Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts

Monday, February 19, 2024

Western Europe could become the new Ukraine | Timofey Bordachev

The real causes of major armed conflicts such as world wars are always linked to socio-economic factors. For the naturally cautious German nation to become a bunch of cannibals, it first had to sink into the economic misery and moral oppression of the 1920s. Before that, demographic growth and the unresolved social problems of industrialization created the necessary mass of people willing to kill and die on the fields of the First World War.
 
 » Both the Minister for Economic Affairs and the Minister of Finance have come to the conclusion
that Germany is no longer sufficiently competitive. It is inconceivable that this will not lead to political changes. «
Christian Lindner, German Minister of Finance, Feb 12, 2024.

In any case, any great aggression against neighbors has required a very large number of poor and morally degenerate people. This is roughly what happened to Ukraine during the 30 years of its failed statehood. In other words, the ability of the Western Europeans to unleash armed aggression against us depends on how their own affairs are going.

This is why, from the Russian point of view, it is now of the utmost importance to observe what is happening in the Western European economies. The irrational policy of sanctions against Russia and the partial breakdown of trade and economic relations between us have already led to serious losses for their business sectors. Added to this are the accumulated domestic problems, competition from American and Chinese companies, and the general recession in the global economy.
 
» Ukraine must win this war. If Putin had his way, this would only be the beginning. « 
 
For example, one of the Western news agencies recently published a story about how large manufacturing companies, industry leaders, are leaving Germany in search of more favorable locations and investment conditions. Other major Western European states are going through their own worrying processes. If these economic difficulties begin to erode the established model, the mood of the citizenry may change.

We do not know exactly how Western Europeans will react to the deterioration of their material situation and how long it will take. It is quite likely that the world will not see the practical consequences of this economic decline for another 20-30 years. What is more, we cannot say with certainty that the behavioral algorithms of its inhabitants will be exactly the same as in the first half of the 20th century. History does not repeat itself, which makes thinking about events by analogy a rather dead-end way of understanding what is happening.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

The Defeat of the West │ Emmanuel Todd

Emmanuel Todd, historian, demographer, anthropologist, sociologist and political analyst, is part of a dying breed: one of the very few remaining exponents of old school French intelligentzia. Todd was the first Western intellectual, already in 1976, to have predicted the fall of the USSR in his book La Chute Finale (The Final Fall), with his research based on Soviet infant mortality rates [...] The first nugget concerning his latest book, La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West) is the minor miracle of actually being published last week in France, right within the NATO sphere: a hand grenade of a book, by an independent thinker, based on facts and verified data, blowing up the whole Russophobia edifice erected around the 'aggression' by 'Tsar' Putin.
 
Behemoth, the land monster (land forces), and Leviathan, the sea monster (sea forces), killing each other.
Engraving by William Blake (1757–1827).

Todd focuses on the key reasons that have led to the West’s downfall. Among them: the end of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO’s deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the “degree zero” of the West’s religious matrix, Protestantism; the sharp increase of mortality rates in the US (much higher than in Russia), along with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Forever Wars. Todd methodically analyses, in sequence, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia and finally The Empire. Let’s focus on what would be the 12 Greatest Hits of his remarkable exercise:

1. At the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, the combined GDP of Russia and Belarus was only 3.3% of the combined West (in this case the NATO sphere plus Japan and South Korea). Todd is amazed how these 3.3% capable of producing more weapons than the whole Western colossus not only are winning the war but reducing dominant notions of the “neoliberal political economy” to shambles.
2. The “ideological solitude” and “ideological narcissism” of the West – incapable of understanding, for instance, how “the whole Muslim world seems to consider Russia as a partner rather than an adversary”.
3. Todd eschews the notion of “Weberian states” – evoking a delicious compatibility of vision between Putin and US realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer. Because they are forced to survive in an environment where only power relations matters, states are now acting as “Hobbesian agents.” And that brings us to the Russian notion of a nation-state, focused on “sovereignty”: the capacity of a state to independently define its internal and external policies, with no foreign interference whatsoever.
4. The implosion, step by step, of WASP culture, which led, “since the 1960s”, to “an empire deprived of a center and a project, an essentially military organism managed by a group without culture (in the anthropological sense)”. This is Todd defining the US neocons.
5. The US as a “post-imperial” entity: just a shell of military machinery deprived of an intelligence-driven culture, leading to “accentuated military expansion in a phase of massive contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “modern war without industry is an oxymoron”.
6. The demographic trap: Todd shows how Washington strategists “forgot that a state whose population enjoys a high educational and technological level, even if it is decreasing, does not lose its military power”. That’s exactly the case of Russia during the Putin years.
7. Here we reach the crux of Todd’s argument: his post-Max Weber reinterpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published a little over a century ago, in 1904/1905: “If Protestantism was the matrix for the ascension of the West, its death, today, is the cause of the disintegration and defeat.Todd clearly defines how the 1688 English 'Glorious Revolution', the 1776 American Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Revolution were the true pillars of the liberal West. Consequently, an expanded 'West' is not historically 'liberal', because it also engineered “Italian fascism, German Nazism and Japanese militarism”. In a nutshell, Todd shows how Protestantism imposed universal literacy on the populations it controlled, “because all faithful must directly access the Holy Scriptures. A literate population is capable of economic and technological development. The Protestant religion modeled, by accident, a superior, efficient workforce.” And it is in this sense that Germany was “at the heart of Western development”, even if the Industrial Revolution took place in England. Todd’s key formulation is undisputable: “The crucial factor of the ascension of the West was Protestantism’s attachment to alphabetization.Moreover Protestantism, Todd stresses, is twice at the heart of the history of the West: via the educational and economic drive - with fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God engendering a work ethic and a strong, collective morality - and via the idea that Men are unequal (remember the White Man’s Burden). The collapse of Protestantism could not but destroy the work ethic to the benefit of mass greed: that is, neoliberalism.
8. Todd’s sharp critique of the spirit of 1968 would merit a whole new book. He refers to “one of the great illusions of the 1960s – between Anglo-American sexual revolution and May 68 in France”; “to believe that the individual would be greater if freed from the collective”. That led to an inevitable debacle: “Now that we are free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, communist, socialist or nationalist, we live the experience of the void.” And that’s how we became “a multitude of mimetic midgets who do not dare to think by themselves – but reveal themselves as capable of intolerance as the believers of ancient times.
9. Todd’s brief analysis of the deeper meaning of transgenderism completely shatters the Church of Woke – from New York to the EU sphere, and will provoke serial fits of rage. He shows how transgenderism is “one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.” And there’s an added analytical bonus: “The transgender ideology says that a man may become a woman, and a woman may become a man. This is a false affirmation, and in this sense, close to the theoretical heart of Western nihilism.” It gets worse, when it comes to the geopolitical ramifications. Todd establishes a playful mental and social connection between this cult of the fake and the Hegemon’s wobbly behavior in international relations. Example: the Iranian nuclear deal clinched under Obama becoming a hardcore sanctions regime under Trump. Todd: “American foreign policy is, in its own way, gender fluid.”
10. Europe’s “assisted suicide”. Todd reminds us how Europe at the start was the Franco-German couple. Then after the 2007/2008 financial crisis, that turned into “a patriarchic marriage, with Germany as a dominant spouse not listening to his companion anymore”. The EU abandoned any pretention of defending Europe’s interests - cutting itself off from energy and trade with its partner Russia and sanctioning itself. Todd identifies, correctly, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced by the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis: that was “the end of Europe as an autonomous geopolitical actor”. And that happened only 20 years after the joint opposition by France-Germany to the neocon war on Iraq.
11. Todd correctly defines NATO by plunging into “their unconscious”: “We note that its military, ideological and psychological mechanism does not exist to protect Western Europe, but to control it.
12. In tandem with several analysts in Russia, China, Iran and among independents in Europe, Todd is sure that the US obsession – since the 1990s - to cut off Germany from Russia will lead to failure: “Sooner or later, they will collaborate, as “their economic specializations define them as complementary”. The defeat in Ukraine will open the path, as a “gravitational force” reciprocally seduces Germany and Russia.

[...] Whatever the deadline, inbuilt in all this is a total Russia victory – with the winner dictating all terms. No negotiations, no ceasefire, no frozen conflict – as the Hegemon is now desperate spinning.

 
 

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Scholz Will Go So Everything Remains The Same │ The Duran

Alex Christoforou & Alexander Mercouris:
Is Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany 
- the governor of the most important US-vassal state in Europe - on his way out? 
 
This is what Springer's Bild, Europe’s biggest daily paper and a major CIA media in Germany, is suddenly peddling with. Bild creates a narrative around Scholz 'retiring' soon. He would be replaced by Boris Pistorius, the current Federal Minister of Defence, another seasoned senior Atlanticist, Anti-German, Warmonger, Russophobe and Zionist apparatchik of the US-occupation regime. Pistorius 'may' ban the AfD, Germany's most popular opposition party, Bild informs. To 'save democracy'. No worries. No elections. Steinmeier, Habeck, Baerbock, Faeser will remain. No regime change. Germany remains course. End of announcement.

"Majority wants Pistorius instead of Scholz" claims Bild,
while farmers block roads and fuel deliveries in largest nationwide protests ever.
Weimar 2.0.
 
Reference:

Friday, September 1, 2023

Crush Europe and Strengthen the U.S. | RAND Corporation

January 25, 2022 
Confidential
Distribution: WHCS, ANSA, Dept. of State, CIA, NSA, DNC 
 
Executive Summary
[...] The current German economic model is based on two pillars. These are unlimited access to cheap Russian energy resources and to cheap French electric power, thanks to the operation of nuclear power plants. The importance of the first factor is considerably higher. Halting Russian supplies can well create a systemic crisis that would be devastating for the German economy and, indirectly, for the entire European Union. The French energy sector could also soon begin to experience heavy problems. The predictable stop of Russian-controlled nuclear fuel supplies, combined with the unstable situation in the Sahel region, would make French energy sector critically dependent on Australian and Canadian fuel.
 
"A reduction in Russian energy supplies - ideally, a complete halt of such supplies -
would lead to disastrous outcomes for German industry
." - RAND Corporation, Jan 25, 2022.
 
[...] The only feasible way to guarantee Germany's rejection of Russian energy supplies is to involve both sides in the military conflict in Ukraine. Our further actions in this country will inevitably lead to a military response from Russia. Russians will obviously not be able to leave unanswered the massive Ukrainian army pressure on the unrecognized Donbas republics. That would make possible to declare Russia an aggressor and apply to it the entire package of sanctions prepared beforehand. Putin may in turn decide to impose limited counter-sanctions - primarily on Russian energy supplies to Europe. Thus, the damage to the EU countries will be quite comparable to the one to the Russians, and in some countries - primarily in Germany - it will be higher.
 
The prerequisite for Germany to fall into this trap is the leading role of green parties and ideology in Europe. The German Greens are a strongly dogmatic, if not zealous, movement, which makes it quite easy to make them ignore economic arguments. In this respect, the German Greens somewhat exceed their counterparts in the rest of Europe. Personal features and the lack of professionalism of their leaders - primarily Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck - permit to presume that it is next to impossible for them to admit their own mistakes in a timely manner.
 
Thus, it will be enough to quickly form the media image of Putin’s aggressive war to turn the Greens into ardent and hardline supporters of sanctions, a ‘party of war’. It will enable the sanctions regime to be introduced without any obstacles. The lack of professionalism of the current leaders will not allow a setback in the future, even when the negative impact of the chosen policy becomes obvious enough [...] This will ensure a sufficiently long gap in cooperation between Germany and Russia, which will make large German economic operators uncompetitive.

"The prerequisite for Germany to fall into this trap is the leading role of the German Greens."

[...] A reduction in Russian energy supplies - ideally, a complete halt of such supplies - would lead to disastrous outcomes for German industry. The need to divert significant amounts of Russian gas for winter heating of residential and public facilities will further exacerbate the shortages [...] A complete standstill at the largest in the chemical, metallurgical, and machine-building, plants is likely, while they have virtually no spare capacity to reduce energy consumption. It could lead to the shutting down of continuous-cycle enterprises, which would mean their destruction.

The cumulative losses of the German economy can be estimated only approximately. Even if the restriction of Russian supplies is limited to 2022, its consequences will last for several years, and the total losses could reach 200-300 billion euros. Not only will it deliver a devastating blow to the German economy, but the entire EU economy will inevitably collapse. We are talking not about a decline in economy growth pace, but about a sustained recession and a decline in GDP only in material production by 3-4% per year for the next 5-6 years. Such a fall will inevitably cause panic in the financial markets and may bring them to a collapse.

The euro will inevitably, and most likely irreversibly, fall below the dollar. A sharp fall of the euro will consequently cause its global sale. It will become a toxic currency, and all countries in the world will rapidly reduce its share in their forex reserves. This gap will be primarily filled with dollar and yuan.
 
NATO's purpose is "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down",
as Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General, put it.

Another inevitable consequence of a prolonged economic recession will be a sharp drop in living standards and rising unemployment (up to 200,000-400,000 in Germany alone), which will entail the exodus of skilled labour and well-educated young people. There are literally no other destinations for such migration other than the United States today. A somewhat smaller, but also quite significant flow of migrants can be expected from other EU countries.
 
Since 1871 the prime U.S. geopolitical foreign policy doctrine for Europe is:
"Keep Germany and Russia separate and in conflict."
Or as Victoria Nuland put it in 2014: "Fuck the EU!"

The scenario under consideration will thus serve to strengthen the national financial condition both indirectly and most directly. In the short term, it will reverse the trend of the looming, economic recession and, in addition, consolidate American society by distracting it from immediate economic concerns. This, in turn, will reduce electoral risks.

In the medium term (4-5 years), the cumulative benefits of capital flight, re-oriented logistical flows and reduced competition in major industries may amount to USD 7-9 trillion. Unfortunately, China is also expected to benefit over the medium term from this emerging scenario. At the same time, Europe's deep political dependence on the U.S. allows us to effectively neutralise possible attempts by individual European states to draw closer to China [...]



See also:

Sunday, August 6, 2023

Nord Stream Pipeline Blast By US-Nuke | Hans-Benjamin Braun

Swiss physicist Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun has meticulously analyzed the Nord Stream 1 explosion: the blast was made using a thermonuclear (fusion) mini-nuke with the greatest possible shockwave impact on Russia’s Kaliningrad. Like the investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersch, Dr. Braun suspects the USA behind the attack. Among the authorities, politicians, journalists and scientists whom he has informed of the results of his analyses since December 2022, there is one thing above all: radio silence.

China called the Nord Stream pipeline blast an act of international terrorism,
and an act of war against Germany and Russia.

Dr. Braun is a renowned scientist specializing in statistical physics, quantum physics, neutron scattering, condensed matter physics and materials science, magnetism and topology. For years he taught as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Catholic University of Dublin. In 2014, he was honored to be one of four “Distinguished Lecturers” (editor’s note) worldwide from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE, Magnetics Society, who has given 50 lectures internationally at the invitation of individual institutions or sections. Dr. Braun has widely cited publications in Nature Physics, Nature Communications, and Advances in Physics.
 
 
The puzzling, in contradictory public interpretations of the explosion event at the pipeline at 17:03 UTC on September 26, 2022, had piqued his scientific curiosity as a physicist who also holds a master’s degree in earth sciences, Dr. Braun reports. Why, he wondered in this context, did the UN Security Council not initiate an investigation despite the many unanswered questions. In October 2022, he set to work analyzing what had happened via six entirely independent methods: Evaluation of seismic data according to two methods, analysis of the development of aerosol clouds after the detonation, consideration of underwater currents in the Baltic Sea, especially in an underwater canyon between Bornholm and Kaliningrad during the following days, temperature development on the seafloor, and spread of a possible radioactive fallout after the blast.
 
 
The surprising result: the seismic measurements suggest an explosive force in the equivalent of up to 1-4 kilotons TNT, a strong contrast to the estimated data of an equivalent of 250 kg TNT published e.g. in the renowned magazine Nature.
 
The comparison of seismic measurements in the Baltic Sea, e.g. of Sweden and Finland
with the values of the well-documented North Korean nuclear event also identified by
the Columbia University Earth Institute on the basis of IRIS data shows a very similar pattern.

According to the infrared satellite data, four hours after the detonation a distinct aerosol cloud with an extension of up to 100 km was formed away from the explosion site in wind direction and in the Kaliningrad region due to the impact of shock waves on the steep Kaliningrad shoreline. Such a phenomenon would not occur to this extent with a much smaller explosive charge, Dr. Braun said. During the days following the detonation moment, significant underwater currents have been formed in the Baltic Sea (~50km and more), focusing into the underwater canyon directed directly towards Kaliningrad. As a result, a vortex current formed in the Bornholm Basin. According to the Nature publication of March 15, 2023, the explosion stirred up 250,000 tons of sediments that were subsequently deposited. Indeed, it appears that this process also affected water temperatures on the seafloor during the whole winter time.


Remarkably, according to satellite data, the water temperature at the seafloor increased by up to 5 degrees Celsius year-on-year over an area of circa 100 km x 100 km in the winter of 2023 compared to 2022. Dr. Braun clarifies that this cannot be explained by natural fluctuations, especially since the mean temperature in the more distant regions of the Baltic Sea tends to be even lower.
 
 
 
In Poland, radioactive fallout was detected one day after the blast; in Switzerland, it showed up three days after the event.


Highly noteworthy, Dr. Braun said, is that the blast site apparently must have been chosen to reflect and amplify shock waves due to the elliptically shaped Swedish coastline, allowing them to focus precisely on Kaliningrad via the underwater canyon. The city, 500 km away, experienced a seismic effect 10 times greater than that of neighboring Bornholm, which is only 70 km from the pipeline blast site. 
 
Dr. Braun’s investigative conclusion: “None of the seven independent geophysical observations can be explained by the use of a conventional explosive; a thermonuclear weapon must have been used. The Nord Stream sabotage was also a targeted shockwave attack on Kaliningrad, which to me makes the U.S. the only plausible culprit.” He considers a tactical self-endangerment of the Russians by the detonation unlikely, Ukraine as another possible aggressor does not possess nuclear weapons. The U.S., however, had nuclear weapons, delivery systems and, through NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise in the Baltic Sea, which took place in June 2022, extensive fresh barythmetric knowledge of conditions at the eventual site. “BALTOPS also provides a unique opportunity for the U.S. Research, Development, and Acquisition communities to exercise the current and emerging UUV technology in real-world operational environments. This year featured the current and future programs of record for mine hunting UUVs in the MK-18 and Lionfish systems. Both systems were put through the paces over 10 days of mine hunting operations, collecting over 200 hours of undersea data,” writes the U.S. NAVY under the heading “BALTOPS 22 a perfect opportunitey for research and testing new technologies.” Of course, a collaboration of other geopolitical interest groups besides the U.S. would also be conceivable, Dr. Braun adds.

Precisely such an autonomous underwater drone as the Lionfish, which was tested during the NATO exercise BALTOPS 22, could have been used to transport the explosive charge to the scene, Dr. Braun elaborates. To actually carry out the detonation using such an unmanned vehicle would have required the involvement of only a few people. It is clear, however, that if the USA were involved, it would have to be assumed that the blast was carried out with the knowledge and will of US President Joe Biden. The U.S. company Sandia Labs, a longtime partner of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), writes on its website: “The nation’s nuclear weapons must always work when commanded and authorized by the president of the United States, and must never detonate otherwise.” The U.S., Dr. Braun notes, is incidentally the only country in the world that has not joined the international ban on a nuclear first strike.

Dr. Braun reports that he made his findings available to selected journalists and politicians on December 22, 2022, seven weeks before Seymour Hersh’s article appeared. On January 3, 2023, he reportedly informed the Swiss government, and on January 25, 2023, he informed the Swiss parliament. At the same time, he wrote to a colleague at MIT, who drew his attention to the imminent article by Seymour Hersh. On March 27, 2023, he had contacted Prof. J. Sachs as a representative of the UN Security Council, and on April 4, 2023, he had formulated an open letter to the Secretary General of NATO, the Finnish and Swedish governments, and three Nobel laureates in physics. On April 4, 2023, he had written to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the White House, the Kremlin, the Russian and Chinese embassies in Switzerland, and on April 24, 2023, again to the UN Security Council, this time under the new Russian chairmanship. The answer: radio silence.

Dr. Braun demands that the matter be completely clarified. Due to their easy scalability, with which one can adjust the detonation strength by a factor of 100 with a flick of the wrist (so-called “dial a yield”), thermonuclear weapons pose an increasing threat to humanity, especially through the combination with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, which is used in autonomous air and underwater vehicles, and can also be used in covert operations.


 
Alienating commemoration 2023:
Japan's PM Fumio Kishida and UN Secretary-General António Guterres
no longer even mention who dropped atomic bombs on 6th and 9th of August 1945.

Monday, September 26, 2022

Wall Street's Revolutionary Socialism for Mexico | Anthony C. Sutton

Anthony C. Sutton (1974) - Another case of revolution supported by New York financial institutions concerned that of Mexico in 1915-16. Von Rintelen, a German espionage agent in the United States, was accused during his May 1917 trial in New York City of attempting to "embroil" the U.S. with Mexico and Japan in order to divert ammunition then flowing to the Allies in Europe. 
 
Iconic image of revolutionary Pancho Villa in Ojinaga, a publicity still taken
by Mutual Film Corporation photographer John Davidson Wheelan, January 1914
 
Payment for the ammunition that was shipped from the United States to the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, was made through Guaranty Trust Company. Von Rintelen's adviser, Sommerfeld, paid $380,000 via Guaranty Trust and Mississippi Valley Trust Company to the Western Cartridge Company of Alton, Illinois, for ammunition shipped to El Paso, for forwarding to Villa. This was in mid-1915. On January 10, 1916, Villa murdered seventeen American miners at Santa Isabel and on March 9, 1916, Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, and killed eighteen more Americans. 
 
Columbus, New Mexico, after being raided by Pancho Villa
 
Wall Street involvement in these Mexican border raids was the subject of a letter (October 6, 1916) from Lincoln Steffens, an American Communist, to Colonel House [Edward Mandell House], an aide' to Woodrow Wilson: My dear Colonel House: Just before I left New York last Monday, I was told convincingly that "Wall Street" had completed arrangements for one more raid of Mexican bandits into the United States: to be so timed and so atrocious that it would settle the election [...]
 
Venustiano Carranza, 44th President of Mexico,
First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army, 1920
 
Once in power in Mexico, the Carranza government purchased additional arms in the United States. The American Gun Company contracted to ship 5,000 Mausers and a shipment license was issued by the War Trade Board for 15,000 guns and 15,000,000 rounds of ammunition. The American ambassador to Mexico, Fletcher, "flatly refused to recommend or sanction the shipment of any munitions, rifles, etc., to Carranza." However, intervention by Secretary of State Robert Lansing reduced the barrier to one of a temporary delay, and "in a short while [the American Gun Company] would be permitted to make the shipment and deliver."

The raids upon the U.S. by the Villa and the Carranza forces were reported in the New York Times as the "Texas Revolution" (a kind of dry run for the Bolshevik Revolution) and were undertaken jointly by Germans and Bolsheviks. The testimony of John A. Walls, district attorney of Brownsville, Texas, before the 1919 Fall Committee yielded documentary evidence of the link between Bolshevik interests in the United States, German activity, and the Carranza forces in Mexico.

Consequently, the Carranza government, the first in the world with a Soviet-type constitution (which was written by Trotskyites), was a government with support on Wall Street. The Carranza revolution probably could not have succeeded without American munitions and Carranza would not have remained in power as long as he did without American help.
 
[...] We also identified documentary evidence concerning a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution.

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Lenin. Money. Revolution. | Serhii Hrabovsky

Serhii Hrabovsky (2010) - The themes linked to Lenin, money, and revolution, present an inexhaustible source for historians, psychologists, and satirists. Just imagine: we have a man who urged to make, after the complete victory of communism, toilet bowls in public restrooms of solid gold; who never had to earn a living through hard work; who was quite comfortably off even in prison and exile, and barely knew what money is, yet at the same time made a considerable contribution to the theory of commodity-money relations.

How exactly did he manage to do that? Not via brochures and articles, of course, but through his revolutionary activities. It was Lenin who introduced, in 1919-21, non-monetary “natural” barter between towns and in the countryside. This resulted in the total collapse of the economy, a complete standstill in agriculture, mass famines, and, consequently, mass uprisings against the regime of the Russian Communist Party. Only then, soon before his death, did Lenin perceive the true meaning of money and introduced the NEP, the New Economic Policy, a kind of “manageable capitalism” under the supervision of the communist party.
 
 
 
However, our purpose here is something other than the exploration of these fascinating subjects. Instead, we will take a look at where Vladimir Lenin got the fantastic sums necessary to fund party activity before the revolution. Over recent decades some very interesting materials have been published, but still, much remains obscure. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, the underground newspaper Iskra was sponsored by a mysterious benefactor (individual or collective), disguised in the party documents as the “Californian gold mines.” Some researchers believe that this was an instance of radical Russian revolutionaries being sponsored by American Jewish bankers, mostly Russian expatriates and their descendants, who hated Tsarism for its official anti-semitic policies.

During the revolution of 1905-07, Bolsheviks were sponsored by American oil corporations with the view to pushing their rivals out of the world markets (namely, Nobel’s oil cartel in Baku). At that very time, the American banker Jacob Schiff also provided Bolsheviks with money, as he himself confessed. The list of donors also included Yermasov, a manufacturer from Syzran, and Morozov, a merchant and industrialist based near Moscow. Later, the Bolshevik party acquired another financial donor in the person of Schmidt, owner of a furniture factory in Moscow. It is curious that Savva Morozov and Nikolai Schmidt both eventually committed a suicide, as a result of which the Bolsheviks got a considerable proportion of their fortunes. And of course, big money came from the so-called ex’es [the truncated form of “expropriation”] or, in simpler terms, banal robberies of banks, post offices, and railway ticket-offices. These actions were masterminded by two characters with criminal monickers Kamo and Koba, i.e., Ter-Petrosian and Dzhugashvili.

Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands and even millions of roubles invested in revolutionary activities might at best only shake the Russian empire. Despite all its shortcomings, its institutions were pretty solid – but only in peacetime. With the outbreak of the First World War, new financial and political opportunities opened up before the Bolsheviks, and they didn’t fail to take advantage of them. On Jan. 15, 1915 the German ambassador in Istanbul sent a report to Berlin, relating about his meeting with a Russian subject Aleksander Gelfand (aka Parvus), an active participant of the revolution of 1905-07 and owner of a large trade company. Parvus acquainted the German ambassador with the plan of the Russian revolution. He was immediately invited to Berlin, where he met with some influential cabinet members and advisors to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. Parvus suggested that the Germans give him a large sum of money to help promote, firstly, the national movements in Finland and Ukraine and secondly, to support the Bolsheviks, who propagated the idea of the defeat of the Russian empire in the unjust war for the sake of overthrowing the “regime of landlords and capitalists.” Parvus’ suggestions were accepted; on Kaiser Wilhelm’s personal order, he was given two million German marks as the first contribution to “the cause of the Russian revolution.” Later, other installments followed, some of them for greater sums. Thus, according to a receipt made by Parvus, on Jan. 29, 1915 he received 15 million in Russian bills for the development of the revolutionary movement in Russia. The money was allotted with the typical German efficiency.

In Finland and Ukraine Parvus’ (and the German general staff’s) agents turned out to be of second or third-rate importance. Therefore, their influence on the process of gaining independence in these countries was insignificant in comparison with the objective processes of nation-building in the Russian empire. Yet in regards to Lenin, Parvus-Gelfand hit the bull’s-eye. Parvus claimed that he told Lenin that, at that moment, revolution was only possible in Russia, and only as a result of Germany winning the war. In response, Lenin sent his proxy Fuerstenberg (aka Ganetsky) for close cooperation with Parvus, which lasted till 1918. Another installment from Germany, although not as large, came to the Bolsheviks via the Swiss parliamentary Karl Moor – but it only amounted to 35,000 dollars. More investments came from the Nia Bank in Stockholm. On the order of the German Imperial Bank at No. 2754, Nia, personal accounts for Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Bolshevik leaders, were opened. Order No. 7433 of March 2, 1917, provided payments for the “services” of Lenin, Zinoviev, Kollontai, and others, in the sphere of public peace propaganda in Russia, where the Tsarist regime had just been overthrown.

The colossal sums were wisely administered. The Bolsheviks published their own newspapers which were distributed free of charge in every town and village. The entire territory of Russia was covered with a network of their professional propagandists. “Red guard” units were formed quite openly. Of course, it was done not just with the German gold. Although the “poor” political emigrant Trotsky had 10 thousand dollars confiscated by Canadian customs in Halifax in 1917, whilst being on his way from America to Russia, it is absolutely clear that he still managed to smuggle huge sums from the banker Schiff to his supporters.
 
Yet even greater funds were raised in the course of “the expropriation of the expropriators” (in more common terms, the robbing of wealthy individuals and organizations), initiated in the spring of 1917. Has it ever occurred to anyone to question the Bolsheviks occupation of the palace of the ballerina Kshesinskaya and the Smolny Institute?

Generally speaking, the Russian democratic revolution broke out in the early spring of the 1917 quite unexpectedly for all its political subjects both inside the empire and outside its boundaries. It was a spontaneous, truly grass-roots movement both in Petrograd and on the outskirts of the empire. Suffice it to say that a month before the start of the revolution Lenin, who then was in emigration in Switzerland, publicly voiced his doubts about the chances for the politicians of his generation (i.e., 40 and 50-year-olds) to live to see a revolution in Russia. However, it was the radical Russian politicians who were the fastest to change their ways and ready to ride the revolution (as we have already said, with the use of the German assistance).

All in all, the Russian revolution was not accidental. It is even strange that it should not have broken out, say, one year earlier: all the social, political, and national problems in the Romanov empire had reached their limits, while from the formal, economic perspective, the industry was developing dynamically, and the stock of weapons and ammunition had considerably increased. Yet the utter inefficiency of the central power and the corruption of the elite, unavoidable under any autocracy, took their toll. Following that, the deliberate corruption of the army, the undermining of the rear, the sabotage of any attempts at constructive solutions of the urgent problems, together with the incurable chauvinistic centralism typical of virtually all Great Russian political forces, aggravated the crisis. During the campaign of 1917, the Entente troops were supposed to start a simultaneous general offensive on all European fronts, but the Russian army proved to be unprepared. Consequently, in April the attacks of the Anglo-French forces at Rheims failed, the casualties exceeding 100,000 in dead and wounded. In July, the Russian troops attempted an offensive in the direction of Lviv, but eventually had to retreat from Galicia and Bukovyna, and yield Riga in the north, almost without resistance. Finally, the battle at Caporetto in October resulted in a disastrous defeat of the Italian army. 130,000 Italian men were dead, another 300,000 were taken captive. Only the English and French divisions, urgently shipped from France, were able to stabilize the front and prevent Italy from withdrawing from the war. And finally, after the November uprising in Petrograd, when the Bolsheviks and left social revolutionaries came to power, an armistice was declared on the East front – first de facto and then de jure, and not only with Russia and Ukraine, but Romania as well.

Such changes on the Eastern front were to a large degree possible due to the funds which were allotted by Germany for the demoralization of the Russian army from the rear. The military operations on the Eastern front, prepared on a large scale and executed with great success, were considerably facilitated by the undermining activities from within Russia, conducted by the Ministry of foreign affairs. “Our chief goal in this activity was to further strengthen the nationalist and separatist sentiments, and support the revolutionary elements. We are continuing this activity even at present, and completing an agreement with the political division of the General Staff in Berlin” (Captain von Huelsen).

Our joint efforts have yielded considerable results. Without our constant support, the Bolshevist movement could have never reached the scale and influence it now has. Everything testifies to the further growth of this movement.” These were the words of German secretary of state, Richard von Kuehlmann, written on Sept. 29, 1917. It was a month and a half before the Bolshevik revolt in Petrograd. Von Kuehlmann knew what he was writing about. He was an active participant in all those events; a little later he was to conduct peace negotiations with Bolshevik Russia and the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Brest in the early 1918. He controlled the huge financial current, going into the tens of thousands of German marks, and also had contacts with a number of key characters in this historic drama. “I have the honor of asking Your Excellence to allot a sum of 15 million marks at the disposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for political propaganda in Russia, referring this sum to paragraph 6, section II of the extraordinary budget. Depending on the development of events, I would like to stipulate in advance a possibility of addressing Your Excellence again in the nearest future with the view to allotting additional monies,” wrote von Kuehlmann on Nov. 9, 1917.

As we can see, no sooner had news of the Petrograd revolt (to be labeled the Great October Revolution) arrived than Kaiser Germany allotted new funds for propaganda in Russia. This money went first and foremost to support the Bolsheviks, who first demoralized the army, and then withdrew the Russian Republic from the war, thus freeing millions of German soldiers for operations in the West.

Yet managed to preserve the image of unselfish revolutionaries, romantic Marxists, until this very day. Even now, not only “official” adepts of the Marxist-Leninist creeds, but also a certain proportion of the non-party left intellectuals, are convinced that Lenin and his adherents were sincere internationalists and noble champions of the popular cause.

On the whole, we can observe a curious situation. In 1958, Oxford University published the secret documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kaiser Germany (this is where von Kuehlmann’s telegrams come from, and where one can find scores of no less significant texts dating back to the First World War), which proved the massive financial and organizational assistance rendered by the German authorities to the Bolsheviks.

Germany’s goals were obvious. The radical revolutionaries were to undermine the military potential of one of the principal rivals of the central powers, to which Germany also belonged, i.e., the Russian empire. Thousands of books on the subject have been published, providing other convincing evidence. Yet even today not only communist historians, but also a great number of liberally-minded researchers, will deny self-evident historical facts. Here is some more evidence provided by the German secretary of state von Kuehlmann: “Only when the Bolsheviks began to receive constant investments from us via various channels and under various labels, were they able to firmly establish their major printed organ, Pravda, to develop active propaganda, and to considerably enlarge their party base, which was rather narrow at the beginning” (Berlin, Dec. 3, 1917). Indeed, party membership grew 100 times only within a year after overthrowing Tsarism! As far as Lenin’s personal stand goes, this is how Colonel Walter Nicolai, head of German military intelligence service in the times of the First World war, described him in his memoirs: “Like anyone else, at that time I knew nothing about Bolshevism; as for Lenin, I only knew that he was living in Switzerland as a political emigrant, under the cryptonym ‘Ulianov’ he provided my service with valuable information on the situation in Tsarist Russia against which he was fighting.

In other words, without constant assistance from the Germans, the Bolsheviks would hardly have become one of the leading Russian parties in 1917. This would mean a completely different development of events, probably much more anarchical, which would have hardly resulted in the establishment of a dictatorship, let alone a totalitarian regime. The most likely scenario is a different version of the disintegration of the Russian empire, as WWI was primarily about the ruin of empires. Thus, the independence of Finland and Poland was de facto a fait accompli some time around 1916.

The Russian empire, or even the Russian republic, would hardly have become an exception from this process of collapse triggered by the First World War. Suffice it to remember that Britain was forced to grant independence to Ireland, India rushed for its independence just after WWI, and so on, and so forth. And this revolution itself was to a point marked by the national-liberation struggle, as it was the Life Guards Volhynia Regiment that was the first to rebel against autocracy in the early 1917. As to the Bolsheviks, at that time they were a minute party, hardly known to anyone else (four thousand members, mostly in exile and emigration). They had no say in overthrowing Tsarism.

Assistance did not stop after Lenin’s government came to power. “You are free to operate large sums, as we are extremely interested in the stability of the Bolsheviks. You have Riesler’s funds at your disposal. If necessary, wire us how much more you need.” (Berlin, May 18, 1918). As usual, von Kuehlmann calls a spade a spade as he addressed the German embassy in Moscow. The Bolsheviks stood fast, and in the fall of 1918 they threw huge sums from the Russian imperial treasury, which they had seized, into revolutionary propaganda in Germany, with the hope to inciting the world revolution.

The situation in Germany was a mirror image of the one in Russia. In early November, 1918, the revolution did break out there. Money, weapons, and qualified professional revolutionaries shipped in from Moscow and played their role. Yet the local communists failed to lead this revolution. Subjective and (more importantly) objective factors worked against them. A totalitarian regime was established in Germany only 15 years later, but this is a different topic. Meanwhile, in 1921, in the democratic Weimar Republic the renowned social democrat Eduard Bernstein published in his party’s central organ Vorwaerts an article headed “A Shady Story.” In it, he related that as far back as December 1917, he received an affirmative answer from "a certain comp
etent person” to the question of whether Germany had given money to Lenin. According to his data, the Bolsheviks alone were paid more than 50 million German marks in gold. Later, this sum was officially mentioned during the session of the Reichstags committee on foreign policy. Responding to the accusations of libel from the communist press, Bernstein suggested that they sue him, after which the campaign instantly stopped. As Germany was in a bad need of friendly relations with Soviet Russia, the discussion of this topic in the press ended abruptly.

Aleksander Kerensky, one of the Bolshevik’s chief political opponents, deduced from his own investigation of the case, that the sums received by the Bolsheviks before and after coming to power totaled 80 million German marks in gold. As a matter of fact, Ulianov-Lenin never even tried to conceal this from his party colleagues. Thus, in November, 1918, at the meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (a Bolshevist quasi-parliament), the Bolshevik leader said: “I am often accused of having carried out our revolution with German money; I do not deny it, but instead, with the Russian money, I’m going to carry out the same revolution in Germany.” And he tried to do so, throwing away tens of millions of roubles. However, he failed: the German social democrats, unlike their Russian counterparts, saw which way the wind was blowing and managed to arrange for a timely assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. This was followed by the disarmament of the “red guards” and physical extermination of their leaders.

They had no other way out of the situation. Maybe, if Kerensky had mustered his courage and ordered to shoot Smolny together with all of its “red” inhabitants, even the Kaiser’s millions wouldn’t have helped them. We might as well round off here, should it be not for a piece of information in The New York Times of April, 1921, stating that in 1920 alone, 75 million Swiss franks were sent to Lenin’s account in one of the Swiss banks. According to the newspaper, Trotsky had 11 million dollars and 90 million franks on his accounts, Zinoviev – 80 million franks; the “knight of the revolution,” Dzerzhynsky, had 80 million, while Ganetsky-Fuerstenberg had 60 million franks and 10 million dollars. Lenin, in his secret note to the Cheka leaders Unschlicht and Bokiy of April 24, 1921, demanded that they find the source of the information leak. However, it was never established.

Was this money also meant for the world revolution? Or is it a kind of kickback from the politicians and financiers of those countries where Lenin and Trotsky’s “red horses” were not ordered to go? One can only hypothesize. Even now a considerable proportion of Lenin’s papers is kept top secret [...].

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