Hundred Years of War against Germany
In Deutsch: Hundert Jahre Krieg Gegen Deutschland
By Steffen Werner
In August 1895, a series of articles began in the British weekly The Saturday Review, which called for the annihilation of Germany and whose disastrous greed for German plunder still reverberates to the present day.
With the Second Reich, a German state came into being which was rapidly creating a modern economy which imperiled the economic predominance of Great Britain. Coal and steel were the two indicators by which national economies were measured prior to the First World War. The production of raw materials in Germany grew by 334% in the quarter-century before the First World War, from 4 million to 17.8 million tons, while the figures for Great Britain rose from 7.7 to 9 million, therefore an increase of 17%. During the same period the mining of coal in Germany increased from 76.2 to 255.8 million tons (240%) but in Britain only 60%, to 240 million tons. Germany’s foreign trade was reaching proportions alarming to Great Britain. An investigation by the English Parliament in 1885 noted that the Germans produced more cheaply and their products were geared to the preferences of their buyers. Knowledge of languages, tirelessness and flexibility were considered to be the merits of the German commercial travelers. A trademark law was passed in England as a counter-measure, which prescribed that German products be marked “Made in Germany,” yet the British middlemen and consumers nevertheless still often preferred the German goods, on which account the obligatory mark was modified to “Foreign made.”[1]
That this new development was no accident was discovered by Paul Valéry in a British commissioned work from the year 1896, in which the reasons for this new development would be raised to a dogma:[2]
“One learns that the military victories through which this [German] nation established itself are small when compared with the economic triumphs which it has already wrested; already their many markets in the world are more tightly held than the territories which it owes to its army […] one grasps that Germany has turned to industry and trade as it once did to its military: with level-headedness and resolve. One senses that it is omitting no means. If one wishes to explain this new […] greatness, then one should call to mind: constant hard work, most precise investigation of the sources of wealth and unrelenting manufacturing of the means for producing it; exact topography of the favorable sites and most convenient connecting routes; and above all, perfect obedience, a subordination of all motives under a sort of simple, exclusive, powerful thought - which is strategic in form, economic in purpose, scientific in its profound design and its realm of authority. Thus does the totality of the German enterprises have its impact upon us.”
The European upper classes saw their indolent life imperiled by this upswing of the German economy. They were living, according to Max Scheler, in a Paradise:[3]
“For our Eastern neighbors there was more dreaming, plotting, feeling, praying, and quiet submission to the yoke of fate, but also the drinking of schnapps, strolling romantically through life, careless and illicit coarse enjoyment […] For the English, it was easy to buy and sell, according to the old way, accustomed to winning, and in the manner of old grand merchants, proud of the old proven types of goods, without adapting to the needs of customers in the world market […] it was also, however, to enjoy life in sports, wagering, gaming, country life, traveling, to end the week’s work on Friday evening and to go to the sports stadium […] - but to do all this with a matter-of-fact feeling, grounded in the situation and geography of the island, of having been divinely chosen to be Lord of the Sea […] not as a member of Europe, but as a power equal to all of Europe, indeed, a power which was a match for the entire world, equal to guiding the nations outside of Europe, of leading them and of being their political arbiter. And the same paradise meant for France: increasing financial wealth with few children, pensions after 20-30 years of work, great colonial empire, time and idle leisure for luxury, intellect, outward appearances, adventures full of sensuality with beautiful women.”
The terror which the German power of achievement set loose in these European upper classes, was captured by Max Scheler in the parable:
“There […] appeared on their every horizon […] the image of a new, strange archangel, the face […] as severe and iron-like as the old one of the myth, but otherwise quite different […] He bore the stamp of a plain workman, with good, tough fists, he was a man who labored and kept working, on and on, according to the inner testimonial of his own convictions, not in order to outdo or for the sake of some sort of renown, and not for enjoyment apart from or after the work, nor in order to contemplate and admire the beauty of the world in that spare time following work, but quietly and slowly, immersed in his labor, yet with a terror-exciting steadiness, exactitude and punctuality when seen from the outside, and wholly lost within himself and his task, he worked, worked on and kept working - and this the world was least able to grasp - out of pure joy in boundless work in itself - without goal, without purpose, without end. What will become of us, what shall happen to us - felt the nations […] How shall we exist, faced by these new masses? Shall we change ourselves, seeking to emulate him? No and again no! We cannot obey this new demand! But we do not want it and shall not do it!”
In 1895 these upper classes, beginning with Great Britain, formed a War Party against Germany which is still at work today and which will be documented by citations from the years 1895 to 1994.
Delendam, Delendam, Delendam!
The Saturday Review of 24 August 1895:[4]
“OUR TRUE FOREIGN POLICY.
[…] As we have before pointed out, the dominant fact of the situation with regard to our foreign policy is the steadfast enmity of France. We can call this enmity unreasonable or untimely, but its existence is not to be doubted. Some papers, therefore, recommend that England should at once join the Triple Alliance; that Lord Salisbury should promise the German Emperor assistance and support in case of any attack made upon the estates or interests of the Allies in Europe, on condition that the Allies should support England in case of any aggression upon her territories in other parts of the world. For various reasons this policy, although eminently safe, does not altogether please us. First of all, we English have always made war hitherto upon our rivals in trade and commerce; and our chief rival in trade and commerce to-day is not France but Germany. In case of a war with Germany, we should stand to win much and lose nothing; whereas, in case of a war with France, no matter what the issue might be, we stand to lose heavily.”
The Saturday Review of 1 February 1896:[5]
“A Biological View of our Foreign Policy by a Biologist.
The record of the past history of life upon the catch has made us familiar with one phase in the drama of evolution. For countless generations a number of species may have been struggling on tolerably equal terms, now one, now the other, securing some little advantage, when suddenly a turn in the kaleidoscope of the world gives one of them an advantage of real moment. The lucky species multiplies rapidly; it spreads over the land and the seas, its rivals perishing before it or being driven into the most inhospitable corners; […]
The great nations of the earth are local varieties, species in the making. It is not necessary that there should be anatomical distinctions among them; although, indeed, the English, Germans, French, Russians and Americans, Chinese and Japanese, have each their distinct groups of average characters. […]
The world is rapidly approaching the epoch of these last wars, of wars which cannot end in peace with honour, of wars whose spectre cannot be laid by the pale ghost of arbitration. The facts are patent. Feeble races are being wiped of the earth, and the few great, incipient species arm themselves against each other. England, as the greatest of these - greatest in geographical distribution, greatest to expansive force, greatest in race-pride - has avoided for centuries the only dangerous kind of war. Now, with the whole earth occupied and the movements of expansion continuing, she will have to fight to the death against successive rivals. […]
Of European nations, Germany is most alike to England. In racial characters, in religious and scientific thought, in sentiments and aptitudes, the Germans, by their resemblances to the English, are marked out as our natural rivals. In all parts of the earth, in every pursuit, in commerce, in manufacturing, in exploiting other races, the English and the Germans jostle each other. Germany is a growing nation; expanding far beyond her territorial limit, she is bound to secure new foothold or to perish in the attempt. […] Were every German to be wiped out to-morrow, there is no English trade, no English pursuit that would not immediately expand. Were every Englishman to be wiped out tomorrow, the Germans would gain in proportion. Here is the first great racial struggle of the future: here are two growing nations pressing against each other, man to man all over the world. One or the other has to go; one or the other will go. […]
The biological view of foreign policy is plain. First, federate our colonies and prevent geographical isolation turning the Anglo-Saxon race against itself. Second, be ready to fight Germany, as Germania est delenda [Germany must be destroyed]; third, be ready to fight America when the time comes. Lastly, engage in no wasting tears against peoples from whom we have nothing; to fear.”
The Saturday Review of 11 September 1897:[6]
“England and Germany
Prince Bismarck has long recognised what at length the people of England are beginning to understand - that in Europe there are two great, irreconcilable, opposing forces, two greet nations who would make the whole world their province, and who would levy from it the tribute of commerce. England, with her long history of successful aggression, with her marvellous conviction that in pursuing her own interests she is spreading light among nations dwelling in darkness, and Germany, bone of the same bone, blood of the same blood, with a lesser will-force, but, perhaps, with a keener intelligence, compete in every, corner of the globe. In the Transvaal, at the Cape, in Central Africa, in India and the East, in the islands of the Southern sea, and in the fair North-West, wherever - and where has it not ? - the flag has followed the Bible and trade has followed the flag, there the German bagman is struggling with the English pedlar. Is there a mine, to exploit, a railway to build, a native to convert from breadfruit to tinned meat, from temperance to trade gin, the German and the Englishman are struggling to be first. A million petty disputes build up the greatest cause of war the world has ever seen. If Germany were extinguished to-morrow, the day after to-morrow there is not an Englishman in the world who would not be the richer. Nations have fought for years over a city or a right of succession; must they not fight for two hundred million pounds of commerce?
[…] Our work over, we need not even be at the pains to alter Bismarck’s words to Ferry, and to saw to France and Russia ‘Seek some compensation. Take inside Germany whatever you like: you can have it.’ […] ‘Germania esse delendam.’ [Germany must be destroyed[7]]“
Secret speech of Winston S. Churchill in March 1936 in the Lower House:[8]
“For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent […]. Faced by Philip II of Spain, against Louis XIV under William III and Marlborough, against Napoleon, against William II of Germany, it would have been easy and must have been very tempting to join with the stronger and share the fruits of his conquest. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong Powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant whoever he was, whatever nation he led. Thus we preserved the liberties of Europe […].
Observe that the policy of England takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the overlordship of Europe. The question is not whether it is Spain, or the French Monarchy, or the French Empire, or the German Empire, or the Hitler régime. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever is the strongest or the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore, we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German. If the circumstances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-French. It is a law of public policy which we are following, and not a mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances, or likes and dislikes, or any other sentiment.
The question, therefore, arises which is today the Power in Europe which is the strongest, and which seeks in a dangerous and oppressive sense to dominate. Today, for this year, probably for part of 1937, the French Army is the strongest in Europe. But no one is afraid of France. Everyone knows that France wants to be let alone, and that with her it is only a case of self-preservation. Everyone knows that the French are peaceful and overhung by fear. […]
Germany, on the other hand, fears no one. She is arming in a manner which has never been seen in German history. She is led by a handful of triumphant desperadoes. The money is running short, discontents are arising beneath these despotic rulers. Very soon they will have to choose, on the one hand, between economic and financial collapse or internal upheaval, and on the other, a war which could have no other object, and which, if successful, can have no other result, than a Germanised Europe under Nazi control. Therefore, it seems to me that all the old conditions present themselves again, and that our national salvation depends upon our gathering once again all the forces of Europe to contain, to restrain, and if necessary to frustrate, German domination. For, believe me, if any of those other Powers, Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had with our aid become the absolute masters of Europe, they could have despoiled us, reduced us to insignificance and penury on the morrow of their victory.”
Report of Carl J. Burkhardt of a conversation on 15 August 1938 with the Polish foreign minister Beck:[9]
“The Poles are waiting in apparent calm. Beck, during our nocturnal journey, made me privy to his plans to some extent. Furthermore, he is playing his double-game. It is no German game, as many French and the Polish opposition believe. It is a game in which the greatest profit is hoped for Poland, a profit which is supposed to come out of a final and unavoidable German catastrophe. For this reason, the Germans are being encouraged in their wrong actions, and in Danzig they are enjoying letting the extremists triumph while at the same time they repeatedly stress adherence to the outer form of the treaties. One day there will be a reckoning, interest and compound interest will be demanded. Already now, by collaborating in this way with the National Socialists, they have succeeded in creating a solidarity of aversion toward any revision of the treaties in the whole West, in France, England and America. […] That was entirely different in 1932. At that time Western opinion in the great democracies for the most part supported the German minorities. People got excited over badly drawn borders, over isolated provinces. Thanks to the excessive methods of Nazism, all of that has ended, and now in Warsaw they are hoping not only for the unconditional integration of Danzig into the Polish state territory, but for much more, for all of East Prussia, for Silesia, even for Pomerania. In the year 1933 they still spoke in Warsaw of Polish Pomerania, but now they say ‘our Pomerania.’ Beck makes a purely Polish policy, ultimately an anti-German policy, a policy of only a seeming Polish-German détente, since the occupation of the Rhineland and the French passivity at the occasion of this event. But they are making efforts to encourage the Germans quite methodically in their errors.”
Note of Eduard Benesch of August 23/24, 1939, in London:[10]
“It was a properly tough tactic, to drive Hitler to war.”
Report of Friedrich Grimm concerning a visit in May 1945:[11]
“In May 1945, a few days after the collapse, I had a memorable discussion with an important representative of the opposing side. He introduced himself to me as a university professor of his nation who wished to talk with me about the historical foundations of the war. It was a conversation on an elevated level that we were having. Suddenly, he broke off and pointed to the leaflets which were lying on the table in front of me, with which we were flooded in the first days after the surrender and which were mainly concerned with the concentration camp atrocities. ‘What do you say to that?’ he asked me. I replied: ‘Oradour and Buchenwald? You’re beating a dead horse with me. I am an attorney and condemn injustice wherever I meet it, but most of all when it occurs on our side. Nonetheless, I know how to make a distinction between facts and the political usage made of them. I know what atrocity propaganda is. After the First World War, I read all publications of your experts concerning these questions, the writings of the Northcliff bureau, the book ‘From War to Peace’ of the French finance minister Klotz, in which he describes how the fairy tales about the hacked-off children’s hands were invented, and what use was made of them, the enlightening writings of the magazine Crapouillot, which compares the atrocity propaganda of 1870 with that of 1914/1918, and finally the classic book by Ponsonby: ‘Falsehood in Wartime.’ In it, it is revealed that in the previous war they already had magazines in which artificial mountains of corpses were arranged by means of a photo montage with dolls. These pictures were distributed. In doing so, the captions were left blank. They were later inserted telephonically by propaganda headquarters according to need.’ My visitor exploded: ‘I see I’ve come across an expert. Now I also want to say who I am. I am no university professor. I am from the headquarters of which you have spoken. For months I have been conducting what you have correctly described: atrocity propaganda - and with it we have won the total victory.’ I replied: ‘I know and now you must stop!’ He responded: ‘No, now we are just properly beginning! We will continue this atrocity propaganda, we will increase it until no one will have a good word to say about the Germans any longer, until any of the sympathy you have had in other countries will have been destroyed, and until the Germans themselves will have fallen into such confusion that they no longer know what they are doing!’ I ended the conversation: ‘Then you will be taking a great responsibility upon yourself!'”
The British magazine Sunday Correspondent on September 17, 1989, for the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War and of the reunification marking it:[12]
“We must now be honest about the German question, as uncomfortable as it may be for the Germans, for our international partners and even ourselves […] The question remains, in essence, the same. Not how do we prevent German tanks from rolling over the Oder or the Marne, but how Europe will deal with a people whose number, talent, and efficiency is allowing it to become our regional super-power. We did not enter the war in 1939 in order to save Germany from Hitler or the Jews from Auschwitz or the Continent from Fascism. As in 1914, we entered the war for the no less noble reason that we were not able to accept a German predominance in Europe.”
Lech Walesa in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Elsevier of April 7, 1990:[13]
“I do not shrink even from making a declaration which makes me unpopular in Germany. If the Germans destabilize Europe anew in one way or another, one should no longer resort to a division, but rather simply eradicate the nation from the map. The East and the West possess the necessary advanced technologies to carry out this sentence.”
Henry Kissinger in the Welt am Sonntag of November 13, 1994:
“President Clinton’s idea of the USA and Germany as Partners in Leadership was not exactly very wise […] Actually, this notion drives everyone to the barricades, for in the final analysis two world wars were waged in order to prevent just that, a dominant role of Germany.”
The citations imply that all the wars, revolutions, persecutions and expulsions of the 20th century were matter-of-factly initiated by rationally planning nations or were tolerated, for the sake of power and money. In view of the apocalyptic terror and horror resulting from these undertakings, a clear analysis appears more practical than moral accusations.
For the British upper class - and their international partners - war is an entirely normal activity. The British pragmatically ask: How did our forebears hold it? What was their advantage? Did they not, for four hundred years, wage war against their main rival or the strongest continental power? One weighs, like a merchant: is it advantageous to wage war against France, can Austria hurt us? What will war against Germany bring us? 250 million pounds = 5 million marks per year? The security of our predominance? Must we fight against the USA later?
The thought of whether a war is morally defensible does not even occur! For it is, in any case, “tough” to drive someone to war. For war becomes a game, a double-game. For one places snares by quite methodically encouraging the opponent in his errors. In this ‘game,’ the ‘greatest profit’ entices. “Take inside Germany whatever you like”: that’s how one buys allies; for oneself, one takes money. Is it not better that the other, the enemy, totally disappears? Does he not destabilize the situation, imperil the loot, if he has recovered? Is it not better to exterminate the Germans at once? Is it not smarter to eradicate Germany from the map? Germania esse delendam! One has the advanced technologies - by which the neutron bomb is probably meant: the Germans would be dead and the loot intact.
For there is no honorable peace permitted. For the atrocity propaganda is to be continued and increased until no one will any longer have a good word to say about the enemy. The enemy becomes Evil in himself. The objection of Friedrich Grimm, which generally applies to such actions: “Then they will take a great responsibility upon themselves” - fails here. Responsibility toward the enemy does not exist and guilt not at all. Guilt, in this system, is merely a question of power. God isn’t needed here, there is no God permitted! “Thou shalt not kill” devolved into meaningless chatter. Man puts himself in God’s place.
The sponsors embracing such ideas are: a high British politician, Navy Minister of the First World War and Prime Minister of the Second World War; a former Czech state President; a Polish foreign minister of the year 1938; a Polish President of 1990; and a former American Secretary of State.
The continuity with which these ideas are pursued from 1895 to 1994 is alarming, and the matter-of-fact attitude with which not only the ideas, but also their acceptance, are still presumed in 1989 by a probably broad public of a British weekly paper. Baffled, with Kissinger, that here it is no longer preventing a German predominance, which is discussed, since even the thought of a Germany as partner of the USA is pronounced dangerous.
Winston Churchill and Thomas More
What is the intellectual-historical background of the continuity of British policy? The model can be found in Utopia by Thomas More. Utopia, misread as social design, is a state with an aristocracy of priests, in which the priests are subject to no public court but only to god and their conscience. The system of government of the Utopians encompasses, in addition to the much-cited social model, a model for world rulership as well. Through the over-valuation of the “utopian” social model, the significance of More’s ideas for the British power policy has been misapprehended - and, at least in this century, forgotten.[14]
Machiavelli had the Prince rule over his people and maintain himself against his neighbors. The Utopians, however, have mastery over the world. They decide worldwide over what is just and unjust, so, if “their friend’s merchants in any part of the world have been unjustly accused under some pretext of justice, either by using unjust laws speciously or by interpreting good laws perversely.” The Utopians are the ruling economic power of their world.[15] They hoard and pile up money, for money is the source of their power, the breaking off of trade relations one of their preferred weapons. In case of war, they buy soldiers and traitors with money, or sow discord between their foes, without any kind of moral restriction: “So easy it is to get someone to commit any crime whatsoever by means of bribe.” Thanks to their wealth, most nations are in debt to them.[16] Along with Churchill, one can find in Utopia the foundations for a credo of Liberalism.[17]
Utopia, which appeared exactly 379 years before the first Saturday Review article, seems to have served British policy as a handbook. Even when it was published it was understood to be a political roman à clef: “In truth, the utopian flag marks British goods.”[18] Set pieces from Utopia, which seem very familiar to the Germans, have left their imprint upon classical British policy: “[…] they stir up neighboring people and set them against their enemy by digging up ancient claims such as is never lacking to kings.”[19] The mercilessness in conduct of war can also be found there. “Certainly, whether the cause was just or unjust, it was avenged by a hideous war, in which the surrounding nations also added their energy and resources to the hostile forces of the major opponents so that some prosperous peoples were ravaged, others were badly shaken.”[20] Also from More came the advice of having others fight for one, for in addition to mercenaries “they use the forces of those for whom they have taken up arms, and after that the auxiliary troops of their friendly nations. As a last resort do they add their own citizens.”[21] (There are still numerous other references here to British policy, to deal with which would lead us too far afield.)
When Winston Churchill, in his secret speech of 1936 - 420 years after More had written the first part of his Utopia - adduced, as a four-hundred-year British policy, the struggle against the ruling tyrant, and then went on to claim: “thus we preserved the liberty of Europe,” he was arguing in the tradition of the Utopians:[22]
“Therefore, […] they are reluctant to go to war and also only […] out of compassion and humanity, they use their force to liberate oppressed people from tyranny and servitude.”
Charles VIII of France was viewed as an actual tyrant by More. In Utopia, More discusses his concrete situation in a fictional discussion between Charles VIII and his counselors.[23] With the pretense of disgust, the utopian techniques are illustrated here of inflaming others toward the actual enemy by means of money and plunder. In 1511 England entered the Holy League, by which the beginning of this four-hundred-year-old British war policy invoked by Churchill was probably made.
Common Sense…
The Saturday Review articles appeared anonymously between 1895 and 1897. But what sort of magazine was this? The German Brockhaus encyclopedia of 1908 mentions it as “imperialist ‘magazine’ published since 1855 with witty reviews of Engl., Fr. and German literature”[24] In accordance with its importance, it is found in many German libraries, and the annual series from 1855 are partially extant. There is not much that can be said about the readers, but they must surely have come from the educated upper class. A judgment concerning the contributors, among whom can be found many illustrious British names, is more easily made. Many of them published several times, a portion of them on a regular basis.
Many of the articles appear anonymously, which gives an even greater weight to the list of names, since it seems to have been customary in England for high-ranking and wealthy persons to have others write for them.[25] But in the period between 24 August 1895 and 11 September 1897, in which this series of articles appeared, there are renowned British names: G. Bernard Shaw,[26] H. G. Wells,[27] Winston S. Churchill,[28] W. B. Yeats,[29] Conan Doyle,[30] Henry M. Stanley,[31] Rudyard Kipling,[32] and Algernon Charles Swinburne.[33] Four of those named received Nobel prizes and one was very influential in the First World War and was the key figure in British politics in the Second World War.
The reputation of many other contributors is so significant that they are still named even 70 years later in one other German encyclopedia,[34] from which also the information about the authors was taken: Sir Max Beerbohm,[35] English writer and caricaturist from the circle around Wilde and Beardsley; John Bagnell Bury,[36] classical philologist and historian, professor at Cambridge and one of the most important scholars in the field of late ancient and Byzantine history, editor of E. Gibbons’ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Stephen Crane,[37] American writer, a friend of J. Conrad, H. James and H. G. Wells; John Davidson,[38] Scottish poet and dramatist; Charles Wentworth Dilke,[39] editor of the periodical Athenaeum as well as Member of the Lower House 1868-86 and 1892-1911, in the Foreign Office under Gladstone 1880-82 (Bit.-Fr. Trade Agreement of 1882), publicist and representative of a liberal imperialism; Edward Dowden,[40] British historian of literature, professor in Dublin; Richard Garnett,[41] English writer and Librarian at the British Museum; Frank Harris,[42] American writer of Anglo-American descent and owner of The Saturday Review, who appointed G. B. Shaw as theater critic; William Henry Hudson,[43] English writer, whose books are distinguished by the exactitude of their descriptions of Nature; Sir Oliver Lodge,[44] British physicist, professor at Liverpool and first President of the University in Birmingham; Margaret Macdonald,[45] British proponent of arts and crafts, formed the Glasgow School in Birmingham with her sister and her husband, Ch. R. Mackintosh; Frederic William Henry Myers,[46] English writer, co-founder of the Society of Psychical Research; Coventry Patmore,[47] English poet; Sir Will(iam) Rothenstein,[48] British painter and graphic artist, influenced by Degas and Whistler, official painter of the war for the British and Canadian army in the First and Second World War; Arthur Symons,[49] English lyric poet and critic, most zealous advocate of Symbolism in England; Silvanus Phillips Thompson,[50] British physicist, Professor at Finsbury, made contributions to the history of Natural Science; Alfred Russel Wallace,[51] British zoologist and explorer; the impressions obtained from his journeys suggested to him the idea of natural selection by means of selection in the struggle for existence. Darwin intentionally beat him to publication and created with Bates the theory of mimicry; Sir William Watson,[52] English lyric poet, honored several times, yet not named “Poet Laureate,” because he was an opponent of the policy of empire, from which an opposition to the above ideas may be deduced. The contributors were for the most part recruited from the wealthy educated middle class. I have scarcely found any well-known military figures, apart from two names: General Neville Chamberlain,[53] an old veteran of 70 from India, who does not appear in the above lexicon; in any case, he is probably distantly related to the political Chamberlain family, and Admiral Colomb,[54] the inventor of the Colomb signal apparatus.
Not one of these authors and not any of the readers objected to the proposals in The Saturday Review for the destruction of Germany or dismissed them as insane ideas, not even after these ideas were repeatedly put forward. The global lay-out of the idea of destruction with the biological and historical recourse to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, the analogy of Rome = Great Britain and Carthage = Germany, and the reference to Cato with his inflammatory speech for war: “Ceterum censeo Carthiginem esse delendam” reveals the wire-pullers. Thus it was only consistent when further articles and letters to the editor were anchored upon the notion of destruction. The comparison of the British and the Roman Empire surfaced in a clear allusion to an appeal to destroy Germany in other texts in The Saturday Review in 1896. J.B. Bury[55] analyzed the causes of the fall of Rome through the invasion of the Germans, in which he ascertained that Rome fell, not because of a moral decline, but rather because it did not possess at least a small class with a pronounced will to power. But Great Britain - according to Bury - possessed this class! In an anonymous letter to the editor of a “GREATER ENGLANDER”[56] responding to the article by Bury, a superior fleet was promoted as the basis for the British world empire.
The growth of Germany’s economic power was suspiciously observed. Above all, the increase in the German iron and steel exports was followed objectively in editorial articles[57] or excitedly in an anonymous letter to the editor from a “Perplexed.”[58] But beyond this, a monster-image of Germany was also constructed. In order to prepare the path for replacing France with Germany as the arch-enemy, the English reader learned how unpopular the German and how well-liked the Frenchman was in England of those days, a fact that an Englishman who lived in England would not, however, have needed to learn from the newspapers. As another example, the war between Denmark and the German confederation in 1864 was falsified into in attack of Prussia against Denmark.[59] As one of the few strategically placed exculpatory articles, one can possibly name an essay on Martin Luther, which refers to the fact that Luther makes the individual obligated to God before anything else.[60]
…and its Antipode
Only George Bernard Shaw vehemently objected in the most manifold ways by word and deed to these ideas from 1898, although at first in a veiled manner, to the extent that he has become the chief witness for the prosecution against Great Britain. But in Germany the connection between Shaw’s protests and the battle cry “Germania esse delendam” was not recognized.
Shaw’s historical drama Caesar and Cleopatra, which appeared in 1898, is a unique answer to the insane ideas of the British middle class of The Saturday Review. The argument runs through the prologue, the drama and notes. In the play, Rome - analogous to Great Britain - stands at a crossroads. Shaw juxtaposes to the image of the old, power-hungry Rome which, like Pompey, claimed to “being himself a god”,[61] the other, new Rome of Caesar. By breaking with the old Rome, Caesar leads it to greatness and endurance.
Shaw glorifies Caesar as a duty-bound, kind and wise statesman. Thus, as if Shaw had had a presentiment of the Moscow show-trials, he has Caesar throw into the sea incriminating letters which his secretary Britannus (!), a repugnant character, proudly presented him because by using them Caesar would have power over his enemies. Caesar to Britannus:[62]
“Would you have me to waste the next three years of my life in proscribing and condemning men who will be my friends when I proved that my friendship is worth more than Pompey’s - than Cato’s. [who at this time had been dead for 100 years and whose slogan “Cathago esse delendam” was annulled by Caesar] O incorrigible British Islander: am I a bull dog, to seek squarrels merely to shew show how stubborn my jaws are?”
In another scene, in desperate straights, in the spirit of old Rome inevitably at the start of a chain of murders, Caesar opposes this path and prophetically warns:[63]
“And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race than can understand.”
Instead of the statesman for Great Britain whom Shaw portrayed in his writing, Shaw found only Sir Edward Grey, “an unscrupulous imposter and fool, and worse […] than Caesar Borgia”,[64] and so twenty years later, he was no longer thinking of the welfare of Great Britain and the world, but only of that of his own soul. In Heartbreak House, which was written between the years 1913 and 1919, in imitation of Chekhov, he creates a portrait of the idle European society to which Scheler also makes reference. For Shaw, the attitude toward life of this class is typical for all nations of Europe:[65]
“The same nice people, the same extreme superficiality […] they hated politics, they did not want the land of Utopia realized for the common man. They wanted their pet fantasies and favorite verses realized in their own lives, and if they were able to manage it, they lived lightheartedly from an income which they did nothing to earn!”
In Heartbreak House, an old seaman and a young girl - who, it seems to me, embody the young and the aging Shaw - encounter each other. The old man, paraphrasing Matthew 16:26, warns the young girl that she should be careful:[66]
“It is clever to win the whole world and thereby lose your soul. But do not forget that your soul does not abandon you if you hold it firmly; only the world has its way of melting away in your hands.”
So much for the writer and his work. We will be returning yet to the politician and his words.
The Tough Kernel
The authors of the three anonymous articles quoted in the beginning are partly known. Concerning the author of the first article of August 24, 1895: “The Proper Foreign Policy for Us English,” Hans Grimm, who in 1895 was in Great Britain as a young businessman, learned this about his host:[67]
“And it happened by chance that my boss, who himself belonged to the English Conservative Party, had been unexpectedly informed that that essay of August 24, 1895, on English foreign policy had originated from a quite definite faction in the English Foreign Office, directed by the half-German, Sir Eyre Crowe.”
Behind the biologist, the author of the article of February 1, 1896: “A Biological Perspective on our English Foreign Policy by a Biologist,” is concealed Sir P. Chalmers Mitchell, Professor of Astronomy and Biology at Oxford, as Hans Grimm likewise discovered.[68] According to Grimm, Mitchell was a Captain in the British General Staff from 1916 to 1919 and had connections
to Crowe.
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Sir Eyre A.B.W. Crowe |
Information about the group around Crowe is given in a diary note of October 12, 1918, of First Lieutenant C. Repinton, in which he writes that Crowe, Mallet, and Tyrell will be going as negotiators from the Foreign Office to the planned peace conference. Moreover, he maintains:[69]
“They joined the F.O. between 1885 and 1893, and, with Carnock and Bertie, were the head and front of the anti-German party all along, vexed at our surrenders to Germany and persuaded that Germany planed our ruin. Between them they made the German peril the central feature of our foreign policy.”
There is still one more to be counted as belonging to this circle of the F.O., whose significance for the outbreak of the First World War can hardly be overestimated: Sir Edward Grey.
In 1892, Edward Grey became parliamentary Under-Secretary under Lord Rosebery, who took over the Foreign Office. In 1895 Rosebery is voted out and Grey loses his office. Grey writes that these years were “very important” for his life.[70]
To these experiences clearly belongs also the world-view that England must oppose Germany and turn to France. In his memoirs, couched in a very vague diplomatic language, we read:[71]
“In light of after-events, the whole policy of these years from 1896 to 1904 may be criticized as having played into the hands of Germany.”
Concrete criticism is expressed by Grey in this manner:[72]
“We relied on German support i and we received it; but we never could be sure when some price for that support might not be extracted.”
The England of Grey wanted to remain the sole master of the world and not share the power with anyone, most certainly not Germany. This is the basic thought, which runs through Grey’s memoirs, and his joy when the British policy of 1904 draws closer to France expresses itself effusively in comparison with his otherwise dry text:[73]
“The real cause for satisfaction was that the exasperating friction with France was to end, and that the menace of war with France had disappeared. The gloomy clouds were gone, the sky was clear, and the sun shone warmly. Ill-will, dislike, hate, whether the object of them be a person or a nation, are a perpetual discomfort; they come between us and all that is beautiful and happy; they put out the sun. If the object be a nation with whom our interests are in contact, they poison the atmosphere of international affairs. This had been so between Great Britain and France. […] That was all to be changed; it was to become positively pleasant, where we had seen before only what was repellant; to understand and to be understood where before there had been misrepresentation and misconstruction; to have friends instead of enemies - this, when it happens, is one of the great pleasures of life.”
Of course, the price for this was “perpetual discomfort,” “poison,” “misrepresentation,” and “misconstruction” in the relationship to Germany, but that did apparently not let anything come between Grey and “all that is beautiful and happy.” In Grey’s eyes, France was no longer a match for England, whereas Germany was about to outperform England economically. In 1905, Grey took over the Foreign Office and subsequently surrounded himself with the gentlemen from the anti-German circle of the Foreign Office. Crowe, Mallet, Tyrell, and Bertie all reached key positions and collaborated closely with Grey. Carnock is the only one about whom I did not find anything. Bertie had already previously been ambassador in Paris and in future formed one of the pillars of the new British policy.[74] According to Margaret Bovari, the ambassadors of the most important European nations were exchanged under Grey, but the Parisian embassy, with Sir F. Bertie, remained unchanged, and “it emerges from the private letters between him and Grey that close relations and an excellent accord must have prevailed between the two men.” From 1905 to 1906, Louis Mallet was Private Secretary to Grey, and from 1906 to 1907, he was Senior Clerk in the Foreign Office. From 1907-1913, he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and diplomat in Constantinople between 1913 and 1914. Margaret Boveri sees the influence of Mallet upon Grey as having been “considerable” and numbers him “amongst the most zealous advocates of English-Russian friendship. Still more pronounced with him than this tendency is the anti-German attitude.” William Tyrell was Senior Clerk in the Foreign Office from 1907 to 1918 and from 1907 to 1915 he was Private Secretary to Edward Grey.[75]
In his memoirs, Grey especially emphasized Tyrell and writes in reference to him:[76]
“The public little or no means of knowing how much it owes in public service to special gifts and qualities in individual civil servants in high positions in thr Department of State. In each case, where such qualities exist, a man renders service peculiarly his own, besides taking an able part in the conduct of business in the Department. […] I had the occasion, in office to know the great value of Tyrell’s public service; but the thing that is prize is our friendship, that began in the Foreign Office, and has continued uninterrupted and intimate after official ties ceased.”
Eyre Crowe finally became Senior Clerk in the Foreign Office in 1906 and was Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1912 to 1920.[77] His role in the British policy toward Germany cannot be overestimated. For Hermann Lutz, expert in the investigatory committee of the Reichstag for the war-guilt question, Eyre Crowe is “the Evil Spirit of the Foreign Office.”,[78] and Margaret Boveri confirms this:[79]
“Although we […] must assess his direct influence upon the daily decisions in the Foreign Office as small [because of his relatively low position; due to his German mother he presumably climbed only slowly], his fixed stance was however surely of enormous effect upon the shaping of the atmosphere which prevailed in the Western Department and from which policy was made.”
It should be briefly remarked - this will be developed later - that from a subordinate position, as expert on Germany, Crowe decisively influenced official policy several times. Edward Grey himself gives Crowe prominent mention in his memoirs:[80]
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Sir Edward Grey |
“It has been a great satisfaction since I left office to see great knowledge, ability and unsurpassed devotion to the public service recognized in the promotion of Sir Eyre Crowe to be head of the Foreign Office.”
And he added as a footnote:
“Since these words were written the public service of the country has suffered an irreparable loss in the death of Sir Eyre Crowe.”
Under Grey, the anti-German circles which were behind the Saturday Review article of 1895, thereby ascended to key positions.
Grey knew portions of the pattern of thinking there and approved indirectly. Thus, Grey recorded a conversation of 28 April 1908 with Clemenceau and considered it to be so important that he included it as one of the few documents in his memoirs. There we read:[81]
“M. Clemenceau had some conversation with me at the Foreign Office this morning.
He dwelt with great emphasis upon the certainty that we should have to intervene on the continent of Europe against any power which attained a position of domination there, just as we had had to do in the time of Napoleon.
He said we ought to be prepared for this. […] He felt this to be most important. The fate of Napoleon had been decided not at Trafalgar but at Waterloo. And so it would have to be again, in the case of any Power which attempted to dominate the continent.”
Clemenceau is consciously making use of those modes of thought from the Saturday Review articles in order to drive England into war against Germany, and Grey responds in such a way that not only are these modes of thought familiar to him, but he is also influenced by them. This is also shown by a quotation from Grey, which is found in Margaret Boveri:[82]
“The Germans are not clear about the fact that England always has gotten into opposition to or has intentionally proceeded against any power which establishes a hegemony in Europe.”
By his conduct, Grey deceived many Germans about his anti-German attitude, and not only diplomats but also scientists, to the extent that caused Hans Rothfels to derisively refer to the remark of a Prussian artillery lieutenant concerning Napoleon:[83]
“A kindhearted fellow, but stupid, stupid.”
As a contributor to The Saturday Review in the years from 1895 to 1897, G.B. Shaw was of course familiar with the anti-German development and surely knew the authors of the articles agitating against Germany. He tried to warn the German ambassador Lichnowsky in London about Grey and his policy. He laid out a proposal to Lichnowsky. Shaw:[84]
“He rejected it without reflecting for a moment. It was inappropriate [he said], because Sir Edward Grey was one of the greatest living statesmen, moreover the most sincere friend of Germany. I could […] not raise my hands to heaven and, with Huss, cry out: Sancta simplicitas [holy simpleton]! Besides, it was of course Lichnowsky, not I, who was going to the stake. […] It was not my task to enlighten the Duke about the fact that he was walking straight into a trap.”
A trap so thorough in construction that Shaw writes concerning the British wirepullers on the occasion of the outbreak of the First World War:[85]
“They felt in this important hour, as though England was lost if but a single traitor in their midst let out into the world a tiny kernel of truth about anything.”
From 1905 onward, the Foreign Office begins systematically to construct a front with Russia and France against Germany. This development is proven on the basis of the public documents from the German side after the lost war. Crowe, but not only he, worked systematically against Germany through numerous papers, but above all through his memorandum of January 1, 1907,[86] in which he claimed that Germany was striving for world rule and wanted to secretly attack England. In a counter-expert opinion, Sanderson, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1894 to 1906, dismissed the worst distortions in Crowe’s memorandum. Grey passed the paper on only to his like-minded comrades; otherwise it went nowhere.[87]
It would lead us too far afield to present all the lies, distortions, misrepresentations and ploys with which Grey, Crowe, and Company prepared the way for a war against Germany. They have been thoroughly explored to the last detail in many investigations in Germany.[88]
G.B. Shaw has reduced the First World War to this nullity:
“The present destruction of the German military power is […] a completely regular operation of British foreign policy, which was executed according to plan with all the resolve, patience, cunning and power which we in England are accustomed to use, and with overwhelming success. But likewise also, however, with the amazing English talent of veiling from oneself what one is doing. The Englishman never knows what the ‘Foreign Office’ is up to; […] An instinct tells him that it is better for him […] not to know.”
The whole text is rife with such quotations and others, which describe the techniques and partly the motive of British imperialism. Concerning the key role of Grey and his methods, one more citation:
“Grey was not ruined over his mistakes; rather, for him the fact became fatal that the necessity of feeding the British public a children’s fairy-tale about the nature and causes of the war made it impossible for him to highlight his triumph; for this was of a kind which he himself had described as machiavellian.”
There is also a solid fact, which proves that Shaw knew exactly what he was talking about, that he knew the fundamental ideas of Grey. In 1912, he made a public proposal for how the peace could be kept; that is what he had also laid out to Lichnowsky:[89]
“In order to avoid war, England would have to strengthen its army as guardian over the balance of powers and officially and unambiguously declare that in the event of a German attack on France, it will throw its sword onto the scales in favor of the latter. But on the other hand, it would have to give its assurance that it will defend Germany in the event the latter is attacked by Russia or France or by both.”
According to all that is known today, the First World War of 1914 would not have happened. Germany would have been able to calmly put up with the parade from Russia toward its borders!
The Enemy as Criminal
War as Armageddon, where the opponent is no longer only the opponent and, ultimately, the defeated party, but is, rather, absolute Evil, had already been prognosticated by the Saturday Review on February 1, 1896. After the Second World War this path was then consistently trodden by means of war crimes trials and more. That these trials were directed against Germany as such is shown by the Charter of the United Nations, which withholds human rights and the right to self-determination from Germany. Since the Charter is also directed against Japan, which is, however, not charged with ‘unique’ crimes, the true background becomes obvious: it was directed against the two great non-Western economic powers and therefore was about safeguarding the most sacred treasure of the West: the key to power and material wealth.
War crimes trials were already demanded by the victors at the end of the First World War. The behavior of Eyre Crowe allows us to presume that he was the political initiator of this demand, unusual in modern European history. Lutz writes:[90]
“It is typical that the statements of the German delegation in Paris regarding the extradition of the German ‘war criminals’ made a certain impression upon all, apart from the representative of England, Sir Eyre Crowe, who conducted himself in a completely negative way and was almost offensive.”
Winston S. Churchill, who was connected to these circles and their activities not only through his collaboration at The Saturday Review, subsequently promote the continuation of this British policy; he also had an affectionate relationship with Grey, about which Wilfrid Scrawen Blunt reports in his diaries:
“Winston nevertheless wants nothing to be said about Grey other than that he is a shining example of an Englishman, the best of his type, and they are obviously good friends; in fact, Grey is the godfather of Winston’s son.”
His role as Navy minister is well-known, in which he brought about an assemblage of the British Mediterranean fleet by an order of July 30, 1914, that is, before the outbreak of the war, which, in case of in a war between Germany and France, would have pulled England into the war under any circumstances, even without a marching through Belgium of German troops.[91]
“Quite a few things seem to have been handed down here due to the brisk-and-lively manner in which Churchill wanted to see foreign policy conducted,” according to Margaret Boveri, who also cites a letter from Mallet to Grey, which warns against indiscretions which “will slip out of Churchill during maneuvers.”[92] To this character weakness of Churchill we presumably owe knowledge of the secret speech of March 1936, which was cited above. The text of the speech was passed on in April 1936 to the German embassy in London.[93] After the Second World War, Churchill published the speech in The Second World War - The Gathering Storm in the Boston edition of 1948. Presumably there was some intervention, since in the London edition of 1948 and naturally, of course, in the German edition, it is missing!
Here Churchill declares:
“For, believe me, if any of these other powers, like Spain, Louis XIV, Kaiser Wilhelm, had become absolute ruler of Europe through our assistance, then they would have robbed us and on the morning after their victory have condemned us to insignificance and poverty.”
Here it is once again, the void which is the gist of it all: power and money - the rest is window-dressing! Neither the victory over Spain, nor that over Louis XIV or Napoleon, which of course also belongs in this roll call, led to the triumph of democracy in these nations! How things went for the people in these systems was a matter of total indifference to the powerful in Great Britain - and democracy, which was allegedly so important according to Western propaganda, was not only withheld from the French and the Spanish, but also from their own subjects.[3]
For had the struggle really been waged against the tyrant and for democracy, then British policy would have had to vehemently and energetically oppose the Soviet Union, be it only by means of continuous massive support of the Whites against the Reds. In the 20th century, morality was discovered as a weapon and directed against Germany. By labeling the enemy a criminal, one justifies any crime against him! By raising his crimes to the status of ‘uniqueness,’ one relativizes and trivializes any other crime into insignificance!
False Parallels
As is well known, Rome and Carthage fought three wars, Great Britain and Germany, so far, only two! Since Germany has been reunified and Communism has collapsed, as a result of which German assistance against the Soviet Union is no longer needed, this Carthage Syndrome surfaced again. Kissinger and Walesa, whose greed for loot is immeasurable, were cited. But there are still other texts without aggressive background, which give reason for hope.
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Sir Hartley Shawcross, Chief Prosecutor for Great Britain at the Nuremberg war crime trials, feels ashamed for having been an accomplice with the Soviets in delivering Europe to Stalinism. (Click to enlarge) |
On March 12, 1948, a few days after the downfall in the CSR and the subsequent suicide of Jan Masaryk, the Chief Prosecutor for Great Britain at the Nuremberg war crime trials, Sir Hartley Shawcross, stated according to the London Times:[94]
“Step by step I have been forced more and more to the conclusion that the aims of Communism in Europe are sinister and deadly aims.
I prosecuted the Nazis in Nuremberg. With my Russian colleagues I condemned Nazi aggression and Nazi terror.[[95]] I feel shame and humiliation now to see under a different name the same aims pursued, the same technique followed, without check.”
The international edition of the U.S. magazine Newsweek wrote on May 8, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of the German Armed Forces:[96]
“The chiefs of state who are assembling this week for the solemn remembrance of the end of the Second World War, will formally dedicate themselves to the theme of reconciliation. The winners of the year 1945 showed toward the losers an unusual degree of generosity, as they had not done after the First World War - with disastrous consequences. However, the state which first brought about this reconciliation will not be taking part in the gathering. It is the Soviet Union, whose ideological menace caused the victorious Western powers to put Germany and Japan on their feet again in the framework of a free-market economy and political democracy. More closely considered, this war did not end even in 1945. Those who were waging war merely found themselves in new systems of alliances, and with modified tactics. The end did not come until 1990-91, when Germany was reunified and the Soviet Union imploded. According to this general view of the chronology, it can be said that the war lasted seventy-five years. The Kaiser and Hitler lost and Germany has won.”
And the German government? A small episode proves that those who govern there know much better than the governed what is going on globally. When then British Prime Minister John Major, in his address in Berlin for the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, spoke of the second Thirty Years War from 1914-1945:
“Fifty years ago Europe saw the end of the 30 Years War, 1914 to 1945. The slaughter in the trenches, the destruction of cities and the oppression of citizens: all these left a Europe in ruins just as the other 30 Years War did three centuries before.”
The Bulletin of the German government (No. 38, May 12, 1995) falsified the text of the speech into:
“Vor fünfzig Jahren erlebte Europa das Ende der dreißig Jahre, die nicht einen, sondern zwei Weltkriege beeinhaltet hatten. Das Gemetzel in den Schützengräben, die Zerstörung der Städte und die Unterdrückung der Bürger hinterließen ein Europa in Trümmern, gerade, wie es einige Jahrhunderte zuvor der Dreißigjährige Krieg getan hatten.”
In English:
“Fifty years ago, Europe experienced the end of the thirty years which encompassed not one, but two world wars. The slaughter in the trenches, the destruction of cities and the oppression of citizens left behind a Europe in ruins, just as the Thirty Years War had done some centuries before.”
But still weeks after the speech, the British embassy sent the upper text with the clear formulation “the other 30 Years War”! By the will of the German Federal Government, the fact that Major sees the First and Second World War as parts of a single event, was not allowed to become publicly known in Germany.
Berthold Brecht once wrote warningly, with an eye on Germany:[97]
“Great Carthage waged three wars. It was still powerful after the first, still inhabitable after the second. After the third, it could no longer be found.”
After the First World War, a foreign diplomat expressed to Churchill:[98]
“In the twenty years of my residency there, I was witness to a profound and total revolution in England, even as the French Revolution was. The ruling classes in your country have been almost completely robbed of their political power and, to a large extent, their prosperity and property as well; and all this […] without the loss of a single human life.”
The European upper classes, the idle ones of Scheler and Shaw, who wanted to be “clever” as they went out of their way to start a war, they have paid! Anastasia, the wife of the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch - who, in 1914 after a murder in Sarajevo, is supposed to have called out triumphantly to Poincaré: “War will break out. Nothing more will remain of Austria […] Germany will be destroyed!”[99] - lost everything!
In 1947, after the Second World War, India, the Crown of the British Empire, became independent. Egypt freed itself from Great Britain and subsequently Great Britain had to cede the Suez Canal. In 1957 the Gold Coast became the first independent state of Black Africa, after which a large number of colonies followed. Churchill had yet to learn what Shaw knew: that the world for which one exchanged one’s soul, had its own way of melting in one’s hands. Not even the First, and most certainly not the Second World War, Great Britain was able to win by its own resources! From a position as master of the world, Great Britain was relegated to insignificance, and the descent seems not to have come to an end yet. New powers are arising. Their influence, by means of the modern terrorist techniques of war and the unhesitating way with which they are used, can easily grow to extreme proportions. They are staking claims and creating new centers of conflict. They threaten to unite the Islamic powers and Fundamentalism. A new war against Germany would propel their power into the stratosphere. It is to be feared that powerful groups will continue not to see that the world of today is much larger than the White man’s world.
In any case, the analogy of Rome = Great Britain and Carthage = Germany is false. For Carthage was the commercial and sea power and Rome the land power of antiquity! Brecht was a master of language, but had no head for politics. His history would tell a different story today: Great Britain won two wars. It was still powerful after the first, still inhabitable after the second. Does anyone seriously believe that Great Britain could dare to wage yet a third war against Germany?
Notes
| [1] | Heinrich Fried Jung, Das Zeitalter des Imperialismus 1884-1914, Vol. 1, Berlin 1919, p. 230, 80. |
| [2] | Paul Valéry, Eine methodische Eroberung, Zürich, New York 1946. p. 9; Cf. also: Hans-Dietrich Sander, Der nationale Imperativ, Krefeld 1980. p. 116ff. |
| [3] | Max Scheler, Die Ursachen des Deutschenhasses, Leipzig 1917. p. 61ff. Concerning Great Britain, cf. also Winston S. Churchill, Meine frühen Jahre. Weltabenteuer im Dienst, Munich 1965, 4th ed., p. 79. There it says:“In those days English society still had kept its old form and tradition, a shining and impressive Whole, of a highly elevated standard of behavior and conduct, and with sure methods of establishing their general acceptance, as today they are completely forgotten. Thus each man quite knew each man, and knew who he was. The few hundred Great Families who ruled England for many generations and had experienced the ascent of the country to the zenith of its glory, were related by marriage to the utmost degree. Everywhere one went, one met friends or relatives. The leading personalities of Society were often at the same time the leading statesmen in Parliament and likewise the leading sportsmen on the turf. Lord Salisbury always carefully avoided summoning the cabinet when there was racing at Newmarket; and the lower House basically held no sessions during the Derby.” This testimony of the British upper class reveals the talk of British democracy to be pure hypocrisy. Editor’s note: In the English edition of this book, My Early Years. A Roving Commission, Butterworth, London 1930, I did not find the passages Werner quotes here and in note [98]. |
| [4] | Quoted by Hans Grimm, Warum-Woher-Aber wohin, Lippoldsberg 1954. p. 33. For the original see “Our True Foreign Policy,” The Saturday Review, August 24, 1895, p. 228. |
| [5] | Ibid., p. 46ff. For the original see “A Biological View of our Foreign Policy,” “by a Biologist,” The Saturday Review, 01 February 1896, p. 118ff. |
| [6] | Up to the headline, H. Grimm, op. cit. (note [4]), p. 58f. For the original see “England and Germany,” The Saturday Review, 11 September 1897, p. 278f. |
| [7] | Editor’s note: These last three words of this article, meaning “Germany must be destroyed” do not appear in the microfilmed version in the Public Library of Chicago as well as in other libraries, as Mr. Werner was told be readers of his original German article. However, Mr. Werner sent me a copy of this article which does include these words. It seems that there are two different versions of this article, one of which had these words omitted/deleted (most likely those which were later microfilmed). |
| [8] | Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. l. “The Gathering Storm“, Boston 1948, p. 207ff. |
| [9] | Carl J. Burckhardt, Meine Danziger Mission 1937-1939, 3. rev. ed., Munich 1980, p. 156f. |
| [10] | Igor Lukes, “Benesch, Stalin und die Komintem 1938/39,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 41(3) (1993), p. 325. |
| [11] | Friedrich Grimm, Politische Justiz, die Krankheit unserer Zeit, Bonn 1953, p. 146ff. |
| [12] | Retranslated from Frankfurter Allgemeine, September 18, 1989, p. 2. Since the 18th of September 1989 was a Monday, the day of appearance of the article is taken to be the 17th of September 1989. |
| [13] | Quoted by a letter to the editor from Ferdinand Otto Mischke, Officier de la Legion d’Honneur, Paris, Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 27, 1990, p. 14. For the original text see Elsevier, April 7, 1990, p. 45. |
| [14] | Thomas More, Utopia, Yale Univ. Press, 2001, p. 133. Also, in Utopia divorce is only a formality (cf. p. 98f). It can be assumed that Utopia inspired Henry VIII in several respects. In 1529 More became Lord Chancellor. In 1534 Henry VIII made himself Supreme Head of the Church and thereby to a certain extent its Chief Priest and - since he was also King - he, like the priests of the Utopians, was subject only to God and his conscience. In a letter Henry VIII describes himself as King and Sovereign, who recognizes above himself no one on earth save God alone and who is not subject to the laws of earthly creatures. Quoted by Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, vol II: “The New World,” Dodd, Mead & Co., New York 1956, p. 61. In fairness to More it should be mentioned that he vehemently opposed this self-elevation of Henry VIII and for that reason was executed in 1535. |
| [15] | T. More, ibid., p. 105. One should recall here the trade war between the USA and Japan which was beginning to develop in 1995 where the thinking was similar on the American side. |
| [16] | Ibid., p. 74, pp. 106-109, esp. 108. |
| [17] | In Churchill one finds this sentence concerning the time after Henry VIII: “Thomas More’s definition of government as a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth fitted England very accurately during these years,” op. cit. (note [8]), vol. II, p. 93. |
| [18] | Hermann Oncken, in: Thomas Morus, Utopia, Darmstadt 1979, p. 32 (introduction). Oncken has also made detailed reference to the connection between More and British colonial policy, p. 33. |
| [19] | T. More, op. cit. (note [14]), p 109. |
| [20] | Ibid., p. 106. |
| [21] | Ibid., p. 111. |
| [22] | Ibid., p. 105. The contradictory absurdity is that the Utopians in their country know slavery quite well (p. 95f). When More introduced slavery into his ideal state, it had disappeared in the West. But of all things, such a model is chosen by the intellectuals of Modernism as namesake for their future plans! |
| [23] | Ibid., p. 39-50, cf. also footnotes. That the discussion is fictitious is naturally an assumption for which, however, inspection speaks, since from where could More have be able to get his information? |
| [24] | Brockhaus Konservations-Lexikon, Leipzig 1908, Vol. 8, p. 374. |
| [25] | In an bitter comment on the death of Juarez, Shaw wrote, obviously out of knowledge of the practices of the English press:“I once proposed a press law […] each article printed in a newspaper should not only give the name and address of the author, but also give the sum which was paid for the contribution. If the miserable fool who murdered Juarez had known that the worthless articles […] were not the voice of imperiled France, but instead the ignorant scrawling of some poor devil who no longer knew how to earn three francs for himself, he would hardly have thrown away his own life.” Bernard Shaw, Der gesunde Menschenverstand im Krieg (Commons Sense in War), vol. II. Zürich 1919, p. 75. Editor’s remark: I did not find an English version of this German book. |
| [26] | G. B. Shaw had taken over the theater paper between 1895 and 1898; cf. Hermann Stresau, George Bernard Shaw, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1962, p. 56. |
| [27] | For H. G. Wells, as with the names following, only one publication may be named: “The Well at the World’s End,” The Saturday Review, October 17, 1896, p. 413ff. |
| [28] | Winston S. Churchill published three articles, all about the war in Cuba. With his first article of February 15, 1896, his name is erroneously given as Winston L. Churchill, but Churchill repaired this in his next essay “American Intervention in Cuba”, The Saturday Review, March 7, 1896, p. 244f. |
| [29] | W.B. Yeats, “The Twilight of Forgiveness,” The Saturday Review, November 2, 1895, p. 573. |
| [30] | Conan Doyle wrote two reader letters: The Saturday Review, January 2, 1897, p. 15f.; January 9, 1897 p. 40f. |
| [31] | Henry M. Stanley, “The Recent Attacks on the Congo Administration,” The Saturday Review, September 19, 1896, p. 307. |
| [32] | Rudyard Kipling, “The Vampire,” The Saturday Review, April 24, 1897, p. 443. |
| [33] | Algernon Charles Swinburne, “A February Roundel,” The Saturday Review, February 22, 1896, p. 194 |
| [34] | Meyers enzyklopädisches Lexikon, 25 volumes, Mannheim 1971. Information about these persons also comes from this excyclopedia. |
| [35] | Max Beerbohm, “Madame Tussaud’s,” The Saturday Review, February 13, 1897, p. 165f. |
| [36] | J. B. Bury, “The British and the Roman Empire,” The Saturday Review, June 27, 1896, p. 645. |
| [37] | Stephen Crane, “London Impressions,” The Saturday Review, July 31, 1897, p. 105f. |
| [38] | John Davidson, “The Hymn of Abdul Hamid,” Saturday Review, May 22, 1897, p. 570. |
| [39] | Charles Wentworth Dilke, “Lord Roberts, Lord Salisbury, and Russia,” The Saturday Review, January 23, 1897, p. 83ff. |
| [40] | Edward Dowden, “Mattew Arnold’s Letters,” The Saturday Review, December 12, 1895, p. 757f. |
| [41] | Richard Garnett, “Recollections of Coventry Patmore,” The Saturday Review, December 5, 1896, p. 582f. |
| [42] | For the latter information cf. Hermann Stresau op. cit. (note [26]), p. 56. |
| [43] | W. H. Hudson, “London Birds in Winter,” The Saturday Review, March 13, 1897, p. 264f. |
| [44] | Oliver Lodge, “Roentgen Radiography and its Uses,” The Saturday Review, April 25, 1896, p. 422f. |
| [45] | Margaret Macdonald, Reader letter “Salvagia,” The Saturday Review, October 24, 1896, p. 445f. |
| [46] | Frederic William Henry Myers, “A Cosmic Outlook,” The Saturday Review, December 7, 1895, p. 758. |
| [47] | Coventry Patmore, “Mrs. Meynell’s New Essays,” The Saturday Review, June 13, 1896, p. 593f. |
| [48] | Will(iam) Rothenstein, “Goya II,” The Saturday Review, September 19, 1896, p. 307. |
| [49] | Arthur Symons,”A Visit to Dumas fils,” The Saturday Review, November 30, 1895, p. 724f. |
| [50] | Silvanus P. Thompson, “The Progress of Electric Traction,” The Saturday Review, June 29, 1897, p. 600. |
| [51] | Alfred Russel Wallace, “Our Native Birds,” The Saturday Review, September 14, 1895, p. 342f. |
| [52] | William Watson, “Estrangement,” The Saturday Review, May 2, 1896, p. 451. |
| [53] | Gen. Neville Chamberlain, “Our Treatment of the Kafirs,” The Saturday Review, May 16, 1896, p. 494ff. For personal data: Mayers Konversations-Lexikon, 5th rev. ed., Leipzig and Vienna 1897. |
| [54] | Admiral P. H. Colomb, “The Naval Programme,” The Saturday Review, March 14, 1896, p. 268f. For personal data see previous note. |
| [55] | J. B. Bury, op. cit. (note [36]), p. 64. |
| [56] | GREATER-ENGLANDER, “The British and Roman Empire,” letter to the editor, The Saturday Review, July 11, 1896, p. 39. |
| [57] | “German Competition,” The Saturday Review, January 25, 1896, p. 91, or “The German Menance,” The Saturday Review, August 29, 1896, p. 208. |
| [58] | Perplexed. “The Spectator and Political Economy, ” letter to the editor, The Saturday Review, August 8, 1896, p. 137. |
| [59] | “The Failure of Germany,” The Saturday Review, October 24, 1896, p. 434. |
| [60] | “Luther: Liberalism: Individualism”, The Saturday Review, January 2, 1897, p. 6. |
| [61] | Bernard Shaw, “Caesar and Cleopatra,” Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1965, p. 5. |
| [62] | Ibid., p. 78. In his character of Britannus, Shaw expressly maintains continuity of character between the inhabitants of the Great Britain in Caesar’s time and that of today (cf. p. 123f). In his argument, he personifies the mind-set which is found in the essay by “a Biologist” (cf. footnote [5]), as when he stresses the importance of the climate and of the forest for the character of Britannus and of present-day Britons. |
| [63] | Ibid., p. 113. |
| [64] | Bernard Shaw, op. cit. (note [25]), vol. I., p. 35. |
| [65] | Hermann Stresau, op. cit. (note [26]), p. 126; retranslated. |
| [66] | Ibid., p. 127; retranslated. |
| [67] | Hans Grimm, op. cit. (note [4]), p. 33f. |
| [68] | Ibid., p. 52. |
| [69] | Charles à Court Repington, The First World War 1914-1918, Personal Experiences, vol. II., London 1920, p. 463; cf. p. 478. |
| [70] | Edward Grey, Twenty Five Years, 1892-1916, Fredrick A. Sokes Company, New York 1925, p. 2; cf. p. 25. |
| [71] | Ibid., p. 32. |
| [72] | Ibid. Editor’s note: On pp. 9-11, Gray reports how Germany pressured competing England in the 1890s to withdraw its offer to build a railway through Minor Asia (Turkey) or Germany would stop supporting England in Egypt. England complied, but was mischievous ever since. |
| [73] | Ibid., p. 50. |
| [74] | Cf. the detailed exchange of letters which Grey reproduces in his memoirs, ibid., p. 70-74, 76-79, 102-107, 110, 139ff. |
| [75] | Margret Boveri, Sir Edward Grey und das Foreign Office, Berlin-Grunewald 1993, p. 134; 198; 105; 198. |
| [76] | Edward Grey, op. cit. (note [70]), p. xviii. |
| [77] | Margret Boveri, op. cit. (note [75]), p. 197. |
| [78] | Hermann Lutz, Eyre Crowe, der böse Geist des Foreign Office, Stuttgart and Berlin 1931. |
| [79] | Margret Boveri, op. cit. (note [75]), p. 112. |
| [80] | Edward Grey, op. cit. (note [70]), p. xviif. |
| [81] | Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 302. |
| [82] | Margret Boveri, op. cit. (note [75]), p. 183. |
| [83] | Hans Rothfels, “Zur Beurtellung Greys,” in: “Die Kriegsschuldfrage,” Berliner Monatshefte für internationale Aufklärung, April 1927, p. 351f. |
| [84] | Bernard Shaw, Winke zur Friedenskonferenz, Berlin 1919, p. 22. |
| [85] | Bernard Shaw, op. cit. (note [25]), p. 5. |
| [86] | Friedrich Thimme, “Das Memorandum E. A. Crowes vom 1. Januar 1907. Seine Bedeutung für die Kriegsschuldfrage,” Berliner Monatshefte für internationale Aufklärung, August 1929, p. 735. |
| [87] | Hermann Lutz, op. cit. (note [78]), p. 9. |
| [88] | Cf. e.g. Friedrich Thimme, op. cit. (note [86]), pp. 732ff.; Hermann Lutz, Deutschfeindliche Kräfte im Foreign Office der Vorkriegszeit, Berlin 1932, p. 13ff.; Werner Frauendienst, “Crowe, der Deutschland-Referent des Foreign Office,” Berliner Monatshefte für internationale Autklärung, August 1931, p. 776ff.; Hermann Lutz, op. cit. (note [78]), p. 10-55; Margret Boveri, op. cit. (note [75]), p. 114ff. |
| [89] | Bernard Shaw, op. cit. (note [84]), p. 8; 9; 20 |
| [90] | Hermann Lutz, Deutschfeindliche Kräfte…, op. cit. (note [88]), p. 18, footnote 35. |
| [91] | Hermann Lutz, Lord Grey und der Weltkrieg, Berlin 1927, p. 48; 299 footnote 82a. |
| [92] | Margret Boveri, op. cit. (note [75]), p. 53. |
| [93] | Fritz Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland, Munich 1953, p. 66. |
| [94] | The Times, March 13, 1948, p. 4. |
| [95] | Editor’s note: Between these two sentences, one often finds quoted other sentences, the entire text allegedly stemming from an AP press release of that time (the date often quoted, March 16, 1984, is obviously wrong):“Hitler and the German people did not want war. According to the principles of the balance of powers, we, goaded on by the ‘Americans’ around Roosevelt, declared war against Germany in order to destroy it. We did not respond to the various appeals for peace of Hitler. Now we must discover that Hitler was right. In place of a conservative Germany which he had offered us, stands the enormous imperialistic power of the Soviets.” These sentences are, however, not part of the London Times article, which does not claim to be based on an AP release. Associated Press informed me that they have no record of such a press release, which may or may not be result of AP archiving exclusively national U.S. news releases on microfilm at that time. I also did not find Shawcross’ speech quoted in the New York Times or the then German-friendly/IMT critical Chicago Tribune. Since Shawcross always indicated his full and uncritical support for the IMT show trial and its judgment (cf. his memoirs Life Sentence, Constable & Co., London 1995), it is more than unlikely that these sentences were added by a third person. |
| [96] | Kenneth Auchincloss, “The Long Shadow,” Newsweek International Edition, May 8, 1995, p. 11. [Although order via inter-library loan, I had to retranslate this quotation from German to keep the deadline. Editor.] |
| [97] | Bertolt Brecht, “Offener Brief an die Künstler und Schriftsteller vom 26. September 1951,” in: Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 1967, p. 496. |
| [98] | Churchill, op. cit. (note [3]), p. 80. |
| [99] | Dieter Friede, Das russische Perpetuum Mobile, 2nd ed., Würzburg 1959, p. 181. |
Source: The Revisionist 1(4) (2003), pp. 373-385.
