Recently I explained that “Presidents have little control over their governments.”
The same holds for monarchs and “authoritarians.” There are many examples. I will use one in front of me at this moment as I reread Harry Elmer Barnes’ book, The Genesis of the World War.
World War I was planned by the French President, who wanted to recover Alsace-Lorraine, which Napoleon 3rd lost to Prussia in 1871, and the Russian foreign minister and Russian ambassador to France, who wanted to take from Turkey the Dardanelles Straits that connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Their conspiracy to ignite a European war in order to achieve these goals was put in place over several years. The French president, Poincare, and the Russians, Foreign Minister Sazonov and Russian Ambassador to France Izvolski, were not confident to take on Germany and Austria-Hungary without British support. Consequently, they brought the British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey into their plot, without the awareness of the British monarch.
Vaccines: Mythology, I...
Best Price: $26.25
Buy New $24.38
(as of 02:26 UTC - Details)
Once the alliances and reassurances among the war plotters were in place, the Russians and French arranged, encouraged, the Serbian assassination of the Austrian Archduke, successor to the throne, and his wife, and if not responsible seized on the assassination to set in motion the wheels of war. Russia took the line that it had to protect Serbia from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire’s retaliation and used Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia as an excuse to order Russian mobilization.
The three monarchs–the British King, the Russian Tsar, and the German Kaiser were first cousins, all being Queen Victoria’s grandsons. On receipt of a telegram from his German cousin warning that a European catastrophe awaited them if war broke out, the Tsar ordered the Russian mobilization to be halted, convinced that the mobilization would not serve to intimidate Austria but to provoke European war. The Tsar’s ministers told him it was too late to countermand the general mobilization, and it proceeded.
The Tsar had been left out of the plot and at best was only vaguely aware of what was afoot. Once the light dawned on the Tsar, he found himself unable to control the military zeal in his government. In a telegram to his German cousin he confessed his helplessness before the militarists:
“I foresee that very soon I shall be overwhelmed by the pressure brought upon me, and be forced to take extreme measures which will lead to war. To try and avoid such a calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do what you can to stop your allies (Austria) from going too far.” The Tsar was asking Germany to restrain Austria’s actions against Serbia, which the Kaiser tried to do.
Never Fear Cancer Agai...
Best Price: $3.50
Buy New $11.55
(as of 05:21 UTC - Details)
The Kaiser’s response to his Russian cousin’s telegram was: “A confession of his own weakness, and an attempt put the responsibility on my shoulders.”
The war, which resulted from the inability of the British, German, Russian monarchs, and French people to prevent it, destroyed Europe. The war destroyed the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and left Russia in the hands of Lenin. The deaths World War I inflicted on France and the British wiped out a generation of leaders, eliminated aristocrats, who at least had a system of honor whether or not they abided by it, from leadership, and turned the leadership over to “jackets and sheep” to use the apt term of Giuseppe Di Lampedusa. Britain was left so financially weak that it was easy for US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to use WW II to push the British aside and assume for the US dollar the role and power of the country of the reserve currency.
Germany, whose Kaiser tried to prevent WWI was held responsible for it. Consequently, at Versailles, Germany in violation of US President Wilson’s guarantee, was faced with territorial loss and unpayable reparations, which caused WWII and left Europe with Soviet rule over Eastern Europe.
Today the world faces an even more absurd situation. Israel, a tiny country with no resources except American money and protection, has Western foreign policy, and apparently also Russia’s, in its tiny hands. For a quarter century Americans have fought to destroy Arab nations for the sake of expanding Greater Israel. American soldiers were told by their lying government that they were dying and being permanently disabled to protect America from a non-existent Muslim terrorism, when in fact they were dying for Greater Israel.
Now we are on a new road to our destruction in pursuit of the Zionist American neoconservatives’ agenda of a hegemonic America and Israel. Where is the leadership to stop it?
