Winston Churchill and the death of Prince George, Duke of Kent

[Len Colby]

“10 May marked the end of the London Blitz. It was the last time the Nazis would attempt a major raid on the capital. Foreign journalist based in London at the time wrote articles that highlighted this strange fact.”

A bit misleading since the focus of the Blitz had shifted to other cities before this and the Germans launched a major raid on Birmingham on May 16 and a smaller raid on Cardiff the next day (*, **, *6). The historically accepted explanation for the end of the Blitz was that resources were being shifted east to attack the Soviet Union (**, *4, *5, *6). You even quoted A.J.P Taylor as saying “16 May 1941 saw the last heavy German attack on Birmingham. Thereafter the Luftwaffe was busy preparing to cooperate with the army against Soviet Russia”***.

I don't think my statement is anyway misleading. In fact, it is completely accurate. I said it was the last major German air raid on London. It was.

Which is why I said it was “misleading” and not erroneous, someone unfamiliar with the history of WW2 might have interpreted that as meaning the Germans stopped bombing the UK. How does bombing Birmingham, Cardiff and other cities instead of London equal a “good will gesture”? (Hopefully other members of the forum will refrain from giving sarcastic answers to that question.)

Of course, Hitler continued to order air raids on other parts of the UK. In the same way that Churchill did not completely abandon the bombing of Germany. If Hitler and Churchill had done this it would be clear that peace negotiations were taking place.

Not really since the Luftwafe (sp?) was redeployed against the USSR. You should have made it clear that historians have already explained why the Germans stopped bombing the UK.

What we do know is that leading officials of both governments were amazed by these decisions made by Hitler and Churchill.

Please cite examples of leading German and British officials who were amazed by the virtual end of the Blitz, especially after ‘Operation Barbarossa’ was launched. Have any historians questioned it? Did Murphy link the end of the London Blitz to Hess’ arrival before or after Hitler attacked Russia? Have any historians said that Britain was on the verge of surrender? Can you provide the exact quotes of Lippman and Sheean about this?

Please cite examples of leading German and British officials (other than Sir Portal) or historians who were “amazed” by the reduction of British bombing of Germany.

I'm still not sure why you think Churchill negotiating with Hitler meant the duke had to die.

Can you please provide the references for your unsourced claims?

Edit: See below

Edited June 16, 2007 by Len Colby

[Tom Kutzer]

"What about American bombing did it increase, decrease or stay about the same in this period?"

it probably would have stayed at zero.

sorry for the sarcasm.

[Len Colby]

LOL that was embarrassing. I added that after having written the rest of the message for some reason I was thinking about 1942. As Emily Litella would say “Oh, never mind”

[Evan Burton]

Mind you, there were a few Americans with the RAF at that time.

[Tom Kutzer]

hey, you were on a roll....the rest of your line was good enough....valid questions, imo.....

though I must admit I also think Winnie was capable of being a nasty bit of work, a real realpolitik-tian, for certain.

Edited June 16, 2007 by Tom Kutzer

[John Simkin]

John, I'm rather surprised at that last statement! I thought a large part of your thesis revolved around the ruling classes supporting the Nazis, why would they need to flee the country?

They would have only been forced to flee the country if these negotiations were unsuccessful and Germany successfully invaded the UK. Hitler was willing to do deals with the British ruling class but if they resisted and lost, he would have been unwilling to share power with them.

Sorry John but I'm not convinced, the ruling classes would still be useful, if only as a puppet government. The fact that there were indeed secret plans for the aristocracy to flee ( I assume this information has only relatively recently been released) would surly imply that although at the beginning ,they may have had some sympathy with the Nazis, after the war started in earnest most of them were totally loyal, otherwise, why would they need a secreat escape plan ? I am in no way a royalist but I cant help but wonder if your not giving the royals a raw deal deal with this one. I know from my own late grandfather that many soldiers had a lot of sympathy with the Nazis polices, but that in no way implies that when push came to shove, every man Jack of them did their duty and put personal feelings aside.

I believe there is a major difference between being sympathetic to the Nazis and being willing to be puppet rulers. I am not particularly fond of the royal family but I do not think that King George VI would have been willing to do that. Nor do I believe Winston Churchill would have played the role of a Quisling leader. (Vidkun Quisling ruled Norway on behalf of Hitler between 1940 and 1945). This was not an option for Hitler because of Churchill public resistance to Nazi Germany. In fact, some people believed the reason that these peace negotiations failed was because both sides were insisting that both Hitler and Churchill stood down as leaders of their respective countries.

In the event of invasion George VI and Churchill would have fled to Canada. If Germany had successfully invaded the UK in 1940, Hitler would have wanted a high profile figure to be a Quisling leader. It has usually been assumed that the Duke of Windsor would have played that role. Another possibility is that the Duke of Kent would have held the post. The prime minister would probably have been Sir Archibald Ramsay. He had been the head of the secret organization, the Right Club. He explained the objectives of the organization in his autobiography, The Nameless War:

"The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective."

The Right Club had been infiltrated by the intelligence services from the beginning (Joan Miller, Marjorie Amor and Helem de Munck). In fact, some of the leaders of MI5 and MI6 like Sir Stewart Menzies and Maxwell Knight shared the views of this secret organization. Churchill knew about the activities of the Right Club via Desmond Morton.

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War the government passed a Defence Regulation Order. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm" On 22nd September, 1939, Oliver C. Gilbert and Victor Rowe, became the first members of the Right Club to be arrested.

In the House of Commons Ramsay attacked this legislation and on 14th December, 1939, asked: "Is this not the first time for a very long time in British history, that British born subjects have been denied every facility for justice?"

In the House of Commons Ramsay was the main critic of having Jews in the government. He began a campaign to have Leslie Hore-Belisha sacked as Secretary of War. In one speech on 27th April 1938 he warned that Hore-Belisha "will lead us to war with our blood-brothers of the Nordic race in order to make way for a Bolshevised Europe."

Ramsay continued his campaign against Leslie Hore-Belisha after the war started and even distributed free copies of right-wing magazines that included articles attacking the Secretary of War. Eventually Neville Chamberlain decided to remove Hore-Belisha as Secretary of State for War and appoint him as Minister of Information. Lord Halifax objected, claiming that it was "inappropriate to have a Jew in charge of publicity." In January 1940 Hore-Belisha was sacked as Secretary of State for War.

On 20th March, 1940, Ramsay asked the Minister of Information a question about the New British Broadcasting Service, a radio station broadcasting German propaganda. In doing so he gave full details of the wavelength and the time in the day when it provided programmes. His critics claimed he was trying to give the radio station publicity. Two Labour Party MPs, Ellen Wilkinson and Emanuel Shinwell, made speeches in the House of Commons suggesting that Ramsay was a member of a right-wing secret society. In fact, we now know he was leader of that society.

By this time Ramsay was being helped in his work by two women, Anna Wolkoff and Joan Miller. Unknown to Ramsay, Miller was a MI5 agent. Wolkoff was the daughter of Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff, the former aide-to-camp to the Nicholas II in London. Wolkoff ran the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington and this eventually became the main meeting place for members of the Right Club.

In the 1930s Anna Wolkoff had meetings with Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess. In 1935 her actions began to be monitored by MI5. Agents warned that Wolkoff had developed a close relationship with Wallis Simpson (the future wife of Edward VIII) and that the two women might be involved in passing state secrets to the German government.

In February 1940, Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk from the American Embassy. He soon became a regular visitor to the Russian Tea Room where he met other members of the Right Club including Ramsay. Wolkoff, Kent and Ramsay talked about politics and agreed that they all shared the same political views.

Kent was concerned that the American government wanted the United States to join the war against Germany. He said he had evidence of this as he had been making copies of the correspondence between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent invited Wolkoff and Ramsay back to his flat to look at these documents. This included secret assurances that the United States would support France if it was invaded by the German Army. Kent later argued that he had shown these documents to Ramsay in the hope that he would pass this information to American politicians hostile to Roosevelt.

On 13th April 1940 Wolkoff went to Kent's flat and made copies of some of these documents. Joan Miller and Marjorie Amor were later to testify that these documents were then passed on to Duco del Monte, Assistant Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy. Soon afterwards, MI8, the wireless interception service, picked up messages between Rome and Berlin that indicated that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (Abwehr), had seen the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence.

Soon afterwards Anna Wolkoff asked Joan Miller if she would use her contacts at the Italian Embassy to pass a coded letter to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) in Germany. The letter contained information that he could use in his broadcasts on Radio Hamburg. Before passing the letter to her contacts, Miller showed it to Maxwell Knight, the head of B5b, a unit within MI5 that conducted the monitoring of political subversion.

On 18th May, Knight told Guy Liddell about the Right Club spy ring. Liddell immediately had a meeting with Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in London. Kennedy agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity and on 20th May, 1940, the Special Branch raided his flat. Inside they found the copies of 1,929 classified documents, including the secret correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent was also found in possession of what became known as Ramsay's Red Book. This book had the names and addresses of members of the Right Club and had been given to Kent for safe keeping.

Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years.

Ramsay was surprisingly not charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. Instead he was interned under Defence Regulation 18B. Ramsay now joined other right-wing extremists such as Oswald Mosley and Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff in Brixton Prison. Some left-wing politicians in the House of Commons began demanding the publication of Ramsay's Red Book. They suspected that several senior members of the Conservative Party had been members of the Right Club. Some took the view that Ramsay had done some sort of deal in order to prevent him being charged with treason.

The Home Secretary refused to reveal the contents of Ramsay's Red Book. He claimed that it was impossible to know if the names in the book were really members of the Right Club. If this was the case, the publication of the book would unfairly smear innocent people. In reality it was because Churchill did not want the British public to know that several senior members of the Conservative Party, including several members of the House of Lords, were supporters of Nazi Germany.

The government found it difficult to suppress the story and in 1941 the New York Times claimed that Ramsay had been guilty of spying for Nazi Germany: " Before the war he (Ramsay) was strongly anti-Communist, anti-semitic, and pro-Hitler. Though no specific charges were brought against him - Defence Regulations allow that - informed American sources said that he had sent to the German Legation in Dublin treasonable information given to him by Tyler Kent, clerk to the American Embassy in London."

Ramsay sued the owners of the New York Times for libel. In court Ramsay argued that if there had been any evidence of him passing secrets to the Germans he would have been tried under the Official Secrets Act alongside Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent in 1940. The newspaper owners were found guilty of libel but the case became a disaster for Ramsay when he was awarded a farthing in damages. As well as the extremely damaging publicity he endured, Ramsay was forced to pay the costs of the case.

Although detained in Brixton Prison he was allowed to submit questions in the House of Commons. This enabled him to continue to make racist comments. For example, on 23rd February, he asked for details of the Jews fighting in the British armed forces. On 3rd August, 1944, he complained about the music of "Oriental and African music" being played on British radio.

[Len Colby]

A few more questions John you said in your initial post that “Prince George was one of many people murdered as part of a cover-up operation”, can you tell us who the others were?

Also it seems that many of the other people involved

Lived long healthy lives. According to your site the Duke of Hamilton died in 1973 for example.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhamilton.htm

I was also hoping you could elaborate on this point as well:

“It is a story that also involves Allen Dulles and the US intelligence services. It is also a story that involved a trial run for the MKULTRA project”

As for Hess’s trip to the UK if it were really part of some secret plan why wasn’t it done in a more discreet way than having him fly a German warplane to Scotland during the Blitz? Couldn’t he have slipped into a neutral country and from there to UK or perhaps send British negotiators to the same country?

It’s also unclear to me is if Hess parachuted out of his plane or landed it. I’ve seen contradictory reports. Both versions indicate that he said he was low on fuel which is odd since the Bf 110’s use during the Battle of Britain would seem to indicate it was capable of a roundtrip between the Continent and Britain.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERme110.htm

Do you still believe that Hess died in the Duke’s crash?

[Denis Pointing]

John, I'm rather surprised at that last statement! I thought a large part of your thesis revolved around the ruling classes supporting the Nazis, why would they need to flee the country?

They would have only been forced to flee the country if these negotiations were unsuccessful and Germany successfully invaded the UK. Hitler was willing to do deals with the British ruling class but if they resisted and lost, he would have been unwilling to share power with them.

Sorry John but I'm not convinced, the ruling classes would still be useful, if only as a puppet government. The fact that there were indeed secret plans for the aristocracy to flee ( I assume this information has only relatively recently been released) would surly imply that although at the beginning ,they may have had some sympathy with the Nazis, after the war started in earnest most of them were totally loyal, otherwise, why would they need a secreat escape plan ? I am in no way a royalist but I cant help but wonder if your not giving the royals a raw deal deal with this one. I know from my own late grandfather that many soldiers had a lot of sympathy with the Nazis polices, but that in no way implies that when push came to shove, every man Jack of them did their duty and put personal feelings aside.

I believe there is a major difference between being sympathetic to the Nazis and being willing to be puppet rulers. I am not particularly fond of the royal family but I do not think that King George VI would have been willing to do that. Nor do I believe Winston Churchill would have played the role of a Quisling leader. (Vidkun Quisling ruled Norway on behalf of Hitler between 1940 and 1945). This was not an option for Hitler because of Churchill public resistance to Nazi Germany. In fact, some people believed the reason that these peace negotiations failed was because both sides were insisting that both Hitler and Churchill stood down as leaders of their respective countries.

In the event of invasion George VI and Churchill would have fled to Canada. If Germany had successfully invaded the UK in 1940, Hitler would have wanted a high profile figure to be a Quisling leader. It has usually been assumed that the Duke of Windsor would have played that role. Another possibility is that the Duke of Kent would have held the post. The prime minister would probably have been Sir Archibald Ramsay. He had been the head of the secret organization, the Right Club. He explained the objectives of the organization in his autobiography, The Nameless War:

"The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective."

The Right Club had been infiltrated by the intelligence services from the beginning (Joan Miller, Marjorie Amor and Helem de Munck). In fact, some of the leaders of MI5 and MI6 like Sir Stewart Menzies and Maxwell Knight shared the views of this secret organization. Churchill knew about the activities of the Right Club via Desmond Morton.

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War the government passed a Defence Regulation Order. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm" On 22nd September, 1939, Oliver C. Gilbert and Victor Rowe, became the first members of the Right Club to be arrested.

In the House of Commons Ramsay attacked this legislation and on 14th December, 1939, asked: "Is this not the first time for a very long time in British history, that British born subjects have been denied every facility for justice?"

In the House of Commons Ramsay was the main critic of having Jews in the government. He began a campaign to have Leslie Hore-Belisha sacked as Secretary of War. In one speech on 27th April 1938 he warned that Hore-Belisha "will lead us to war with our blood-brothers of the Nordic race in order to make way for a Bolshevised Europe."

Ramsay continued his campaign against Leslie Hore-Belisha after the war started and even distributed free copies of right-wing magazines that included articles attacking the Secretary of War. Eventually Neville Chamberlain decided to remove Hore-Belisha as Secretary of State for War and appoint him as Minister of Information. Lord Halifax objected, claiming that it was "inappropriate to have a Jew in charge of publicity." In January 1940 Hore-Belisha was sacked as Secretary of State for War.

On 20th March, 1940, Ramsay asked the Minister of Information a question about the New British Broadcasting Service, a radio station broadcasting German propaganda. In doing so he gave full details of the wavelength and the time in the day when it provided programmes. His critics claimed he was trying to give the radio station publicity. Two Labour Party MPs, Ellen Wilkinson and Emanuel Shinwell, made speeches in the House of Commons suggesting that Ramsay was a member of a right-wing secret society. In fact, we now know he was leader of that society.

By this time Ramsay was being helped in his work by two women, Anna Wolkoff and Joan Miller. Unknown to Ramsay, Miller was a MI5 agent. Wolkoff was the daughter of Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff, the former aide-to-camp to the Nicholas II in London. Wolkoff ran the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington and this eventually became the main meeting place for members of the Right Club.

In the 1930s Anna Wolkoff had meetings with Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess. In 1935 her actions began to be monitored by MI5. Agents warned that Wolkoff had developed a close relationship with Wallis Simpson (the future wife of Edward VIII) and that the two women might be involved in passing state secrets to the German government.

In February 1940, Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk from the American Embassy. He soon became a regular visitor to the Russian Tea Room where he met other members of the Right Club including Ramsay. Wolkoff, Kent and Ramsay talked about politics and agreed that they all shared the same political views.

Kent was concerned that the American government wanted the United States to join the war against Germany. He said he had evidence of this as he had been making copies of the correspondence between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent invited Wolkoff and Ramsay back to his flat to look at these documents. This included secret assurances that the United States would support France if it was invaded by the German Army. Kent later argued that he had shown these documents to Ramsay in the hope that he would pass this information to American politicians hostile to Roosevelt.

On 13th April 1940 Wolkoff went to Kent's flat and made copies of some of these documents. Joan Miller and Marjorie Amor were later to testify that these documents were then passed on to Duco del Monte, Assistant Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy. Soon afterwards, MI8, the wireless interception service, picked up messages between Rome and Berlin that indicated that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (Abwehr), had seen the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence.

Soon afterwards Anna Wolkoff asked Joan Miller if she would use her contacts at the Italian Embassy to pass a coded letter to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) in Germany. The letter contained information that he could use in his broadcasts on Radio Hamburg. Before passing the letter to her contacts, Miller showed it to Maxwell Knight, the head of B5b, a unit within MI5 that conducted the monitoring of political subversion.

On 18th May, Knight told Guy Liddell about the Right Club spy ring. Liddell immediately had a meeting with Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in London. Kennedy agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity and on 20th May, 1940, the Special Branch raided his flat. Inside they found the copies of 1,929 classified documents, including the secret correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent was also found in possession of what became known as Ramsay's Red Book. This book had the names and addresses of members of the Right Club and had been given to Kent for safe keeping.

Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years.

Ramsay was surprisingly not charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. Instead he was interned under Defence Regulation 18B. Ramsay now joined other right-wing extremists such as Oswald Mosley and Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff in Brixton Prison. Some left-wing politicians in the House of Commons began demanding the publication of Ramsay's Red Book. They suspected that several senior members of the Conservative Party had been members of the Right Club. Some took the view that Ramsay had done some sort of deal in order to prevent him being charged with treason.

The Home Secretary refused to reveal the contents of Ramsay's Red Book. He claimed that it was impossible to know if the names in the book were really members of the Right Club. If this was the case, the publication of the book would unfairly smear innocent people. In reality it was because Churchill did not want the British public to know that several senior members of the Conservative Party, including several members of the House of Lords, were supporters of Nazi Germany.

The government found it difficult to suppress the story and in 1941 the New York Times claimed that Ramsay had been guilty of spying for Nazi Germany: " Before the war he (Ramsay) was strongly anti-Communist, anti-semitic, and pro-Hitler. Though no specific charges were brought against him - Defence Regulations allow that - informed American sources said that he had sent to the German Legation in Dublin treasonable information given to him by Tyler Kent, clerk to the American Embassy in London."

Ramsay sued the owners of the New York Times for libel. In court Ramsay argued that if there had been any evidence of him passing secrets to the Germans he would have been tried under the Official Secrets Act alongside Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent in 1940. The newspaper owners were found guilty of libel but the case became a disaster for Ramsay when he was awarded a farthing in damages. As well as the extremely damaging publicity he endured, Ramsay was forced to pay the costs of the case.

Although detained in Brixton Prison he was allowed to submit questions in the House of Commons. This enabled him to continue to make racist comments. For example, on 23rd February, he asked for details of the Jews fighting in the British armed forces. On 3rd August, 1944, he complained about the music of "Oriental and African music" being played on British radio.

That was absolutely fascinating John, thank you. I didn't realize there was so much OPEN hostility towards Jews by politician's back then. Hard to belive it was only sixty odd years ago.

[Guest David Guyatt]

There is another more conspiratorial aspect about Churchill that hasn’t been discussed yet that might well impact on these events and which could explain his behaviour and the distrust (if not loathing) with which his British elite contemporaries held him.

This concerns Churchill’s massive finances losses in the 1929 Wall Street “crash” where Churchill stood in the visitors gallery with Wall Street financier and best friend Bernie Baruch, observing his fortune drain away. A sum of somewhere between $10-14 million of Churchill’s money was irrevocably lost. Churchill was not just broke but ruined and would have very likely thereafter faded into penury had it not been for Bernie Baruch who assured him that he would make good all of his losses.

(see: http://judicial-inc.biz/winston_churchill_biography.htm)

Baruch was one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations who, along with J P Morgan, John Rockefeller, Otto Kahn, Jacob Schiff and Paul Warburg had provided the funds to establish and maintain the CFR. These same men were the ones who founded the Federal Reserve (of which a great deal of conspiracy theory has been written).

I would reiterate here what I have mentioned before about the CFR’s War & Peace Studies Project and how this study appears to have been a template for the later US military and economic domination of the world. The study remains, to this day, unavailable.

Interestingly enough, Baruch’s assistant in the War Industries Board that Baruch headed in WWI was Clarence Dillon. Dillon later was made a VP of W A Harriman & Co., one of the principal Wall Street banks that financed Hitler and which founded the Union Banking Corp that was controlled by the Dutch Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V that was, in turn, solely controlled by nazi financier Fritz Thyssen. Part of these funding arrangements were the subject of negotiations between Thyssen and Rudolf Hess, in fact.

The obvious question to formulate is whether Churchill’s financial debt to Bernie Baruch was sufficient for him to have become a US pawn in the Great Game that was unfolding. I have no immediate answer to this question, but what little is available about the CFR study referenced above, is that the new American hegemony that was planned fully intended to absorb the British Empire.

Had those elite members of the British Establishment succeeded (assuming that was their true ambition?) in negotiating a treaty with Hitler following Hess’s arrival in Scotland, and had jointly demolished Russia then the shape of the post war world may have been very different indeed.

England may not have become penurious and thus economically dependent on the US.

David

[John Simkin]

There is another more conspiratorial aspect about Churchill that hasn’t been discussed yet that might well impact on these events and which could explain his behaviour and the distrust (if not loathing) with which his British elite contemporaries held him.

This concerns Churchill’s massive finances losses in the 1929 Wall Street “crash” where Churchill stood in the visitors gallery with Wall Street financier and best friend Bernie Baruch, observing his fortune drain away. A sum of somewhere between $10-14 million of Churchill’s money was irrevocably lost. Churchill was not just broke but ruined and would have very likely thereafter faded into penury had it not been for Bernie Baruch who assured him that he would make good all of his losses.

(see: http://judicial-inc.biz/winston_churchill_biography.htm)

Baruch was one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations who, along with J P Morgan, John Rockefeller, Otto Kahn, Jacob Schiff and Paul Warburg had provided the funds to establish and maintain the CFR. These same men were the ones who founded the Federal Reserve (of which a great deal of conspiracy theory has been written).

I intended to go into this issue later. However, now you have raised it I will add a bit of information on Winston Churchill’s financial problems.

Bernie Baruch was not the only one who helped out Winston Churchill. Lord Beaverbrook, who was an arch appeaser, recruited Churchill to write a regular column for the Evening Standard. The idea being that this money would stop Churchill from urging the British government to stand-up to Hitler. However, Churchill was in a difficult position, the only way he could become prime minister was by attacking the foreign policy of Neville Chamberlain.

When Churchill refused to play along with Beaverbrook’s attempt to control him, the contract was cancelled. (Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston Churchill 1939-41, page 919) Churchill, deeply in debt, was forced to put Chartwell on the market. This was withdrawn from sale when Sir Henry Strakosch, paid the then substantial sum of £18,162 to clear his debts. Why did Strakosch do this? Well he was a very important figure in the Jewish lobby. Originally from Austria, he chairman of the South African goldminers, Union Corporation. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance during 1925 and 1926. He later served on the Council of India between 1930 and 1937. He was also chairman of The Economist.

It has been argued that it was money from the Jewish lobby that ensured Winston Churchill opposed appeasement. Maybe, but as Peter Padfield has pointed out (Hess, page 118): “…throughout the war he did as little to ameliorate the horrors suffered by Jews in German hands as Chamberlain had done for the Poles”.

Churchill was of course just as anti-Semitic as the rest of the British ruling class. However, he was always willing to take a bribe. What is significant is that as soon as Churchill become prime minister, he brought in Lord Beaverbrook to the war cabinet. Beaverbrook of course then goes on to organize the secret negotiations with Nazi Germany and to cover-up the Hess affair.

[Sid Walker]

There is another more conspiratorial aspect about Churchill that hasn’t been discussed yet that might well impact on these events and which could explain his behaviour and the distrust (if not loathing) with which his British elite contemporaries held him.

This concerns Churchill’s massive finances losses in the 1929 Wall Street “crash” where Churchill stood in the visitors gallery with Wall Street financier and best friend Bernie Baruch, observing his fortune drain away. A sum of somewhere between $10-14 million of Churchill’s money was irrevocably lost. Churchill was not just broke but ruined and would have very likely thereafter faded into penury had it not been for Bernie Baruch who assured him that he would make good all of his losses.

(see: http://judicial-inc.biz/winston_churchill_biography.htm)

Baruch was one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations who, along with J P Morgan, John Rockefeller, Otto Kahn, Jacob Schiff and Paul Warburg had provided the funds to establish and maintain the CFR. These same men were the ones who founded the Federal Reserve (of which a great deal of conspiracy theory has been written).

I intended to go into this issue later. However, now you have raised it I will add a bit of information on Winston Churchill’s financial problems.

Bernie Baruch was not the only one who helped out Winston Churchill. Lord Beaverbrook, who was an arch appeaser, recruited Churchill to write a regular column for the Evening Standard. The idea being that this money would stop Churchill from urging the British government to stand-up to Hitler. However, Churchill was in a difficult position, the only way he could become prime minister was by attacking the foreign policy of Neville Chamberlain.

When Churchill refused to play along with Beaverbrook’s attempt to control him, the contract was cancelled. (Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston Churchill 1939-41, page 919) Churchill, deeply in debt, was forced to put Chartwell on the market. This was withdrawn from sale when Sir Henry Strakosch, paid the then substantial sum of £18,162 to clear his debts. Why did Strakosch do this? Well he was a very important figure in the Jewish lobby. Originally from Austria, he chairman of the South African goldminers, Union Corporation. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance during 1925 and 1926. He later served on the Council of India between 1930 and 1937. He was also chairman of The Economist.

It has been argued that it was money from the Jewish lobby that ensured Winston Churchill opposed appeasement. Maybe, but as Peter Padfield has pointed out (Hess, page 118): “…throughout the war he did as little to ameliorate the horrors suffered by Jews in German hands as Chamberlain had done for the Poles”.

Churchill was of course just as anti-Semitic as the rest of the British ruling class. However, he was always willing to take a bribe. What is significant is that as soon as Churchill become prime minister, he brought in Lord Beaverbrook to the war cabinet. Beaverbrook of course then goes on to organize the secret negotiations with Nazi Germany and to cover-up the Hess affair.

Rather an overstatement to suggest the entire British ruling class was 'anti-Semitic', don't you think?

Here's a brief extract from Diana Mosley's fond account of husband Oswald and their life together:

The first time I met him was in 1932 at the twenty-first birthday party of a friend, Barbara Hutchinson, who afterwards married Victor Rothschild. We did not get on particularly well at that first meeting, but as he was out of Parliament and had plenty of free time, he and his wife Cynthia went about a good deal, as did my husband Bryan Guinness and I, and we saw one another frequently. He used to say he had seen me at a ball at Philip Sassoon's house a few months before. I was twenty-one and he was thirty-five; he had resigned from the Labour government in 1930, and with a few other M.P.s had founded the New Party. When it was defeated at the General Election in 193I he became a Fascist, and he was now writing a book, The Greater Britain, setting out his political and economic ideas. The word 'Fascist' in those days was not a term of abuse but described a system of government familiar to most people. Our hosts at this dinner party were Liberals, Philip Sassoon a Conservative Minister. Mosley had been asked to make a little birthday speech for Barbara, which he did. I knew of his reputation as a great orator and was rather disappointed by his performance; it suited the occasion and was no more than friendly banter directed at Barbara's father, St John Hutchinson, an old friend. Like everyone else, I also knew of his reputation as a lady killer, but this did not predispose me in his favour.

One gets the feeling of a significant Jewish presence within the aristocracy and rather easy mixing between Jew and Gentile.

Of course, this was not universal. Some in the British aristocracy were anti-Jewish. But I think the case would need to be made - and documented - that the British ruling class as a whole was significantly more anti-Jewish than any other part of the general population. It isn't obvious.

Regarding Beaverbrook, Halifax, Churchill and the dramatic events of 1940, I think this article by Irving merits consideration: Winston Churchill and Hitler's peace offer

Those who are fond of the dear old queen mum (R.I.P.) may like to read to the end, for an insight into the political machinations of this quintessential British icon in her prime.

Edited June 19, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Sid Walker]

There is another more conspiratorial aspect about Churchill that hasn’t been discussed yet that might well impact on these events and which could explain his behaviour and the distrust (if not loathing) with which his British elite contemporaries held him.

This concerns Churchill’s massive finances losses in the 1929 Wall Street “crash” where Churchill stood in the visitors gallery with Wall Street financier and best friend Bernie Baruch, observing his fortune drain away. A sum of somewhere between $10-14 million of Churchill’s money was irrevocably lost. Churchill was not just broke but ruined and would have very likely thereafter faded into penury had it not been for Bernie Baruch who assured him that he would make good all of his losses.

(see: http://judicial-inc.biz/winston_churchill_biography.htm)

Baruch was one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations who, along with J P Morgan, John Rockefeller, Otto Kahn, Jacob Schiff and Paul Warburg had provided the funds to establish and maintain the CFR. These same men were the ones who founded the Federal Reserve (of which a great deal of conspiracy theory has been written).

I would reiterate here what I have mentioned before about the CFR’s War & Peace Studies Project and how this study appears to have been a template for the later US military and economic domination of the world. The study remains, to this day, unavailable.

Interestingly enough, Baruch’s assistant in the War Industries Board that Baruch headed in WWI was Clarence Dillon. Dillon later was made a VP of W A Harriman & Co., one of the principal Wall Street banks that financed Hitler and which founded the Union Banking Corp that was controlled by the Dutch Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V that was, in turn, solely controlled by nazi financier Fritz Thyssen. Part of these funding arrangements were the subject of negotiations between Thyssen and Rudolf Hess, in fact.

The obvious question to formulate is whether Churchill’s financial debt to Bernie Baruch was sufficient for him to have become a US pawn in the Great Game that was unfolding. I have no immediate answer to this question, but what little is available about the CFR study referenced above, is that the new American hegemony that was planned fully intended to absorb the British Empire.

Had those elite members of the British Establishment succeeded (assuming that was their true ambition?) in negotiating a treaty with Hitler following Hess’s arrival in Scotland, and had jointly demolished Russia then the shape of the post war world may have been very different indeed.

England may not have become penurious and thus economically dependent on the US.

David

David,

FWIW, I advise some caution in citing the judicial-inc.biz website. It's not (for me) that is overtly and rather virulently anti-Jewish. Although others may find that offensive, I'm through getting too excited any more about people being nasty about each other. After all, I read Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Pipes.

My problem is that I think it's inaccurate - not in toto, but in part, sufficiently often to be rather dangerous.

Unless I'm mistaken (if so, please correct me), there is no clear evidence that Baruch actually bankrolled Churchill. Just suspicions.

According to David Irving, their financial relationship was complex indeed:

While in office he had been cushioned by his emoluments as M.P. and

minister, and he had profited from the traditional perquisites of the highborn

– a currency flutter; £500 won at the tables from the Duke of

Westminster; a £5,000 fee to handle oil companies’ dealings with the government.

Even after Baldwin’s defeat his contacts in Whitehall were of

pecuniary value, and he attracted lucrative directorships in coal storage

and transport companies.

Hoping to found a personal fortune, he plunged into the U.S. stock

market, and liked the easy money that he made. He began to commune by

transatlantic telephone with the financier Bernard Baruch, the head of the

U.S. War Industries Board with whom he had dealt when munitions minister.

But in vain will the inquisitive search the Baruch papers in New Jersey

for any trace of financial succour – apart from one item, a note in the

multi-millionaire’s hand acknowledging repayment of five dollars which

he had advanced to the Englishman. It was that kind of detail that makes

rich men what they are: rich.

Baruch’s advice was worth every dollar. In 1929 Winston earned

£2,000 from his U.S. electrical stocks; in one three-week period these

jumped £5,300 in value, prompting a jubilant letter to Clementine that he

had recovered a fortune: ‘And this, with the information I can get and

now am free to use, may earn further profits in the future.’

He continued to speculate. But now funds flowed also from his writing.

He was commanding substantial fees. He had contracted for twentytwo

articles for American weeklies which would earn him no less than

£, – so he telegraphed to Clemmie in October 1929.

But his dreams of great fortune dissolved on the twenty-fourth of that

month, as he was eye-witness to the New York stock market crash. ‘O

Lord,’ he gasped, stepping out into Wall-street as the Stock Exchange

ejected visitors at noon-thirty: ‘What a day!’

- Churchill's War, pages 14 & 15

In the second week of March 1938 a slump wiped out Churchill’s

American stockholdings. Becoming uneasy about them while still at

Cannes, he had inquired of Baruch whether to sell. Baruch had telegraphed

back: ‘'See it through. Bernie'.’ The advice was wrong: the stocks collapsed;

suddenly his share account with London stockbrokers Vickers, da

Costa & Co was £17,000 in the red, and they wanted payment.

- Churchill's War, page 107

Edited June 19, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Guest David Guyatt]

Thanks Sid.

My internet search was brief -- perhaps all too brief in this case. I was remembering a British TV series on the life of Churchill that was broadcast decades ago (can't even remember the name of it offhand -- although if forced I can locate it, with some difficulty, as a friend has it on video) in which it reflected Churchill's losses during the Stock Market crash and how his great friend Bernie Baruch aided him with his finances. Ergo, I was looking for a site that reflected that information and did not overly focus on the site itself.

One's sins and laziness will always get you in the end!

I also do think that John is generally correct is saying that the ruling elite were, by and large, anti-semitic and for the most part Arabist leaning -- doubtless to do with the oil in that thar' part of the world. I suppose one would need to have lived here a fairly long time back in them thar' days to have seen how such rascism was around. Of course, it would have been far too impolite to display it outwards. It was far more subtle than that. The inherent English attitude was something along the lines of:

"Remember that you are an Englisman and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life".

Indeed there was a significant Jewish influence in English life as you pointed out....the Rothchilds being one that stand out. Then there were the Randlords, some of whose offspring were - incredibly some may consider - members of the Right Club.

But the overall point I was aiming at was not pro or anti semitism, but rather pro-American with Churchilll's mother being an American and Churchill being (most likely) bankrolled by Baruch and others who were also financing Hitler. Playing both sides is, of course, one of the key techniques of the Hegelian influenced Rhodes-Milner Group. Ditto Skull and Bones in the US who helped finance both Hitler and, earlier, the Bolsheviks, thus setting Europe up for further destabilisation in the post WWI world.

While all this gets very complex indeed, what I think is key to it all is not race or religion, but rather a long-term right-wing political creed that is inherently tied to money and wealth.

That, so far as I can see, is where we are today.

Yours in bias.

David

[Sid Walker]

Thanks Sid.

My internet search was brief -- perhaps all too brief in this case. I was remembering a British TV series on the life of Churchill that was broadcast decades ago (can't even remember the name of it offhand -- although if forced I can locate it, with some difficulty, as a friend has it on video) in which it reflected Churchill's losses during the Stock Market crash and how his great friend Bernie Baruch aided him with his finances. Ergo, I was looking for a site that reflected that information and did not overly focus on the site itself.

One's sins and laziness will always get you in the end!

I also do think that John is generally correct is saying that the ruling elite were, by and large, anti-semitic and for the most part Arabist leaning -- doubtless to do with the oil in that thar' part of the world. I suppose one would need to have lived here a fairly long time back in them thar' days to have seen how such rascism was around. Of course, it would have been far too impolite to display it outwards. It was far more subtle than that. The inherent English attitude was something along the lines of:

"Remember that you are an Englisman and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life".

Indeed there was a significant Jewish influence in English life as you pointed out....the Rothchilds being one that stand out. Then there were the Randlords, some of whose offspring were - incredibly some may consider - members of the Right Club.

But the overall point I was aiming at was not pro or anti semitism, but rather pro-American with Churchilll's mother being an American and Churchill being (most likely) bankrolled by Baruch and others who were also financing Hitler. Playing both sides is, of course, one of the key techniques of the Hegelian influenced Rhodes-Milner Group. Ditto Skull and Bones in the US who helped finance both Hitler and, earlier, the Bolsheviks, thus setting Europe up for further destabilisation in the post WWI world.

While all this gets very complex indeed, what I think is key to it all is not race or religion, but rather a long-term right-wing political creed that is inherently tied to money and wealth.

That, so far as I can see, is where we are today.

Yours in bias.

David

An interesting discussion, David.

The more I learn of Churchill, the more I see him as a quintessential opportunist to whom mainstream history has been excessively kind.

He changed his views often, to suit the flow of events and the opportunities presented to him at any given time, although he often got his timing wrong. He also had a knack of changing his views and stance quite unapologetically (so it was less noticeable, perhaps?) - and turning setbacks to his advantage. Often his recklessness caused extensive 'collateral damage' (Australasians have special memories of this from World War One). Typically, others paid the price for his flawed judgment.

A Master of Spin, long before the term was coined.

This is from Irving's Churchill's War Vol. 1, once again. Apologies to those who find his work objectionable. Perhaps they could point out to me where (if at all) he is in error in what follows:

To Kay Halle, girlfriend of his only son Randolph, he remarked one

weekend at Chartwell upon how his fortunes had improved each time he

betrayed his party. ‘I’ve ratted twice,’ he said, ‘and on the second rat

Baldwin made me chancellor.’

He added, ‘The family motto of the House of Marlborough is Faithful

but Unfortunate. I, by my daring and enterprise, have changed the motto

to Faithless but Fortunate.’

His five years at the Treasury cannot be glossed over. They were a

grim epoch. He came under the influence of powerful City figures who

persuaded him to restore Britain to the Gold Standard of 1914. The decision

unleashed an economic avalanche. He found the zeros and ‘damned

little dots’ beyond his grasp. He resorted to patter and showmanship on

the floor of the House to mask his own ignorance.

His naval colleagues watched with particular bitterness as he slashed

defence spending to finance eye-catching schemes for social insurance, derating

industrial property, and sixpence or even a shilling off income tax.

This poacher turned gamekeeper attacked every vestige of new naval construction

with unremitting zeal.

It shocked his old friends in cabinet and at the admiralty. ‘That

damned fellow Winston,’ snorted Hankey, referring to Britain’s unreadiness

for the new war that slowly loomed, ‘was largely responsible.’ Admiral

Lord Beatty wrote to his wife on January 26, 1925: ‘That extraordinary

fellow Winston has gone mad. Economically mad, and no sacrifice is

too great to achieve what in his short-sightedness is the panacæa for evils –

to take a shilling off the income tax.’

Where just one year earlier he had enthusiastically endorsed plans for

a new naval base at Singapore, now he mercilessly struck it from the list;

he opposed the admiralty’s cruiser building programme, and vetoed the

increase in submarine strength at Hong Kong.

In particular he scorned the very idea of a Japanese danger to Britain’s

immense interests in the Far East. ‘A war with Japan!’ he scoffed to Baldwin,

‘But why should there be a war with Japan? I do not believe there is

the slightest chance of it in our lifetime.’

The naval staff disagreed, arguing in March 1925 that Japan’s growing

population and need for markets and sources of self-supply would compel

her to ‘push a policy of penetration, expansion and aggression.’ Churchill

as chancellor demurred: ‘I do not believe Japan has any idea of attacking

the British empire,’ he wrote, ‘or that there is any danger of her

doing so for at least a generation to come.’ If she did attack, he believed

that Britain’s naval power was sufficient to force Japan’s surrender after

three or four years. At his suggestion the Ten Year Rule – the policymaking

assumption that no major war was likely within ten years – was

extended in 1926 and again in 1928.

He was becoming aware that Britain’s world position was slipping,

and despite his American blood he was inclined to identify the United

States as the culprit. At Chartwell he talked of their ‘arrogance’ and ‘fundamental

hostility’ to Britain. They wished, he believed, to dominate

world politics. In a cabinet memorandum he urged a similar view: Britain

alone should decide how large a navy she required, independently of

American desiderata; as for President Calvin Coolidge, he was just a crude

amateur with the ‘viewpoint of a New England backwoodsman.’ Coolidge

delivered an anti-British electioneering speech, which raised Churchill’s

hackles further: ‘They have exacted every penny from Europe. . .

Surely they might leave us to manage our own affairs.’ He warned his

colleagues against cutting the navy down to ‘the limits which the United

States considers suitable for herself.’ When Coolidge was now defeated by

Herbert Hoover, Churchill described even this as being not good for England.

‘She is being slowly but surely forced into the shade,’ he wrote sombrely

to Clemmie.

By the spring of 1929 this wise woman was writing to warn him that

his ‘known hostility to America’ might stand in the way of his becoming

foreign secretary: ‘You would have to try and understand and master

America and make her like you. It’s no use grovelling or being civil to

her.’

But the change of feeling which now overtook him was wrought less

by Clementine’s wise advice than by his growing infatuation with the huge

North American continent, as he revisited it on a lecture tour in September

1929 – borne luxuriously from coast to coast by special railroad

coaches provided by steel magnate Charles Schwab or his financier friend

Bernie Baruch, or driven by limousine through the giant Sequoia forests of

northern California to splash about in a starlet’s heated marble pool in

Hollywood. He liked almost everything about the country, and even Prohibition

held no terrors for him since Randolph the Rabbit – s he affectionately

spoke of his son – had filled every flask and medicine bottle in

their cases with brandy or whisky: ‘Up to the present I have never been

without what was necessary,’ twinkled Churchill in a letter home.

By the end of that September his affection for this great new nation

was complete. ‘I explained to them all about England and her affairs,’ he

wrote Clemmie from Los Angeles, still suffused with the thrill of America,

‘showing how splendid and tolerant she was and how we ought to

work together.' This visit began a love affair that never ended.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Sid Walker]

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