What quicker way to unify people who believe that government is there to save them than to paint the government as the victim. This worked extremely well in 1933 (know your history) when the Nazi’s party HQ was torched. The masses saw this violent action and assumed the Nazi party had been victimized. The people placed their support behind the Nazi’s and their promises from that day forward.
The events of 06JAN2021 in Washington DC are the same thing only different. Why would a peaceful protest spread inside the capitol itself. I am sure that the masses only think one step ahead, like gain access and their voice would be heard, but the intelligent would know there are always unintentional consequences to these types of actions. The 2nd and 3rd effects of this event will be with us for some time and embolden the state and those who believe in that cult and that cult’s promises.
Jon Rappoport shared:
if the assault on the Capitol building was a false flag, all the blame cascading down on Trumpers paves the way for Biden and his handlers to carry out even more draconian measures on the American people, under the rubric of National Security—piled on top of the COVID lockdowns.
The Democrats, but especially the STATE, had the most to gain from this brief show, and the Democrat’s evilness has time and again tricked the stupid Republicans to fall for it all. (or at least faint ignorance since most of both sides are on the same team, fervent statists, in reality).
Both the Republican and Democrats have historically been behind doing this same thing in other countries under the guise of spreading “democracy” (mob rule) and it shows. It is no wonder that the voting machines and software used around the world would also come back to the US to “roost”, and as of yesterday, possibly pulling one more false flag to unify Americans (Remember 9/11).
The silver lining here is that the overconfident state will make more mistakes faster now and quicken the process towards its own disintegration, as its trajectory is not financially sustainable, and those that can critically think know it. It is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
Daniel McAdams shared yesterday some wisdom:
The Democrats and Republicans are nearly identical in their view that only the political elites, from the Sacred Throne of Democracy recently defiled by the unwashed masses, can save us from ourselves. We don’t know how to manage our lives, we don’t know how to manage our health, we are far too stupid to simply live without their constant guidance…”
Y’all ain’t getting freedom by protesting in the politician’s “church” or aligning with a politician from either party .. only grassroots approach can change society from the bottom up.
I hate lies. I love truth. Friends don’t let friends believe in lies .. but they also allow someone that process .. towards truth .. it is a different timeline for everyone .. everyone is unique and ultimately have to own their own beliefs, values, mission, etc.
Along these lines, once I found out what “Honest Abe” did to the much more honorable Robert E. Lee, I had my suspicions that Lincoln was not everything the state says he was, Father Abraham to the freed Blacks, a saint that ended slavery, and the list goes on and on to this deified man. The very fact that the “state” does this should make everyone suspicious!
I detest the way the Lincoln administration chose to bury their dead on an honorable man’s private property .. a man who had 100x the character of Lincoln himself when it came to principles. Lincoln’s words in 1848 about a very Jefferson idea about the consent of the governed would have been something that Robert E. Lee would have agreed with .. and when Lee acted on this belief, Lincoln made sure Lee could never return to his home.
16,000 Union solders buried in Lee’s garden
Obviously, Lincoln was all words (typical politician) and Lee was principles and character, not moved by conditions or time.
The quote Lee and Lincoln would agree to:
“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements.” ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle
Anyway, Jacob Hornberger at FFF (The Future of Freedom Foundation) shared this article a few years ago about Memorial Day, but I thought that as 2019 wrapped up it was good to reflect on the nation we find ourselves a part of, and its real history, including a good dose of truth!
Today, Memorial Day, Americans across the land will hear the same message: that U.S. soldiers who have died in America’s foreign wars and foreign interventions have done so in the defense of our rights and freedoms. It is a message that will be heard in sporting events, memorial services, airports, churches, and everywhere else that Memorial Day is being commemorated.
There is one big thing wrong, however. It’s a lie. None of those soldiers died protecting our rights and freedoms. That’s because our rights and freedoms were never being threatened by the enemy forces that killed those soldiers.
Yes, lets look at how the US military defended our rights and freedoms … it should not take long and you will see that it has been a LONG time since they actually did that:
Syria. The Syrian government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Syria was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Niger. The Niger government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Niger was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Iraq. The Iraq government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Afghanistan. The Afghan government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Afghanistan was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Even al-Qaeda never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Its terrorist attacks, including the one on 9/11, were retaliation for U.S. interventionism in the Middle East.
Panama. The Panama government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Panama was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Grenada. The Grenada government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Grenada was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Vietnam. The North Vietnam government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Vietnam was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Korea. The North Korean government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Korea was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
World War II.
The Japanese government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the Pacific theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. The Japanese attack on U.S. Naval forces on Hawaii was intended solely to prevent the U.S. Navy from interfering with Japanese attempts to acquire oil in the Dutch East Indies in response to President Roosevelt’s oil embargo, whose aim was to provoke the Japanese into attacking the United States so that the U.S. could get into the European part of war.
The German government never invaded the United States and try to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the European theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Germany wasn’t even able to cross the English Channel to invade England, much less the Atlantic Ocean to invade the United States. In fact, the last thing that Germany wanted was war with the United States, as reflected by Germany’s refusal to react to President Roosevelt’s repeated provocations to get Germany to attack the United States. Germany only declared war on the United States after FDR successfully provoked the Japanese into attacking the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the hope that this would provide a back door to entry into the war in Europe.
World War I. The German government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in World War I was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms, especially given the ridiculous aims of U.S. intervention into the war: to “end all wars” and to “make the world safe for democracy,” a word that isn’t even in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, it is perversely ironic that it was U.S. interventionism into the conflict that contributed to the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II.
The Spanish-American War. The Spanish government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any soldier who died in the Spanish-American War was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
I will add the following:
The War Against Southern Independence (of seven states originally, wrongly called a civil war, wrong because the southern states did not want any other territory, PERIOD).
The South Carolina militia in Dec 1860 to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. As a sovereign entity (reclaiming what it had before the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation) it said LEAVE US ALONE.
The Confederate States of America from Feb to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. While after the US Army detachment in Fort Moultrie violated the agreement in place since Dec 1860 when it agreed NOT to take any action in Charleston Harbor and remained at peace in what was now South Carolina territory (seceded from USA), Gen. Anderson, in the cover of night moved his troops to Fort Sumter. When Lincoln attempted to resupply the fort with provisions AND troops was when the forces around Charleston Harbor chose to fire on Fort Sumter .. KILLING NO ONE.
The Confederate States of America (now 11 states) from April – July 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states.
So why celebrate Memorial Day when the reason for its existence is based on lies .. it is yet another government piece of propaganda that when repeated enough get into the heads of the sheep!
Bottom line is that while the defense of the United States in the War of 1812 was ‘honorable’, even that war was entered into under questionable circumstances and outright lies. Know that by 1814 the NORTH was ready to secede from the United States (peacefully) .. you might want to research the “Hartford Convention of 1814”
“… the Hartford Convention began a three-week debate about the relationship between the then 18 states and the federal government. The meeting was held in secret by New England members of the Federalist Party and there were nationwide fears that the Hartford Convention would call for New England’s secession from the Union …”
New Englanders were unhappy over political concerns that they were being badly treated by the Union. Since Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800, the president had been a Southerner chosen by an electoral system that allowed the slave-holding Southern states to count each slave as 60 percent of a free person for their allocation of congressional seats and the number of presidential electors…”
Did the southern states invade the north to keep this from happening? No! As early as 1804, sensing that New England was not happy with things (this time it was the Louisiana Purchase, another time when secession was discussed in the North.):
“Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.”
–Letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Jan. 29, 1804
So maybe the American Revolutionary War was really the last time the government’s troops fought for our freedom and for our rights. Think about that!
PS Also, if you think George Washington was really the tactical hero of Yorktown, just know that when the French general Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau told Washington to move his troops to Yorktown as the French fleet was coming to contain the British troops under Cornwallis there, Washington had a melt-down and at first refused the thought thinking as he had the last few years that the decisive battle HAD to take place against the British in New York harbor.
Hands clasped in friendship, Adolf Hitler and England’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, are shown in this historic pose at Munich on Sept. 30, 1938. This was the day when the premier of France and England signed the Munich agreement, sealing the fate of Czechoslovakia. Next to Chamberlain is Sir Neville Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany. Paul Schmidt, an Interpreter, stands next to Hitler. (AP Photo)
Back a few months I wrote how my oldest son gave me a birthday present:
What prompted me to better understand what I call the “inter-war” period from the end of WWI in 1918 to the beginning of WWII in 1939 was a book my oldest son gave me for my birthday/Father’s Day called “Appeasement” by Tim Bouverie. Written from a British perspective, Tim paints the 1938 efforts as a lost cause for keeping the world safe from Nazi expansionism.
Well, after intermittent reads, I finally wrapped that book up today. My initial view was that the author was a Churchill worshiper, however, by page 400 I did see the author admit that many of Churchill’s mistakes were lumped on Neville Chamberlain as England needed a scapegoat after being outmaneuvered by Hitler off the coast of Norway in Germany’s attempt to keep the supplies from Sweden undeterred in Germany’s effort to maintain and ramp up industrial war production activities in their homeland.
I was pleasantly surprised that the author shared some truth as to Neville’s own transformation from what appeared to be a pacifist (was really just a non-interventionists) to a realist by 1939 in he dealings with Hitler. All in all the tilt was toward appeasement being a “lost cause”, but he did admit that IF the British would have ramped up war efforts in the mid-30s, their planes would have been outdated by the time they would have needed them in the 1940s to defend their own homeland.
If nothing else, the learning from this book taught be the risks that empires have once more. (I think all one has to do is read about King Solomon in the Bible to see how even the wisest man in the world could not keep all the alliances with various nations intact for a peaceful coexistence of Israel back when both Egypt and Babylon’s empires contracted) Multiple “entangling” alliances, which triggered WWI were resorted to again in the run up to WWII as well as the fact that empires can’t just think of protecting their homeland, but also colonies scattered across the globe that are only thought of from time to time as political bargaining chips.
However, no honest discussion of WWII can be had without knowing how the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of WWI set the stage for a humiliated Germany to roar back to life in only 20 years. It also involves decisions made back to 1906 that involved NOT Neville Chamberlain, but Winston Churchill, as the primary villain that created the climate for Hitler to gain success in Germany with his Nazi party.
.. it was colossal blunders of British statesmen, Winston Churchill foremost among them, that turned two European wars into world wars that may yet prove the mortal wounds of the West.
Wow, quite the accusation. But Pat does give us plenty of data to support these findings decades later:
The first blunder was a secret decision of the inner Cabinet in 1906 to send a British army across the Channel to fight in any Franco-German War. Had the Kaiser known the British Empire would fight for France, he would have moved more decisively than he did to halt the plunge to war in July 1914. Had Britain not declared war on Aug. 4 (1914) and brought in Japan, Italy and the United States, the war would have ended far sooner. Leninism and Stalinism would never have triumphed in Russia, and Hitler would never have come to power in Germany.
The second blunder was the vengeful Treaty of Versailles that added a million square miles to the British Empire while putting millions of Germans under Czech and Polish rule in violation of the terms of the armistice and Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
A third was the British decision to capitulate to U.S. demands in 1921 and throw over a faithful Japanese ally of 20 years. Tokyo took its revenge, 20 years later, by inflicting the greatest defeat in British history, the surrender of Singapore and an army of 80,000 to a Japanese army half that size.
A fourth British blunder, which Neville Chamberlain called the “very midsummer of madness,” was the 1935 decision to sanction Italy for a colonial war in Ethiopia. London destroyed the Stresa Front of Britain, France and Italy that Mussolini had forged to contain Germany, and drove Mussolini straight into the arms of a Nazi dictator he loathed.
This is the world stage that Neville Chamberlain entered as Winston Churchill was sidelined for a few years in. Neville’s 1938 Munich Treaty effort was a direct, if not inevitable, consequence of a Versailles treaty that had consigned 3.5 million Sudeten Germans to Czech rule against their will and in violation of the principle of self-determination.
The seeds of the crisis were planted at the Paris peace conference of 1919. There, the victorious Allies carved the new nation of Czechoslovakia out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
But instead of following their principle of self-determination, the Allies placed under the rule of 7 million Czechs 3 million Germans, 3 million Slovaks, 800,000 Hungarians, 150,000 Poles and 500,000 Ruthenians. These foolish decisions spat upon Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points, under the terms of which the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had laid down their arms.
By 1938, Germany had arisen, re-armed and brought Austria into the Reich, and was demanding the right of self-determination now be granted to the 3 million Germans in Czechoslovakia, who were clamoring to be free of Prague to rejoin their kinsmen.
But the fatal blunder was not Munich. Appeasement #1 is usually blamed as a failed policy because of what happened in the next 18 months. The truth is more on what is unseen than seen (just like in economics).
Chamberlain went to Munich because he did not believe that keeping 3 million Germans inside a nation to which they had been consigned against their will was worth a world war.
Moreover, Britain was unprepared for war. She had no draft, no Spitfires, no divisions ready to be sent to France. Why should the British Empire commit suicide by declaring war on Germany, to support a Paris peace agreement that he, Chamberlain, believed had been unjustly and dishonorably imposed on a defeated Germany?
It was common knowledge in the higher positions of England and France’s political elite that Germany was done wrong with the mandated “demilitarization” of its armed forces, but to leave native people across borders does tug on the hearts of a culture. Even by 1939 the average German was not pro-war but was for the return of German people groups under Germany’s protection.
England was ecstatic as to what Neville accomplished in Munich, war was averted, German people groups would be allowed “self-determination”. However, Hitler had more people groups outside the borders of Germany:
Hitler had already turned to the next item on his menu, Danzig, a city of 350,000 Germans, detached from the Reich at Versailles and made a Free City to give the new Poland an outlet to the sea. Hitler did not want war with Poland. Indeed, he wanted the kind of alliance with Poland he had with Italy. But, first, Danzig must be resolved.
Here, too, the British Government agreed: Danzig should be returned. For of all the amputations of German lands and peoples at Versailles, European statesmen, even Winston Churchill, regarded Danzig and the Polish Corridor that sliced Germany in two as the most outrageous. The problem was the Poles, who refused to discuss Danzig.
The Polish, who disliked communist Russia, desired to stay intact. At the same time in March 1939, Czechoslovakia suddenly began to fall apart. The Sudetenland had been annexed by Germany the previous fall and Hungary had taken back its lost lands. It looked as though the wheels were coming off this peace effort, but in fact, the pre-WWI version of Europe was re-emerging as all of the political re-drawing of lines started to be erased by reality.
Chamberlain, now humiliated, mocked by Tory back-benchers, panicking over wild false rumors of German attacks on Romania and Poland, made the greatest blunder in British history. Unasked, he issued a war guarantee to Poland, empowering a Polish dictatorship of colonels that had joined Hitler in dismembering Czechoslovakia to drag the British Empire into war with Germany over a city, Danzig, the British thought should be returned to Germany.
The war guarantee with Poland actually led to a half-hearted war against Germany after Poland fell in under one month. This was a war that was declared by both France and England, and was, in fact, a “pre-emptive” war that in the end was unnecessary, which in turn led to a world war that was also unnecessary.
Result: a Hitler-Stalin Pact and a six-year war that left scores of millions dead, Europe in ruins, the British empire bankrupt and breaking, 10 European nations under the barbaric rule of Joseph Stalin and half a century of Cold War. Had there been no war guarantee to Poland, there might have been no war, no Nazi invasion of Western Europe and no Holocaust.
Sick, right?
So Neville is not as bad as he is portrayed today but made some huge mistakes. So too Churchill is not as good as he is portrayed today but he too made some huge mistakes.
He [Churchill] was behind the greatest British military blunders in two wars: the Dardanelles disaster of 1915 and the Norwegian fiasco of 1940 that brought down Chamberlain and vaulted Churchill to power.
While excoriating Chamberlain for appeasing Hitler, Churchill’s own appeasement of Stalin lasted longer and was even more egregious and costly, ensuring that the causes for which Britain sacrificed the empire — the freedom of Poland and preventing a hostile power from dominating Europe — were lost.
Politicians, no matter how wise, are in fact horrible at directing human action and human events. All collectives, whether they be monarchies, democracies, fascist or communist peril the innocent subjects in their midst with the fallout and blow-back from their leader’s decisions. From the first act of war, usually economic sanctions, to the desperate actions in war, the wanton killing of innocents, there is always a worse “unseen” aspect to war and the unintentional consequences of those decisions than there is in the honorable striving for peace.
No wonder Thomas Jefferson declared:
Churchill was, however, surely right when he told FDR in their first meeting after Pearl Harbor that they should call the war they were now in “The Unnecessary War.”
If one were to believe the history books, the American Experience and Exceptionalism shone bright and clear from the effort and success to leave the British Empire to the rescue of Europe in WWI and WWII. Actual history shows that our exceptional export of ideas and character were not a rosy as the history books might paint.
There was a way that nations fought from the 1600s and into the 1700s that had been influenced by both Christianity as well as those who understood that war happened when politics failed, which meant that the people in general were caught in the middle of various power struggles in Europe. The American Revolution was fought mainly around large population centers usually having armies square up to each other in open fields and having at it. There were exceptions on both sides where military leaders like Banastre Tarleton and even some patriot militia would discard honorable warfare to achieve short-term military objectives, but in the end those tactics had their own “blowback”. The civilian sentiment played an important role in the way the effort for independence of each of the 13 states would play out before the British grew tired of the conflict and costs.
Even the War of 1812 was fought this way and the treaty signed a few years later involved both parties at the negotiation table just like what they did in Paris in 1783 after the American Revolutionary War. Once again, principles, honorable principles prevailed even when warfare was “in session”.
The War Against Southern Independence (called the American Civil War in US government history books) unveiled the inherit evil that is at the core of humans in a broken world. Driven by desperation, principles are cast aside in the effort to short-cut to a desired outcome.
The truth be known, the seven states that seceded actually took the high ground in formulating their reason for divorce with the federation. They knew that the US Constitution, the law of the land, was to be central in their rationale in desiring to exit, just like the 13 colonies did with England 80 years prior. Lawyer speak made these documents stress the way the slavery issue made the separation a necessity. The Constitution had allowed chattel slavery, and so the seven southern states made their case based on this “issue”.
In reality, the main issue was financial and economic in nature, but to prove that based on the Constitution would have been a tough fight. The southern region in general was the wealthiest in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was penned but by 1860 this region had seen their power be eclipsed by the North and the West (existing Midwest). Tariff revenue sources were a hot issue since the South bore the brunt of that expense. Additionally, this revenue funded not only the general government but also internal improvements, mainly in the northern states. Also, industries like the railroad and steel industry received corporate welfare at the expense of the southern businessmen. Additionally, southern plantations were financed by the Northeast elite bankers and until 1808 these same businessmen supplied the slave ships that would transport blacks rounded up by other blacks on the African continent to the United States and other areas in the Caribbean after it was illegal to do so in the US. The southern chattel slavery economic profitability was on the downward trend as most economists expected maybe 5-10 years left in this business model.
It should also be noted once more that Lincoln offered the seven southern states “perpetual legal slavery” via the proposed 13th amendment (Corwin Amendment) if they re-entered the union. Not one state considered that. They really wanted independence and all the risks that entailed instead of a continued marriage to the northern states. Even if it meant that run-away slaves making their way to the United States (all but those seven states that seceded) would indeed be free and not be required by law to be returned as the Fugitive Slave Act mandated. Most people in the North did NOT want ex-slaves fleeing north to take the lowest paying jobs, as even Lincoln feared this.
With that long introduction and setting of context, there was an article that brought to light (for me anyway) what this internal conflict offered to the world. A clip from it said:
So in a very literal sense the Civil War was the first World War. It not only created a powerful nation of organized resources and potential military might, but the greater world wars took their pattern from the American one, even to the trench system Lee set up at Petersburg .. What this country brought to Europe was unconditional surrender. The actual phrase was used by Roosevelt in the Second World War, but it was not his phrase. Grant had delivered it to the Confederate Command at Fort Donelson in February, 1862. Its implication is total surrender or total destruction, or slavery, or whatever. A strange alternative to be delivered by one Christian state to another; and yet it had precedent in Sherman’s harrying the lands of Mississippi and Georgia ..
U.S. (Unconditional Surrender) Grant or William Tecumseh (Total War) Sherman transitioned warfare to not only be brutal for military personnel and civilians in proximity, but also back to the way pre-Christian influenced empires operated, the slaughtering/slaving of the people in conquered lands.
The nineteenth century abandoned God officially, and the faith of Christian communicants was absorbed into the powerful western will; and this will set out, openly at last, to know and control not only nature but the universe. In the late stages of any society there is always the aging form and the formlessness of the new pistis, but this is no new faith; it is a perversion of faith, the final and open acceptance of Machiavelli’s science of politics, the politics whose end is absolute power, whose technique is reason without any theological restraint.
The transition from a republic that was a federation of states to a democracy that makes politics a god, will always keep evolving lower and lower in morality as the narcissist leaders practice power over principles.
Sherman said “War is Hell,” and by this he meant total war, openly carried out upon the civil population, with the shrewd understanding that if the source of supply was cut off, the armies would dwindle and perish.
This policy was then brought to the American Indians, then to the Spanish empire after Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba and to the Germans during WWI as well as the failure to include the Germans in the negotiated surrender, treating Germany like the North treated the South after the war with military districts, corrupt politics and the hatred of the people.
Yes, this part of the American “Exceptionalism” is rarely taught in schools or even in “approved” books. I would rather have American history taught in books like the authors of the Bible described the events of the Hebrew people, the nation Israel and the leaders of Jesus’ day .. communicating the good, the bad and the ugly.
Truth.
Truth-seekers these days have to expend a lot of effort to mine the accounts of days gone by, but it is written that “the truth shall set you free”
I have a (bad?) habit. When I hear of some historical event, I look for the context and the history that preceded that event. Do I have a CSI in my DNA? I guess I just want to know the event in a holistic way so that I do not judge it by it’s appearance only. (My family knows this reference, but it works really well here)
As I pointed out in a previous post a couple of weeks ago:
My point today is that any book on any subject that has you reflecting on what you thought you knew, can launch you into doing research in and around the book reading to attempt to get at the nugget of truth that is typically obscured by an overriding narrative that the masses like to believe.
Reading a “wrong” book or a book from a different perspective from your own should never be seen as a waste of time. In fact, it is usually this kind of ‘entertaining a thought without accepting it’ is essential towards being a true CSI’er of our history.
One of the books I am reading is “Appeasement”, by Tim Bouverie. Primarily about the steps Britain took, or failed to take, with Hitler that led to a disastrous start to WWII. It is assumed in this book, written from a primarily Oxford viewpoint, that the treaty signed at the end of WWI should have kept Germany from rearming causing the British to once again cross that channel and save the day for the continent of Europe.
Well today I want to shed a little light on that treaty, which as of this past week turned 100 years old. Just today, at Lew Rockwell, a post appeared that helped me to mine this time period even more for the wisdom that can come out of understanding history, which is basically just “relationships” at a macro level.
The work by the author, Edward W. Fuller, is fascinating in that it really tells the story of the “tree” that was planted in 1919 which makes the fruit that we see in the 1930s, with Hitler’s rise to power, give us no real surprise.
I contend, that if we all really knew history well, even events that happen today might have us all asking the right questions in the search for truth. We want to be like The Who in their song “We won’t get fooled again”:
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t want to get fooled again
No, no!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
So let me assist in getting some major points down on the situation 100 years ago when many nations attempted to draw up a treaty to ensure that “The Great War” would not be repeated:
June 28, 2019 is the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles. The notorious treaty, signed by Germany on June 28, 1919, was the most important of the peace treaties that ended the First World War. Although each defeated nation signed its own treaty, the entire settlement is often called the Treaty of Versailles.
Yes Germany signed this treaty, however, doesn’t it really take two (or more) to actively work on hammering out a real treaty? I do think that the author of the book “Appeasement” and 95% of US citizens think and have been taught that this treaty was indeed honorable, not only in its terms but also in its inception. Mr. Fuller points out something interesting:
In early January, 1919, delegates from Britain, France, Italy, and the United States congregated in Paris. Initially, the Allies’ plan was to have a preliminary conference amongst themselves to decide on the peace terms to offer Germany. After the brief preliminary conference, the plan was to invite Germany to a full-scale peace conference to negotiate the terms.
As the Allies squabbled amongst themselves, the preliminary conference gradually developed into the full-scale conference. The Germans were not summoned to Paris until early May. And when they finally arrived, they were never allowed to negotiate the terms of the treaty. Thus, the Treaty of Versailles was a dictated treaty, not a negotiated treaty.
Whoa! While I knew that Germany got really ripped off in this treaty, I mean, it had not even entered this conflict on its own, as Eric Margolis shares:
.. Germany’s role in the conflict was no greater than the other belligerents, and perhaps less than commonly believed. Starved into submission by Britain’s naval blockade, Germany was unfairly and foolishly saddled with total war guilt, and saw 10% of its territory and 7 million of its people torn away at Versailles by the war’s rapacious victors.
One thing that stood out to me in my read of “Appeasement” is how inadequate was my own high school and post high school history “official” education. I am so glad that at this date I can re/un-learn enough to really know what was going on and why.
Just yesterday I read that Serbia, Bosnia, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine all were relinquished by the German’s with this treaty and France and Britain would be the new overseers. Don’t tell me that this has nothing to do with the Middle East as it stands today. Something tells be there is a lot more to this story.
Eric Margolis hints at why the French and the British did not include Germany at the negotiation table when he says:
Both of these imperial powers feared Germany’s growing commercial and military power (just as the US today fears China’s rise). Germany’s vibrant social democracy with its worker’s rights and concern for the poor posed a threat to the capitalists of Britain and France. Britain’s imperialists were deeply worried by the creation of a feeble little German Empire based in Africa. At the time they controlled a quarter of the globe and all of its oceans.
One has to wonder how the world might have been if England would have acted honorably for once and put the brakes on the rush to war fever that initially was primarily a French emotion:
A total conflagration could still have been averted if Great Britain, which had been playing neutral, had boldly demanded the rush to war cease. France would have been unlikely to go to war without Britain’s supporting its left flank in Flanders.
… a coterie of anti-German officials in Britain, led by the duplicitous foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey and the ambitious, war-yearning imperialist, Winston Churchill, pushed the British Empire to war against Germany. They were joined by a cabal of German-haters in the French government. British and French industrialists, fearful of German competition, and seeing huge profits to be made, backed the war party.
Does this sound familiar or what. How much DNA was transferred to the USA when the British Empire help the American colonies get established in the 1600s?
Beyond not being an equal partner in the “negotiation” of this treaty, the obedience to the treaty’s terms were also an issue:
The military clauses of the treaty disarmed Germany. But the German disarmament was supposed to be part of general European disarmament sponsored by the League of Nations. While the Germans were disarmed by the treaty, the Allies did not fulfill their promise to disarm. This was unfair, and the Allies’ broken promise infuriated German public opinion.
Psychologically, there was more damage from this treaty to those German citizens who knew better. Consider this “feature”:
The reparations section of the treaty included Article 231 – the infamous war-guilt clause. Article 231 required Germany to accept responsibility for starting the war. This clause was unfair, because Germany was not solely responsible for the war. All the major European powers share the blame.
Anger, resentment, punishment all lead to a sense of GROSS INJUSTICE!
I, myself, am wired in a way that is incensed by injustice. Beyond injustice, is my own drive to give individuals on a micro level, and people groups on a macro level the ability to give their consent to those who would govern them, otherwise this becomes slavery even if it comes under the guise of “government” for the greater good.
.. the Allied leaders assured the world that the peace would be based on the principle of national self-determination. Their actions proved otherwise. At the conference, the Allies imperialistically carved up the world and created new but unsustainable nation states with government coercion.
Is this believable? In 2019, after a century of war with 200 million killed by governments, you just have to agree that they do lie, they all do!
So for Germany, what did this mean?
… how could a lunatic like Hitler rise to power in Germany? The answer is the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles. The German population thought the treaty was unfair, and they wanted someone to oppose it. The treaty created the platform for Hitler’s rise to power. For this reason, the Treaty of Versailles must be considered a major cause of the Second World War.
The fruit of this non-negotiated treaty was more war. Such is the wisdom of men (including woMEN) in committees … stupid is multiplied!
For the rest of the world the author concludes:
The First World War and the Paris Peace Conference led to Nazism in Germany, fascism in Italy, militarism in Japan, extremism in the Middle East, and communism in Russia, China, Korea, and Vietnam. What must be learned from the war and peace settlement? Here is the most important lesson: the free market economy is the only way to lasting world peace.
The war was caused by Europe’s imperialistic intervention in foreign trade. In the decades before the war, there was a massive drive by the European powers to expand their empires. This put the European powers on a collision course. Why the imperial expansion? The European powers did not allow other powers to trade freely in their empires. For this reason, the European powers viewed imperial expansion as the only way to gain new markets for their goods. Europe’s rejection of the principle of free trade was the fundamental cause of the First World War.
