The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  On February 4, 1920, after Germany’s defeat, Churchill warned of the spread of communism in a newspaper article. He said that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy, evidenced by historical data. He wrote, “This movement among Jews is not new… but a ‘world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality.” In July 1925, Stalin addressed the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and anticipated a future war. Stalin explained his doctrine, “Should war begin, we will not stand by inactively; we will enter the war, but we will enter as the last belligerent. We shall throw a weight on the scale that should be decisive.” 763 He obviously changed sides and worked for the very people he claimed to fear.

  In 1930, Churchill, allegedly wary of Adolf Hitler and his objectives, warned others at a dinner at the German Embassy that Hitler and his followers wanted to initiate a war. Beginning in 1932, Churchill, in his writings, opposed the British politicians who favored giving Germany military parity with France. Churchill, portraying himself as a lone courageous voice, frequently referred to Germany’s potential rearmament. He accused the Spanish Republican government of being a communist front and that Spain was attempting to influence the politics in Portugal and France.

  Meanwhile, Hitler was concerned with minimizing the influence of the “Jewish Bolshevists.” On March 23, 1933, Hitler, in a speech, had said “the struggle with communism in Germany is our internal affair.” He did not intend to allow Germany’s relationship with other countries interfere with that struggle. 764

  On February 7, 1934, Churchill, in a speech, urged the rebuilding of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the creation of a Ministry of Defence. On July 13, he endorsed a stronger League of Nations. In 1935, he helped found The Focus, a bipartisan group seeking and promoting peace. He supported the Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935) and until 1937, supported Benito Mussolini. In Great Contemporaries (1937), contradicting his earlier statements, he said that he hoped that Hitler would rebuild Germany. Churchill apparently targeted Germany according to his writings of 1934. One must also consider his actions in the execution of World War I, meaning the orchestrated attack on the Lusitania. He and FDR, also a factor in the Lusitania incident, considered Germany even more dangerous to Britain and France, than Stalin was, mostly because of Germany’s economic threat and her successes. 765

  According to Leon Gelfand, “Stalin had been obsessed with the idea of an agreement with Germany since 1933.” On December 21, 1935, and again in July 1936, Sergei Bessonov, apparently on assignment from the Kremlin, visited with German authorities in Berlin to promote the idea that Germany and Soviet Russia should devise an additional neutrality pact similar to the one that Germany and the Soviet Russia signed in 1926. 766 In 1933, Roosevelt appointed Laurence Steinhardt, a member of the Federation of American Zionists and the American Zion ommonwealth as Minister to Sweden. Previously, he practiced law at Guggenheimer, Untermeyer and Marshall. Samuel Untermeyer was his uncle. Steinhardt confided to FDR that the German and Soviet governments maintained communications.

  Stalin, resolute to reach an agreement with Germany, replaced Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov on May 3, 1939. The German media had derided Litvinov’s Jewish ancestry and Stalin wanted to remove any obstacles to the negotiation process. Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria and Molotov informed Litvinov of his dismissal. 767 Stalin quickly directed Molotov to “purge the ministry of Jews.” Molotov commented, “Thank God for these words! Jews formed an absolute majority in the leadership and among the ambassadors. It wasn’t good.”768 Of course, it was only a token purging.

  Hitler, in an attempt to improve relations between the two countries, encouraged British officials to sign the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) which they did on June 18, 1935. This pact would isolate the Soviet Union, which both the Soviet Union and Britain had previously attempted to do to Germany. This bilateral agreement between the United Kingdom and the German Reich regulated the size of the Kriegsmarine, from 1935 to 1945, in relation to the Royal Navy. The AGNA set the permanent ratio for the total tonnage of the Kriegsmarine at thirty-five percent of the total tonnage of the Royal Navy. On July 12, 1935, officials registered the AGNA as the League of Nations Treaty Series. Hitler would renounce the agreement on April 28, 1939 because Britain was encouraging Poland to oppose Germany and marshal troops for warfare.

  In December 1935, British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval created the Hoare-Laval Pact, a proposal to end the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. The Pact would also make Abyssinia an Italian colony, an objective of Italian leader, Benito Mussolini. Historian, A. J. P. Taylor maintained that the pact “killed the League of Nations” and “was a perfectly sensible plan, in line with the League’s previous acts of conciliation from Corfu to Manchuria.” It would have “ended the war; satisfied Italy; and left Abyssinia with a more workable, national territory.” Taylor said, the common sense of the plan was, in the circumstances of the time, its vital defect.” 769

  Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Special Ambassador at Large and the Japanese Military Attaché in Berlin, General Oshima Hiroshi, worked out a treaty directed against the Comintern. By the summer of 1936, concerns in Berlin and Tokyo about the Franco-Soviet alliance, and Hitler’s desire for a dramatic anti-Communist foreign policy gesture led to the idea of the Anti-Comintern Pact.

  On November 25, 1936, the Japanese ambassador to Germany Viscount Kintomo Mushakoji and Ribbentrop of Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, against the Communist International (Comintern). In order to avoid damaging relations with the Soviet Union, they applied the Pact only to the Comintern with a lateral agreement that should either signatory engage in warfare with the Soviet Union, the other party would maintain neutrality. Germany recognized the threat of the Comintern, which planned to forcibly conquer and control all existing adjacent countries. Not only was the Comintern, with its subversive activities, a threat to Europe but a menace to the entire world. In case the Soviet Union attacked Germany or Japan, the two countries would decide what measures to take. They also agreed that neither of them would enter into any political treaties with the Soviet Union, and German officials also consented to recognize Manchukuo, previously known as Manchuria, which Japan had seized from China after the Mukden Incident in 1931. Italy would sign the pact on July 24, 1937.

  Hitler also tried to persuade Polish officials to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact and to negotiate the ongoing territorial disputes between Germany and Poland. However, Poland rejected all of Hitler’s conditions, fearing that any kind of an alliance with Hitler would make Poland a German puppet state. Meanwhile, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement surprised many Japanese politicians, such as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Some of Japan’s military leaders also assumed, because of the clique then in control in Tokyo, that it was a ruse designed to allow Germany some time to strengthen its navy. They continued to plot war against the Soviet Union or the Western democracies, assuming Germany would eventually act against one of them. Hitler’s efforts to develop relations with Britain eventually failed.

  In December 1936 and February 1937, David Kandelaki, one of Stalin’s aides met with Hjalmar Schacht during which he shared a statement, apparently from Stalin, saying that the Soviets wanted to improve relations and trade with Germany, especially since Hitler came to power. 770 Hitler told Carl J. Burckhardt, the High Commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig (1937-1939), “Everything I undertake is directed against Russia. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine so that they can’t starve me out as happened in the last war.” 771

  The Soviets sent numerous agents into Western Europe, Canada and America, a country that enjoyed enormous productivity, and a high li
ving standard. Britain and America, despite the rhetoric and the billions of squandered dollars, were not formidable obstacles to Communism. On March 10, 1939, Stalin addressed the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party and officially declared his intention to overthrow the United States. Unquestionably, the Soviet-stacked State Department and the Roosevelt administration were cognizant of his remarks. 772

  According to Pravda, dated May 14, Stalin needed a situation in which the capitalists would fight each other. 773 Hitler, the icebreaker, inadvertently played into Stalin’s hands in the same way that Roosevelt manipulated Japan. Roosevelt did everything he could to provoke the Japanese so they would respond militarily. Hitler had fought in World War I. According to Viktor Suvorov, Hitler certainly was not contemplating or planning a major European war. However, the unscrupulous Communists, envisioning world domination, were planning a massive revolution. The Communists never abandoned the “Stalin Doctrine” but it remained in force to incite Germany and the West against each other.

  Hitler welcomed some kind of a pact with the Soviets to avoid a war with them as he needed grain from the Ukraine. 774 On August 14, Ribbentrop contacted the Soviets to arrange that pact. In 1939, with more than enough weaponry, Stalin thought that the time was right to “intervene as a belligerent in the crisis of world capitalism.” 775 Therefore, on August 19, Stalin ordered a surprise attack on Japan, Germany’s ally. The Soviet Red Army then assaulted Japan’s Sixth Kwantung Army at Khalkhin Gol, a river in Mongolia that functions as a border. 776

  On that day, August 19, the Politburo of the Central Committee held a secret meeting, which also included members of the Communist International. Stalin, in his speech, said, “If we accept the German proposal for the conclusion of a Non-Aggression pact with them, they would naturally attack Poland, and the intervention of France and England in this war would be inevitable.” The ensuing “serious unrest and disorder” would destabilize Western Europe, “without the Soviets initially being drawn into the conflict.” As he had explained in 1925, in this way, “we can hope for an advantageous entry into the war.” In Stalin’s view, this was the perfect circumstances for a world revolution and the Sovietization of Europe and Bolshevik domination. He concluded, “Comrades! In the interests of the USSR—the homeland of the workers—get busy, and work so that war may break out between the Reich and the capitalistic Anglo-French bloc.” 777

  Ribbentrop met with the Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in Moscow. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a treaty of non-aggression, between Germany and the Soviet Union, dated August 23, 1939, was named for the diplomats who negotiated it. The two countries agreed to neutrality if a third country attacked either country. In doing this, Germany broke the terms of the Anti-Comintern Pact. 778 Stalin’s objective, with this treaty, was to manipulate Hitler into attacking Poland. He anticipated that Hitler’s attack on Poland would provoke a European war. Stalin also invaded Poland, on September 17, but without incurring a declaration of war from the Western powers. On October 31, Molotov, responsible for the Soviet’s foreign policy, said, “A single blow against Poland, first by the Germans, and then by the Red Army, and nothing remained of this misbegotten child of the Versailles Treaty, which owed its existence to the repression of non-Polish nationalities.” 779

  Stalin wanted to eliminate Poland and tear away the other countries that provided a protective buffer against the rest of Europe. Therefore, he waged war against Poland and Finland, and threatened warfare against Romania, and then forcibly annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Stalin enlarged the territory of the Soviet Union, through the pacts with Hitler, his warfare and his annexations by 426,000 sq. km. This expansion provided him with a better foundation for deploying the Red Army throughout the rest of Europe. Germany was now fighting, wearing itself out, against England, with the potential assistance of the U.S. military, under certain circumstances. Moscow officials ascertained that Germany could not feasibly fight a prolonged war because of economics and the fact that she depended on Romania for petroleum, absolutely essential for warfare. Soviet officials also figured, because of those conditions, that she was militarily inferior. 780

  The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact arbitrarily divided Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet regions of influence. Subsequently, each power invaded and occupied Poland. Germany, for a substantially different reason, invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Soviets invaded it on September 17. The Soviets, without a legal declaration of war, increased their territory by 426,000 square kilometers 781 by invading and annexing part of eastern Finland (November 30, 1939) followed by the invasions of Latvia (June 16, 1940), Estonia (June 16, 1940), and Lithuania (June 15, 1940) which they had ceded after World War I. In September 1939, the Soviets had professed neutrality and yet they seized territories with populations totaling 23,000,000 people—Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland, Lithuania, and portions of Finland. The Soviets seized the Romanian provinces of Bukovina and Bessarabia to cut off Germany’s oil resources.

  With the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin subtly granted Hitler permission to retrieve the territory taken after World War I. The Soviets early on referred to Hitler as the “Icebreaker for the Revolution.” The communists recognized that warfare would weaken Europe, exactly what they desired, but they did not want to initiate that warfare. Instead, they manipulated other people and events to guarantee warfare and render Europe vulnerable to communism. Hitler, the icebreaker, unaware that the communists were using him, predictably opened the way for world communism, the very philosophy that he despised. 782

  Although the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact designated spheres of interest, it did not authorize either country to invade the Baltic States and Finland, but only permitted them to claim strategic bases if war should erupt. As early as April 1939, before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin and Churchill, the leader of the War Party thought it beneficial to cooperate in a multi-front war against Germany. In July, they agreed, probably through Stalin’s agent in London, Ivan Maisky, who was on very good terms with Churchill, that Britain would only declare war against Germany, even though both nations, Germany and the Soviet Union, attacked Poland. Maisky had also been the Soviet Ambassador to Finland (1929-1932). On October 15, Stalin and Churchill signed the agreement to economically and militarily obliterate Germany. 783

  The Pravda editor asked Stalin what he thought of the Havas version of his speech of August 19, 1939 about his alleged comment that “the war must be continued for as long as is needed to exhaust the belligerent countries.” Stalin sent the following response, which Pravda published on November 30, “This report issued by the Havas agency, like many more of its messages, is nonsense. I of course cannot know in precisely which nightclub these lies were fabricated. But no matter how many lies the gentlemen of the Havas agency might tell, they cannot deny that; a)

  It was not Germany that attacked France and Britain, but France and Britain which attacked Germany, thereby taking upon themselves the responsibility for the present war; b) after hostilities began, Germany made peace proposals to France and Britain, while the Soviet Union openly supported these German peace proposals, for it considered, and continues to consider, that only an early end of the war can bring relief in a fundamental way to all countries and all peoples; c) The ruling circles in Britain and France rejected out of hand both the German peace proposals and the Soviet Union’s efforts to end the war as quickly as possible.” 784

  Communists believe that they need to destroy the old world and replace it with a new one. This destruction and reconstruction requires the usurpation of political power, by whatever measures possible—from the most peaceful to the most violent, from the most transparent to the most secretive means. The struggle for a new world cannot be on a national level but must be worldwide—which means that a nation’s citizens must forfeit their national interests. 785 In November 1939, Churchill acknowledged on British radio, “This war is a British war and its aim is the destruction
of Germany.” It was not only the obliteration of National Socialism but, as he referred to it, “Nazi tyranny.” He said, “This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting for Poland. We are fighting to save a whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man.” 786

  On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland in what people referred to as the Winter War, as it ended on March 13, 1940. With the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty, Finland ceded eleven percent of its pre-war territory and thirty percent of its economic assets to the Soviet Union. Stalin did not terminate the war because he thought that the western allies might defend Finland. Instead, Hitler demanded that Stalin halt his warfare against Finland under threat of a German attack against the Soviet troops. Hitler apparently knew about the plot that Stalin made with the allies concerning Finland. If Hitler had attacked the Russian forces, the allied forces would have retaliated and invaded Norway and Sweden as a pretense to assist Finland. Then the Soviet Union, in vanquishing Finland, would have made Scandinavia a front against Germany. Britain and the allied forces relinquished Finland to the Soviet Union. 787

  If Germany had not intervened, Finland would have completely collapsed. According to Marshal Carl Mannerheim, Chief of the Finnish Defence (1939-1945), Germany’s occupation of Denmark and Norway partially rescued Finland. Sweden also contributed by not allowing the Soviet Union passage. Mannerheim became the sixth President of Finland (1944-1946). Hitler assured King Gustaf V that Germany would not make any claims if Sweden stayed neutral and continued to be a resource for ore. The King was also aware of the Allie’s plans. In June 1941, Gustaf V attempted to write to Hitler to thank him for eradicating the “Bolshevik pest” and praising him on his victories. Prime Minister Hansson prevented him from sending his letter but the King managed to get his message to Hitler through the German embassy in Stockholm. 788