‘The Special Relationship’

Here is an interesting article on US contingency war plans against the British Empire in the early 1930s. However, the author poorly researched the political-economic background for this possible war. Although little known to the general public today, this is a topic of which I have been familiar with since the 1970s through the fascinating works of journalist Ludwell Denny. Denny wrote two excellent books during this period, We Fight For Oil (1928), and America Conquers Britain: A Record of Economic War (1930). Here is a link to both books online. This possible war between the British Empire and the United States was not as farfetched as many would believe today with the on-going mainstream media propaganda of “the special relationship.” Murray Rothbard touched slightly on these matters in his seminal Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, while John Hagel III provided a cogent background analysis in the August 1973 edition of The Libertarian Forum, “Oil and American Foreign Policy.” The conflict was essentially based on economic warfare between Britain’s Royal Dutch-Shell (headed by Sir Henri Deterding) versus the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (headed by Walter Teagle). Deterding later threw in with the Nazis, as did Standard Oil with I. G. Farben. Four good follow-up books are F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order; Glyn Roberts, The Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Sir Henri Deterding; Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of The Nazi American Money Plot 1938–1949; and James and Suzanne Pool, Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919–1933.

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8:17 pm on September 28, 2011