World War One

"Money is the worst of all contraband."
— William Jennings Bryan

It is now apparent that there might have been no World War without the Federal Reserve System. A strange sequence of events, none of which were accidental, had occurred. Without Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" candidacy, the popular President Taft would have been reelected, and Woodrow Wilson would have returned to obscurity. If Wilson had not been elected, we might have had no Federal Reserve Act, and World War One could have been avoided. The European nations had been led to maintain large standing armies as the policy of the central banks which dictated their governmental decisions. In April, 1887, the Quarterly Journal of Economics had pointed out:

"A detailed revue of the public debts of Europe shows interest and sinking fund payments of $5,343 million annually (five and one-third billion). M. Neymarck's conclusion is much like Mr. Atkinson's. The finances of Europe are so involved that the governments may ask whether war, with all its terrible chances, is not preferable to the maintenance of such a precarious and costly peace. If the military preparations of Europe do not end in war, they may well end in the bankruptcy of the States. Or, if such follies lead neither to war nor to ruin, then they assuredly point to industrial and economic revolution."

From 1887 to 1914, this precarious system of heavily armed but bankrupt European nations endured, while the United States continued to be a debtor nation, borrowing money from abroad, but making few international loans, because we did not have a central bank or "mobilization of credit". The system of national loans developed by the Rothschilds served to finance European struggles during the nineteenth century, because they were spread out over Rothschild branches in several countries.

By 1900, it was obvious that the European countries could not afford a major war. They had large standing armies, universal military service, and modern weapons, but their economies could not support the enormous expenditures. The Federal Reserve System began operations in 1914, forcing the American people to lend the Allies twenty-five billion dollars which was not repaid, although considerable interest was paid to New York bankers. The American people were driven to make war on the German people, with whom we had no conceivable political or economic quarrel. Moreover, the United States comprised the largest nation in the world composed of Germans; almost half of its citizens were of German descent, and by a narrow margin, German had been voted down as the national language.

The German Ambassador to Turkey, baron Wangeheim asked the American Ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, why the United States intended to make war in Germany. "We Americans," replied Morgenthau, speaking for the group of Harlem real estate operators of which he was the head, "are going to war for a moral principle." J.P. Morgan received the proceeds of the First Liberty Loan to pay off $400,000,000 which he advanced to Great Britain at the outset of the war. To cover this loan, $68,000,000 in notes had been issued under the provisions of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act for issuing notes against securities, the only time this provision was employed. The notes were retired as soon as the Federal Reserve Banks began operation, and replaced by Federal Reserve Notes.

During 1915 and 1916, Wilson kept faith with the bankers who had purchased the White House for him, by continuing to make loans to the Allies. His Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, protested constantly, stating that "Money is the worst of all contraband." By 1917, the Morgans and Kuhn, Loeb Company had floated a billion and a half dollars in loans to the Allies. The bankers also financed a host of "peace" organizations which worked to get us involved in the World War. The Commission for Relief in Belgium manufactured atrocity stories against the Germans, while a Carnegie organization, The League to Enforce Peace, agitated in Washington for our entry into war. This later became the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which during the 1940s was headed by Alger Hiss. One writer claimed that he had never seen any "peace movement" which did not end in war.

The U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page, complained that he could not afford the position, and was given twenty-five thousand dollars a year spending money by Cleveland H. Dodge, president of the National City Bank. H.L. Mencken openly accused Page in 1916 of being a British agent, which was unfair. Page was merely a bankers' agent. On March 5, 1917, Page sent a confidential letter to Wilson.

"I think that the pressure of this approaching crisis has gone beyond the ability of the Morgan Financial Agency for the British and French Governments . . . The greatest help we could give the Allies would be a credit. Unless we go to war with Germany, our Government, of course, cannot make such a direct grant of credit."

The Rothschilds were wary of Germany's ability to continue in the war, despite the financial chaos caused by their agents, the Warburgs, who were financing the Kaiser, and Paul Warburg's brother, Max, who, as head of the German Secret Service, authorized Lenin's train to pass through the lines and execute the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. According to Under Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's heavy industry had been preparing for war for a year. Both the Army and Navy Departments had been purchasing war supplies in large amounts since early in 1916. Cordell Hull remarks in his Memoirs:

"The conflict forced the further development of the income-tax principle. Aiming, as it did, at the one great untaxed source of revenue, the income-tax law had been enacted in the nick of time to meet the demands of the war. And the conflict also assisted the putting into effect of the Federal Reserve System, likewise in the nick of time."

One may ask, in the nick of time for whom? Certainly not for the American people, who had no need for "mobilization of credit" for a European war, or to enact an income tax to finance a war. Hull's statement affords a rare glimpse into the machinations of our "public servants".

The Notes of the Journal of Political Economy, October, 1917, state:

"The effect of the war upon the business of the Federal Reserve Banks has required an immense development of the staffs of these banks, with a corresponding increase in expenses. Without, of course, being able to anticipate so early and extensive a demand for their services in this connection, the framers of the Federal Reserve Act had provided that the Federal Reserve Banks should act as fiscal agents of the Government."

The bankers had been waiting since 1887 for the United States to enact a central bank plan so that they could finance a European war among the nations whom they had already bankrupted with armament and "defense" programs. The most demanding function of the central bank mechanism is war finance.

On October 13, 1917, Woodrow Wilson made a major address, stating:

"It is manifestly imperative that there should be a complete mobilization of the banking reserves of the United States. The burden and the privilege (of the Allied loans) must be shared by every banking institution in the country. I believe that cooperation on the part of the banks is a patriotic duty at this time, and that membership in the Federal Reserve System is a distinct and significant evidence of patriotism."

E.W. Kemmerer writes that

"As fiscal agents of the Government, the federal reserve banks rendered the nations services of incalculable value after our entrance into the war. They aided greatly in the conservation of our gold resources, in the regulation of our foreign exchanges, and in the centralization of our financial energies. One shudders when he thinks what might have happened if the war had found us with our former decentralized and antiquated banking system."

Mr. Kemmerer's shudders ignore the fact that if we had kept "our antiquated banking system" we would not have been able to finance the World War or to enter as a participant ourselves.

Woodrow Wilson himself did not believe in his crusade to save the world for democracy. He later wrote that "The World War was a matter of economic rivalry."

On being questioned by Senator McCumber about the circumstances of our entry into the war, Wilson was asked,

"Do you think if Germany had committed no act of war or no act of injustice against our citizens that we would have gotten into this war?"

"I do think so," Wilson replied.

"You think we would have gotten in anyway?" pursued McCumber.

"I do," said Wilson.

In Wilson's War Message in 1917, he included an incredible tribute to the Communists in Russia who were busily slaughtering the middle class in that unfortunate country.

"Assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening in the last few weeks in Russia. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor."

Wilson's paean to a bloodthirsty regime which has since murdered sixty-six million of its inhabitants in the most barbarous manner exposes his true sympathies and his true backers, the bankers who had financed the blood purge in Russia. When the Communist Revolution seemed in doubt, Wilson sent his personal emissary, Elihu Root, to Russia with one hundred million dollars from his Special Emergency War Fund to save the toppling Bolshevik regime.

The documentation of Kuhn, Loeb Company's involvement in the establishment of Communism in Russia is much too extensive to be quoted here, but we include one brief mention, typical of the literature on this subject. In his book, Czarism and the Revolution, Gen. Arsene de Goulevitch writes,

"Mr. Bakmetiev, the late Russian Imperial Ambassador to the United States, tells us that the Bolsheviks, after victory, transferred 600 million roubles in gold between the years 1918-1922 to Kuhn, Loeb Company."

After our entry into World War I, Woodrow Wilson turned the government of the United States over to a triumvirate of his campaign backers, Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch and Eugene Meyer. Baruch was appointed head of the War Industries Board, with life and death powers over every factory in the United States. Eugene Meyer was appointed head of the War Finance Corporation, in charge of the loan program which financed the war. Paul Warburg was in control of the nation's banking system.

Knowing that the overwhelming sentiment of the American people during 1915 and 1916 had been anti-British and pro-German, our British allies viewed with some trepidation the prominence of Paul Warburg and Kuhn, Loeb Company in the prosecution of the war. They were uneasy about his high position in the Administration because his brother, Max Warburg, was at that time serving as head of the German Secret Service. On December 12, 1918, the United States Naval Secret Service Report on Mr. Warburg was as follows:

"WARBURG, PAUL: New York City. German, naturalized citizen, 1911. was decorated by the Kaiser in 1912, was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Handled large sums furnished by Germany for Lenin and Trotsky. Has a brother who is leader of the espionage system of Germany."

Strangely enough, this report, which must have been compiled much earlier, while we were at war with Germany, is not dated until December 12, 1918. AFTER the Armistice had been signed. Also, it does not contain the information that Paul Warburg resigned from the Federal Reserve Board in May, 1918, which indicates that it was compiled before May, 1918, when Paul Warburg would theoretically have been open to a charge of treason because of his brother's control of Germany's Secret Service.

Paul Warburg's brother Felix in New York was a director of the Prussian Life Insurance Company of Berlin, and presumably would not have liked to see too many of his policyholders killed in the war. On September 26, 1920, The New York Times mentioned in its obituary of Jacob Schiff in reference to Kuhn, Loeb and Company, "During the world War certain of its members were in constant contact with the Government in an advisory capacity. It shared in the conferences which were held regarding the organization and formation of the Federal Reserve System."

The 1920 Schiff obituary revealed for the first time that Jacob Schiff, like the Warburgs, also had two brothers in Germany during World War I, Philip and Ludwig Schiff, of Frankfurt-on-Main, who also were active as bankers to the German Government! This was not a circumstance to be taken lightly, as on neither side of the Atlantic were the said bankers obscure individuals who had no influence in the conduct of the war. On the contrary, the Kuhn, Loeb partners held the highest governmental posts in the United States during World War I, while in Germany, Max and Fritz Warburg, and Philip and Ludwig Schiff, moved in the highest councils of government. From Memoirs of Max Warburg, "The Kaiser thumbed the table violently and shouted, 'Must you always be right?' but then listened carefully to Max's view on financial matters."

In June, 1918, Paul Warburg wrote a private note to Woodrow Wilson, "I have two brothers in Germany who are bankers. They naturally now serve their country to their utmost ability, as I serve mine."

Neither Wilson nor Warburg viewed the situation as one of concern, and Paul Warburg served out his term on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, while World War I continued to rage.

The background of Kuhn, Loeb & Company had been exposed in Truth Magazine, edited by George Conroy:

"Mr. Schiff is head of the great private banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. which represents the Rothschild interest on this side of the Atlantic. He has been described as a financial strategist and has been for years the financial minister to the great impersonal power known as Standard Oil. He was hand-in-glove with the Harrimans, the Goulds and the Rockefellers, in all their railroad enterprises and has become the dominant power in the railroad and financial world in America. Louis Brandeis, because of his great ability as a lawyer and for other reasons which will appear later, was selected by Schiff as the instrument through which Schiff hoped to achieve his ambition in New England. His job was to carry on an agitation which would undermine public confidence in the New Haven system and cause a decrease in the price of its securities, thus forcing them on the market for the wreckers to buy."

We mention Schiff's lawyer, Brandeis, here because the first available appointment on the Supreme Court of the United States which Woodrow Wilson was allowed to fill was given to the Kuhn, Loeb lawyer, Brandeis.

Not only was the U.S. Food Administration managed by Hoover's director, Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, who married into the Kuhn Loeb Company by marrying Alice Hanauer, daughter of partner Jerome Hanauer, but in the most critical field, military intelligence, Sir William Wiseman, chief of the British Secret Service, was a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. He worked most closely with Wilson's alter ego, Col. House.

"Between House and Wiseman there were soon to be few political secrets, and from their mutual comprehension resulted in large measure our close cooperation with the British."

One example of House's cooperation with Wiseman was a confidential agreement which House negotiated pledging the United States to enter into World War I on the side of the Allies. Ten months before the election which returned Wilson to the White House in 1916 'because he kept us out of war', Col. House negotiated a secret agreement with England and France on behalf of Wilson which pledged the United States to intervene on behalf of the Allies. On March 9, 1916, Wilson formally sanctioned the undertaking.

Nothing could more forcefully illustrate the duplicity of Woodrow Wilson's nature than his nationwide campaign on the slogan, "He kept us out of war", when he had pledged ten months earlier to involve us in the war on the side of England and France. This explains why he was regarded with such contempt by those who learned the facts of his career. H.L. Mencken wrote that Wilson was "the perfect model of the Christian cad", and that we ought "to dig up his bones and make dice of them."

According to The New York Times, Paul Warburg's letter of resignation stated that some objection had been made because he had a brother in the Swiss Secret Service. The New York Times has never corrected this blatant falsehood, perhaps because Kuhn, Loeb Company owned a controlling interest in its stock. Max Warburg was not Swiss, and although he had probably come into contact with the Swiss Secret Service during his term of office as head of the German Secret Service, no responsible editor at The New York Times could have been unaware of the fact that Max Warburg was German, and that his family banking house was in Hamburg, and that he held a number of high positions in the German Government. He represented Germany at the Versailles Peace Conference, and remained peacefully in Germany until 1939, during a period when persons of his religion were being persecuted. To avoid injury during the approaching war, when bombs would rain on Germany, Max Warburg was allowed to sail to New York, his funds intact.

At the outset of World War I, Kuhn, Loeb Company had figured in the transfer of German shipping interests to other control. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British Ambassador to the United States, in a letter to Lord Grey wrote:

"Another matter is the question of the transfer of the flag to the Hamburg Amerika ships. The company is practically a German Government affair. The ships are used for Government purposes, the Emperor himself is a large shareholder, and so is the great banking house of Kuhn, Loeb Company. A member of that house (Warburg) has been appointed to a very responsible position in New York, although only just naturalized. He is concerned in business with the Secretary of the Treasury, who is the President's son-in-law. It is he who is negotiating on behalf of the Hamburg Amerika Shipping Company."

On November 13, 1914, in a letter to Sir Valentine Chirol, Spring-Rice wrote, (p. 241, v. 2)

"I was told today that The New York Times has been practically acquired by Kuhn, Loeb and Schiff, special protege of the (German) Emperor. Warburg, nearly related to Kuhn Loeb and Schiff is a brother of the well known Warburg of Hamburg, the associate of Ballin (Hamburg) Amerika line), is a member of the Federal Reserve Board or rather THE member. He practically controls the financial policy of the Administration, and Paish & Blackett (England) had mainly to negotiate with him. Of course, it was exactly like negotiating with Germany. Everything that was said was German property."

Col. Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve Law, that

"Through the banking House of the Kuhn Loeb Company, a powerful weapon would have been placed in the hands of the German Kaiser over the destiny of American business and American citizens."

Garrison was referring to the Hamburg Amerika affair.

It seemed strange that Woodrow Wilson felt it necessary to place the nation in the hands of three men whose personal history was one of ruthless speculation and the quest for personal gain, or that during war with Germany, he found as persons of supreme trust a German immigrant naturalized in 1911, the son of an immigrant from Poland, and the son of an immigrant from France. Bernard Baruch first attracted attention on Wall Street in 1890 while working for A.A. Housman & Co.

In 1896 he merged the six principal tobacco companies of the United States into the Consolidated Tobacco Company, forcing James Duke and the American Tobacco Trust to enter into this combination. The second great trust set up by Baruch brought the copper industry into the hands of the Guggenheim family, who have controlled it ever since. Baruch worked with Edward H. Harriman, who was Schiff's front man in controlling America's railway system for the Rothschild family. Baruch and Harriman also combined their talents to gain control over the New York City transit system, which has been in perilous financial condition ever since.

In 1901, Baruch formed the firm of Baruch Brothers, bankers, with his brother Herman, in New York. In 1917, when Baruch was appointed Chairman of the War Industries Board, the name was changed to Hentz Brothers.

Testifying before the Nye Committee on September 13, 1937, Bernard Baruch stated that "All wars are economic in their origin." So much for religious and political disagreements, which had been specially touted as the cause of wars.

A profile in the New Yorker magazine reported that Baruch made a profit of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in one day during World War I, after a phony peace rumor was planted in Washington. In "Who's Who", Baruch mentions that he was a member of the Commission which handled all purchasing for the Allies during World War I. In fact, Baruch WAS the Commission. He spent the American taxpayer's money at the rate of ten billion dollars a year, and was also the dominant member of the Munitions Price-Fixing Committee. He set the prices at which the Government bought war materials. It would be naive to presume that the orders did not go to firms in which he and his associates had more than a polite interest.

At the Nye Committee hearings in 1935, Baruch testified,

"President Wilson gave me a letter authorizing me to take over any industry or plant. There was Judge Gary, President of United States Steel, whom we were having trouble with, and when I showed him that letter, he said, 'I guess we will have to fix this up', and he did fix it up."

Some members of Congress were curious about Baruch's qualifications to exercise life and death powers over American industry in time of war. He was not a manufacturer, and had never been in a factory. When he was called before a Congressional Committee, Bernard Baruch stated that his profession was "Speculator". A Wall Street gambler had been made Czar of American Industry.

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