Ex-Bush Adviser: Germany Prints Old Currency in Case Euro Ditched ……….

http://www.moneynews.com

Tuesday, 04 Oct 2011 01:06 PM

By Michael Kling

Germany is printing deutsche marks in preparation to leave the euro common currency, says Philippa Malmgren, a former economics adviser to George W. Bush.”My view is that it is Germany that will have to pull out of the euro,” Malmgren said at an investors’ conference in London recently, according to the Citywire news website.

“The decision has already been made by the government that leaving the euro is a possibility. I think they have already got the printing machines going and are bringing out the old deutsche marks they have left over from when the euro was introduced.”

Malmgren, co-founder of Principalis Asset Management, acknowledged that leaving the euro would be a radical move that would cause Germany’s export prices to jump, but said German industries are strong enough to handle price increases, Citywire reported.

Other countries have let currency unions before, Malmgren said, citing the report, “Checking Out: Exits from Currency Unions.”

Countries leaving currency unions are usually larger, wealthier, and more democratic and typically have higher inflation than their partners, according to the report, published by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Malmgren predicts that more eurozone countries will default, causing deep changes in society, Citywire reported. “It is important to begin preparing the public to deal with this situation.”

Malmgren isn’t the only one saying the euro is in trouble.

“The euro is nearing its ugly end,” said Stefan Homburg, head of Germany’s Institute for Public Finance, according to The Telegraph. “A collapse of monetary union now appears unavoidable.”

The Bundestag, Germany’s legislature, approved more bailout funds for Greece but the growing rescue fund is becoming increasingly unpopular in Germany. Many economists and investment professionals say the fund is not large enough to save Greece and other eurozone countries from defaulting.

Meanwhile, Ireland’s central bank reportedly is printing Ireland’s old currency in case that country leaves the eurozone. At least that’s the rumor circulating in Dublin, notes Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Bloxham stockbrokers in that city.

McQuaid, writing a guest commentary for The Guardian, says he’s not sure if the rumor is true. But he does hope Ireland has contingency plans in case the euro disintegrates.
© Moneynews. All rights reserved.

Read more: Ex-Bush Adviser: Germany Prints Old Currency in Case Euro Ditched

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Germany Set to Abandon Nuclear Power for Good

http://www.commondreams.org/

by Juergen Baetz

BERLIN — Germany is determined to show the world how abandoning nuclear energy can be done.

In this March 18, 2011 photo, a traffic sign stands next to the nuclear power plant of Biblis, Germany. Germany stands alone among the world’s leading industrialized nations in its determination to abandon nuclear energy for good because of the technology’s inherent risk. Europe’s biggest economy is betting billions on expanding the use of renewable energies to meet its demand instead. The transition was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but now it is being accelerated in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ‘catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions’ irreversibly marks the start of a new era. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) The world’s fourth-largest economy stands alone among leading industrialized nations in its decision to stop using nuclear energy because of its inherent risks. It is betting billions on expanding the use of renewable energy to meet power demands instead.

The transition was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but is now being accelerated in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant disaster, which Chancellor Angela Merkel has called a “catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions.”

Berlin’s decision to take seven of its 17 reactors offline for three months for new safety checks has provided a glimpse into how Germany might wean itself from getting nearly a quarter of its power from atomic energy to none.

And experts say Germany’s phase-out provides a good map that countries such as the United States, which use a similar amount of nuclear power, could follow. The German model would not work, however, in countries like France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its power and has no intention of shifting.

“If we had the winds of Texas or the sun of California, the task here would be even easier,” said Felix Matthes of Germany’s renowned Institute for Applied Ecology. “Given the great potential in the U.S., it would be feasible there in the long run too, even though it would necessitate huge infrastructure investments.”

Nuclear power has been very unpopular in Germany ever since radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster drifted across the country. A center-left government a decade ago penned a plan to abandon the technology for good by 2021, but Merkel’s government last year amended it to extend the plants’ lifetime by an average of 12 years. That plan was put on hold after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami compromised nuclear power plants in Japan, and is being re-evaluated as the safety of all of Germany’s nuclear reactors is being rechecked.

Germany currently gets 23 percent of its energy from nuclear power – about as much as the U.S. Its ambitious plan to shut down its reactors will require at least euro150 billion ($210 billion) investment in alternative energy sources, which experts say will likely lead to higher electricity prices.

Germany now gets 17 percent of its electricity from renewable energies, 13 percent from natural gas and more than 40 percent from coal. The Environment Ministry says in 10 years renewable energy will contribute 40 percent of the country’s overall electricity production.

The government has been vague on a total price tag for the transition, but it said last year about euro20 billion ($28 billion) a year will be needed, acknowledging that euro75 billion ($107 billion) alone will be required through 2030 to install offshore wind farms.

The president of Germany’s Renewable Energy Association, Dietmar Schuetz, said the government should create a more favorable regulatory environment to help in bringing forward some euro150 billion investment in alternative energy sources this decade by businesses and homeowners.

Last year, German investment in renewable energy topped euro26 billion ($37 billion) and secured 370,000 jobs, the government said.

After taking seven reactors off the grid last week, officials hinted the oldest of them may remain switched off for good, but assured consumers there are no worries about electricity shortages as the country is a net exporter.

“We can guarantee that the lights won’t go off in Germany,” Environment Ministry spokeswoman Christiane Schwarte said.

Most of the country’s leaders now seem determined to swiftly abolish nuclear power, possibly by 2020, and several conservative politicians, including the chancellor, have made a complete U-turn on the issue.

Vice Chancellor Guido Westerwelle said Wednesday “we must learn from Japan” and check the safety of the country’s reactors but also make sure viable alternatives are in place.

“It would be the wrong consequence if we turn off the safest atomic reactors in the world, and then buy electricity from less-safe reactors in foreign countries,” he told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

But Schuetz insists that “we can replace nuclear energy even before 2020 with renewable energies, producing affordable and ecologically sound electricity.”

But someone will have to foot the bill.

“Consumers must be prepared for significantly higher electricity prices in the future,” said Wolfgang Franz, head of the government’s independent economic advisory body. Merkel last week also warned that tougher safety rules for the remaining nuclear power plants “would certainly mean that electricity gets more expensive.”

The German utilities’ BDEW lobby group said long-term price effects could not be determined until the government spells out its nuclear reduction plans. Matthes’ institute says phasing out nuclear power by 2020 is feasible by better capacity management and investment that would only lead to a price increase of 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

In Germany, the producers of renewable energy – be it solar panels on a homeowner’s rooftop or a farm of wind mills – are paid above-market prices to make sure their investment breaks even, financed by a 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour tax paid by all electricity customers.

For a typical German family of four who pay about euro1,000 ($1,420) a year to use about 4,500 kilowatt-hours, the tax amounts to euro157 ($223).

The tax produced euro8.2 billion ($11.7 billion) in Germany in 2010 and it is expected to top euro13.5 billion ($19.2 billion) this year. The program – which has been copied by other countries and several U.S. states such as California – is the backbone of the country’s transition toward renewable energies.

“Our ideas work. Exiting the nuclear age would also be possible in a country like the U.S.,” Schuetz said.

Another factor likely to drive up electricity prices is that relying on renewable energies requires a huge investment in the electricity grid to cope with more decentralized and less reliable sources of power. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle just announced legislation to speed up grid construction but gave no cost estimate.

And even if non-nuclear power is more expensive, Germans seeing images daily of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex seem willing to pay the higher price.

Ralph Kampwirth, spokesman for Lichtblick AG, Germany’s biggest utility offering electricity exclusively from renewable sources, said since the Fukushima disaster it has been getting nearly three times more new clients than normal, up from 300 to more than 800 per day, despite prices slightly above average.

Sticking with nuclear power would also have its costs and require public funds.

The only two new nuclear reactors currently under construction in Europe, in France and in Finland, both have been plagued by long delays and seen costs virtually doubling, to around euro4 billion ($5.7 billion) and euro5.3 billion ($7.5 billion) respectively.

The disposal of spent nuclear fuel is also a costly problem, but it has no set price tag in Germany because the government has failed to find a sustainable solution.

Many decades-old reactors are highly profitable as their initial cost has been written off, but they now face higher costs as regulators push for safety upgrades in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. One of the most pressing – and costly – requirements is likely to be a mandatory upgrade to reinforce all nuclear power plants’ outer shell to withstand a crash of a commercial airliner.

Utility EnBW pulled the plug for good on one reactor temporarily shut down by the government because the new requirements made operating it “no longer economically viable.”

But even if Germany abandons nuclear energy, some of Europe’s 143 nuclear reactors will still sit right on its borders.

Since France and other nations are firmly committed to nuclear power, shutting down all reactors across Europe won’t happen, but Merkel is now pushing for common safety standards. The topic will be discussed at the European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

Merkel said the 27-nation bloc, which has standardized “the size of apples or the shape of bananas,” needs joint standards for nuclear power plants.

“Everybody in Europe would be equally affected by an accident at a nuclear power plant in Europe,” Merkel said.

© 2011 Associated Press

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Bravo, Angela! Germany Pulls Out of NATO Operations While Kucinich Calls Obama’s Attack on Libya ‘An Impeachable Offense’

http://redactednews.blogspot.com 

Breaking: Germany has pulled out of NATO operations due to disagreements over the mission in Libya. To add to that, Germany did the unthinkable: it voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution calling the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory illegal and demanding the immediate halt of all settlement activity. Whoa.

Then, Ms Merkel did something very strange: she ordered the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear reactors.

Curiously, the Japanese, too, have now openly sided with the Palestinians — and they have now have serious problems with runaway nukes. Coincidence? Perhaps. But consider this: The same Israeli company providing “security” to Japan’s reactors is the one that’s also responsible for the nukes in Germany. Reckon that had something to do with why Merkel hurriedly ordered the shut down of German reactors? What does she know? Was Israel’s Stuxnet virus responsible — intentionally or not — for the Japanese meltdown? Was it unleashed on the Japanese as a warning (albeit one that got out of control) not to mess with God’s chosen people? Is this what Merkel fears could happen in Germany?

Think that’s farfetched? Not when you consider that just yesterday, BOTH engines of Merkel’s immaculately maintained Puma chopper suffered simultaneous flameouts. Is Ms Merkel now suddenly waking up to the fact that the Israelis are stark raving mad and will stop at nothing to get what they want?

I’m inclined to believe Ms Merkel now takes very seriously the words of noted Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld when he openly boasted in an interview last year about Israel’s military capabilities, “We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”

And van Creveld isn’t exactly chopped liver — he’s lectured at the American Army War College. Replying to a question whether Israel does not have fears of being classified as a criminal state if it expelled Palestinians, van Creveld said, “Israel is a state that does not care about what others say about it and you must remember the saying of former defense minister Moshe Dayan when he said that ‘Israel must always act as a wild dog because it should be dangerous in the eyes of others, rather than be harmed.’” …

[Related RedactedNews]

Military Enlistment Forms for Hypocrites

Germany pulls out of NATO operations
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/171235.html

Germany has pulled out of NATO operations in the Mediterranean due to the disagreement over the forces’ mission in Libya. 

The German defense ministry said on Tuesday that Berlin pulled out of any military operations in the Mediterranean following the Western military alliance’s involvement in the Libya conflict, DPA reported.

A ministry spokesman said two frigates and two other ships with a crew of 550 would be reverted to German command.

Some 60 to 70 German troops participating in NATO-operated AWACS surveillance operations in the Mediterranean would also be withdrawn, according to the ministry.

Following the disputes among NATO members over the military intervention in Libya, they met in Brussels to mend differences over what role the alliance should play in Libya.

France says the takeover of the operations by NATO will alienate Arab states, however, Italy believes that NATO should take control of the military campaign in Libya.

Meanwhile, the head of the Italian Senate’s defense affairs committee, Gianpiero Cantoni, said the French policy is motivated by a desire to secure oil contracts with a future Libyan government.

US President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron have agreed NATO should play an important role in the command structure of the Libya mission, the White House said.

“They reviewed the substantial progress that’s been made in terms of halting the advance of Gaddafi’s forces on Benghazi as well as the establishment of a no-fly zone,” said White House spokesman Ben Rhodes.

A Deepening Rift Between Germany and Israel
By JUDY DEMPSEY

BERLIN — On Feb. 18, Germany did something unthinkable. It voted in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory illegal and demanding the immediate halt of all settlement activity.

The resolution did not pass — the United States, the only one of the Security Council’s 15 members to vote against it, vetoed it. That did not stop the German vote from opening a serious rift between Germany and Israel.

Ruprecht Polenz, a conservative lawmaker and chairman of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said “the vote was highly unusual” given Germany’s practice of abstaining from or voting against any U.N. resolutions criticizing Israel.

But Mr. Polenz was adamant that it did not mean that Germany no longer defended the security of Israel. “It means that Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to explain to the Israeli government that with the extraordinary changes taking place across the Middle East, time is not on its side when it comes to resolving the conflict with the Palestinians,” he said.

The German vote was authorized at the highest level. It marks a major change in Mrs. Merkel’s attitude toward Israel, which she had unswervingly supported since she took office more than five years ago.

Over the past few months, and particularly since the collapse of the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, Mrs. Merkel has made it plain to the Israeli government that it cannot expect unqualified support from Berlin if it allows the conflict with Palestinians to drag on.

[This is the van Creveld article from last year to which I referred, above]…

Israeli Historian: Israel Could Find Itself Forced To Wipe Out Europe
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/author/politicaltheatrics/

Noted Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld stated that Israel could find itself one day forced to exterminate the European continent using all kinds of weapons including its nuclear arsenal if it felt its demise neared, stressing that Israel also considers Europe a hostile target. 

This came in a press interview broadcast by the seventh Hebrew radio and was translated on Wednesday into Arabic by the press information analysis and study center.

“We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital,” Creveld said, adding that most of the European capitals would become preferred targets for the Israeli air force.

The Israeli historian reiterated Israel’s ability to destroy the whole world whenever it felt its existence would be doomed to extinction.

As for the Palestinians, the historian said that Israel at the present time pursues a specific strategy based on mass deportation of the Palestinian people and has intentions to expel all Palestinians without exception, but it is awaiting the right moment to take this step.

“Two years ago, there was only seven to eight percent of the Israelis believing in this solution towards the Palestinians and just two months ago this percentage rose amongst the Israelis to 33 percent, but today, according to a survey conducted by Gallup institute, this figure surged to 55 percent,” he noted.

The historian highlighted that Israel must take advantage of any incident that would give it a golden opportunity to expel the Palestinians as happened in Deir Yassin massacre in 1948.

Replying to a question whether Israel does not have fears of being classified as a criminal state if it expelled Palestinians, he said, “Israel is a state that does not care about what others say about it and you must remember the saying of former defense minister Moshe Dayan when he said that ‘Israel must always act as a wild dog because it should be dangerous in the eyes of others, rather than be harmed.’”

EXCLUSIVE: Kucinich calls Obama’s attack on Libya ‘an impeachable offense’
By Sahil Kapur
March 21, 2011 @ 12:44 pm

WASHINGTON – In an exclusive interview with Raw Story on Monday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) tore into President Barack Obama’s decision to order U.S. air strikes against Libya, opening the door for impeachment while emphatically declaring that Obama violated the Constitution.

“President Obama moved forward without Congress approving. He didn’t have Congressional authorization, he has gone against the Constitution, and that’s got to be said,” Kucinich told Raw Story. “It’s not even disputable, this isn’t even a close question. Such an action — that involves putting America’s service men and women into harm’s way, whether they’re in the Air Force or the Navy — is a grave decision that cannot be made by the president alone.”

“And I’m raising the question as to whether or not it’s an impeachable offense. It would appear on its face to be an impeachable offense,” Kucinich said. “Now, it doesn’t necessarily follow that simply because a president has committed an impeachable offense, that the process should start to impeach and remove him. That’s a whole separate question. But we have to clearly understand what this Constitution is about.”

The anti-war Democrat said Obama must know he violated the Constitution, referring to this quote from candidate Obama in 2007 [1]: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

“So what the president did is, by his own words, outside the Constitution,” Kucinich said. “This isn’t a case of him not knowing. He knows clearly that he has not complied with the Constitution. And that’s a very serious matter because he’s using the ultimate authority of a president.”

The White House argues that the intervention, waged alongside the U.K. and France, may have been necessary to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Libya as Muammar Gaddafi uses lethal force against protesters seeking his ouster.

Kucinich confirmed an anonymously-sourced report [2] that, on a call with Democratic lawmakers Saturday, he wondered whether attacking Libya without Congressional authority was an impeachable offense.

Hearkening back to some of his fierce criticisms of President George W. Bush, Kucinich criticized the “aggressive reach” of Obama. The attack on Libya, he said, would have “no end game” and would “break our Army, break out budget, and break any ability for America to play a constructive role in the world. This is going to inevitably open the door to Islamic extremists in the eastern part of Libya.”

“This isn’t about whether you like President Obama or not,” Kucinich said. “This isn’t about whether you’re a Democrat or not. And this isn’t about 2012.”

Source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/21/exclusive-kucinich-calls-obamas-libya-attack-an-impeachable-offense/

Kucinich moves to cut funding in Libya
By Daniel Strauss | The Hill Blog  - 03/22/11 12:52 PM ET

One of the most liberal members of the House plans to introduce an amendment to the next federal budget bill barring funding for military involvement in Libya.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has been an outspoken critic of the United States’s involvement in Libya, announced the amendment in a letter to his colleagues in the House.

“While the administration assures us that that the U.S. will hand-off its lead role to coalition partners within days, we have not been notified of long-term plans or goals following initial air strikes in the country,” Kucinich writes in the letter. “The timeline the president gave to Congress was summarized with one word: ‘limited.’ “

Kucinich went on to say that he would attach the amendment to whatever piece of legislation the House would propose to fund the rest of the 2011 fiscal year.

“I intend to offer an amendment to the forthcoming continuing resolution or omnibus appropriations bill that would prohibit funding for U.S. involvement in military operations in Libya. I urge you to support this amendment,” he wrote.

The Defense Department has not released a projected price tag for the U.S. air-and-sea strikes in Libya, but defense analysts say the Pentagon could be burning through more than $100 million per day.

Kucinich, a vocal antiwar Democrat, has been an outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in enforcing a recently passed United nations resolution calling for a no-fly zone and ceasefire of Libyan military forces led by Moammar Gadhafi. He said that President Obama overextended his authority by authorizing the airstrikes and U.S. involvement without adequately consulting Congress.

The White House has said its current mission in Libya is to protect Libyan civilians from Gadhafi’s military. Obama also sent a letter to Congress defending his action, saying he used his authority as commander in chief to authorize the military force.

This isn’t the first time Kucinich has called for a vote on military action abroad. Last week the House voted down his resolution that would have required U.S. troops be removed from Afghanistan by the end of the year. Last year, the House defeated a similar measure Kucinich proposed on Afghanistan.

The current continuing resolution funding the government expires after April 8. Congress is in recess this week but will be back next week.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/151237-kucinich-will-try-to-defund-us-action-in-libya

Posted by [Redacted] at 3/22/2011 11:08:00 PM

Germany : People power defending 25 trees and the democratic police brutality . 30/Sept/2010 ( filed under ; Democracy and modern fascism )

The Hidden but Awkward Origins of World War 2 The unexpected views of four key diplomats who were close to events:

from  :  http://hrp-historicalreviewpress.blogspot.com

The Hidden but Awkward Origins of World War 2

The unexpected views of four key diplomats who were close to events:

Just consider the following:
Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Britain during the years immediately preceding WW2 was the father of the famous American Kennedy dynasty. James Forrestal the first US Secretary of Defense (1947-1949) quotes him as saying “Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister) stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into the war”. (The Forrestal Diaries ed. Millis, Cassell 1952 p129).
Count Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador in Washington, in a report to the Polish Foreign Office in January 1939, is quoted approvingly by the highly respected British military historian Major-General JFC Fuller. Concerning public opinion in America he says “Above all, propaganda here is entirely in Jewish hands…when bearing public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe… It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign… no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of countries… Jewry was able not only to establish a dangerous centre in the New World for the dissemination of hatred and enmity, but it also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps…President Roosevelt has been given the power.. to create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for.” (Fuller, JFC: The Decisive Battles of the Western World vol 3 pp 372-374.)
Hugh Wilson, the American Ambassador in Berlin until 1938, the year before the war broke out, found anti-Semitism in Germany ‘understandable’. This was because before the advent of the Nazis, “the stage, the press, medicine and law [were] crowded with Jews…among the few with money to splurge, a high proportion [were] Jews…the leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia, a movement desperately feared in Germany, were Jews. One could feel the spreading resentment and hatred.” (Hugh Wilson: Diplomat between the Wars, Longmans 1941, quoted in Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh, Hodder 1976).
Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador in Berlin ‘said further that the hostile attitude in Great Britain was the work of Jews and enemies of the Nazis, which was what Hitler thought himself’ (Taylor, AJP: The Origins of the Second World War Penguin 1965, 1987 etc p 324).
Is all of this merely attributable to terrible antisemitism?

The economic background to the war is necessary for a fuller understanding, before casting judgement on the originators of these viewpoints.

At the end of the First World War, Germany was essentially tricked [see Paul Johnson A History of the Modern World (1983) p24 and H Nicholson Peacemaking 1919 (1933) pp13-16] into paying massive reparations to France and other economic competitors and former belligerent countries in terms of the so-called Treaty of Versailles, thanks to the liberal American President Woodrow Wilson. Germany was declared to be solely responsible for the war, in spite of the fact that ‘Germany did not plot a European war, did not want one, and made genuine efforts, though too belated, to avert one.’ (Professor Sydney B Fay The Origins of the World War (vol. 2 p 552)).

As a result of these massive enforced financial reparations, by 1923 the situation in Germany became desperate and inflation on an astronomical scale became the only way out for the government. Printing presses were engaged to print money around the clock. In 1921 the exchange rate was 75 marks to the dollar. By 1924 this had become about 5 trillion marks to the dollar. This virtually destroyed the German middle class (Koestler The God that Failed p 28), reducing any bank savings to a virtual zero.

According to Sir Arthur Bryant the British historian (Unfinished Victory (1940 pp. 136-144):

‘It was the Jews with their international affiliations and their hereditary flair for finance who were best able to seize such opportunities.. They did so with such effect that, even in November 1938, after five years of anti-Semitic legislation and persecution, they still owned, according to the Times correspondent in Berlin, something like a third of the real property in the Reich. Most of it came into their hands during the inflation.. But to those who had lost their all this bewildering transfer seemed a monstrous injustice. After prolonged sufferings they had now been deprived of their last possessions. They saw them pass into the hands of strangers, many of whom had not shared their sacrifices and who cared little or nothing for their national standards and traditions.. The Jews obtained a wonderful ascendancy in politics, business and the learned professions (in spite of constituting) less than one percent of the population.. The banks, including the Reichsbank and the big private banks, were practically controlled by them. So were the publishing trade, the cinema, the theatres and a large part of the press – all the normal means, in fact, by which public opinion in a civilized country is formed.. The largest newspaper combine in the country with a daily circulation of four millions was a Jewish monopoly.. Every year it became harder and harder for a gentile to gain or keep a foothold in any privileged occupation.. At this time it was not the ‘Aryans’ who exercised racial discrimination. It was a discrimination that operated without violence. It was exercised by a minority against a majority. There was no persecution, only elimination.. It was the contrast between the wealth enjoyed – and lavishly displayed – by aliens of cosmopolitan tastes, and the poverty and misery of native Germans, that has made anti-Semitism so dangerous and ugly a force in the new Europe. Beggars on horseback are seldom popular, least of all with those whom they have just thrown out of the saddle.’

Goodness gracious, Sir Arthur! What made you get out of the wrong side of the bed?

Strangely enough, a book unexpectedly published by Princeton University Press in 1984, Sarah Gordon (Hitler, Germans and the “Jewish Question”) essentially confirms what Bryant says. According to her, ‘Jews were never a large percentage of the total German population; at no time did they exceed 1% of the population during the years 1871-1933.’ But she adds ‘Jews were over-represented in business, commerce, and public and private service.. They were especially visible in private banking in Berlin, which in 1923 had 150 private Jewish banks, as opposed to only 11 private non-Jewish banks.. They owned 41% of iron and scrap iron firms and 57% of other metal businesses.. Jews were very active in the stock market, particularly in Berlin, where in 1928 they comprised 80% of the leading members of the stock exchange. By 1933, when the Nazis began eliminating Jews from prominent positions, 85% of the brokers on the Berlin Stock exchange were dismissed because of their “race”.. At least a quarter of full professors and instructors (at German universities) had Jewish origins.. In 1905-6 Jewish students comprised 25% of the law and medical students.. In 1931, 50% of the 234 theatre directors in Germany were Jewish, and in Berlin the number was 80%.. In 1929 it was estimated that the per capita income of Jews in Berlin was twice that of other Berlin residents..’ etc etc.

Arthur Koestler confirms the Jewish over-involvement in German publishing. ‘Ullstein’s was a kind of super-trust; the largest organization of its kind in Europe, and probably In the world. They published four daily papers in Berlin alone, among these the venerable Vossische Zeitung, founded in the eighteenth century, and the B.Z. am Mittag, an evening paper.. Apart from these, Ullstein’s published more than a dozen weekly and monthly periodicals, ran their own news service, their own travel agency, etc., and were one of the leading book publishers. The firm was owned by the brothers Ullstein – they were five, like the original Rothschild brothers, and like them also, they were Jews.’ (The God that Failed (1950) ed. RHS Crossman, p 31).

Edgar Mowrer, Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, wrote an anti-German tract called Germany Puts the Clock Back (published as a Penguin Special and reprinted five times between December 1937 and April 1938). He nevertheless notes ‘In the all-important administration of Prussia, any number of strategic positions came into the hands of Hebrews.. A telephone conversation between three Jews in Ministerial offices could result in the suspension of any periodical or newspaper in the state.. The Jews came in Germany to play in politics and administration that same considerable part that they had previously won by open competition in business, trade, banking, the Press, the arts, the sciences and the intellectual and cultural life of the country. And thereby the impression was strengthened that Germany, a country with a mission of its own, had fallen into the hands of foreigners.’

Mowrer says ‘No one who lived through the period from 1919 to 1926 is likely to forget the sexual promiscuity that prevailed.. Throughout a town like Berlin, hotels and pensions made vast fortunes by letting rooms by the hour or day to baggageless, unregistered guests. Hundreds of cabarets, pleasure resorts and the like served for purposes of getting acquainted and acquiring the proper mood..’ (pp. 153-4). Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutes outside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. He adds ‘Most of them (the night clubs and vice-resorts) were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews.. among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.’ (pp. 144-5).

Douglas Reed, Chief Central European correspondent before WWII for the London Times, was profoundly anti-German and anti-Hitler. But nevertheless he reported: ‘I watched during the one-day boycott of Jewish shops the Brown Shirts going from shop to shop with paint pots and daubing on the window panes the word “Jew”, in dripping red letters. The Kurfürstendamm was to me a revelation. I knew that Jews were prominent in business life, but I did not know that they almost monopolized important branches of it. Germany had one Jew to one hundred gentiles, said the statistics; but the fashionable Kurfürstendamm, according to the dripping red legends, had about one gentile shop to ninety-nine Jewish ones.’ (Reed Insanity Fair (1938) p. 152-3). In Reed’s book Disgrace Abounding of the following year he notes ‘In the Berlin (of pre-Hitler years) most of the theatres were Jewish-owned or Jewish-leased, most of the leading film and stage actors were Jews, the plays performed were often by German, Austrian or Hungarian Jews and were staged by Jewish film producers, applauded by Jewish dramatic critics in Jewish newspapers.. The Jews are not cleverer than the Gentiles, if by clever you mean good at their jobs. They ruthlessly exploit the common feeling of Jews, first to get a foothold in a particular trade or calling, then to squeeze the non-Jews out of it.. It is not true that Jews are better journalists than Gentiles. They held all the posts on those Berlin papers because the proprietors and editors were Jewish’ (pp238-9).

The Jewish writer Edwin Black notes ‘For example, in Berlin alone, about 75% of the attorneys and nearly as many of the doctors were Jewish.’ (Black, The Transfer Agreement (1984) p58.

To cap it all, Jews were perceived as dangerous enemies of Germany after Samuel Untermeyer, the leader of the World Jewish Economic Federation, declared war on Germany on August 6 1933. (Edwin Black The Transfer Agreement: the Untold Story of the Secret Pact between the Third Reich and Palestine (1984) pp272-277) According to Black, ‘The one man who most embodied the potential death blow to Germany was Samuel Untermeyer.’ (p 369). This was the culmination of a permanent worldwide boycott of German goods led by international Jewish organizations. The London Daily Express on March 24, 1933 carried the headline Judea Declares War on Germany. The boycott was allegedly particularly motivated by the German imposition of the Nuremberg Laws, however imposed in 1935 only, which ironically were similar in intent and content to the Jewish cultural exclusivism practiced so visibly in present-day Israel (Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem p 7).

Hitler saw the tremendous danger posed to Germany by Communism. He appreciated the desperate need to eliminate this threat, a fact that earned him the immense hatred and animosity of the Jewish organisations and the media and politicians of the west which they could influence. After all, according to the Jewish writer Chaim Bermant, although Jews formed less than five percent of Russia’s population, they formed more than fifty percent of its revolutionaries. According to the Jewish writer Chaim Bermant in his book The Jews (1977, chapter 8):

‘It must be added that most of the leading revolutionaries who convulsed Europe in the final decades of the last century and the first decades of this one, stemmed from prosperous Jewish families.. They were perhaps typified by the father of revolution, Karl Marx.. Thus when, after the chaos of World War I, revolutions broke out all over Europe, Jews were everywhere at the helm; Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kamenev and Zinoviev in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, Kurt Eisner in Bavaria, and, most improbable of all, Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin.

‘To many outside observers, the Russian revolution looked like a Jewish conspiracy, especially when it was followed by Jewish-led revolutionary outbreaks in much of central Europe. The leadership of the Bolshevik Party had a preponderance of Jews.. Of the seven members of the Politburo, the inner cabinet of the country, four, Trotsky (Bronstein), Zinoviev (Radomsky), Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and Sverdlov, were Jews.’ Other authors agree with this:

“There has been a tendency to circumvent or simply ignore the significant role of Jewish intellectuals in the German Communist Party, and thereby seriously neglect one of the genuine and objective reasons for increased anti-Semitism during and after World War 1.. The prominence of Jews in the revolution and early Weimar Republic is indisputable, and this was a very serious contributing cause for increased anti-Semitism in post-war years.. It is clear then that the stereotype of Jews as socialists and communists.. led many Germans to distrust the Jewish minority as a whole and to brand Jews as enemies of the German nation.” (Sarah Gordon Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’ Princeton University Press (1984) p 23).

“The second paroxysm of strong anti-Semitism came after the critical role of Jews in International Communism and the Russian Revolution and during the economic crises of the 1920s and 30s… Anti-Semitism intensified throughout Europe and North America following the perceived and actual centrality of Jews in the Russian Revolution.. Such feelings were not restricted to Germany, or to vulgar extremists like the Nazis. All over Northern Europe and North America, anti-Semitism became the norm in ‘nice society’, and ‘nice society’ included the universities.” (Martin Bernal, Black Athena vol. 1 pp. 367, 387).

“The major role Jewish leaders played in the November (Russian) revolution was probably more important than any other factor in confirming (Hitler’s) anti-Semitic beliefs.” (J&S Pool, Who Financed Hitler, p.164).

Hitler came to power in Germany with two main aims, the rectification of the unjust provisions of the Versailles Treaty, and the destruction of the Soviet/ Communist threat to Germany. Strangely enough, contrary to the mythology created by those who had an opposing ethnic agenda, he had no plans or desire for a larger war of conquest. Professor AJP Taylor showed this in his book The Origins of the Second World War, to the disappointment of the professional western political establishment. Taylor says, “The state of German armament in 1939 gives the decisive proof that Hitler was not contemplating general war, and probably not intending war at all” (p.267), and “Even in 1939 the German army was not equipped for a prolonged war; and in 1940 the German land forces were inferior to the French in everything except leadership” (p104-5). What occurred in Europe in 1939-41 was the result of unforeseen weaknesses and a tipping of the balance of power, and Hitler was an opportunist ‘who took advantages whenever they offered themselves’ (Taylor). Britain and France declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Hitler wanted peace with Britain, as the German generals admitted (Basil Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill 1948, Pan Books 1983) with regard to the so-called Halt Order at Dunkirk, where Hitler had the opportunity to capture the entire British Army, but chose not to. Liddell Hart, one of Britain’s most respected military historians, quotes the German General von Blumentritt with regard to this Halt Order:

“He (Hitler) then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world. He remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the creation of its Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but ‘where there is planing, there are shavings flying’. He compared the British Empire with the catholic Church – saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the Continent. The return of Germany’s colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in difficulties anywhere..” (p 200).

According to Liddell Hart, “At the time we believed that the repulse of the Luftwaffe in the ‘Battle over Britain’ had saved her. That is only part of the explanation, the last part of it. The original cause, which goes much deeper, is that Hitler did not want to conquer England. He took little interest in the invasion preparations, and for weeks did nothing tospur them on; then, after a brief impulse to invade, he veered around again and suspended the preparations. He was preparing, instead, to invade Russia” (p140).

David Irving in the foreword to his book The Warpath (1978) refers to “the discovery.. that at no time did this man (Hitler) pose or intend a real threat to Britain or the Empire.”

This gives a completely different complexion, not only to the war, but to the successful suppression of this information during the war and afterwards. Historians today know only too well where the boundaries lie within which they can paint their pictures of the war and its aftermath, and the consequences of venturing beyond those boundaries, irrespective of the evidence. Unfortunately, only too few of them have been prepared to have the courage to break out of this dreadful straitjacket of official and unofficial censorship.

E-mail comment received:

I worked and studied in Berlin for three years, have an MA in International Relations and a BA in Government with a minor in History. I am embarrassed to say that until I read this article, I had no idea of the scope and cause for the anti-Semitism in Germany before WWII. The Halt Order at Dunkirk was never mentioned in my studies, nor was the ownership of the media, banks and businesses.

Thank you for the excellent article. It certainly gives me a new perspective. I have always questioned the actual numbers of Jewish victims of the concentration camps, as the numbers didn’t make sense based upon Germany’s population. Perhaps it was fear of failing or being labeled an anti-Semite by my history professors (all but two were Jewish) and classmates that I refrained from demanding an honest discussion during my classes. I once said that the only reason Israel existed was out of Holocaust guilt, and I was immediately labeled a terrorist sympathizer.

I see what is now happening in Israel and I am aghast. The parallels to WW II are frightening. Even today, one cannot bring up this subject without being labeled a Holocaust denier or white supremacist.

Thanks again for an excellent article. I am forwarding it to several friends.

JBP