to Moscow. However, at home, the noble families, many members of which had become intimate advisors of Ivan’s (as they were the most knowledgeable men in Russia at the time on political matters, specifically the West) were found bribing army officers to participate in Ivan’s overthrow. Around this time Ivan fell sick, which meant little more than that the noble families of Moscow came to his bedside to provoke him, explicitly stating that they had no loyalty to him or his son, and that they would divide up the country among themselves (Ram baud, 258-259). When Ivan unexpectedly recovered, he set about to gradually eliminate these aristocratic families which he now knew were a direct threat to his dynasty and the Russian state.<br />
One must understand the transformation that occurred a century earlier in Russian history before going any further. Previous to the centralization within Moscow, the political system revolved around land being granted to sons of powerful princes, leading to a highly decentralized political system, one particularly vulnerable to attack. This is part of the reason why the Mongols were so successful in occupying al most the entire country. Such a system of land holding was the genesis of the families Ivan had to contend with, and they were jealous of their inherited prerogatives. Russia’s political and military situation at the time, however, made it imperative that this system be overthrown. A fractured country simply could not fight the centralized and powerful kingships of Sweden and Poland. Thus, the idea of the resurrection of the apanage system of land holding was considered, reasonably, by Ivan to be a direct threat to the state. The result was the absolute military imperative of tying the land owning families to the office of the czar, their land and to Moscow. Many within the nobility were exiled. Ram baud explains the situation after many of the scions were driven out:<br />
<b>They left behind a complete administration, a perfect army of clients. They had peopled the court, the governments and the “<i>voievodies</i>”</b><sup>1</sup><b> with their creatures. Their partisans were certain to agitate and plot for the return of their chiefs. Who knew how far these plots might go? [It was a] short time after Adashef’s disgrace that Anastasia [Ivan’s daughter] died suddenly. Ivan alleged she was poisoned. Since the publication of M. Zabielin’s careful studies on the “Private Life of the Czaristas of Russia,” this allegation and others like it do not appear as inconceivable as they seemed to [N.M.] Karamsin. The intrigues of Adashef’s friends forced Ivan the Fourth many times to have recourse to severity, but at this point, he was comparatively merciful.</b>(260)<br />
At any rate, the daughter of Ivan died under mysterious circumstances, nearly immediately after the various threats given to Ivan while he lay on his sickbed. Here is what that “murderous psychotic” wrote after the fact in his journal:<br />
<b>When the treachery of that dog Alexis Adashef and his accomplices was discovered, we let our anger be tempered with mercy; we did not condemn the guilty to capital punishments, but only banished them our different towns. . . . Then we put no one to death. Those who belonged to the party of Sylvester and Adashef we commanded to separate from them, and no longer to recognize them as chiefs. This promise we made them confirm by a vow, but they paid no heed to our injunction, and trampled their oath under foot. Not only did they not separate from the traitors, but they aided them by all possible means, and schemed to render them back their ancient power, and to set on foot against us a perfidious plot. </b>(260, quoted in Rambaud.)<br />
Few realize that capital punishment was relatively rare in Russia (Rambaud, 261); though this fact is universally acknowledged in the literature, the au thors refuse to even ask the question of how a society allegedly so “backward” and “ignorant” as Russia would have re fused to implement the death penalty for capital crimes. But both military de feat and revolutionary agitation in the 19th century made it an unpleasant necessity.<br />
Ivan began the process of long overdue purges of the Moscow “political class.” One of the strongest reasons for Ivan’s “exhibition of murderous brutality” was the defection of the famed Andrei Kurbski, another scion of a family descended from Rurik the Viking, who founded the first Russian dynasty. Kurb ski was a distinguished military leader against the Tartars years before. He was close with Adashev and Sylvester and was irritated by their fall from power (Rambaud, 261).<br />
In a battle against the Poles during the Livonian wars, Kurbski outnumbered his enemy 15,000 versus 4,000. Somehow, this distinguished military commander lost that battle, and, of course, Ivan claimed (as any of the reasonable observer would claim) he “threw” the fight. Afterward, it was discovered that he was in negotiations with the Poles during the battle itself to form an alliance against Ivan. Later, according to Rambaud, he left his wife and children to Ivan’s mercy and crossed over into Poland, officially becoming a traitor. He additionally had the gall to blame Ivan for his defeat.<br />
The defection of a top Russian commander was a bit too much for the czar, already abandoned by many of his former “friends.” Ivan would have rather abandoned his throne than have to deal with characters like these. This is precisely what he did. In letters written justifying his abdication, he, of course, blamed the noble land owning classes, but, in a true populist spirit, Ivan vindicated and defended the plight of the commoner, the worker and farmer. These were some of his most powerful supporters. Ivan had proven an excellent counterweight to some of the exploitation of the peasantry from the noble families. From then on, the czar was looked upon by the peasantry as the “Little Father.” To this day, Russian peasants carry with them a picture of the last Russian czar, Nicholas II, and he is referred to by the same phrase of endearment. It is shocking to what extent the establishment historians are baffled by this incredible loyalty. Carmichael and Pipes, among others, simply chalk it up to peasant “backwardness” and “ignorance.”<br />
The purges against the aristocratic families began. Of course, part of the reforms put in place was the infamous “<i>oprichina</i>” (meaning “separate estate”), a means by which much land was placed in the hands of the czar himself, taking them away from the noble families that had time and again proved that they would turn traitor if it was in their personal interest. Ivan worried quite significantly about his life and throne. During a particularly heinous bout with the traditional aristocracy, he had written Queen Elizabeth of England to secure safe haven if he was overthrown. His will, additionally, shows some worry about this possibility. Certainly, it was far from “paranoia,” but rather a dispassionate understanding of the forces arrayed against him (Rambaud, 266-267).<br />
Almost universally in the literature, the institution of the <i>oprichina</i> is treated in about the same tone as the SS or the Khmer Rouge. Of course, much of pure fiction has been written about this institution and accepted uncritically as fact. The same might also be said about every single other institution in Russian society. What makes matters worse is that our sources on Ivan’s “crimes” derive from sources positively hostile to Ivan: Kurbski himself, the Italian Guag nini (at that time in the service of the Polish crown) and German refugees fleeing Russian victories in the Livonian War, specifically the refugees Taube and Kruse. According to Rambaud’s research with primary data, these “sources,” were not only biased, but also highly inconsistent concerning the alleged “crimes” of the <i>oprichina</i> system and Ivan’s purges.<br />
Given Ivan’s interest in opening trade with Germany and the Netherlands, as well as the English (who still have yet to get over the idea that Russia is anything more than a society in need of English en lightenment), Ivan showed a tolerance to foreigners un heard of in Russia at that time. Pro tes tant churches were permitted in Moscow (but at the displeasure of the population, these were forced to move out into the countryside a bit). After several defeats from a Tran sylvanian warlord, Stepan Batory (or Bathory), Ivan called for the mediation of Pope Gregory XIII and even considered another at tempt at the reunification of Ortho doxy and Catholicism. The pope sent the Je suit Antonia Possevino. According to Rambaud:<br />
<b>Possevino’s account shows us Ivan the Terrible in his true light; almost free-thinking, inquisitive and sometimes disposed to see the humorous side of things, with idea of tolerance remarkable for his time. If the pope’s envoy failed in the religious part of his mission, he at least succeeded in concluding a truce between the two sovereigns in 1582, by which Ivan had to cede Polotsk [in Lithuania] and all Livonia.</b> (271-272)<br />
Now, there is no question that this time was not one of perfect justice, calm and political reform. Rambaud himself claims that a “reign of terror” hung over the aristocratic houses. How ever, the alleged crimes of Ivan are highly exaggerated in the literature. The principle episodes in the “reign of terror” that we know of for sure were (again quoting from Rambaud):<br />
<b>The deposition and perhaps murder of St. Philip, archbishop of Moscow, who was guilty of having nobly interceded for the condemned and of hating Ivan’s bodyguard.</b><br />
<b>The execution of Alexandra, widow of Iuri and sister-in-law of Ivan; of Prince Vladimir and his mother, the ambitions Evfrosinia, who thus expiated their intrigues of 1553. We must remark that Ivan, whatever Kurbski may say, spared Vladimir’s children, and largely provided for them.</b><br />
<b>The chastisement of Novgorod, where, it seemed to Ivan, the aristocratic party had entertained the project of opening the gates to the king of Poland, and where the czar, according to his own testimony, put to death 1,505 persons.</b><br />
<b>The great execution in the Red Place in 1571, where a certain number of Muscovites and Novgorodians were slain. . . . </b>(265-266)<br />
Rambaud goes on to explain that, at the monastery of St. Cyril, a memorial to those slain existed, which listed the exact number of those slain as 3,470 (266). It needs to be noted that Kurbski’s propaganda claimed that this number included “women and children” murdered. This is based on the misunderstanding of the inscriptions on the memorial, which state that such and such noble was killed “with his entire family.” This, however, does not necessarily mean that Ivan actually killed the entire family, but simply refers to the Russian understanding of the time that when the head of a household dies, the entire household is, in a symbolic sense, “killed” (266). One must understand further that Ivan’s reign lasted nearly a half-century, and thus, when compared with the 20th century with tens of millions of anti-communists killed, Ivan’s reign was far from “terrible.”<br />
However, his attacks on the corrupt aristocracy (more accurately, oligarchy), his concerns with the security of the Russian nation (the Livonian Order was eventually dissolved after many defeats at the hands of the “backward” Russians, though, it is true, Russia eventually lost the war against numerous opponents), his popularity with the peasantry and the commoner, the expansion of the Russian empire, the realization in Europe that Russia was a force to be dealt with, Ivan’s rather advanced literacy and understanding of history and theology, his actual construction of the concept of Russian czardom that was to be more or less accepted until the communist revolution and his securing of German and Dutch trade and tolerance toward their tradesmen who eventually settled in Moscow, showed that he clearly deserved his real title, “Ivan the Awesome.”<br />
<br />
FOOTNOTE<br />
<b><sup>1 </sup></b><i>Voievodies</i> are regional governors.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-4053322766686544192010-03-22T04:40:00.000-07:002010-03-22T04:40:22.999-07:00In Defense of Monarchy<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">By Charles A. Coulombe</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">The United States of America constitutes the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Yet, in seeming paradox, this mighty <i>imperium</i> is a federative republic made up of 50 small ones and a few possessions held in common between them. It is very difficult, indeed, in the face of this reality, to argue the case for monarchy. Or is it?</span><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;">I</span><span style="color: black;">n the sheer realm of pragmatism the overwhelming physical success of the American commonwealth is a powerful argument in favor of her institutions. Moreover, reverence for these institutions themselves is not pragmatic, but in essence, religious. Every “product” of the American educational system is taught to revere the Pilgrims and Puritans as the prophets of the old law; the Founding Fathers as the apostles; George Washing ton, Abraham Lincoln and, (depending upon one’s politics) Teddy or Franklin Roose velt as the holy trinity; the Constitution as holy writ; places like Old North Church, Independence Hall and the Lincoln Memorial as shrines; and such items as the flag and the Liberty Bell as holy relics. An American monarchist is considered to be not merely blind to his nation’s success as a republic, but worse yet, “un-American”: He is an infidel in the temple.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But setting aside both our country’s (doubtless temporary, if history may be believed) power, and our national mythology, there must be something to be said for mankind’s oldest institution of government. The United States is a mere 225 years old as an independent nation, and has been the world’s financial power for 86 years, her mightiest single power for 55 and her only superpower for just a decade.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Regardless of our might, moreover, and the power of our president over the affairs of all other nations, and despite our loud and long protestations against kings and crowns, a funny thing happens when sovereigns actually appear over here. Be it the king of Spain or the queen of Great Britain, politicos and media folk alike tend to bow and scrape. Actors and actresses, who in America generally receive the adulation reserved for royalty in other nations, are no less forward. When the king and queen of Sweden in 1988 arrived for a reception at Holly wood’s Motion Picture Academy, this writer observed the struggles to reach the royal couple on the part of people who normally profess nothing but scorn for such things. Could it be that, at the bottom of all our posturings, lies a psychological need for kingship?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Before we look any further into the topic, we need to define our terms. Mention monarchy to most Americans, and they will cite Nero, Ivan the Terrible and a historically ridiculous view of George III as “proofs” that kings are tyrants and monarchy mere oppression. But this is as foolish an argument as pointing out Hit ler, Stalin and Idi Amin as typical presidents. As all republics and all republicans are not the same, neither are all monarchies, nor all monarchs.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Medieval Christian monarchies, to be sure, were barely governments in our sense of the term; lacking both income tax and secret police, the worst kings of the Middle Ages could do little more than make life miserable for their entourage. When such rulers were bad, the price their nations paid was not oppression, but anarchy. Good kings, conversely, wielding the authority consecrated them by the church, could and did mobilize the powers of church, nobility, guilds and so on, for the common good. It is fair to say that no nation in the formerly Christian West is as well governed today as they were by the best of their medieval sovereigns.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The absolute monarchies, such as those of Louis XIV, were in reality simply stages in the growth of the modern state; when kings, bound by tradition as they were, attempted to limit the state’s power, they were overthrown. Thus William Jefferson Clinton has far more practical power than ever did Louis XIV.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But even the worst despotisms, where “divine” rulers such as the emperor of China, or “leaders of the faithful,” like the Ottoman sultan, were at least more humane than the Ataturks and Maos who replaced them. In terms of taxation alone, the American people have never—at least in the 20th century—been bled by the tax man so lightly under their elected representatives as they were under George III.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Today, however, with exception of the Muslim monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan and the Gulf States) and little Buddhist Bhutan, the world’s monarchs preside over modern states. Practically speaking, the kings of Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Nepal, the queens of Denmark, the Netherlands and Great Britain (who wears also the crowns of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a number of other realms), and the emperor of Ja pan, are figureheads—as the saying goes, they “reign, but do not rule.” Under their authority, politicians manipulate and bamboozle their subjects as well as under any of the planet’s republics. Surely these crowns are undemocratic window-dressing best put out of the way?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">By no means. Non-totalitarian republics come in two varieties: presidential and parliamentary. The first sort, prevalent in the Americas (and, since 1958, in France), offer an elected head of state who is Head of Government as well. He fights with the legislature over budgets, bills and appointments, but generally has near-complete control of the day-today workings of government, as well as of the armed forces. In short, practically speaking, unless he falls victim to Watergate-style scandal, he may enjoy near total power without answering to anyone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The second variety is more popular in Europe. In Germany, Ireland, Italy, Austria and most of the rest of republican Europe, the president is, in terms of actual power, a figurehead elected by parliament to perform the tasks given constitutional monarchs: opening and closing parliament, receiving ambassadors’ credentials, appointing the head of the largest party as prime minister and a host of other ceremonial functions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">To be sure, even a “figurehead” monarch is of more use to his people than either type of president. Trained from birth for his position, he does not have to spend half his term learning his job and the other half getting re-elected, as must the chief of a presidential republic. Nor is he beholden to the interest groups who secured his election. The king is rarely a creature of a political party, but rather must work with all of them—today’s opposition may be tomorrow’s government.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The monarch is a human flag. Unlike the world’s presidents, whose significance to their countries spans only a single career, the sovereign generally sums up in his own being all his nation’s history. He is, as it were, the father of the national family.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In a republic, members of the party out of power are effectively frozen out of national life. But in a monarchy, the king remains a focus of loyalty beyond party. Such institutions as the courts, the armed forces and the universities, which in a republic always run the risk of becoming politicized (and so less effective), in a monarchy remain attached directly to the crown.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">One of the major roles of the monarch is as ultimate guardian of the law. Ordinarily, this is a ceremonial position; appointing the head of the largest party in Parliament as prime minister, dissolving Parliament and calling for new elections at the prime minister’s request—these tasks, formal as they are, represent a greater reality: it is the sovereign’s authority which the ministers of the day exercise, and that authority may be withdrawn.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">It has rarely happened in this century, but on several occasions, where prime ministers have tried illegally to hold on to power, or to void their respective constitutions, such as in 1930s Italy, the sovereign or his representative has acted decisively to maintain the rule of law. In other cases, where the political classes have been unanimous in their support of or opposition to a measure against the interests of the people, such as in 1990s Thailand, the sovereign has raised his voice, when no one else could speak.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">A president would be incapable of such tasks. In a parliamentary presidency, there could be no question of the president acting against the prime minister who created him; in a presidential republic, it would be the president himself who was thus voiding the law. In neither case could the chief executive claim the support of the courts and the armed forces on behalf of the people.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">There is a deeper tie to the populace for monarchs than merely that of defending their liberties. In every case, the monarchy is religious in nature, and loyalty to the crown is a religious duty. Depending upon the religion of the country involved, the monarch is either chief layman or a quasi-priest. Although, due to the desire to imitate the United States, the Ameri can myth of “separation of church and state” grows everywhere in popularity among the world’s political classes, a secular monarchy is a contradiction in terms. However dimly, the monarchy is seen as a reflection of the divine kingship, which nearly all faiths claim underlies the world. Needless to say, the very concept is alien in a republic, which must officially see men purely as productive and consuming units and treat them as such.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But even as the sovereign’s national fatherhood concerns him with the physical well-being of his subjects, so too does his religious relationship with them involve him in their spiritual and educational welfare. Hence the royal patronage which is such a large feature of churches and schools both abroad and even in the United States. Again, this is an aspect of life which is quite out of the purview of a president.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But none of this is to say that the institution as currently constituted is not without its drawbacks. If anything, in the countries mentioned, their monarchies have lost much of their ability to serve their people through acceptance of the myth that the politicians really do speak for the people—or for that matter, that whatever the majority of the people want at any given time ought to be given preference over objective right and wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">It is thus very difficult for a monarch to stand up to the politicos over issues of any less moment than the overthrow of the Constitution. In Australia, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere, we have seen politicians, even prime ministers, who have taken oaths to their sovereign and yet perjure themselves by joining republican campaigns. Yet the conventions of constitutional monarchy forbid the king to say a word in his own defense or that of the crown he represents, lest he himself be “political.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The same conventions require the monarch to assent to legislation he himself finds objectionable, thus ensuring that he is to be the only inhabitant of the realm who is not permitted freedom of conscience. This flaw was thrown into relief when King Baudouin I of Belgium “abdicated for a day” rather than sign into law a bill permitting abortion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">If anything, if the institution is ever to regain its effectiveness, kings must begin to act in regard to politicians not as if they were the chosen servants of the people of legend and tale, but what they are: the governing caste, whose interests frequently run counter to those of the folk from whose votes they claim to derive legitimacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The very fact that kings are not elected saves them from the most common illusion of politicians—that they owe their position to their own excellence. A successful politician must pursue power the way an artist pursues his art; like an artist, the politician is thereby divorced from the common run of men and becomes a breed apart, seeing all things through the prism of his own efforts. But the “blood royal” is not a skill; it is a gift of God, or chance if one is not a believer. He in whose veins it runs is painfully aware that it did not come to him through his own works, and so is less likely to be tainted with the sort of hubris which ends in bunkers and last stands.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In a word, it would seem to this writer that the best role model for a modern monarch is not the current constitutional mode—even though this continues to provide benefits superior to most if not all republics—but that of the president of the United States. In origin, this office’s du ties and powers were based upon a misunderstanding of those of King George III, the notion involved being that of an elected king. But while George III himself did not enjoy such powers, his Stuart predecessors did.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Policies could be long term and national interest-based, rather founded upon the shifts of public opinion—or at least, whatever the media interpret that opinion to be. Yet the existence of a legislature through whom all measures must be financed would ensure that a king’s policies could not be too extravagant.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Moreover, placing the permanent bureaucracy under actual control by a permanent monarch would help increase its effectiveness. In republics of both sorts, one finds either a spoils system which produces ineptitude, or else a series of fiefdoms uncontrolled by the ever-changing politicians nominally at their head. Traditionally, monitoring of bureaucrats was a major function of royal administration.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;">B</span><span style="color: black;">ut what if one does get an incompetent sovereign? History is filled with regencies and replacements of incapable heirs by dynastic councils. It is not a perfect system, to be sure, but nothing is, as the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton might remind us. To that point it could be replied that, at least, Clinton would leave at the end of his term. To be sure; but the same forces which shaped him will shape his successor.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">What has been said so far may well apply to today’s constitutional monarchies. But what about further afield? Certainly, in all republican European and some Latin American, Asian and African countries, there are larger or smaller monarchist organizations which seek restoration. There are very many of these on the Internet, whose pages will repay study (you can get a list—see the end of this article). For each of these nations, republican revolution was a break in the organic development of the nation, and the scars from which have both held unfortunate consequences and never healed. For such countries as these, the return of the king would have a healing effect, to say the least.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But the greatest single opponent to such occurrences is our own nation. Given our government’s intervention in Bulgaria and Romania during the 1990s (reminding restoration-minded governments of the effects of cutting off U.S. aid should they be so rash as to bring back their immensely popular kings) and its refusal to deal with Serbia’s Crown Prince Alexander (the only figure in that nation’s politics capable of uniting the anti-Milosevic opposition), it is apparent that we will continue to thwart these aspirations, however laudable they may be. It is not a role an American who loves his country can relish.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">And what of the United States itself? Well, despite our deepest roots, our tradition is republican and doubtless thus to persist. There is no monarchical heritage shared by all the nation, simply a collection of colonial and immigrant relics and memories. As we are, we are likely to remain, so long as we exist as a country. But we might at least, in the light of our experiences with the Clinton administration, admit not merely the utility of monarchy for others, but the truth of C.S. Lewis’s dictum:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Monarchy can easily be debunked, but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach—men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality, they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes or film stars instead—even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served: Deny it food and it will gobble poison.</span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></b></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-61472194797969485512010-03-22T04:38:00.001-07:002010-03-22T06:22:51.449-07:00The White ‘Mummies’ Of Ancient China<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;"><br />
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By Dr. Alexander Jacob<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Traditionally archeologists and historians have supposed that the civilization of China, with an origin at approximately 1700 B.C. (give or take a century or so), evolved almost in isolation from the rest of the world. In recent years, however, amazing evidence has emerged that white people were present in eastern Turkestan (where Red China in recent times has tested its thermonuclear weapons) at an even earlier date. And these Caucasian people gave China the chariot, as well as metallurgical and textile technology. They may even have given Chinese civilization its start.</span><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">O<span style="color: black;">ne of the most extraordinary anthropological revelations of the 20th century was the re cent discovery of 4,000-year-old Euro poid desiccated human remains (generally, though not very accurately, called “mummies”) in the Tarim Basin of Cen tral Asia. The mummies, as we shall re fer to them, were found in Sinkiang, also known as the Uighur Autonomous Region, located north of Tibet and southwest of Mongolia, in an area that has been claimed by China since the 19th century.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The bodies are those of white people, who did not undergo an Egyptian-style mummification process but were preserved by the extreme dryness of the local climate.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">These archeological finds demonstrate a very ancient Aryan (Indo-European) presence in an area we now call part of China, which may have been responsible for the transmission of chariot use, metallurgy and weaving techniques to the various other peoples of the region, including the Chinese themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">It is known that the Chinese borrowed a number of words dealing with wheels and chariots from Indo-European sources. Archeology tells us that the art of making spoked wheels, and thus chariots light enough to be drawn by horses, was developed at the western end of Asia, around the southern Urals, in the third and early second millennia B.C. We do not know for certain that the mummy people used chariots, but given the known facts, it seems likely that they did, and that they transmitted this know-how to the Shan tribe of Chinese. There is no doubt that a sizable chunk of ancient Chinese vocabulary came from Indo-European—not only to do with chariotry, but also in architecture, divination, healing and other matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Continuing excavation turned up a few bronze trinkets, plus the marks left by metal tools used to shape wood found in the mummy graves. Since it is believed the bronze age began in the Near East around 3000 B.C., a date of 2000 B.C. would tally for a bronze age site in the Tarim Basin. Current archeological evidence indicates that the bronze age in “China proper” didn’t get under way until nearly 1500 B.C. If the use of bronze began centuries earlier in the Tarim country next door, it throws into doubt the doctrine that Chinese civilization grew up entirely separately from Near Eastern innovation on all fronts, that the Chinese invented such seminal crafts as metalworking and writing quite independently.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Unfortunately the mummy people put little in the way of metal or pottery into their graves, possibly having a taboo against such use of newfangled items. However, we have a wealth of textiles from the graves, and cloth and the words associated with it can tell many tales. In our own English language, such words as “weave” and “sew” are very ancient, coming down to us from the Proto-Indo-European language. Other words, like “felt,” were borrowed from other sources along the way. The situation with the mummy people seems to be similar. Their cloth has survived well enough (notably from a series of mummies found near Hami, or Qumul) to show an uncanny resemblance to a series of textiles of the same age from Central Europe, woven by the ancestors of the Kelts, fellow Indo-Europeans living at the other end of Eurasia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">T<span style="color: black;">he Tarim bodies did not undergo a mummification process similar to that of the ancient Egyptians, but simply were preserved by the extreme dryness and saltiness of the climate and soil, much like the similarly misnamed Inca “ice mummies” and the Siberian (Paz ryk) “mummified ice maiden.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Much mystery still surrounds this early central Asian tribe, whose name is unknown. Scholars have not yet been able to ascertain precisely whether these “mummy people” were proto-Scythians, proto-Kelts or both.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The earliest of the mummies found in the Tarim Basin can be dated to around 2000 B.C., that is, before either the earliest Indic Mitanni kingdom in Western Asia (ca. 1600 B.C.) or the first flowering of the Indic culture in the Indus Valley (ca. 1500 B.C.). The mummies bear no records of their linguistic or religious status, and the Indo-European Tokhar ian (also spelled Tocharian) language of the region is attested from a much later date (3rd-8th centuries A.D.) than the mummies, which can only tentatively be identified as belonging to the ancestors of the Tokharian speakers. (See pages 8-9 for a sidebar article on the Tokharians.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Tokharian is a “centum” language, un like the “satem” Indo-Iranian languages.<sup>1</sup> The pictorial representations of the historical Tokharians, however, exhibit Indo-Iranian attire, while the To kharian texts themselves are related to the Buddhist religion, which the Tokharians may have been instrumental in conveying to their Chinese neighbors.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The collection of scholarly essays edited by Prof. Victor Mair in <i>The Bronze Age and</i> <i>Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia</i>sheds some focused light on the mysterious origins of the Tarim Basin mummies. These two volumes continue an earlier collection of essays edited by Prof. Mair, which appeared in the <i>Journal of Indo-Euro pean Studies</i>, 23 (fall/winter 1995) on the same subject of the Europoid mummies and their possible links to the Tokhar ians. The earlier collection contains some valuable studies by J.P. Mallory, D.Q. Adams and D. Ringe on the archeological and linguistic affiliations of the Europoid peoples of eastern Central Asia and of the Tokharians, as well as an intriguing article by James Opie on the probable connection between the To khar ians and the Guti and Tukri tribes of what is today called Iran.<sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Mair volumes are unfortunately too technical for the average lay reader, who would profit more from reading Elizabeth Barber’s<i>Mummies of Ürümchi. </i>(See our ad on the back inside cover.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">One of the scenarios explored by Miss Barber is that the Uighurs may be the descendants of the Tokharians, despite the language difference. (Uighurs speak a Turkic language; Tokharians of course used an Indo-European tongue.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">FOOTNOTES</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">1</span></sup><span style="color: black;"> What have sometimes been called the “western” and “eastern” groups of the Aryan family of languages are distinguished, roughly, by their use of “c” (pronounced “k”) in the west or “s” in the east, in words like “centum”/ “satem” (from the Avestan, pronounced “shatem”) (= “hundred”). Most linguists no longer automatically divide the family in two in this way, partly because they wish to avoid implying the Indo-Europeans underwent an early split into two branches—although the terms are still used. Also, this trait is only one of several patterns that cut across the lines of the 11 or so different subfamilies of Indo-European.—Ed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">2</span></sup><span style="color: black;">These people were called, in ancient Greek records, the Getae.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">BIBLIOGRAPHY<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="color: black;">The Mummies of Ürümchi</span></i><span style="color: black;">, Elizabeth W. Barber, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1999.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="color: black;">The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia</span></i><span style="color: black;">, two vols., clothbound, 899 pp., ed. V.H. Mair, Institute for the Study of Man, 1133 13th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20005, 1998.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="color: black;">The Silent Past</span></i><span style="color: black;">, Ivar Lissnar, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1962.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"> <a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-71199140166049143492010-03-22T04:37:00.000-07:002010-03-22T04:37:23.233-07:00Hiroshima: Assault On a Beaten Foe?<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 36pt;"> </span><span style="color: black;">By Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><i><span style="color: black;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Most Americans are still under the impression that the U.S. military had to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to avoid what would otherwise be the inevitable loss of millions of lives on both sides, Japan and the Allies. But it has been incontrovertibly proved that Japan offered to surrender six months before the atom bombing President Harry Truman defended as “necessary.” The “father of Revisionist history,” our mentor, Harry Elmer Barnes, explains the evidence in this article, which he wrote in 1958.</span><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>P</span><span style="color: black;">resident Harry S Truman sought to justify the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But something more than his dubious public manners and his lack of sympathetic perspective is at stake in dealing with his statement that: “I think the sacrifice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was urgent and necessary for the prospective welfare of both Japan and the Allies.” The situation calls for some realistic historical analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Well-informed persons have known for years that the bombing of these Japanese cities was not needed to bring the war to a speedy end and make it unnecessary to launch an assault against the Japanese mainland, which, if actually carried out, would certainly have led to enormous bloodshed on both sides. It has been difficult, however, to get this momentous fact before the American public in any effective manner, even though the relevant information has been published in prominent American newspapers and periodicals, the most complete revelation having actually been made on the Sunday following V-J Day. What are the facts on this situation?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">By January 1945, the Japanese had become convinced that they had lost the war; indeed, so thoroughly convinced that they made overtures for peace so extreme that they were almost identical with those accepted in August after months of bloody fighting in the Pacific and the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is every probability that the war could have been ended in February or March on the basis of the complete surrender of Japan. What factual data are there to support what will seem to most readers an incredible statement?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Two days before President Roosevelt left for the Yalta Conference, he had received from Gen. Douglas MacArthur valid Japanese peace overtures virtually identical with those which were accepted in August as the basis for the Japanese surrender. They were made up of some five separate proposals, two of which came through American channels and three through British. These Japanese peace feelers were not irresponsible, anonymous, fly-by-night proposals but came from responsible Japanese acting for Emperor Hirohito. Gen. MacArthur urged President Roosevelt to start immediate negotiations with the Japanese on the basis of these overtures, and warned against inviting or urging the Russians to enter the war in the Far East.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Roosevelt rejected MacArthur’s advice, and, figuratively, threw MacArthur’s vi tally important information into the wastebasket, with the remark that Mac Arthur “is our greatest general and our poorest politician.” Roosevelt proceeded to Yalta, where he granted the concessions to Russia that made the Soviet Union the dominant power in the Far East and played a crucial role in the later victory of the communists in China. The bloody warfare in the Pacific was allowed to drag on for six more months without any real military necessity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Specifically, the terms of these Japanese peace overtures of late January 1945 were the following:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">1. Full surrender of the Japanese forces on the sea, in the air, at home, on island possessions and in occupied countries.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">2. Surrender of all arms and munitions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">3. Occupation of the Japanese homeland and island possessions by Allied troops under American direction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">4. Japanese relinquishment of Manchuria, Korea and Formosa, as well as all territory seized during the war.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">5. Regulation of Japanese industry to halt present and future production of implements of war.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">6. Surrender of designated war criminals.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">7. Release of all prisoners of war and in ternees in Japan proper and in areas under Japanese control.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The government has never made this sensational episode public, so it may fairly be asked how we know the above statement about MacArthur’s communication to Roosevelt to be a fact. It so happens that Mac Arthur’s document passed over the desk of a high-ranking military officer in Washington who was greatly disturbed at what he feared might happen at Yal ta. He wished to get Mac Arthur’s communication on re cord so it could not be de stroyed by Mr. Roosevelt or his associates or hidden away from the public for many years as “top-secret” ma terial. Hence, he called in his friend, Walter Trohan of <i>The Chi cago Tribune</i>, and suggested that Trohan make an exact copy of the Ja panese overtures. But he first bound Trohan to absolute secrecy and confidence until the end of the war. Trohan kept his promise, but on the Sunday after V-J Day (August 19, 1945) Trohan published the material in full in <i>The Chicago Tribune</i>, and <i>The Washington Times-Herald</i>. De spite the very timely and sensational nature of the Trohan article, no prominent newspaper, so far as I know, noticed or republished it either then or at any time since.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After Gen. MacArthur re turned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to Gen. MacArthur, and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">We have here, then, absolutely accurate and convincing evidence that, before Roosevelt left for Yalta, he knew that the Japanese were ready for peace negotiations based on amazing concessions—so amazing that they were ultimately accepted as the basis for peace with Japan six months later. This completely knocks the bottom out from under Mr. Truman’s statement that the bombing was “urgent and necessary” six months after the Japanese were ready to sue for peace and when they were vastly weaker and far more frantic for peace than they were in January and February.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>I</span><span style="color: black;">t was quite evident by early February 1945 that there was no need for further bloody fighting in the Pacific, certainly not until the genuineness of the Japanese peace overtures was tested out by actual negotiations—and we now know that they were genuine. Any military delay in the Pacific due to negotiations at this time would, naturally, have worked to the advantage of the United States, which was daily gaining in strength and morale, while the Japanese power was fading away. But, as we have seen, there was no move for negotiations on the part of Roosevelt. Instead, the needless but extremely lethal battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, together with other costly engagements, followed on the heels of Roosevelt’s contemptuous dismissal of MacArthur’s recommendation of negotiations for peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In the meantime, at Yalta, Russia was invited, even bribed, to enter the war against Japan, with the disastrous results we now know all too well, although Russia took no actual part in hostilities against Japan until August 8, two days after the bombing of Hiroshima. She merely waited until the war was over and picked up the Far Eastern booty and spoils that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had almost forced on her at Yalta.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But the MacArthur communication to Roosevelt was not the only source of information reaching Washington as to the Japanese desire for peace on the most humiliating terms from January 1945 onward. Adm. Ellis M. Zacharias of the Intelligence Service of the Navy, in his book <i>Secret Missions</i>, and [in] even more sensational articles in <i>Look</i>magazine, tells us how Naval Intelligence learned of the desperate condition of the Japanese and their real desire for peace. There were other “leaks,” some of them actually coming through the Russians and Chinese. But all this information had no more apparent effect on President Roosevelt or Truman than did the MacArthur communication to Truman at the end of January 1945.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The facts about the Japanese situation from January to August 1945, and the official American reaction to them, are admirably summarized in Chapter 10 of the scholarly book of Prof. Richard N. Cur rent,<i>Secretary Stimson</i>. They serve to make it crystal clear that there was not the slightest military need of bombing the Japanese cities to bring the war to a speedy close, even in the spring on 1945, and without any necessity whatever of attacking the Japanese mainland.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In reaction to Mr. Truman’s recent declaration, the vital question is whether Mr. Truman knew all of the above facts by, or around, the time he took over the office of president. He obviously implies in his recent pronouncement that he did not. But I have the personal testimony of an American public figure of the greatest eminence and with perhaps the best reputation for unquestionable probity of any leading American statesman since George Washington himself, to the effect that Mr. Truman knew all about the situation by early May 1945 and admitted that further fighting, to say nothing of atomic bombing, was quite unnecessary to win the war and bring an early peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">This distinguished public figure told me personally, in the presence of a prominent witness, that, having learned the above facts and being shocked by the continuance of needless bloodshed in the Pacific, he went to have a talk with Presi dent Truman. The latter assured him that he was well acquainted with the facts about the Japanese desire for peace, the lack of any need for further military activity, and the good prospect for an immediate negotiated peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">But he went on to say that he was new on the job and did not feel equal to the formidable task of interfering personally to check the persistent bellicosity of Stimson and the Pentagon hierarchy, who were determined to carry on to the bitter end—as we now know they were ready to try out their new military “toy,” the atom bomb. The bomb was the pet project of Stimson, who had been given general authority over its development. Truman did nothing to arrange an armistice and negotiate, but finally, months later, when Japan had virtually collapsed, approved the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>T</span><span style="color: black;">he remaining important question is whether it was the bombing that actually brought the Pacific war to a close and compelled the Japanese to surrender, as Mr. Truman implies. A large volume of expert testimony, much of it official, has been accumulated since the end of the war, and it proves Mr. Truman and other de fenders of the bombing to have been completely wrong on this vital point. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey stated, even as early as 1946, that: “The Hiro shima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The reason for the surrender of Japan was the collapse of her military power and the full recognition that further resistance would be futile. As the Bomb ing Survey summarizes the matter: “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bomb had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span>P</span><span style="color: black;">erhaps the most striking fact established by research since the end of the war is that the main purpose in using the atomic bombs on Japan was not military at all, but diplomatic, and that the real target was not Japan but Russia. This was suggested by Norman Cousins and Thomas K. Finletter in an article in <i>The Sunday Review of Literature</i>, June 15, 1946, and was more explicitly confirmed by the British atomic physicist, P.M.S. Blackett. The eminent American publicist and industrialist, the late Robert R. Young, also directly charged that this was the case in his trenchant article in <i>The Saturday Review of Literature</i>, March 8, 1947, but many regarded this allegation as fantastic. Yet it has been supported by subsequent events and revelations, some of them official. As Prof. Current points out, even Stimson’s <i>Memoirs</i> hinted that: “Russia and not Japan was the real target of the atom bomb.” The bomb, so state the <i>Memoirs,</i> would “give democratic diplomacy a badly needed ‘equalizer’ as against the postwar power of the communist colossus.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Historical study since the <i>Memoirs</i> appeared has confirmed this interpretation. Stalin took this view, and many date the origins of the Cold War from the time he received news of the bombing shortly after the Potsdam Conference.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">If this interpretation of the underlying reason for the bombing is correct, then the tens of thousands of Japanese who were roasted at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed not to end the war or save American and Japanese lives but to strengthen American diplomacy<i>vis-a-vis</i> Russia. Not only the “humanity” of this procedure but even its political sagacity is open to question. As Prof. Current wryly observes:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">If the purpose really was to check the Russians in the Far East, the destruction of their historic enemy in that area must seem, in retrospect, like a peculiar way to go about it. A quick peace with Japan, short of complete humiliation, might have been a more sensible expedient.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Mr. Truman may seek to cite in refutation of my presentation the statements made by Army and Navy experts at Yalta, such as Gen. Marshall, to the effect that Japan could only be brought to her knees by a frontal assault on the Japanese mainland, and that to achieve this victory Russia had to be brought into the war. But we now know that these statements do not prove Mr. Truman right; they only prove how wrong Marshall and the others were at the time of Yalta. Moreover, Roosevelt, having read the MacArthur communication before he left for Yalta, knew that they were mistaken. The assertion by Stimson and American military leaders in the summer of 1945 that Japan could be brought to surrender only by an actual invasion, or by the use of the atom bomb, could readily have been tested by Mr. Truman by starting honest negotiations with Japan based on the MacArthur communication of late January 1945 and the subsequent Japanese overtures with which Mr. Truman was acquainted. The Potsdam peace offer in July 1945 was not a fair test.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Mr. Truman seeks, finally, to defend his action by the statement that:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">The need for such a fateful decision [the atomic bombing], of course, would never have arisen had we not been shot in the back by Japan at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Mr. Truman has made no little pretension to an interest in history and some regard for historical facts. We might suggest that there is a vast body of historical material on Pearl Harbor that apparently still awaits his careful scrutiny. They reveal, at the very least, that President Roosevelt kicked Japan in the shins, handcuffed the United States, bared its back and dared the Japanese to shoot.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Even if one were to take the most hostile attitude toward Japan and her Pearl Harbor attack—even President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” rhetoric—the answer of the Hiroshima City Council to Mr. Truman’s blast is utterly devastating:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Had your decision been based on the Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on your country’s combatants and military facilities [at Pearl Harbor], why could you not choose a military base for the target? You committed the outrage of massacring 200,000 noncombatants as revenge, and you are still trying to justify it.</span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></b></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-3167942605477711172010-03-22T04:35:00.000-07:002010-03-22T04:35:33.044-07:00The Making of Woodrow Wilson— An American Nero?<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER"> By Michael Collins Piper</div><b><i> </i></b>The administration of our 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, saw the enactment of the progressive federal income tax, the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and the involvement of the United States in the first-ever “world” war that set the stage for World War II, the Cold War and the never-ending series of “brush fire” wars that have followed. Here’s the little-known story of Woodrow Wilson and his ideological leanings and the high-level, behind-the-scenes forces that brought Wilson to power, setting the stage for where the United States is today.<br />
Mainstream historians portray Woodrow Wilson as a vanguard of the Progressive Era, a forward-looking realist who ushered America into modern times. Wilson is hailed as a globally oriented statesman who saw the need to abandon the isolationism of the past and open up new vistas for the United States in the world arena. Although admiring historians almost uniformly score Wilson for his failure to bring the United States into the League of Nations, they praise his valiant efforts to do so.<br />
Others—including historians such as Prof. Harry Elmer Barnes, in whose memory The Barnes Review is dedicated—have a less favorable view of Wilson. They recall his duplicity and behind-the-scenes treachery in bringing America into World War I—a war that many Americans viewed as a European quarrel in which the United States had no business intervening, and which, it might be added, laid the foundation for the postwar struggles that led to the outbreak of the second world conflagration.<br />
Populists remember Wilson as the president under whom the modern federal income tax (inspired by <i>The Communist Manifesto</i>) was first instituted, through the controversial 16th Amendment. They also recall that it was under Wilson the privately owned banking monopoly known as the Federal Reserve System came into being. Others point out that Wilson was one of the first American presidents to attempt to institutionalize the theory of “free” trade as national policy. Under Wilson, popular election of U.S. senators began, withdrawing the traditional Constitutional mandate of state legislatures to elect the members of the upper house of Congress—a major blow against the republican form of government.<br />
Wilson, clearly, is a controversial figure. Yet, despite all the debate over Wilson’s policies and his legacy, few people (outside academic circles) are actually aware of the origins of Wilson’s world view. And to understand Wilson’s world view is to understand the forces that drove America’s 28th president into pursuing the policies that he did.<br />
Although Wilson was elected president in 1912 as a Democrat—the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, two of America’s towering populist statesmen—Wilson was anything but a populist or a nationalist. If anything, as Wilson’s sharply critical biographer, Jennings Wise, wrote in 1938, Wilson was a “disciple of revolution.”<br />
The son of a Presbyterian minister and an English-born mother, Wilson was born in Virginia in 1856, but raised in Georgia. And one might expect young Wilson, growing up in the South, to have absorbed and echoed the sentiments held by most southerners of the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction. In fact, however, according to Wise, Wilson himself began to “look askance upon all but the British democracy.”<br />
Under the tutelage of his father, who had become disillusioned with the Ameri can system as a consequence of the Civil War that left the Confederacy in ashes, Wilson became (like his father) an ardent Anglophile by the time he took up his studies at Princeton.<br />
According to Wise:<br />
<b>By the end of his senior year he had become the leading debater in college. So set was his character, and so firmly developed his prejudices, that he refused to take the tariff side in a college debate against free trade, because of his admiration for [British Prime Minister] Gladstone and British free trade policies.</b><br />
Wilson entered the University of Virginia (founded by Thomas Jefferson) to study law, but he was never quite at home there. “Disliking Jefferson as lacking in force, he was out of harmony from the beginning with the university where Jefferson was held almost a divinity. In Woodrow’s own words,” according to Wise, “he became ‘something of a Federalist,’ looking upon [Alexander] Hamilton [Jefferson’s great adversary] as ‘the greatest American statesman, not excepting Washington.’ ”<br />
Frail health gave Wilson the opportunity to escape Jefferson’s university and Wilson completed his law study at home. But although Wilson went into law practice in Georgia, the academic arena continued to beckon and Wilson entered graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he studied political economy, philosophy, history and government. While at Hopkins, Wilson completed his graduation thesis which ultimately was published in 1885 under the title <i>Congressional Government</i>.<br />
This volume was Wilson’s effective declaration of war against the American Constitutional republic. Wilson wrote:<br />
<b>The Constitution is not honored by blind worship. The more open-minded we become, as a nation, to its effects, and the prompter we grow in applying, with the unhesitating courage of conviction, all thoroughly tested or well-considered expedients necessary to make self-government among us a straight forward thing of simple method, single, unstinted power and clear responsibility, the nearer will we approach to the sound sense and practical genius of the great and honorable statesmen of 1787.</b><br />
Although Wilson’s words, one might think, sound a tribute to the Founding Fathers, Wilson’s biographer summarized Wilson’s attitude quite well: “Plainly he chafed under the bonds of the Constitution.” In fact, <i>Congressional Government</i> was a tribute to the British parliamentary system that Wilson had so long admired.<br />
And now, moving in the rarefied circles of what some would later call “the Eastern Establishment,” Wilson—like his associates—was becoming concerned with the growing populist movement that was taking off in America’s hinterlands under the leadership of men such as William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. According to Wilson’s biographer, the young academic was “convinced, like his intellectual associates,” that Bryan’s philosophy was “the product of a dangerous nationalism” and that “America must be led away from the traditional policy of isolation characteristic of both national parties.” In this mode, according to Wise:<br />
<b>Wilson had now come to believe in the necessity of an Anglo-American alliance. He further averred that both national parties were moribund and urged the formation of a third party. Plainly he had in mind one that would abandon the old American isolationism, which, he felt, had become a threat to the world. Being but an unknown professor, he naturally made no headway with this proposal.</b><br />
By 1895, Wilson had increasingly come to look upon himself as some form of statesman. But he also realized that his world view was not in “sync” with the thinking of most Americans. “Wilson had long since seen in the danger of Bryanism a great political opportunity for himself,” noted Wise, but, “moreover, he had learned that . . . he must stop talking about the superiority of the British over the American system of government.”<br />
Thus, in an attempt to essentially cover himself, Wilson set about drafting a life of President Washington: “He was now ready to make a popular appeal to the country by glorifying the Patriot Father.” By the time Wilson finished his manuscript he was on the verge of a physical breakdown, but he was well enough to call attention to the fact that “there were thirteen letters in the names of both Geo. Washington and Woodrow Wilson”—through, it might be added, a typical Wilsonian trick of remembering the Father of Our Country by an abbreviated first name.<br />
In the finished manuscript of his book, <i>George Washington</i>, Wilson even went so far as to suggest that Washington had longed, at one time, to return to his home in England—although, of course, Washington was a native-born American. Wilson’s critical biographer, Wise, in one of his more generous comments, de scribes this as an “almost grotesque blunder” on Wilson’s part, but it did certainly provide an insight into Wilson’s enthusiastic Anglophilia. Despite all this, Wilson’s new work on Washington had the remarkable effect of giving Wilson the appearance of being some sort of “conservative” or traditional American nationalist rather than the revolutionary that he truly was.<br />
By 1902 Wilson had become ensconced —his academic reputation growing—as the president of Princeton. And here, at Princeton, his association with the movers and shakers of the Eastern Establishment laid the groundwork for his move toward the Oval Office.<br />
As president of Princeton, Wilson’s personal finances and his university income were supplemented by endowments by Wall Street figures who saw in the dreamy Wilson a pliable tool of the future. Wilson, as a potential presidential candidate, had already been “bought and paid for.” He was also eminently blackmailable.<br />
In 1906 an event took place that was not only to have a major impact on Wilson’s personal life, but on the course of America’s future. Renditions of this story have been told in bits and pieces in a variety of places, but here in The Barnes Review may be the first time that the entire story has ever been told in one place in detail.<br />
In 1906 Wilson suffered a stroke that left him blind in his left eye and suffering periods of numbness in his right arm. At his wife’s urging he went to Bermuda for a vacation in order to rest and recover. There he met Mary Allen Hulbert Peck, the vacationing wife of a Pittsfield, Massachusetts woolens manufacturer. While Mr. Peck was busy tending to the family’s business in New England, Wilson took up with Mrs. Peck.<br />
Although Wilson had earlier told his wife of his own studious efforts to control “the riotous elements in my own blood,” the Princeton scholar enjoyed the adulterous dalliance so tremendously that he arranged to return to Bermuda for two months in January and February of 1908 in order to actively resume the liaison with Mrs. Peck.<br />
Upon returning to his family, Wilson confessed his affair to his wife, who announced her forgiveness. However, Wilson obviously had the affair on his mind when he went to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the home of the Peck family, where he declared in a speech, “If there is a place where we must adjourn our morals, that place should be in what we call the private life. It is better to be unfaithful to a few people than to a considerable number of people.”<br />
Clearly, Wilson had come to define a new standard of morality in order to justify, at least in his own mind, the betrayal of his wife. Wilson, as we shall see, was coming to perceive his own destiny as something much bigger and more important than his Christian ideals and his dedication to his wife and family.<br />
But the confession to Mrs. Wilson was not the end of things. Mrs. Peck took out a house in New York City and in 1909 and 1910 Wilson resumed his relationship with the woman. According to one Wilson biographer, it was now a full-fledged love affair. Wilson himself had long told Princeton’s graduating seniors that they should realize, essentially, that the Ten Commandments were flexible, that ethical situations were “complicated by a thousand circumstances” and Wilson’s affair was evidently one such circumstance that enabled Wilson to circumvent the laws of God.<br />
However, this dalliance with Mrs. Peck was not Wilson’s only extramarital exploration. It seems as though Wilson was so energized by his adulterous affair with Mrs. Peck that his new outlook on morality had led him into the arms of yet another married woman, the wife of a colleague at Princeton. That lady’s name has been lost to history, although, to this day, the story of Wilson’s escapade with Mrs. Peck has often been confused with this additional indiscretion. But in fact, as we shall see, this second affair proved even more momentous in the course of history.<br />
During this time, though, Wilson was moving step-by-step toward a political career. Prime mover behind Wilson’s political ambitions was George Harvey, the editor of the influential <i>Harper’s Weekly</i> and, according to historian Ferdin and Lundberg, a “henchman” of the J.P. Morgan banking interests (which, it might be added, were essentially American fronts for the European Rothschild financial interests). In 1910 Harvey eased Wilson’s election to the New Jersey governorship and prompt ly began laying the groundwork for Wilson’s bid for the upcoming 1912 Democratic presidential nomination.<br />
Upon his election to the governorship, Wilson ended his physical relationship with Mrs. Peck, but the two did continue to correspond as Wilson began focusing on his future political ambitions. How ever, that affair—and the matter involving the wife of his Princeton colleague—would yet come back to haunt Wilson.<br />
In New Jersey and elsewhere, admirers and detractors alike agreed on one thing: Wilson was quite the orator and an able politician. But Wilson saw in himself much more than that. Wilson, actually, had begun to perceive himself to be some sort of messenger from God.<br />
At one point Wilson described his own desire to be “a minister to the state . . . an instrument of judgment, with motives not secular but religious.” The would-be president and world-shaper said that he felt that he was one leader “who conceives in his mind those reforms which are based upon the statutes of morality; who tries to draw society together by a new motive, which is not the motive of the economist or of the politician but the motive of the profoundly religious man.”<br />
While such views, on their face, could be hailed by many religious people as noble goals, there were more than a few people who detected a strange, even frightening, aura about Wilson. One Democratic functionary said that Wilson gave him, as he put it bluntly, “the creeps.” According to the party hack, “The first time I met him, he said something to me, and I didn’t know whether God or him [sic] was talking.” A few more mystical among Wilson’s critics would rise to point out that in the Bible, even demons are known as “gods.”<br />
Behind the scenes the international money lords were rallying—albeit quietly—in favor of Wilson. Among the names of the high-powered financiers who were funding Wilson were Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and Cleveland Dodge of the National City Bank, along with J. P. Morgan, Jr. One particularly influential figure promoting Wilson’s cause was New York attorney Samuel Untermyer, a leading figure in the increasingly powerful Jewish community in New York and across the country.<br />
In <i>America’s Sixty Families</i>, Ferdin and Lundberg describes the political maneuvering of the period as “the politics of aggrandizement,” and that is precisely what it was. The plutocratic elite were maneuvering to put Woodrow Wilson in the White House.<br />
In his monumental study, <i>The Strangest Friendship in History</i>, George Sylvester Viereck examined the rather bizarre personal and professional relationship of President Woodrow Wilson and his closest advisor and alter-ego, “Col.” Edward Mandel House. The Wilson-House relationship impacted substantially upon Wilson’s internationalist policies, with House acting in many ways as “co-president,” although some would even go so far as to say he was Wilson’s “controller.”<br />
A longtime behind-the-scenes political operative in Texas, the enigmatic and shadowy House was the son of an English immigrant who had acquired a summer home in Massachusetts and ingratiated himself with the eastern plutocratic elite. As the history of House and his associations demonstrates, it is thus no wonder that later critics of Wilson (and House) commonly referred to House as “an agent” of the international financial interests of the Rothschild banking empire.<br />
Among those in House’s inner circle was one Theodore Marburg whom Wilson biographer Jennings Wise de scribes as “one of the world’s leading economists and internationalists,” whose views reflected, among others, the influence of the Bank of England and other one-world forces, including the Rhodes Scholars at Oxford. The Rhodes Scholars were following through with the stated desire of the late Cecil Rhodes, yet another satellite of the Rothschild empire, who dreamed of “the furtherance of the British empire, for the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one empire.”<br />
Marburg worked closely with American industrialist Andrew Carnegie —who shared his internationalist views—in attempting to coordinate efforts by the international banking community to shape the course of global affairs for the ultimate purpose of what has been termed “the enforcement of universal peace”—that is, a “one-world” government. The English branch of this internationalist bloc was the Fabian Society—remembered today as the driving force behind socialism in England. In the United States, Marburg set up the American Association for International Conciliation. Among its members included a diverse array of religious figures, academics and others.<br />
However, the funds for these globalist ventures were provided by American syndicates of the Rothschild financial empire including the banking houses of Paul Warburg and Otto Kahn. Young “Jewish statesman” and financier Bernard Baruch could also be found be hind the scenes.<br />
While Marburg, in the years approaching the 1912 presidential election, was favorably inclined toward the re-election of President William Howard Taft, House saw in Woodrow Wilson an ideal candidate through which to combat the populist and nationalist tendencies in the Democratic Party represented by the party’s three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. House was watching Wilson closely and made contact with him even as Wilson’s advisors were urging him to “look up Col. House. He’s been doing a lot of good work for you.”<br />
As history records, House very clearly became a key player in the drive to put Woodrow Wilson in the White House. He was also a key player in shaping Woodrow Wilson’s world view.<br />
When the two figures met, House brought to Wilson’s attention an unusual novel that he had written. It was entitled <i>Philip Dru—Administrator</i>, a fantasy about a young American, Philip Dru, and how he came to be leader of the United States and about the policies he carried out. According to Jennings Wise, House and Wilson discussed the book and the philosophy put forth therein at length.<br />
In fact, as students of history know, <i>Philip Dru—Administrator</i> was a blueprint for a socialist dictatorship, and many of the programs put forth in House’s peculiar volume ultimately came to be a part of the Wilson program when Wilson achieved the presidency.<br />
But while Wilson’s move toward the White House was being pushed forward, his opponents leaked word of Wilson’s adultery, and in April of 1912 Wilson’s briefcase was actually stolen from a Chicago hotel room by someone who was apparently attempting to gain incriminating evidence of Wilson’s personal indiscretions. It is known that Wilson contacted Mrs. Peck and told her that “malevolent foes” were trying to destroy him. He also sent her money, presumably to buy her silence. In any event, Mrs. Peck divorced her husband several months later.<br />
However, despite the backing that Wilson was receiving, the biggest obstacle in Wilson’s path to the White House was Wilson’s longtime<i>bête noir</i>, populist William Jennings Bryan, who was making yet a fourth bid for the Democratic presidential nomination (having lost the presidency in 1896, 1900 and 1908 as the Democratic candidate). However, at the Democratic Convention, Bryan’s campaign began faltering, and his populist supporters began moving into the camp of Missouri populist Bennett “Champ” Clark.<br />
Wilson’s big money backers saw that action was necessary to prevent the stampede toward Clark by Bryan’s followers and “leaked” word that Wall Street was quietly supporting Clark. This maneuver tricked Bryan into lashing out against Clark, crippling Clark’s candidacy. This left the Democratic convention wide open, and after several ballots, Wilson’s nomination was assured.<br />
For the November election, Wilson was not only facing incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft, but also Taft’s former friend and sponsor, President Theodore Roosevelt. Having unsuccessfully challenged Taft for renomination, Roosevelt was now running as an independent candidate on the ticket of a party of his own creation, the Progressive Party, popularly known as the “Bull Moose” movement.<br />
In fact, the same Wall Street and Rothschild money interests promoting Wilson were raising funds and propping up Roosevelt’s third party candidacy. These forces had their own reasons for supporting the effort to divide the Re publican vote between Taft and Roosevelt and thereby guarantee Taft’s defeat and Wilson’s election to the presidency.<br />
The circumstances rose directly from the rise of the communist Bolshevik movement in Russia that the government of Czar Nicholas II was working to suppress. Although it was common knowledge at the time, and frankly acknowledged in diplomatic communiqués and frequently mentioned in the press, it is not well known today that the Bolshevik movement was overwhelmingly Jewish in origin. Thus, the Bolsheviks had a vested interest in claiming that the czar’s attempts to suppress Bolshevism were acts of “anti-Semitism” when, quite the contrary, the evidence demonstrates that the Jews were flourishing freely in Russia. In fact, to this day there are those who say that it was precisely because Nicholas failed to suppress the Jewish population that his regime fell and the Bolshevik takeover of Russia took place.<br />
In any case, American Jewish leaders, including the aforementioned international banker Jacob Schiff (among Wilson’s sponsors) approached President Taft and demanded that the United States immediately break its long-standing and historic diplomatic and commercial ties with czarist Russia. They also demanded that Taft veto a literacy test on immigrants proposed in Congress that, if incorporated into American immigration law, would have prevented many millions of Jewish immigrants from Russia from coming into the United States.<br />
Thus, Taft was surprised, to say the least, when, on February 15, 1911, Schiff and his colleagues came to the White House and presented him with a prepared statement on these issues that they wanted Taft to release to the press and to Congress. The “statement” drafted in Taft’s name did not reflect the president’s views in any way, and the Ameri can president told the Jewish leaders, frankly, that the interests of the American nation as a whole would not be served, either domestically or internationally, by taking the actions the Jewish leaders demanded.<br />
The White House meeting ended on a bitter note with Schiff refusing to shake the president’s hand and then later declaring, “This means war.” And war it was. The Jewish elite intensified their efforts against Taft and began maneuvering for his defeat. Woodrow Wilson was one of the pawns in the game. Although, in 1912, B’nai B’rith, a leading Jewish Masonic organization, gave a medal to Taft, calling him “the man who had contributed most during the year to the welfare of the Jewish cause,” the actions of the Jewish leadership during the previous year (and in the months that followed) indicated clearly that, public relations notwithstanding, Taft was “out” as far as they were concerned.<br />
Thus, when Theodore Roosevelt opted to launch a third party candidacy on the Bull Moose ticket, Wilson’s backers on Wall Street and in the Jewish elite saw the opportunity to split the opposition GOP vote between Roosevelt and Taft and throw the election to Wilson.<br />
That is precisely what happened. Wilson won with 41.8 percent of the popular vote and 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt actually outran Taft, came in second with 27.4 percent of the vote and carried 88 electoral votes. The beleaguered Taft trailed in third place with 23.18 percent of the popular vote and only eight electoral votes. Taft had paid the price for independence and had been removed from the presidency.<br />
For his own part, upon his election to the presidency, Wilson made great overtures to assure his influential backers, particularly the Jewish community, that he would be compliant with their wishes, so much so that one critic, industrialist Henry Ford, later published the comment in his newspaper, <i>The Dear born Independent</i>, that “The Jews made much of Woodrow Wilson, far too much for his own good. They formed a solid ring around him.” One of those Jewish leaders in Wilson’s inner circle was New York attorney Samuel Untermyer.<br />
It was Untermyer who brought Wilson some most unpleasant news shortly after Wilson was sworn in as president. Untermyer came to the White House and advised the president that although he (like others in the American Jewish community) had been a contributor to Wilson’s campaign he (Untermyer) had been retained in his capacity as an attorney to bring a breach of promise action against Wilson. Untermyer’s client was the lady from Princeton with whom Wil son had conducted the adulterous affair.<br />
The lady had since remarried and taken up residence in Washington, D.C. where her step-son, of whom she was fond, was in trouble to the tune of some $40,000 involving some financial indiscretions relating to his work for a bank in the nation’s capital. The lady, through Untermyer, gently suggested that perhaps the new president might have easy and immediate access to such large funds and that if her ex-paramour could come up with the funds that she would not be inclined to release a number of candid letters that Wilson had written to the lady.<br />
President Wilson expressed his gratitude to Untermyer that the lady had approached one of his Democratic Party allies in the Jewish community rather than an attorney with Republican Party connections—a complication that could have been embarrassing indeed. How ever, Wilson made it clear to Untermyer that he did not have the $40,000 the lady’s son required.<br />
Untermyer, however, offered a solution: Untermyer not only came up with the $40,000, but he also made certain that not only no breach of promise lawsuit would ever be brought, and also obtained control of the incriminating letters and kept them for himself, assuring Wilson that no one else would ever see them.<br />
Untermyer did ask one thing in return for his consideration: that when a vacancy occurred on the Supreme Court that Woodrow Wilson might ask Untermyer for his recommendation as to whom Wilson might appoint. Such a vacancy soon did occur with the convenient death of one of the sitting justices, and Untermyer put forth the name of Louis Dembitz Brandeis, who did indeed rise to the Supreme Court, the first person of the Jewish faith to assume a post on the high court.<br />
Thus, Woodrow Wilson’s personal in discretion of some years before had set the stage for much bigger developments after Wilson achieved the presidency.<br />
In fact, according to an admiring biographer, Professor Bruce Allen Murphy of Penn State University, writing in <i>The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices</i> (the other being Brandeis’s protégé, Felix Frankfurter): “Guided by Brandeis . . . the American Zionists acquired substantial political influence in a short period of time.”<br />
<br />
Through what Murphy describes as “invisible wires into many government bureaus,” Brandeis became a key power behind the throne in the Wilson administration. And in a few short years, Brandeis was also a key player, as England’s closest high-level ally, in the effort to push America into the evolving war in Europe. As Samuel Landman, the former secretary of the World Zionist Organization disclosed:<br />
<b>The only way . . . to induce the American president to come into the war (was) to secure the cooperation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilize the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in favor of the Allies on a <i>quid pro quo</i> contract basis.</b><br />
The direct result of this behind-the-scenes deal was the Balfour Declaration issued by the British on November 2, 1917, establishing the legal basis upon which the state of Israel was ultimately established. In fact, Brandeis himself had final approval of the declaration even before Britain’s foreign minister, Arthur Balfour (after whom the declaration is named) had seen it himself.*<br />
The irony of Wilson’s manipulation by Untermyer (and ultimately by Brandeis) is that yet another of Wilson’s adulterous adventures came back to haunt him: the matter of Mrs. Peck. This happened in May of 1915.<br />
By this time, the first Mrs. Wilson had died and the president was already involved in a blossoming relationship with a vivacious Washington widow, Edith Bolling Galt, to whom he was engaged. Mrs. Peck (three years divorced from Mr. Peck) showed up at the White House for what one writer has referred to as “frank discussions” with the president, presumably involving her financial needs, not to mention the previous relationship that she had had with the president during his days at Princeton.<br />
Shortly thereafter Wilson came up with $15,000 with which to buy several mortgages that Mrs. Peck held on property in New York, but this apparently was not enough to silence her. The president’s son-in law, Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, advised Wilson that he had received an anonymous letter saying that Mrs. Peck had been showing off letters she had received from Wilson and essentially bragging that the $15,000 was a bribe for her silence.<br />
By whatever means, Mrs. Peck was convinced to remain silent thereafter and her letters never reached the public. Perhaps Samuel Untermyer had worked his legal legerdemain once again and gained favors from the president similar to those involving the appointment of Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court.<br />
Yet, while the story of Wilson’s affair with Mrs. Peck has become part of the Wilson legend, the other more explosive story of his affair with the lady from Princeton and its very clear influence on Wilson’s presidential decision-making, has been carefully excised from the “official” story of Woodrow Wilson.<br />
The only reason the story ever received any airing (in independent publications) was because an American Jewish businessman, Benjamin Freed man, an early associate of Wilson, later told the story. [For more on Freedman, who converted to Catholicism and be came an ardent critic of Zionist power in America, see the July/August 1999 issue of The Barnes Review. —Ed.]<br />
Today, as we noted earlier, there are many who confuse the story of Mrs. Peck with the story of the lady from Princeton, but now, for the first time ever, the truth about both affairs has been delineated by TBR in an effort to set the historical record straight.<br />
So it was that through the process of blackmail and double-dealing and political intrigue at the highest levels, Wood row Wilson was ensconced in the White House. The rest, as they say, is history. The massacre of World War I set the stage for Wilson’s attempt to force Amer ica into the League of Nations, a globalist scheme to police the world, and set in place a veritable global government.<br />
Woodrow Wilson’s personal “god complex” became more evident during this time. In fact, at one point, Wilson himself told prominent Jewish leader, attorney Felix Frankfurter, a Brandeis protégé, that he (Wilson) was “the personal instrument of God” at the postwar Versailles conference where Wilson, in league with his Zionist advisors, sought to reshape the world.<br />
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George believed Wilson “regarded himself as a missionary whose function was to rescue the poor European heathen from their age-long worship of false and fiery gods.”<br />
At one point Wilson announced to those at Versailles that “Jesus Christ so far [has] not succeeded in inducing the world to follow His teachings because He taught the ideal without devising any practical scheme to carry out his aims.”<br />
After Wilson’s pronouncement, according to Lloyd George, French Premier Georges Clemenceau—already quite familiar with Wilson’s flights of fancy—“opened his dark eyes to their widest dimension and swept them around the assembly to see how the Christians gathered around the table enjoyed this exposure of the futility of their Master.”<br />
Wilson’s messianic visions notwithstanding, Versailles and its aftermath were a shambles for the course of world history. Belgian general and historian Leon Degrelle frankly describes Germany’s Adolf Hitler as having been “born at Versailles.” According to American populist economist and historian Lawrence Dennis, writing in 1940 in <i>The Dynamics of War and Revolution</i>:<br />
<b>The Wilsonian revolution of international idealism was one of destruction, not creation . . . The Wilsonian revolution liquidated such workable social integrations as the Austro-Hungarian empire and the German empire, the first of which was decrepit when dissolved by the international idealists.</b><br />
<b>But the internationalists could destroy better than they could build. They replaced these nineteenth century political integrations . . . with no workable 20th century substitute . . . Since the war, all that democracy has created of historic importance has been a sterile and suicidal internationalism . . .</b><br />
Nationalist opposition in a war-weary America scuttled Wilson’s plans for U.S. entry into the League of Nations and what was the forerunner of what is today referred to as “the New World Order,” and Wilson, beaten down, collapsed in exhaustion, crippled by a stroke. A few have even alleged that Wilson may have also been suffering from venereal disease (perhaps as a result of his indiscretions) which is known to cause brain damage and insanity.<br />
In any case, bedridden and bitter, Wilson spent the last years of his second term a virtual recluse in the White House although (in another of his flights of fancy) the physically and emotionally ravaged Wilson, at one point, actually instructed his subordinates to attempt to gain him a third nomination for the presidency in 1920. Nothing ever came of that mad dream.<br />
After leaving the White House, Wilson settled into retirement in the nation’s capital, seldom venturing out, but occasionally receiving visitors who would hear Wilson muttering darkly and angrily against his critics who had frustrated his grand design for a new world order. Wilson placed himself again on the level of God, saying, “I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction. You can’t fight God.”<br />
Wilson died—in his own last words—“a broken machine,” in 1925. His legacy: world war and destruction, burdensome taxation, incredible deficits, debt money and interest slavery, the decline in national sovereignty and ever-growing federal intrusion upon liberty.<br />
Had Americans only studied Wilson’s world view and been made aware of the secret forces behind the scenes that were sponsoring Wilson’s drive for the presidency, the United States—and the people of the world—could have been spared so much tragedy and suffering.<br />
<b>* For the complete story of the Balfour Declaration, see the aforementioned Samuel Landman’s first-hand account, “Great Britain, the Jews and Palestine” and “Origins of the Balfour Declaration” in the Jan./Feb. issue of The Barnes Review, as well as the special report, <i>Power Behind Glo balism Exposed: The Balfour Declar ation of 1917</i>, by Dr. Robert John, available through TBR at 10 copies for $3.50.</b><br />
<br />
<b>BIBLIOGRAPHY:</b><br />
Lundberg, Ferdinand, <i>America’s Sixty Families</i> (New York: Vanguard Press, 1937).<br />
Murphy, Bruce Allen. <i>The Brandeis/ Frankfurter Connection</i>.<br />
Viereck, George Sylvester, <i>The Strangest Friendship in History</i> (New York: Liveright, Inc., 1932).<br />
Wise, Jennings, <i>Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution</i> (New York: Paisley Press, 1938).<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-91391152170519888002010-03-22T04:34:00.000-07:002010-03-22T04:34:02.849-07:00The Victory of Hermann Over the Roman Legions<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER"> By Edward Shepherd Creasy</div><div align="CENTER">Author of Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World</div><br />
<div align="LEFT"><b><i> </i></b>To a truly illustrious Frenchman, whose reverses as a minister can never obscure his achievements in the world of letters, we are indebted for the most profound and most eloquent estimate that we possess of the importance of the Germanic element in European civilization, and of the extent to which the human race is indebted to those brave warriors who long were the unconquered antagonists, and finally became the conquerors, of imperial Rome.</div>Twenty-three eventful years have passed away since M. Guizot delivered from the chair of modern history at Paris his course of lectures on the history of civilization in Europe. During those years the spirit of earnest inquiry into the germs and primary developments of existing institutions has become more and more active and universal, and the merited celebrity of M. Guizot’s work has proportionally increased. Its admirable analysis of the complex political and social organizations of which the modern civilized world is made up, must have led thousands to trace with keener interest the great crises of times past, by which the characteristics of the present were determined.<br />
The narrative of one of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us this special attraction—that it forms part of our own national history. Had Arminius (Hermann to his own people) been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eyder and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and “[W]e, this great English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning the earth, from one end of it to the other,”<sup>1</sup> would have been utterly cut off from existence.<br />
Arnold may, indeed, go too far in holding that we are wholly unconnected in race with the Romans and Britons who inhabited this country before the coming over of the Saxons; that, “nationally speaking, the history of Caesar’s invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited our forests.” There seems ample evidence to prove that the Romanized Kelts whom our Teutonic forefathers found here influenced materially the character of our nation.<br />
But the main stream of our people was and is Germanic. Our language alone decisively proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus; and it was our own primeval fatherland that the brave German rescued when he slaughtered the Roman legions 18 centuries ago, in the marshy glens be tween the Lippe and the Ems.<sup>2</sup><br />
Dark and disheartening, even to heroic spirits, must have seemed the prospects of Germany when Arminius planned the general rising of his countrymen against Rome. Half the land was occupied by Roman garrisons; and, what was worse, many of the Germans seemed patiently acquiescent in their state of bondage. The braver portion, whose patriotism could be relied on, was ill armed and undisciplined, while the enemy’s troops consisted of veterans in the highest state of equipment and training, familiarized with victory, and commanded by officers of proved skill and valor. The resources of Rome seemed boundless; her tenacity of purpose was believed to be invincible. There was no hope of foreign sympathy or aid; for the self-governing powers that had filled the Old World had bent one after another before the rising power of Rome, and had vanished. The earth seemed left void of independent nations.<br />
The German chieftain knew well the gigantic power of the oppressor. Armin ius was no rude savage, fighting out of mere animal instinct, or in ignorance of the might of his adversary. He was familiar with the Roman language and civilization; he had served in the Roman armies; he had been admitted to the Roman citizenship and raised to the rank of the equestrian order. It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to confer rank and privileges on the youth of the leading families in the nations which she wished to enslave. Among other young German chieftains, Ar min ius and his brother, who were the heads of the noblest house in the tribe of the Cherusci, had been selected as fit objects for the exercise of this insidious system. Roman refinements and dignities succeeded in denationalizing the brother, who assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and adhered to Rome throughout all her wars against his country. Arminius re mained unbought by honors or wealth, uncorrupted by refinement or luxury. He aspired to and obtained from Roman enmity a higher title than ever could have been given him by Roman favor. It is in the page of Rome’s greatest historian that his name has come down to us with the proud addition of “<i>Liberator haud du biè Germaniae</i>.”<sup>3</sup><br />
Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit which has thus immortalized him, have anxiously revolved in his mind the fate of the many great men who had been crushed in the attempt which he was about to renew—the attempt to stay the chariot-wheels of triumphant Rome. Could he hope to succeed where Hannibal and Mithridates had perished? What had been the doom of Viriathus? And what warning against vain valor was written on the desolate site where Nu mantia once had flourished? Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and more recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight years against Caesar; and the gallant Ver cingetorix, who in the last year of the war had roused all his countrymen to in surrection, who had cut off Roman detachments, and brought Caesar himself to the extreme of peril at Alesia—he, too, had finally succumbed, had been led captive in Cae sar’s triumph, and had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon.<br />
<br />
It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic which for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world. Her system of government was changed; and after a century of revolution and civil war, she had placed herself under the despotism of a single ruler. But the discipline of her troops was yet unimpaired, and her warlike spirit seemed unabated. The first year of the empire had been signalized by conquests as valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding period. It is a great fallacy, though apparently sanctioned by great authorities, to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by Augustus was pacific; he certainly recommended such a policy to his successors (<i>incertum metu an per invidiam</i>—Tacitus, <i>Annals</i>, i., II), but he himself, until Arminius broke his spirit, had followed a very different course. Besides his Spanish wars, his generals, in a series of generally aggressive campaigns, had extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to the Danube, and had reduced into subjection the large and important countries that now form the territories of all Austria south of that river, and of East Switzerland, Lower Wirtemberg, Ba var ia, the Valtelline, and the Tyrol.<br />
While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed the Germans from the south, still more formidable in roads had been made by the imperial legions on the west. Roman armies, moving from the province of Gaul, established a chain of fortresses along the right as well as the left bank of the Rhine, and, in a series of victorious cam paigns, advanced their eagles as far as the Elbe, which now seemed added to the list of vassal rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus, the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the Tiber. Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbors of Gaul along the German coasts and up the estuaries, cooperated with the land-forces of the empire, and seemed to display, even more decisively than her armies, her overwhelming superiority over the rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the territory thus invaded, the Romans had with their usual military skill, established fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept on foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where any popular outbreak might be attempted.<br />
Vast, however, and admirably organized as the fabric of Roman power appeared on the frontiers and in the provinces, there was rottenness at the core. In Rome’s unceasing hostilities with foreign foes, and still more in her long series of desolating civil wars, the free middle classes of Italy had almost wholly disappeared. Above the position which they had occupied, an oligarchy of wealth had reared itself; beneath that position, a degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves, the chance sweepings of every conquered country, shoals of Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others, made up the bulk of the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the absolute authority of Augustus.<br />
Adulation was now the chief function of the Senate; and the gifts of genius and accomplishments of art were devoted to the elaboration of eloquently false panegyrics upon the prince and his favorite courtiers. With bitter indignation must the German chieftain have beheld all this and contrasted with it the rough worth of his own countrymen: their bravery, their fidelity to their word, their manly independence of spirit, their love of their national free institutions, and their loathing of every pollution and meanness. Above all, he must have thought of the domestic virtues that hallowed a German home; of the respect there shown to the female character, and of the pure affection by which that respect was repaid. His soul must have burned within him at the contemplation of such a race yielding to these debased Italians.<br />
Still, to persuade the Germans to combine, in spite of their frequent feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against Rome; to keep the scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour for action arrived; and then, without possessing a single walled town, without military stores, without training, to teach his insurgent countrymen to defeat veteran armies and storm fortifications, seemed so perilous an enterprise, that probably Arminius would have receded from it had not a stronger feeling even than patriotism urged him on. Among the Germans of high rank who had most readily submitted to the invaders, and become zealous partisans of Ro man authority, was a chieftain named Segestes.<br />
His daughter, Thusnelda, was preeminent among the noble maidens of Germany. Arminius had sought her hand in marriage; but Segestes, who probably discerned the young chief’s disaffection to Rome, forbade his suit, and strove to preclude all communication between him and his daughter. Thusnelda, however, sympathized far more with the heroic spirit of her lover than with the time-serving policy of her father. An elopement baffled the precautions of Segestes, who, disappointed in his hope of preventing the marriage, accused Arminius before the Roman governor of having carried off his daughter and of planning treason against Rome. Thus assailed, and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer but bent all his energies to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman dominion.<br />
A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it materially favored the ultimate success of the insurgents, served, by the immediate aggravation of the Roman oppressions, which it produced, to make the native population more universally eager to take arms. Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, had recently been recalled from the command in Ger many, and sent into Pannonia to put down a dangerous revolt which had broken out against the Romans in that province.<br />
The German patriots were thus delivered from the stern supervision of one of the most suspicious of mankind, and were also relieved from having to contend against the high military talents of a veteran commander, who thoroughly understood their national character, and also the nature of the country, which he himself had principally subdued. In the room of Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus, who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria.<br />
Varus was a true representative of the higher classes of the Romans, among whom a general taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual gratifications, a minute ac quaintance with the principles and practice of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools of the rhetoricians and a fondness for either partaking in or watching the intellectual strife of forensic oratory, had become generally diffused, without, however, having humanized the old Roman spirit of cruel indifference for human feelings and human sufferings, and without acting as the least check on unprincipled avarice and ambition, or on habitual and gross pro fligacy.<br />
Accustomed to govern the depraved and debased natives of Syria, a country where courage in man and virtue in woman had for centuries been un known, Varius thought that he might gratify his licentious and rapacious passions with equal impunity among the high-minded sons and pure-spirited daughters of Germany. When the general of any army sets the example of outrages of this description, he is soon faithfully imitated by his officers, and surpassed by his still more brutal soldiery.<br />
The Romans now habitually indulged in those violations of the sanctity of the domestic shrine, and those insults upon honor and modesty, by which far less gallant spirits than those of our Teutonic ancestors have often been maddened into insurrection.<br />
Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathized with him in his indignation at their country’s abasement, and many whom private wrongs had stung yet more deeply. There was little difficulty in collecting bold leaders for an attack on the oppressors, and little fear of the population not rising readily at those leaders’ call. But to declare open war against Rome, and to encounter Varus’ army in a pitched battle, would have been merely rushing upon certain destruction.<br />
Varus had three legions under him, a force which, after allowing for detachments, cannot be estimated at less than fourteen thousand Roman infantry. He had also eight or nine hundred Roman cavalry, and at least an equal number of horse and foot sent from the allied states, or raised among those provincials who had not received the Roman franchise.<br />
It was not merely the number, but the quality of this force that made them formidable; and, however contemptible Varus might be as general, Arminius well knew how admirably the Roman armies were organized and officered, and how perfectly the legionaries understood every maneuver and every duty which the varying emergencies of a stricken field might require. Stratagem was, therefore, in dispensable; and it was necessary to blind Varus to their schemes until a favorable opportunity should arrive for striking a decisive blow.<br />
For this purpose, the German confederates frequented the headquarters of Varus, which seem to have been near the center of the modern country of Westphalia, where the Roman general conducted himself with all the arrogant security of the governor of a perfectly submissive province. There Varus gratified at once his vanity, his rhe torical tastes, and his avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates attended to argue the cases before the Proconsul of Varus, who did not omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to take in the forensic eloquence of their conquerors.<br />
Meanwhile, a succession of heavy rains rendered the country more difficult for the operations of regular troops, and Arminius, seeing that the infatuation of Varus was complete, secretly directed the tribes near the Weser and the Ems to take up arms in open revolt against the Romans. This was represented to Varus as an occasion which required his prompt attendance at the spot; but he was kept in studied ignorance of its being part of a concerted national rising; and he still looked on Arminius as his submissive vassal, whose aid he might rely on in facilitating the march of his troops against the rebels, and in extinguishing the local disturbance. He therefore set his army in motion, and marched eastward in a line parallel to the course of the Lippe. For some distance his route lay along a level plain; but on arriving at the tract between the curve of the upper part of that stream and the sources of the Ems, the country assumes a very different character; and here, in the territory of the modern little principality of Lippe, it was that Arminius had fixed the scene of his enterprise.<br />
A woody and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two rivers, and forms the water-shed of their streams. This region still retains the name (<i>Teutoburg Wald </i>= <i>Teutober gien sis saltus</i>) which it bore in the days of Arminius. The nature of the ground has probably also remained unaltered. The eastern part of it, around Detmold, the modern capital of the principality of Lippe, is described by a modern Ger man scholar, Dr. Plate, as being a “table-land intersected by numerous deep and narrow valleys, which in some places form small plains, surrounded by steep mountains and rocks, and only accessible by narrow defiles. All the valleys are traversed by rapid streams, shallow in the dry season, but subject to sudden swellings in autumn and winter.<br />
“The vast forests which cover the summits and slopes of the hills consist chiefly of oak; there is little underwood, and both men and horse would move with ease in the forests if the ground were not broken by gullies, or rendered impracticable by fallen trees.” This is the district to which Varus is supposed to have marched; and Dr. Plate adds, that “the names of several localities on and near that spot seem to indicate that a great battle has once been fought there. We find the names, ‘<i>das Winnefeld</i>,’ (the field of victory), ‘<i>die Knochenbahn</i>,’ (the bone-lane), ‘<i>die Knochenleke</i>,’ (the bone-brook), ‘<i>der Mordkessel</i>,’ (the kettle of slaughter), and others.”<sup>4</sup><br />
Contrary to the usual strict principles of Roman discipline, Varus had suffered his army to be accompanied and impeded by an immense train of baggage wagons and by a rabble of camp followers, as if his troops had been merely changing their quarters in a friendly country. When the long array quitted the firm, level ground, and began to wind its way among the woods, the marshes, and the ravines, the difficulties of the march, even without the intervention of an armed foe, became fearfully apparent. In many places, the soil, sodden with rain, was impracticable for cavalry, and even for infantry, until trees had been felled, and a rude causeway formed through the morass.<br />
The duties of the engineer were familiar to all who served in the Roman armies. But the crowd and confusion of the columns embarrassed the working parties of the soldiery, and in the midst of their toil and disorder the word was suddenly passed through their ranks that the rear guard was attacked by the barbarians. Varus resolved on pressing forward; but a heavy discharge of missiles from the woods on either flank taught him how serious was the peril, and he saw his best men falling round him without the opportunity of retaliation; for his light-armed auxiliaries, who were principally of Germanic race, now rapidly deserted, and it was impossible to deploy the legionaries on such broken ground for a charge against the enemy.<br />
Choosing one of the most open and firm spots which they could force their way to, the Romans halted for the night; and, faithful to their national discipline and tactics, formed their camp amid the harassing attacks of the rapidly thronging foes, with the elaborate toil and systematic skill, the traces of which are impressed permanently on the soil of so many European countries, attesting the presence in the olden time of the imperial eagles.<br />
On the morrow the Romans renewed their march, the veteran officers who served under Varus now probably directing the operations, and hoping to find the Germans drawn up to meet them; in which case they could have relied on their own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should re assure the supremacy of Rome.<br />
But Arminius was far too sage a commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broad-swords and inefficient defensive armor, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, who were skilled to commence the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins, hurled upon the foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon parade.<sup>5</sup><br />
Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to form first in line for action, and then in column for marching, without the show of opposition. For some distance Varus was allowed to move on, only harassed by slight skirmishes, but struggling with difficulty through the broken ground, the toil and distress of his men being aggravated by heavy torrents of rain, which burst upon the devoted legions, as if the angry gods of Ger many were pouring out the vials of their wrath upon the invaders. After some little time their van approached a ridge of high woody ground, which is one of the offshoots of the great Hircynian forest, and is situated between the modern villages of Driburg and Bielefeld.<br />
Arminius had caused barricades of hewn trees to be formed here, so as to add to the natural difficulties of the passage. Fatigue and discouragement now began to betray themselves in the Roman ranks. Their line became less steady. Baggage wagons were abandoned from the impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the wagons to secure the most valuable portions of their property; each was busy about his own affairs, and purposely slow in hearing the word of command from his officers. Arminius now gave the signal for a general attack. The fierce shouts of the Germans pealed through the gloom of the forests, and in thronging multitudes they assailed the flanks of the invaders, pouring in clouds of darts on the encumbered legionaries, as they struggled up the glens or floundered in the morasses, and watching every opportunity of charging through the intervals of the disjointed column, and so cutting off the communication between its several brigades.<br />
Arminius, with a chosen band of personal retainers round him, cheered on his countrymen by voice and example. He and his men aimed their weapons particularly at the horses of the Roman cavalry. The wounded animals, slipping about in the mire and their own blood, threw their riders and plunged among the ranks of the le gions, disordering all round them. Var us now ordered the troops to be countermarched, in the hope of reaching the nearest Roman garrison on the Lippe.<br />
But retreat now was as impracticable as advance; and the falling back of the Romans only augmented the cour age of their assailants, and caused fier cer and more frequent charges on the flanks of the disheartened army. The Roman officer who commanded the ca valry, Numonius Vala, rode off with his squadrons in the vain hope of escaping by thus abandoning his comrades. Unable to keep together, or force their way across the woods and swamps, the horsemen were overpowered in detail, and slaughtered to the last man.<br />
The Roman infantry still held together and resisted, but more through the instinct of discipline and bravery than from any hope of success or escape. Varus, after being severely wounded in a charge of the Germans against his part of the column, committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of those whom he had exasperated by his oppressions. One of the lieutenant generals of the army fell fighting; the other surrendered to the enemy. But mercy to a fallen foe had never been a Roman virtue, and those among her legions who now laid down their arms in hope of quarter, drank deep of the cup of suffering, which Rome had held to the lips of many a brave but unfortunate enemy. The infuriated Germans slaughtered their oppressors with deliberate ferocity, and those prisoners who were not hewn to pieces on the spot were only preserved to perish by a more cruel death in cold blood.<br />
<br />
The bulk of the Roman army fought steadily and stubbornly, frequently repelling the masses of the assailants, but gradually losing the compactness of their array, and becoming weaker and weaker beneath the incessant shower of darts and the reiterated assaults of the vigorous and unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the column was pierced through and through, two of the eagles captured, and the Roman host, which on the yester morning had marched forth in such pride and might, now broken up into confused fragments, either fell fighting beneath the overpowering numbers of the enemy, or perished in the swamps and woods in unavailing efforts at flight.<br />
Few, very few, ever saw again the left bank of the Rhine. One body of brave veterans, arraying themselves in a ring on a little mound, beat off every charge of the Germans, and prolonged their honorable resistance to the close of that dreadful day. The traces of a feeble attempt at forming a ditch and mound attested in after years the spot where the last of the Romans passed their night of suffering and despair. But on the morrow, this remnant also, worn out with hunger, wounds, and toil, was charged by the victorious Germans, and either massacred on the spot, or offered up in fearful rites at the altars of the deities of the old mythology of the North.<br />
A gorge in the mountain ridge, through which runs the modern road between Paderborn and Pyrmont, leads from the spot where the heat of the battle raged to the Externsteine, a cluster of bold and grotesque rocks of sandstone, near which is a small sheet of water, overshadowed by a grove of aged trees. According to local tradition, this was one of the sacred groves of the ancient Germans, and it was here that the Roman captives were slain in sacrifice by the victorious warriors of Arminius. Never was victory more decisive, never was the liberation of an oppressed people more instantaneous and complete. Throughout Germany the Roman garrisons were assailed and cut off; and within a few weeks after Varus had fallen, the German soil was freed from the foot of an invader.<br />
At Rome the tidings of the battle were received with an agony of terror, the reports of which we should deem exaggerated, did they not come from Roman historians themselves. They not only tell emphatically how great was the awe which the Romans felt of the prowess of the Germans, if their various tribes could be brought to unite for a common purpose,<sup>6</sup> but also they reveal how weakened and de based the population of Italy had become. Dion Cassius says (lib. lvi., sec. 23): “Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he had lost, and for terror respecting the Ger mans and the Gauls. And his chief alarm was that he expected them to push on against Italy and Rome; and there remained no Roman youth fit for military duty that were worth speaking of, and the allied populations, that were at all serviceable, had been wasted away.<br />
“Yet he prepared for the emergency as well as his means allowed; and when none of the citizens of military age were willing to enlist, he made them cast lots, and punished by confiscation of goods and disfranchisement every fifth man among those under 35, and every tenth man of those above that age. At last, when he found that not even thus could he make many come forward, he put some of them to death. So he made a conscription of discharged veterans and of emancipated slaves, and, collecting as large a force as he could, sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany.” Dion mentions, also, a number of terrific por tents that were believed to have oc curred at the time, and the narration of which is not immaterial, as it shows the state of the public mind, when such things were so believed in and so interpreted.<br />
<br />
The summits of the Alps were said to have fallen, and three columns of fire to have blazed up from them. In the Campus Martius, the temple of the war-god, from whom the founder of Rome had sprung, was struck by a thunderbolt. The nightly heavens glowed several times, as if on fire. Many comets blazed forth together; and fiery meteors, shaped like spears, had shot from the northern quarter of the sky down into the Roman camps. It was said, too, that a statue of Victory, which had stood at a place on the frontier, pointing the way toward Germany, had, of its own accord, turned round, and now pointed to Italy. These and other prodigies were believed by the multitude to accompany the slaughter of Varus’ legions, and to manifest the anger of the gods against Rome. Au gustus himself was not free from superstition; but on this occasion no supernatural terrors were needed to increase the alarm and grief that he felt, and which made him, even months after the news of the battle had arrived, often beat his head against the wall, and exclaim, “Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions.” We learn this from his biographer Suetonius; and, indeed, every ancient writer who alludes to the overthrow of Varus attests the importance of the blow against the Roman power, and the bitterness with which it was felt.<br />
The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own territory; but that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her legions again into Germany, to parade a temporary superiority, but all hopes of permanent conquests were abandoned by Augustus and his successors.<br />
The blow Arminius had struck never was forgotten. Roman fear disguised itself under the specious title of moderation, and the Rhine became the acknowledged boundary of the two nations until the fifth century of our era, when the Germans became the assailants, and carved with their conquering swords the provinces of imperial Rome into the kingdoms of modern Europe.<br />
I have said above that the great Cheruscan is more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus<sup>7</sup> is. It may be added that an Englishman is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than can be claimed by any German of modern Ger many. The proof of this depends on the proof of four facts: First, that the Cheruscans were Old Saxons, or Saxons of the interior of Germany. Secondly, that the Anglo-Saxons, or Saxons of the coast of Germany, were more closely akin than other German tribes were to the Cheruscan Saxons. Thirdly, that the Old Saxons were almost exterminated by Charlemagne. Fourthly, that the Anglo-Saxons are our immediate ancestors. The last of these may be assumed as an axiom in English history. The proofs of the other three are partly philological and partly historical. I have not space to go into them here, but they will be found in the early chapters of the great work of my friend, Dr. Robert Gordon Latham, on the “English Language,” and in the notes to his edition of <i>The Ger mania of Tacitus</i>. It may be, however, here re marked, that the present Saxons of Germany are of the High Ger manic division of the German race, whereas both the Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon were of the Low Germanic.<br />
Being thus the nearest heirs of the glory of Arminius, we may fairly devote more attention to his career than, in such a work as the present, could be allowed to any individual leader; and it is interesting to trace how far his fame survived during the Middle Ages, both among the Germans of the Continent and among ourselves.<br />
It seems probable that the jealousy with which Maroboduus, the king of the Suevi and Marcomanni, regarded Arminius, and which ultimately broke out into open hostilities between those German tribes and the Cherusci, prevented Arminius from leading the confederate Germans to attack Italy after his first victory. Perhaps he may have had the rare moderation of being content with the liberation of his country, without seeking to retaliate on her former oppressors. When Tiberius marched into Germany in the year 10, Arminius was too cautious to attack him on ground favorable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skillful to entangle his troops in the difficult parts of the country. His march and countermarch were as unresisted as they were unproductive.<br />
A few years later, when a dangerous revolt of the Roman legions near the frontier caused their generals to find them active employment by leading them into the interior of Germany, we find Arminius again active in his country’s defense. The old quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes, had broken out afresh. Segestes now called in the aid of the Roman general, Germanicus, to whom he surrendered himself; and by his contrivance, his daughter Thusnelda, the wife of Ar minius, also came into the hands of the Romans, being far advanced in pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates,<sup>8</sup> more of the spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that could not be subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent to Ravenna, and there gave birth to a son, whose life we know, from an allusion in Ta citus, to have been eventful and unhappy; but the part of the great historian’s work which narrated his fate has perished, and we only know from another quarter that the son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led captive in a triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome.<br />
The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by these bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him, and of his babe doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed the eloquent invectives with which he roused his countrymen against the home-traitors, and against their invaders, who thus made war upon women and children. Germanicus had marched his army to the place where Varus had perished, and had there paid funeral honors to the ghastly relics of his predecessor’s legions that he found heaped around him.<sup>9</sup><br />
Arminius lured him to advance a little further into the country, and then assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman ac counts, was a drawn one. The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve on re treating to the Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops, embarked in some vessels on the Ems, and returned by that river, and then by sea; but part of his forces were entrusted to a Roman general named Caecina, to lead them back by land to the Rhine. Arminius followed this division on its march, and fought several battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on the Romans, captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have destroyed them completely, had not his skillful system of operations been finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a confederate German chief, who insisted on as saulting the Romans in their camp, in stead of waiting till they were entangled in the difficulties of the country, and assailing their columns on the march.<br />
<br />
In the following year the Romans were inactive, but in the year afterward Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army on shipboard, and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he disembarked, and marched to the Weser, where he encamped, probably in the neighborhood of Minden. Arminius had collected his army on the other side of the river; and a scene occurred, which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is the subject of a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned that the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up while young to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not only refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country, but fought against his country with the legions of Germanicus. He had assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and had gained considerable distinction in the Roman service, in which he had lost an eye from a wound in battle.<br />
When the Roman outposts approached the River Weser, Arminius called out to them from the opposite bank, and expressed a wish to see his brother. Flavius stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the Roman bank of the river. This was done; and the brothers, who apparently had not seen each other for some years, began a conversation from the opposite sides of the stream, in which Arminius questioned his brother respecting the loss of his eye, and what battle it had been lost in, and what reward he had received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye was lost, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account of its loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations that had been given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of slavery; and then each began to try to win the other over. Flavius boasting the power of Rome, and her generosity to the submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the name of their country’s gods, of the mother that had borne them and by the holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the betrayer to being the champion of his country.<br />
They soon proceeded to mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud for his horse and his arms, that he might dash across the river and attack his brother; nor would he have been checked from doing so, had not the Roman general Stertinius run up to him and forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on the other bank, threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.<br />
On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led his army across that river, and a partial encounter took place, in which Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a general action was fought, in which Arminius was severely wounded, and the German infantry routed with heavy loss. The horsemen of the two armies encountered, without either party gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained master of the ground, and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected a trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription, that the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly conquered by his army. But that army speedily made a final retreat to the left bank of the Rhine; nor was the effect of their campaign more durable than their trophy. The sarcasm with which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs of Roman generals over Germans may apply to the pageant which Germanicus celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman army of the Rhine.<br />
After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, the king of the Suevi and Marcomanni, who was endeavoring to bring the other German tribes into a state of dependency on him. Arminius was at the head of the Germans who took up arms against this home invader of their liberties. After some minor engagements, a pitched battle was fought between the two confederacies, A.D. 19, in which the loss on each side was equal, but Maroboduus confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a renewal of the engagement, and by imploring the intervention of the Romans in his defense. The younger Drusus then commanded the Roman legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation a peace was concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the terms of which it is evident that the latter must have renounced his ambitious schemes against the freedom of the other German tribes.<br />
Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence, which he successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated in the thirty-seventh year of his age by some of his own kinsmen, who conspired against him. Tacitus says that this happened while he was engaged in a civil war, which had been caused by his attempts to make himself king over his countrymen. It is far more probable (as one of the best biographers<sup>10</sup> has observed) that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of Armin ius to extend his influence as elective war-chieftain of the Cherusci, and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity. When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades, we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with the tribe by open violence, and when that seemed ineffectual, by secret assassination. Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies, that we know his ex ploits.<sup>11</sup> His countrymen made history but did not write it.<br />
As time passed on, the gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The Irmin-sul, or the column of Hermann, near Eresburgh, the modern Stadtberg, was the chosen object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci, the Old Saxons, and in defense of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne and his Christianized Franks. “Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the ‘Ir min-sul,’ bearing the statute, and considered as the symbol of the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of Eresburgh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic era.”<sup>12</sup><br />
Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, after their settlement in this island. One of the four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity, and was called the “Irminstreet.” The name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of “Hermann,” the name by which the he ro and the deity were known by every man of Low German blood on either side of the German Sea. It means, etymologically, the “War-man,” the “man of hosts.” No other explanation of the worship of the “Irmin-sul,” and of the name of the “Irminstreet,” is so satisfactory as that which connects them with the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the existence of other columns of an analogous character.<br />
About 10 centuries and a half after the demolition of the Irmin-sul, and nearly 18 after the death of Arminius, the modern Germans conceived the idea of rendering tardy homage to their great hero, and accordingly, some eight or 10 years ago, a general subscription was organized in Germany for the purpose of erecting on the Osning—a conical mountain, which forms the highest summit of the Teutoburger Wald, and is 1,800 feet above the level of the sea—a colossal bronze statue of Arminius. The statue was designed by Bandel. The hero was to stand uplifting a sword in his right hand, and looking toward the Rhine.<br />
The height of the statue was to be 80 feet from the base to the point of the sword, and was to stand on a circular Gothic temple 90 feet high, and supported by oak trees as columns. The mountain, where it was to be erected, is wild and stern, and overlooks the scene of the battle. It was calculated that the statue would be clearly visible at a distance of 60 miles. The temple is nearly finished, and the statue itself has been cast at the copper works at Lemgo. But there, through want of funds to set it up, it has lain for some years, in disjointed fragments, exposed to the mutilating homage of relic-seeking travelers. The idea of honoring a hero who belongs to all Germany is not one which the present rulers of that divided country<sup>13</sup> have any wish to en courage; and the statue may long continue to lie there, and present too true a type of the condition of Germany herself.<sup>14</sup> Surely this is an occasion in which Englishmen might well prove, by acts as well as words, that we also rank Arminius among our heroes.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-45510437121025782422010-03-22T04:32:00.000-07:002010-03-22T06:23:51.686-07:00The Dual Nature of the Byzantine Empire<div align="CENTER"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div align="CENTER"> By Edward T. May</div><br />
When considering vast events such as the fall of the western Roman empire, the linkage of specific events with exact dates is a dicey proposition at best. One cannot say, for example, that the empire began its demise in a certain year, or that its absolute collapse occurred on such-and-such a day. With this caveat in mind, we may tentatively suggest the genesis of the Byzantine empire as having occurred when Zeno, emperor of the eastern portion of the Roman empire, assumed sovereignty over the remains of that empire in the late 5th century A.D. Thus, the section of the Roman empire that managed to survive the “barbarian” invasions, and which, as it happened, was centered in Constantinople, became the Byzantine empire, a realm that survived until Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in A.D. 1453.<br />
<br />
Geography dictated the Byzantine (Roman) empire would possess some thing of a dual nature. Straddling the border between Asia and Europe, the empire experienced a tug of war between the Latin world and the Greek, between the Occident and the Orient, between Christian and non-Christian. The population was composed of “a motley assemblage of peoples.”<sup>1</sup> Egyptians, Armenians, Jews, Slavs and Greeks were but some of the ethnic groups in this “chaos of peoples.”<sup>2</sup> Yet the Byzantine empire maintained a cohesion and continuity over the course of its existence that is nothing short of remarkable. That the empire was able to maintain a political unity of sorts for 1,000 years is a testament to the administrative ability of the competent emperors such as Justinian (born 482/3, ruled 527-565) and Heraclius, and the relative efficiency of an extensive bureaucracy that compensated for the weak emperors.<br />
Oswald Spengler penned an apt description of the dichotomous nature of the Byzantine empire in <i>The Decline of the West</i>.<br />
<b>In 326 Constantine, rebuilding on the ruins of the great city destroyed by Septimus Severus, created a late classical cosmopolis of the first rank, into which presently streamed hoary Apollinism from the west and youthful Magism from the east. And long afterward again, in 1096, it is a late Magiancosmopolis, confronted in its last autumn days with spring in the shape of Godfrey of Bouillon’s crusaders.. . . . As the easternmost of the classical west, this city bewitched the Goths; then, a millennium later, as the northernmost of the Arabian world, it enchanted the Russians.</b><sup>3</sup><br />
<br />
Some measure of this dual nature between the east and west is exemplified in the person of the Emperor Justinian, arguably the most well known emperor of the Byzantine empire. Justinian made Latin his language of choice, the last of the Byzantine emperors to do so. It was also one of his greatest ambitions, one might even call it an obsession, to wrest control of the Western Roman empire from the barbarians and reunite it with the Eastern Roman empire. Yet, despite his devotion to the old Roman empire, Justinian was not so thoroughly Latinized that he felt compelled to impose a Roman style of architecture on Constantinople. The church of Hagia Sophia, perhaps Justinian’s most famous contribution to the world of art and architecture, did not utilize the plan of the Roman basilica. Among other differences the architects of the church employed a technique known as “pendentive” construction, a method that “apparently was developed after many years of experiment by builders in the Near East and constitutes <i>the</i> contribution of Byzantium to architectural engineering.”<sup>4</sup> The prominent dome of Hagia Sophia is certainly not of the Occident either but rather represents, using Spengler’s terminology, the Magian world-feeling or spirit. The church further deviates from the Roman tradition by using brick rather than concrete as a construction material.<br />
Not only did Justinian use non-Roman aspects of architecture in Constantinople he imported those aspects to the re-conquered lands of the Western Roman empire as well. In the church of San Vitale in Ravenna “Light filtered through alabaster-paned windows plays over the glittering mosaics and glowing marbles that cover the building’s complex surfaces, producing an effect of sumptuousness that is not Western but Oriental. And, indeed, the inspiration for this design is to be found in Byzantium rather than Rome.”<sup>5</sup><br />
Likewise, the art of the Byzantine empire underwent a noticeable evolution, and it was the Christian religion that played a key role in the transformation. The realism portrayed in art of the Roman empire succumbed to the hieratic<sup>6</sup> characteristics employed by the Byzantine artists. Paintings and mosaics drastically reduced the emphasis on the physical by negating individuality. Human figures became rigid and stylized while spiritual aspects were enhanced. In the later Byzantine empire, the straight lines and unforgiving angles of the early period eventually gave way to the soft curves and sweeps of classic Hellenistic art, although the religious motifs were faithfully retained. The iconoclasts gained ascendancy for a time and artworks were limited to symbols and decorative scrollwork. In this respect the art was definitely Islamic in flavor. When the iconoclasts were overthrown, the painted icon flourished and became a pedagogical tool, being used to instruct the illiterate in Christian belief.<br />
In a similar fashion, Justinian did not feel his allegiance to the ideals of the Latin world necessitated an adherence to paganism, and he decreed Christianity to be not simply the official religion of the empire but the only lawful religion. Heretics to the Christian religion were dealt with harshly, many finding the Islamic empire more tolerant than the Byzantine. Christianity manifested itself to a great degree in the realms of art and literature. Religious treatises, hymns, and works delineating the lives of the saints proliferated. Although Christianity eventually supplanted paganism in the empire, it found it could not completely divorce itself from its old opponent, particularly in the field of literature. When asked why he used non-Christian references in his writings, St. Jerome admitted that pagan literature had its place in a Chris tian society:<br />
<br />
<b>[W]ho is there who does not know that both in Moses and in the prophets there are passages cited from gentile books and that Solomon proposed questions to the philosophers of Tyre and answered others put to him by them. In the commencement of the book of Proverbs he charges us to understand prudent maxims and shrewd adages, parables and obscure discourse, the words of the wise and their dark sayings; all of which belong by right to the sphere of the dialectician and the philosopher. The Apostle Paul also, in writing to Titus, has used a line of the poet Epimenidas. . . .</b><sup>7</sup><br />
<br />
In one area Justinian did not feel inclined to compromise between the Latin world and the Greek, that area being the law. However, it is interesting to note that legislation published after Justinian’s death was not in Latin but in Greek. While Greek became the new language of law in the Byzantine empire, the law itself remained Roman despite the fact some historians feel Justinian’s <i>corpus juris</i>was inferior to early Roman law. In this regard Houston Stewart Chamberlain has re marked that “the Justinian <i>corpus juris</i> with which we are familiar is only the embalmed corpse of Roman law.”<sup>8</sup><br />
One aspect of the Byzantine empire that changed markedly from that of the old Roman empire was the art of warfare. The emperors in the east found that the legion, remarkably adept as it was in dealing with the barbarians of the west, was unable to compete with the mounted archers of the east. Adapting to this exigency the military planners developed the cataphract,<sup>9</sup> an armored rider equipped with lance, bow, and sword, and mounted on an armored horse. The cataphract became the mainstay of the Byzantine army. With his two competent generals, Belisarius and Narses, wielding his military forces, Justinian was not only able to keep the eastern empire intact but also managed to reconquer north Africa, the southern portion of Spain, Italy, and Dalmatia. Justinian nearly succeeded in turning the Mediterranean once again into a Roman lake. However, the reconquest reached its zenith under Justinian, and thereafter the Byzan tine empire was whittled away by its enemies until all that was left was Constantinople itself. Not only did the Byzantine empire modify existing military forces to meet the demands of the moment, it was also capable of devising new devices in the art of warfare. One such innovation enabled the Byzantine empire, under the Emperor Constantine IV, to check the tide of Islam in the 7th century A.D. The invention known as “Greek fire” proved to be a decisive factor in the defense of Constantinople. The Byzantine navy employed “Greek fire” against the Arabs with telling effect.<br />
<br />
<b>[A]n incendiary mixture of naphtha, quicklime, sulfur, and pitch; it was thrown against enemy ships or troops on flaming arrows, or blown against them through tubes, or shot on iron balls bearing flax and tow soaked in oil; or it was loaded and fired on small boats which were set adrift against the foe. The composition of the mixture was a secret successfully guarded for two centuries by the Byzantine government; to reveal any knowledge of it was treason and sacrilege. . . . Until the invention of gunpowder it was the most talked-of weapon in the medieval world.</b><sup>10</sup><br />
<br />
Constantinople was located at the focal point of the trade routes, both land and water, between Europe and Asia. This being the case, it was perhaps inevitable that commerce would become the lifeblood of the Byzantine empire. Just as the American dollar at one time was preferred over local currencies in many part of the world, so the Byzantine “solidus” was used in Asia and Europe until its value was debased in the latter half of the empire’s existence. Customs duties proved to be a dependable and vital source of income for the empire. Justinian’s greatest coup in the field of commerce came when he managed to break the Far East’s monopoly on silk production. A resourceful group of Nestorian monks, after smuggling silkworm eggs out of Asia, bestowed on Justinian the basis of a moneymaking enterprise. As a result money no longer flowed out of Imperial coffers to purchase silk from China and, since the production of silk fabric was a state run monopoly, the local silk industry became another conduit of revenue for the government.<br />
However, Constantinople’s commercial prosperity also engendered jealousy on the part of her competitors, particularly Venice. The Venetians took advantage of the fact that the Byzantine empire had abandoned much of its European heritage and had grafted aspects of the Oriental culture into its body politic to incite hostilities between the French knights of the Fourth Crusade and the Greeks of Constantinople.<br />
<br />
<b>In general Greeks got on better with infidels than with Latins, perhaps because they shared a common form of government. An infidel sultan, like a Greek emperor, had seized power by his own efforts; he was maintained on his throne by a mercenary army; the sole duty of his subjects was to pay taxes, and in return he owed his subjects no duty at all. Every Greek was shocked by the boisterous conduct of Frankish freemen, who thought nothing of armed resistance to a lord who infringed the rights of his men.</b><sup>11</sup><br />
<br />
As a result of this intrigue between the crusaders and the Venetians, Constantinople was sacked in A.D. 1204, and Venice snatched “all the commercially profitable harbors and islands in the empire.”<sup>12</sup><br />
The moral sphere of existence in the Byzantine empire also became a battleground between the conflicting world-views of the east and the west. “The Roman virtues had disappeared even before the Latin tongue; Roman and Greek qualities had been overwhelmed by a flood of uprooted Orientals who had lost their own morality and had taken on no other except in words.”<sup>13</sup> The population, regardless of class, while outwardly professing Christianity, was fond of engaging in decidedly unchristian behavior. “Brutality and piety took turns in the same imperial souls; and among the people intensity of religious need could be adjusted to the corruption or violence of politics and war.”<sup>14</sup> Once again, the reign of Justinian serves as a prime representative of this duality of character. In order to delve further into the morality of the Byzantine empire we must make the acquaintance of the historian Procopius.<br />
<br />
A large amount of the information we possess concerning the Byzantine empire during the reign of Justinian comes from the historian Procopius. Procopius was born in Caesarea toward the end of the 5th century A.D. in the turbulent region of Palestine.<sup>15</sup> He became a lawyer and in 527 was designated legal adviser as well as secretary to Emperor Justinian’s famous general, Belisarius (505-565). Procopius accompanied Belisarius on his campaigns against the Goths in Italy, the Vandals in North Africa and the Persians. Procopius detailed these events, up to the year 554, in his <i>History of the Wars</i>, compiled in eight books. Since Procopius was something of a court historian (Harry Elmer Barnes noted: “[H]e was a formal apologist for the aristocracy of wealth and official position”<sup>16</sup>), the narratives reflect rather favorably on Belisarius. While the attitude of Procopius toward the Emperor Justinian in his<i>History of the Wars</i> is somewhat ambivalent, Justinian was heavily praised by Procopius in a volume titled <i>The Buildings of Justinian</i>, a six-book panegyric to the emperor, probably written in 561 (according <i>to The Medieval Sourcebook</i> on the Internet).<sup>17</sup><br />
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Procopius is generally lauded as one of the better historians in Western civilization (if Byzantium can be considered Western). Will Durant remarked that Procopius was “The one great historian of the period. . . . His industry was courageous, his arrangement of materials is logical, his narrative is absorbing, his Greek is clear and direct, and almost classically pure.”<sup>18 </sup>Prof. John Barker concedes that Procopius “was the last of the great historians in the classical Greek tradition.”<sup>19</sup>Arnold Toynbee was of the opinion that Procopius was “the last of the great Hellenic historians.”<sup>20</sup> J. Bury was equally im pressed, stating “His writings attest that Procopius had received an excellent literary education.”<sup>21</sup> Yet in spite of his credentials, Procopius is still able to incite controversy due to his work known as <i>The Anec dota</i>.<i>The Anecdota</i>, or <i>Secret History</i>, or <i>Un published Memoirs</i>, purports to be a supplement to <i>History of the Wars</i>. Prob ably written around 550, it recounts the salacious and disreputable activities of the players at the court of the Emperor Justinian and his wife the Empress Theodora (d. 547/8). Procopius, knowing full well the consequences of discovery, kept the explosive material under wraps during his lifetime. (He died probably in the 560s or thereabouts.) The following is an example of what Procopius had to say concerning Justinian:<br />
<br />
<b>[T]his emperor was insincere, crafty, hypocritical, dissembling his anger, double-dealing, clever. . . . He was a fickle friend, a truceless enemy, an ardent devotee of assassination and of robbery, quarrelsome and an inveterate innovator, easily led astray into wrong, but influenced by no counsel to adopt the right, keen to conceive and to execute base designs. . . . Nature seemed to have removed all baseness from the rest of mankind and to have concentrated it in the soul of this man.</b><sup>22</sup><br />
<br />
The Empress Theodora is one of the main targets of Procopius. The following is one of the tamer passages concerning Theodora referencing her activities prior to becoming empress.<br />
<br />
<b>Later she was following in the train of Hecebolus, a Tyrian, who had taken over the administration of Pentapolis, serving him in the most shameful capacity; but she gave some offense to the man and was driven thence with all speed; consequently it came about that she was at a loss for the necessities of life, which she proceeded to provide in her usual way, putting her body to work at its unlawful traffic. She first went to Alexandria; later, after making the round of the whole east, she made her way back to Byzantium, plying her trade in each city (a trade which a man could not call by name, I think, without forfeiting forever the compassion of God), as if Heaven could not bear that any spot should be unacquainted with the wantonness of Theodora.</b><sup>23</sup><br />
<br />
Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, fares no better.<br />
<br />
<b>Straightway, therefore, she decided upon being an adulteress from the very start, but she was very careful to conceal this business, not because she was ashamed of her own practices, nor because she entertained any fear so far as her husband was concerned (for she never experienced the slightest feeling of shame for any action whatsoever and she had gained complete control of her husband by means of many tricks of magic), but because she dreaded the punishment the empress might inflict.</b><sup>24</sup><br />
<br />
Belisarius, praised in <i>The History of the Wars</i>, does not go unscathed in <i>The Anecdota</i>. At one point in the narrative Belisarius was experiencing the disfavor of Justinian and was relieved of his command. Theodora, returning a favor to Antonina, made it appear that she had interceded with Justinian on behalf of Antonina, restoring Belisarius to a certain degree. When Belisarius heard the news:<br />
<br />
<b>[H]e straightway arose and fell on his face before the feet of his wife. And clasping both her knees with either hand and constantly shifting his tongue from one of the woman’s ankles to the other, he kept calling her the cause of his life and his salvation, and promising thenceforth to be, not her husband, but her faithful slave.</b><sup>25</sup><br />
<br />
Procopius does not spare the justice system from his deftly aimed barbs. During Justinian’s reign the contention existing between the factions competing in the hippodrome spilled over into the daily life of Constantinople, and soon became nothing more than unrestrained criminal behavior. The following describes how the judges handled members of the blue faction<sup>26</sup> who were arrested and brought before the court.<br />
<br />
<b>[A]nd those who sat in judgment, in rendering their decisions on the points in dispute, gave their verdicts, not as seemed to them just and lawful, but according as each of the disputants had hostile or friendly relations with the factions.</b><sup>27</sup><br />
<br />
Was the history of Procopius a factual history as well as a secret history? Should <i>The Anecdota</i> be completely disregarded as the rantings of a frustrated court historian? <i>The Anecdota</i> has proven itself to be something of a thorn in the side for historians who find it necessary to employ a certain amount of rationalization when dealing with it. Quite often historians, in a futile attempt to have their cake and eat it as well, will contradict themselves concerning <i>The Anecdota</i>. The following is an excellent example of the paradoxical approach historians seem to inevitably adopt regarding <i>The Anecdota</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Untrustworthy as <i>The Secret History</i> may be, it provides a fascinating antidote to the official panegyrics as well as a useful glimpse into the dark corridors of the Great Palace. And even in<i>The Secret History</i>, the comments of the man who has seen the ravages of war have the ring of truth.</b><sup>28</sup><br />
<br />
In the space of one short paragraph we see <i>The Anecdota</i> being described in terms as contradictory as “untrustworthy” and “useful.”<br />
Even a scholar of Edward Gibbon’s eminence seems to be of two minds concerning this particular work of Procopius. As regards Belisarius and Antonina, Gibbon states the following:<br />
<br />
<b>The generous reader may cast away the libel, but the evidence of facts will adhere to his memory; and he will reluctantly confess that the fame and even the virtue of Belisarius were polluted by the lust and cruelty of his wife, and that the hero deserved an appellation which may not drop from the pen of the decent historian.</b><sup>29</sup><br />
<br />
Of <i>The Anecdota</i> in general, we have this statement of Gibbon’s to ponder:<br />
<br />
<b>Of these strange anecdotes, a part may be true, because probable; and a part true, because improbable. Procopius must have known the former, and the latter he could scarcely invent.</b><sup>30</sup><br />
<br />
Yet, when discussing the reason for the tactics employed by Belisarius in the Persian theater of war, Gibbon seems less sure of the reliability of the information contained in <i>The Anecdota</i>. Gibbon says, “with some slight exceptions, we may reasonably shut our ears against the malevolent whisper of the anecdotes.”<sup>31</sup><br />
John Barker describes <i>The Anecdota</i> as “probably the most infamous and scurrilous piece of sustained character assassination in all of literature.”<sup>32</sup> Yet Barker also states that “used with caution and in careful relation to other materials, even <i>The Secret History</i> is of considerable value to the historian of Justinian.”<sup>33</sup><br />
Will Durant also formed an opinion concerning the reliability of <i>The Anecdota</i> and, like Gibbon and Barker, he feels Procopius is to be trusted when writing on some subjects and distrusted when writing about other subjects.<br />
<br />
<b>It is a fascinating book, like any denunciation of our neighbors; but there is something unpleasant in literary attacks upon persons who can no longer speak in their own defense. An historian who strains his pen to prove a thesis may be trusted to distort the truth. Procopius was occasionally inaccurate in matters beyond his own experience; he copied at times the manner and philosophy of Herodotus, at times the speeches and sieges of Thucydides; he shared the superstitions of his age, and darkened his pages with portents, oracles, miracles, and dreams. But where he wrote of what he had seen, his account has stood every test.</b><sup>34</sup><br />
<br />
J. Bury as well seems to have struggled with the question of whether or not <i>The Anecdota</i> could be considered as a valid historical document. Bury states, “the self-defeating maliciousness of the whole performance discredits the work, and has even suggested doubts whether it could have been written at all by the sober and responsible historian of the wars. The authorship, however, is indisputable.”<sup>35</sup>How ever, Bury tempers this harsh indictment with the following words.<br />
<br />
<b>. . . [W]e must carefully distinguish between the facts which the author records, and the interpretation which he places upon them. Malice need not resort to invention. It can serve its purpose far more successfully by adhering to facts, misrepresenting motives, and suppressing circumstances which point to a different interpretation. That this was the method followed by Procopius is certain. For we find that in a large number of cases his facts are borne out by other contemporary sources, while in no instance can we convict him of a statement which has no basis in fact.</b><sup>36</sup><br />
<br />
Procopius himself seems to have foreseen the scholastic shock waves that <i>The Anecdota</i> was sure to generate. He presents an able defense of his work in the opening pages.<br />
<br />
<b>[I]t was not possible, as long as the actors were still alive, for these things to be recorded in the way they should have been. For neither was it possible to elude the vigilance of multitudes of spies, nor, if detected, to escape a most cruel death. . . . I find myself stammering and shrinking as far from it as possible, as I weigh the chances that such things are now to be written by me as will seem neither credible nor probable to men of a later generation; and especially when the mighty stream of time renders the story somewhat ancient, I fear lest I shall earn the reputation of being even a narrator of myths and shall be ranked among the tragic poets. But I shall not flinch from the immensity of my task, basing my confidence on the fact that my account will not be without the support of witnesses.</b><sup>37</sup><br />
<br />
Significantly, a concrete motive linking Procopius to a deliberate fabrication of false hoods seems to have eluded his critics. Bury posited that Procopius was disillusioned by the failure of the later Roman empire to match the accomplishments of the Roman empire in its prime, and then allowed his attitude to spill over onto the pages of<i>The Anecdota</i>. Bury has also conjectured that Procopius was bitter due to a lack of personal recognition.<br />
<br />
<b>Any writer who indulges in such an orgy of hatred as that which amazes us in <i>The Secret History</i>, exposes himself to the fair suspicion that he has personal reasons for spite. We hardly run the risk of doing an injustice to Procopius if we assume that he was a disappointed man.</b><sup>38</sup><br />
<br />
Yet Bury contradicts his own hypothesis with the following.<br />
<br />
<b>An amazing change came to pass in the attitude of Procopius between the year in which he composed <i>The Secret History</i> and 10 years later when he wrote his work on <i>The Buildings</i>, in which he bestows on the policy and acts of the emperor superlative praise which would astonish us as coming from the author of <i>The History of the Wars</i>, even if <i>The Secret History</i> had been lost or never written. The victories of Narses had probably mitigated the pessimism into which he had fallen through the failure of Belisarius and the long series of Totila’s</b><sup>39</sup><b> successes; but it is difficult to avoid the conjecture that he had received some preferment or recognition from the emperor.</b><sup>40</sup><br />
<br />
It seems a reasonable assumption that if Procopius had received “some preferment or recognition from the emperor” the basis for his vituperation would have been dispelled and he would have mollified in some manner his harsh words concerning Justinian in <i>The Anecdota</i>, yet we see nothing of the kind taking place.<br />
Logic would seem to dictate that the published works of Procopius would contain more falsehoods and exaggerations than <i>The Anecdota</i>. After all, the published works of Procopius were read by people who held the power of life and death over him. Procopius even admits, in <i>The Anecdota</i>, to lying in <i>The History of the Wars</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Belisarius, coming to Italy for the second time, departed from there most ignominiously. For during a space of five years he did not succeed once in setting foot on any part of the land, as stated by me in the previous narrative. . . .</b><sup>41</sup><br />
<br />
The “previous narrative” to which Procopius refers is Book VII of<i>The History of the Wars</i>. Another example of Procopius falsifying official history can be seen in the following excerpt.<br />
<br />
<b>And as he was setting out, the emperor gave him such instructions as have been set forth in the appropriate passage, where, however, it was impossible for me, through fear of the empress, to reveal the truth of what took place.</b><sup>42</sup><br />
The “appropriate passage” mentioned is found in Book V of <i>The History of the Wars</i>. It should be noted that Procopius, as he himself noted, was not alone in detailing some of the events written of in <i>The Anecdota</i>. In the introduction to the Loeb Classical Library version, translated by H.B. Dewing, we find that, “Procopius of ten has the support of the testimony of other writers of his time. Two writers may be quoted here in support both of Procopius’ general thesis and of specific statements made by him.”<sup>43</sup><br />
<br />
Was<i>The Anecdota</i> history, libel or a little of both? As with so much of historical writings, the interested party must read the source documents, consider the context of the times, and draw his own conclusions. As Harry Elmer Barnes noted, “[S]uch books as <i>The Secret History</i> were a natural product of the times. In an absolutism such as that of Justinian’s day, literature of this type tends to flourish, since it is one of the few outlets for suppressed ex asperation.”<sup>44</sup><br />
However, is it not fascinating to speculate on the reaction of a historian, centuries hence, should he uncover a copy of <i>The Secret Life of Bill Clinton</i>? It is not so difficult to imagine him commenting on the book in some fashion such as this: “It is probably the most infamous and scurrilous piece of sustained character assassination in all of literature.”<br />
Despite the moral failings of the population, the Byzantine empire was able to inculcate the moral teachings of Christian ity in the Slavic people, not an insignificant accomplishment and unquestionably a bles sing to European civilization. The By zan tine empire protected Europe for a millennium against the depredations of the Arab and Turk. The fact they did so out of a motive of self-preservation rather than selfless love for their neighbor is irrelevant, as is the fact the Turks eventually broke through the Byzantine impasse and invaded Europe. It is beyond dispute that the European civilization was able to develop its inestimable treasures of art, music, literature, and science for a thousand years because of the defense provided by the Byzantine empire. Not only did the Byzantine empire permit the development of European culture, it actively contributed to that culture as well. The knowledge of the ancient Greeks was hoarded by a faithful few in the Byzantine empire who transmitted the precious learning they had accumulated to Europe, via Italy, in a movement known as the Renaissance.<br />
<br />
<b>FOOTNOTES</b><br />
<sup>1</sup>Durant, 114.<br />
<sup>2</sup>Chamberlain, Vol. I, 302.<br />
<sup>3</sup>Spengler, Vol. II, 89.<br />
<sup>4</sup>Tansey and Kleiner, Vol. I, 291 (italics in the original).<br />
<sup>5</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, Vol. I, 295.<br />
<sup>6</sup>(Sacred, priestly, sacerdotal.—Ed.)<br />
<sup>7</sup>Tierney, Vol. I, 33.<br />
<sup>8</sup>Chamberlain, Vol. I, 150.<br />
<sup>9</sup>(Literally, “coat of mail,” but usually the word refers to a soldier wearing scale armor of the ancient eastern type.—Ed.)<br />
<sup>10</sup>Durant, 424, 425.<br />
<sup>11</sup>Duggan, 208.<br />
<sup>12</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, 209.<br />
<sup>13</sup>Durant, 433.<br />
<sup>14</sup><i>Ibid.</i><br />
<sup>15</sup><i>The Medieval Sourcebook</i>, on the Inter net, gives his birthdate at one point as “c. 490/507” and at another point as “c. 490/510.”<br />
<sup>16</sup>Barnes, 59.<br />
<sup>17</sup>(Procopius’s later life is little known, although he was given the title of <i>illustris</i> in 560 and may have been prefect of Constan tinople in 562-3.—Ed.)<br />
<sup>18</sup>Durant, 125, 26.<br />
<sup>19</sup>Barker, 76.<br />
<sup>20</sup>Toynbee, Vol. I, 194.<br />
<sup>21</sup>Bury, Vol. II, 419.<br />
<sup>22</sup>Procopius, 99, 101.<br />
<sup>23</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, 111, 13.<br />
<sup>24</sup>Procopius, 9.<br />
<sup>25</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, 51.<br />
<sup>26</sup>(Emerging under the reign of Justinian, the Blues and the Greens were similar to political parties. Their colors originally were taken from competing chariot teams. Their leaders were chosen by the state. The Blues represented the old Greco-Roman aristocracy, while the Greens represented trade, industry and the civil service.—Ed.)<br />
<sup>27</sup>Procopius, 87.<br />
<sup>28</sup>Willis, 275.<br />
<sup>29</sup>Gibbon, Vol. II, 582.<br />
<sup>30</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, Vol. II, 582 (italics in original).<br />
<sup>31</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, Vol. II, 610.<br />
<sup>32</sup>Barker, 68.<br />
<sup>33</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, 78.<br />
<sup>34</sup>Durant, 125, 126.<br />
<sup>35</sup>Bury, Vol. II, 424.<br />
<sup>36</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, 426, 27.<br />
<sup>37</sup>Procopius, 3, 5.<br />
<sup>38</sup>Bury, Vol. II, 421.<br />
<sup>39</sup>(Totila or Baduila was the last king of the Ostrogoths. He was thoroughly routed by Narses at a battle near Taginae, in the Apennines west of Ancona, and perished in that fight in 552.—Ed.)<br />
<sup>40</sup>Bury, Vol. II, 428.<br />
<sup>41</sup>Procopius, 55.<br />
<sup>42</sup><i>Ibid.</i>, 189.<br />
<sup>43</sup>Procopius, xiii.<br />
<sup>44</sup>Barnes, 60.<br />
<br />
<b>Bibliography</b><br />
Barker, John, <i>Justinian and the Later Roman Empire</i>, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1966.<br />
Barnes, Harry, <i>A History of Historical Writing</i>, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1937.<br />
Bury, J.B., <i>History of the Later Roman Empire</i> (in two volumes), Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1958.<br />
Chamberlain, Houston, <i>Foundations of the Nineteenth Century</i> (in two volumes), Flanders Hall Publishers, New Orleans, 1988.<br />
Duggan, Alfred, <i>The Story of the Crusades</i>, Faber and Faber, London, 1969.<br />
Durant, Will, <i>The Age of Faith</i> (Volume IV in <i>The Story of Civilization</i>), Simon and Schuster, New York, 1950.<br />
Gibbon, Edward, <i>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i> (in two volumes), Random House, New York.<br />
Procopius, <i>The Anecdota</i> (translated by H.B. Dewing), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969.<br />
Spengler, Oswald, <i>The Decline of the West</i> (in two volumes), Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1926-28.<br />
Tansey, Richard and Kleiner, Fred, Gardner’s <i>Art Through the Ages</i>(in two volumes), Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Forth Worth, 1996.<br />
Tierney, Brian, <i>The Middle Ages</i> (in two volumes), Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1978.<br />
Tierney, Brian and Painter, Sidney, <i>Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1475</i>, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1978.<br />
Toynbee, Arnold, <i>A Study of History</i> (in two volumes), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1946.<br />
Willis, F., <i>Western Civilization, An Urban Perspective</i> (Volume I), D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1977.<br />
<a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-36836347183147319832010-03-22T04:30:00.000-07:002010-03-22T04:30:08.586-07:00Concentration Camp Money<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Lagergeld Used to Pay Prisoners for Their Work<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black;">By Jennifer White<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Far from being the “death camps” as you have heard so often, places like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald were not in the business of extermination. They were work camps, critical to the German war effort. But did you know that the Jewish workers were compensated for their labor with scrip printed specifically for their use in stores, canteens and even brothels? The prisoner monetary system was conceived in ghettos such as Lodz, carried to camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau and still existed in the displaced persons camps that were established by the Allies after World War II. Here is the story of the money the court historians do not want you to even suspect existed.</span><span style="color: #c90000; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">P</span><span style="color: black;">iles of incinerated corpses were indicting images at Nuremberg, used to prove that the German-run concentration camps during World War II were intended for purposes of exterminating the Jews of Europe. How ever, a plethora of documentary evidence, long suppressed, shows that prisoners were relatively well-treated, compensated for their hard work and allowed to purchase luxuries to which even the German public did not have ready access. This is not the image of abject deprivation that the Holocaust lobby would like you to entertain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The irrefutable proof is the existence of a means of exchange for goods and services: Money. There were at least 134 separate issues, in different denominations and styles, for such notorious places as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Oran ien burg, Ravens brück, Westerbork and at least 15 other camps. (See <i>Paper Money of the World Part I: Modern Issues of Europe</i> by Arnold Keller, Ph.D., 1956, pp. 23-25 for a complete listing.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">A monetary system was also in existence in the ghettos, most notably Theriesenstadt and Lodz, which produced beautiful notes (veritable works of art) that make U.S. currency look dull.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">There are numerous dealers in rare currency and numismatics who specialize in selling “concentration camp money” or “Holocaust money” as it has been sometimes called. But the very fact of its existence does not seem to have raised questions—as it should have—about what really did (and did not) happen inside the so-called “death camps” where the Holocaust scrip was circulating in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">This scrip was not negotiable outside of the camp for which it was issued. This decreased the chance of a successful escape and made it impossible for the general public to purchase some of the rare luxuries available in the camps. According to Albert Pick in <i>Das Lagergeld der Konzentrations-und D.P.-Lager: 1933-1945</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Inmates were not paid for the work but were given “coupons” now and then to buy things in the “Kantine”. . . . As the war progressed badly and the number of workers declined, the KZ worker potential became important. Offers of “premiums” and other advantages were made to the inmates, tobacco was offered and even visits to bordellos. . . . In order that these scrips could not be used outside the camps, special money was printed.</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Letter from Prisoner No. 11647 Block 28/3 Dachau KIII on September 8, 1940 to his relative in Litzmannstadt (Lodz):<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">I must write you something about myself. I am very well. In the canteen I buy honey, marmalade, cookies, fruit and other food. If you worry about me, you’ll indeed be committing a sin. I have more reason to worry about you. . . . </span></b><span style="color: black;">(<i>Letters from the Doomed: Concentration Camp Correspondence 1940-1945</i>, Richard S. Geehr.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">There was a payment schedule at Theresienstadt utilizing Th. kr. (There sienstadtkroner) as the unit of exchange. (<i>The</i> <i>Shekel</i> Vol. XVI, No. 2, March-April 1983 p. 29). The breakdown looked like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Working men, according to their jobs: 105-205 Th. kr.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Working women, according to their jobs: 95-205 Th. kr.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Part-time workers: 80 Th. kr.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Caretakers: 70 Th. kr.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">War-wounded and holders of the <i>Iron Cross</i>, First Class degree or higher: 195 Th. kr.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><i><span style="color: black;">Prominente</span></i><span style="color: black;"> (doctors, professors, scientists, well-known cultural artists and politicians): 145 Th. kr.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">To put this in perspective, a cup of coffee cost 2 Th. kr. The circulation in Theresienstadt was such that it was necessary to print over 5 million notes. See <i>Papirove Penize Na Uzemi Ceskosloven ska 1762-1975,</i> Second Edition, 1975, Hradek Kralove, trans. by Julius Sem, pp. 134-135.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The first worker’s camp to have its own scrip was Oranienburg. Before using the camp scrip they used German currency in nearby towns, but the authorities decided to centralize. Currency was exchanged for camp money, less 30%. (<i>The Shekel</i>, Vol XVI, No. 2, March-April 1983, p. 40. “Concentration Camp Money of the Nazi Holocaust” by Steven Feller.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Similarly at Buchenwald:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Each prisoner was allowed up to 10 marks per week to be used for the purchase of cigarettes at the camp canteen, other canteen purchases, brothel visits, or credit to a savings account. The regulations went on to specify that a visit to a brothel would cost 2 marks for which 1.5 marks would be kept by the SS and 0.5 marks would be used for “expenses.” </span></b><span style="color: black;">(<i>Ibid</i>., p. 41.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Was there a similar situation at all of the other camps—at least those that issued currency? As this includes Ausch witz, it would be shocking indeed to even consider marmalade and cigarettes being purchased in this “death camp.” Even the existence of money in camps gives us a look at what life was really like there, yet this information has yet to make it to the History Channel. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">Bibliography</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">American Israel Numismatic Association (Temarac, Florida)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Pick, Albert. <i>Das Lagergeld der Konzentrations-und D.P.-Lager: 1993-1945</i>, Munich, Battenberg Publishers, 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Schöne, Michael H., <i>Das Papiergeld im besetzten Deutschland 1945-1949</i>, Regenstauf: Gietl, 1994.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Stahl, Zvi, <i>Jewish Ghettos and Concentration Camps’ Money, 1933-1945</i>, London: D. Richman Books, 1990.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: black;">See also:</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Campbell, Lance K., <i>Dachau concentration camp scrip</i>, Margate, Florida: American Israel Numismatic Association, 1992.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="color: black;">The Numismatist</span></i><span style="color: black;">, April, 1981, by Steven Feller.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="color: black;">Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine</span></i><span style="color: black;">, 1965, 1996, “POW Money and Medals” by Slabaugh, R. Arlie.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Schultze, Manfred, <i>Unsere Arbeit-unsere Hoffnung: Das Ghetto in Lodz 1940-1945, Schwalmtal: Phil-Creativ</i>, 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Sem, Julius, <i>Standard Catalog of World Paper Money</i>, 1977 (Thereisenstadt notes)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="color: black;">Shtarot</span></i><span style="color: black;">, Vol. I, No. 2, Oct, 1976. Yasha L. Beresiner.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2279673923518442186.post-33221235904927843802010-03-22T03:50:00.001-07:002010-03-22T03:50:38.410-07:00The Peróns: Argentina’s Populist Power Couple<div align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Juan Perón and his wife Evita have been lionized by some, while they have been accused of many evil things by others. Were the Peróns really so bad? Or have they merely been smeared because the populist Perón was not unfriendly to the Third Reich?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">By Robert K. Logan</span><span style="color: #c90000;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000;">U</span><span style="color: black;">nderstandably, the mainstream media have chosen to ignore the first results of the much-ballyhooed “CEANA” investigations into Argentina’s alleged Nazi past. CEANA is the Argentine “Com mis sion of Inquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina” (Comisión Para el Esclarecimiento de las Actividades del Nazismo en la Argentina).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">After more than three years of investigations, CEANA ef fec tively exonerates the Argentine government of incessant malicious charges, accusations and insinuations—generated by the media—of having deliberately harbored countless Nazi war criminals, and ill-gotten art treasures and gold, confiscated from Jew ish victims of World War II. Aside from the unfounded media re ports, sensational books of fiction like Frederick Forsyth’s The Odes sa File and Jorge Camarasa’s Odessa al Sur suggested that a vast network had been established, with the complicity of the Vatican and Juan Perón’s administration, to funnel former SS men and Nazi gold into Argentina. A veritable hysteria, fed by the media, over the alleged presence of Nazis in Argentina has prevailed since World War II. These falsehoods are now being ex posed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">On November 11, 1999, CEANA, an official board of inquiry, issued preliminary findings after a comprehensive and exhaustive investigation. Established by Argentine Foreign Minis ter Guido Di Tella in 1997 to determine the truth about the extent of Nazi infiltration and stolen gold hoards allegedly brought to Argentina by German submarines during the closing days of the war, CEANA was staffed by a team of international scholars, chosen for a belief in their integrity, who, to further ensure their findings would be accepted by the world, were monitored by Jewish academic and media shepherds. The CEANA commission was granted full access to the state archives of the nations of Argentina, the United States, Great Britain, Switzerland, Ger many, Italy, France, Belgium and Portugal.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The researchers, with the concurrence of the Jewish members, found that in fact very few Nazis and Nazi collaborators had entered Argentina. For example, respected historian Carlota Jakisch estimated that some 65 alleged war criminals, including the much-publicized Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele, had succeeded in entering Argentina and thereby escaping Allied “justice,” i.e., the hangman. German historian Holger Meding was able to find that only 45 Nazi war criminals had escaped the victors’ justice by slipping into Argentina. The researchers also verified that 36 French and Belgian and 52 Croatian collaborators had also managed to escape justice in Argentina. Thus, a grand total of fewer than 200 Nazis and Nazi collaborators, of whom only a few could be considered dangerous war criminals, was determined to have entered Argentina.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Admittedly, Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal and other priests were found to have aided several wanted individuals in their time of need, just as they helped Jews earlier, when they were threatened. Some gold and valuables belonging to dubious individuals may have been transferred from Europe to Argentina, the land of silver, but certainly not large quantities. Concerning gold transfers, CEANA reports unequivocally that “Nazi gold never entered the country physically . . . and that any complicity of Ar gen tina Central Bank in transactions related to Nazi gold was, in any case, very marginal.” Further, no official records involving the Perón administration on the matter of gold transfers or looted art have been revealed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Quite naturally, many Germans, who saw no future in Germany in 1945, chose to emigrate to Argentina. Moreover, Argentina, as a Catholic country, has a long tradition, shared with other Latin countries, of permitting its churches to grant sanctuary to individuals in need and of granting defeated military personnel the privilege of seeking safety in exile.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The continued animosity of the Anglo-American Establishment directed against the persons of Juan Domingo Perón and his wife, Eva Duarte de Perón (known as “Evita”), which borders on the pathological, deserves special attention. This enduring animus would be incomprehensible without understanding the history of British imperialism in Argentina and the sociopolitical revolutions of the first half of the 20th century.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The underlying cause of the continuing UK/U.S. hostility toward Argentina stems from the Peróns’ success in freeing the country, albeit temporarily, from its traditional economic dependence on foreign markets and capital, initially British but later American. British and U.S. companies eventually held a virtual monopoly over the Argentine meat-packing, railroad, electric power, pharmaceutical and other industries. In 1933, the controversial Roca-Runciman Treaty seemed to seal the special Argentine-British relationship. It would also have kept Argentina in a quasi-colonial status as agricultural supplier to Britain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Several unforeseen events upset this special relationship. First, the onset of World War II cut Argentina off from its traditional markets and investment sources and forced the country to become more self-sufficient by developing its own industrial and financial base. With modernization and industrialization, the labor unions grew ever more powerful. The long-reigning Argentine oligarchy, with which the British had always dealt, began to lose its privileged position. The very word “autarky” (i.e., national self-sufficiency) is, of course, anathema to international moneylenders.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In 1943 a military coup overthrew the corrupt Castillo government. A young, charismatic colonel, Juan Perón, assumed control of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare of the economically foundering nation. With the indispensable assistance of a fellow colonel, Domingo Alfredo Mercante, who assumed control of the vital Buenos Aires province, Perón’s organizational and leadership qualities won him the support of the working class that be came his main political base.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The bulk of the population in Argentina is of Italian and Spanish extraction. It was quite natural in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when American and British capitalism was on the rocks, which the military and the common people in Argentina turned to Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany as models. Moreover, like Italy, Argentina was a Catholic country with mores and a spirit quite different from those of “Perfidious Albion.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">As Perón’s power increased (he became vice president and minister of war in 1940), the oligarchs and others whose status was now being threatened staged a coup in early October 1945 that ousted Perón from the government. However, the insurgents miscalculated badly, and within a few days Perón’s followers were able to regroup and fight back. Under the leadership of the labor leaders in Buenos Aires and Perón’s loyal friend, Col. Mercante, whom Evita was later to call “the heart of Perón,” massive street demonstrations were staged.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">With World War II concluded and Britain an economic basket case, Perón pushed ahead with his domestic industrialization program, including nationalizing foreign-owned businesses. Joining and reinforcing Perón in this major restructuring of the Argentine economy was Evita, whom he married. A woman fiercely dedicated to her husband and his program, Evita proved a tremendous asset to Perón, who, by 1946, had become president of Argentina. Contrary to American public opinion, Juan Perón’s power did not derive from Evita, but Evita’s from Juan’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Perón himself was referred to as the leader and standard bearer of the descamisados (“the shirtless ones,” i.e., the workers). Perón’s political doctrine was justicialismo (“social justice”) and “the Third Position,” which was opposed to the oligarchs, the communists and the imperialists. Evita Perón, who had a successful career in radio, movies and theater before her marriage to Perón, soon won the affection of the Argentine people. Evita was an extremely effective public speaker, arguing emotionally and dramatically on behalf of Perón’s policies.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000;">E</span><span style="color: black;">vita almost single-handedly took over all welfare in Ar gen tina, opening hospitals, schools, housing projects, orphanages, libraries, homes for the elderly, shelters for the indigent and social security programs—all under the auspices of her Social Aid Foundation. In doing so, she in effect re placed charity with a government aid program. Equally important and long lasting were her support of women’s rights and her championship of the law that gave Argentine women the right to vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">To have accomplished so much in Argentinian society at tests to Evita’s unusual appeal and tact. In her speeches she al ways presented herself modestly as Perón’s “bridge to the people,” never ceasing to defer to and praise her husband, El Presidente. For his part Perón could only be most thankful for his wife’s loyalty and support. Evita’s activities further incurred the wrath of the oligarchs, especially the wealthy Ladies of Beneficence, who had traditionally managed charitable operations in Argentina.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Juan and Evita were a perfect team: he, the strong, macho military leader fighting against communism and imperialism for an independent Argentina; she, childless, frail in appearance, in failing health, the wife and main supporter of her revered husband. Upon her death on July 26, 1952, the government announced: “It is our sad duty to inform the people of the republic that Eva, the spiritual leader of the nation, died at 8:25 p.m.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Perón’s fortunes began to decline following his wife’s death. Europe recovered from World War II, and its industries were again working overtime—supplying South American countries. The United States was now not only helping the British reestablish their pre-Perón privileges but also intervening in Argentine affairs. (The total diplomatic and logistical support the U.S. government gave Britain during the Falkland Islands War in 1982 demonstrated clearly the commonality of U.S-UK policy vis-a-vis Argentina, whose claims to the islands are at least as valid as Britain’s.) Perón’s hopes to establish home industries eventually foundered. Economic distress was soon followed by political action against Perónism.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">In 1955 Perón was ousted in a military coup. The new regime, backed by the oligarchy and other enemies of the Peróns, undertook to dismantle as many of Evita’s innovations and institutions (shelters, schools, hospitals) as it could, especially those bearing her name. Even her body was disinterred and transported out of the country. Perón himself went into exile in Spain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">To discredit Perónism, a campaign of calumny and slander concerning the private lives and character of both Juan and Evita was started, and it continues to this day. He was accused of living with teenage girls and of being a Nazi sympathizer. Evita was maliciously denounced as a common prostitute who stole money from the Eva Duarte Foundation. But the campaign of hate and vilification against the Peróns failed completely in Argentina and most of the Latin world, though the allegations continue to titillate British and American scandalmongers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Juan Perón was returned to power in 1974, and Evita’s body was finally laid to rest in her native land. The Perónist Party continues to exist, but, without an effective leader, it has become very fragmented. While Evita never quite became “Santa Evita,” she is nonetheless fondly remembered by many in present-day Argentina.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">After the war many immigrants from Europe arrived in Argentina seeking to start new lives, as they did in the United States. For historical, ethnic and religious reasons the Argentine government chose not to seek out, pursue, arrest or indict “suspect” Germans who arrived as immigrants after World War II. Was this so terrible? For their own reasons, the United States, Britain and France have themselves elected not to seek out, pursue, arrest, indict or deport Russians, Ukrainians or Jews who were involved in communist crimes, not even those associated with the infamous Gulag system, even though communist crimes lasted over a much longer period, involved millions more victims and were of much more recent origin.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000;">D</span><span style="color: black;">uring the war the United States was an active belligerent, allied with the Soviet Union, while Argentina, remained neutral as long as possible with obvious sympathies for the Italian and German people. Not until March 27, 1944, under great pressure from the United States, did Argentina finally declare war against Germany. None other than Juan Domingo Perón, then minister of war, signed the declaration of war. Moreover, most Argentine exports of raw materials during World War II went to the United States and Britain, not to Germany and Italy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">The international CEANA commission has proved extremely useful in demystifying and dispelling many misconceptions about the extent of Nazi influence in Argentina. The selection of honest, independent and unbiased researchers, with the participation of open-minded Jews, combined with the cooperation of involved states, seems the perfect vehicle for resolving lingering doubts about other controversial events of World War II. It is to be hoped that a similar international commission is established to define—once and for all—the exact parameters of Jewish losses in the holocaust.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #c90000;">Postscript<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Half a century after Eva and Juan Perón established the populist Perónist movement, Perónistas, admittedly of varying convictions and authenticity, continue to control the Argentine Congress and most of Argentina’s provinces. But in his day and awash himself in party power struggles, Juan Perón liked to compare the various warring Perónist factions to cats having sex. “It may seem like they are fighting,” Perón would say, “but they are really just reproducing. In the end, Perónism survives and expands.”<sup>1 </sup></span><span style="color: #c90000;">v</span><sup><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></sup></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: #c90000;">FOOTNOTE:<o:p></o:p></span></sup></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><sup><span style="color: black;">1</span></sup><span style="color: black;">Faiola, Anthony, “Squabbling Perónists Can’t Get It Together,” The International Herald Tribune, Sept. 6, 2002, 2.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.barnesreview.org/">http://www.barnesreview.org</a></div>ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΑΔΗΣhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09229186936689072946noreply@blogger.com0