Britain Started WWI And WWII And Both Times Blamed Germany
- by Frank Hilliard
- May 23, 2019
He stares at the camera with tight lips and a high collar, more the Prussian General than a British Foreign Secretary, but Sir Edward Grey knew what he was doing when he got to his feet in the House of Commons at 4:00 PM on August 3, 1914; he was starting a World War with Britain’s archrival, Germany. What’s more, he was pretty plain about why he would ultimately send 885,138 British soldiers to their death. The reason was economic.
Germany’s industrial growth between 1880 and 1910 was the fastest in the world; its international trade quadrupled, industries such as steel, chemicals, engineering and armaments were booming. Germany had become, since it was created in 1871, a serious rival to Britain, British industry and the British Empire.
Now, a little context. France invaded Prussia in 1870 and lost the war. Britain stayed out of it following a German agreement not to invade Belgium. France gave up two departments and the Germans went home after a victory parade. Number of British troops killed: 0. Advance the clock to August 2, 1914. The Germans decide to invade France, in support of Austria, by going through Belgium. Germany demands free passage from the Belgians and offers reparations for any damage. They refuse. German armies invade neighbouring Luxembourg.
The question everyone was asking the next day was what would Britain do? The reason there was a question was that, despite secret staff talks with the French, and despite agreed movements of naval forces, there was no military alliance between Britain and France. There was also no alliance between Britain and Belgium, and indeed, under the terms of the Treaty of London, 1839, both Belgium and the Netherlands had agreed not to enter into alliances with anyone.
Now a little more context. Despite comments made at the time of the Franco-Prussian war by British Prime Minister Gladstone in 1870, and despite a document circulated to the British Cabinet dated November, 15, 1908 entitled “A Memorandum respecting Belgian Neutrality and Britain’s Obligation to Defend it,” there was, and is, nothing in the treaty signed by Belgium and the Netherlands obligating Britain to defend either country’s territorial integrity. It is, in fact, a treaty between Belgium and the Netherlands, requiring them to declare themselves to be neutral, to not invade each other, to establish a border commission, exchange prisoners, split the national debt, and, among other things, to share waterways. There is no obligation on any of the Great Powers, who witnessed the treaty, to do anything. All this is crystal clear to even a lay reader, then or now.
Sir Edward rises in the Commons with members in a high state of excitement. His speech is anything but exciting. Historian Barbara Tuchman described it as a “tangled skein” in which Gray worried about Belgian neutrality, French naval movements and British trade routes, and then got to the heart of the matter.
I am sure that France has the power to defend herself with all the energy and ability and patriotism which she has shown so often [Loud cheers.] — still, if that were to happen and if Belgium fell under the same dominating influence, and then Holland, and then Denmark, then would not Mr. Gladstone’s words come true, that just opposite to us there would be a common interest against the unmeasured aggrandisement of any power? [Loud cheers.]
As a straw man argument, this is hard to beat. If France were defeated, and Holland and Denmark, well, it would not be good, he’s saying. As a reason to kill 2,037,000 German soldiers, this is pretty thin stuff. But if you take it as an economic argument, war begins to make sense. Germany is strong now; imagine what it will be like with the Dutch ports and the French coal mines. On the other hand, if we send a token force to France, we can ride on the back of the French and Russian armies while they demolish our economic rival. Then, in the aftermath, we can collect German East Africa and South West Africa. A no brainer you might say. And that peace treaty between Holland and Belgium can be used as an excuse! That’s why everyone was cheering. Britain’s declaration of war the next day was Grey’s doing: one speech, millions of dead.
You would think this experience of discretionary bloodletting would have been enough, but no. Twenty five years later another British politician would follow Grey’s example and create another World War.
More background. Germany lost a large chunk of Prussia in the aftermath of WWI. What was left was cut off from the rest of the country by the Danzig corridor, giving Poland an outlet to the sea. After occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, Germany asks Poland (which got a piece of Czechoslovakia [Zaolzie] as well) for permission to build an extraterritorial rail and road link across the corridor. On March 22, 1939, Polish leaders meeting at Warsaw Castle, reject the proposal.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, scrambling to build an anti-German alliance, gets his ambassador in Warsaw on March 30, to ask the Polish leader, Józef Beck, if Poland will accept British security guarantees. Beck says yes. The next day, Chamberlain goes on the record:
in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect.
I may add that the French Government have authorised me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter as do His Majesty’s Government.
You’ll notice, at this point, there is no military alliance with Poland and no history of one. Indeed, the first the Polish leaders heard about it was 24 hours earlier. Chamberlain was, in effect, drawing a red line down the Polish/German border and challenging Hitler to cross it.
If that sound a little provocative, consider this. It was Britain and France who constructed that border at the Paris peace talks in 1919, twenty years earlier. They were now saying if Germany crossed a border they created inside Germany, it was cause for war with Germany. Talk about hutzpah.
As was clear to everyone at the time, Germany crossed the border Sept. 1 to reunite the country and the war threatened by Chamberlain was officially begun Sept. 3. All this is remarkably similar to what happened in 1914: Britain drawing lines on the continent and declaring war when they’re crossed. In the first instance, the line was based on a fictitious obligation, and in the second, on the victors’ pound of flesh when they carved up Germany.
I am not suggesting Germany didn’t start a war in 1914 and another in 1939. I’m saying Britain made it into a World War by intervening. Had it not done so the first time, Germany would have defeated France, taken some colonies and gone home. Had it not done so the second time, Germany would have concentrated all its forces on the Eastern Front and attacked the Soviet Union earlier. This would have been a titanic struggle with Germany the likely winner.
And then what? Can you imagine that Germany, with the Soviet Union to police, the largest country in the world, would have had the time, resources and manpower left over to attack France and Britain? Can you find some source suggesting Germany wanted to do so?
The mind trips down some interesting paths speculating on the world that might have been without the millions of dead slaughtered in the name of red lines on European maps, drawn in London, by men like Sir Edward Grey and Neville Chamberlain.
We are all justly horrified at men who organize a cock fight, or a dog fight; innocent animals who are trained to kill each other. What place in Hell should we send men who organize a fight to the death among men from advanced industrial nations who share the same technology, the same blood lines and the same culture?
Addendum
For those interested in going more deeply into the causes of WWII, there is a related article currently at the Unz Review entitled, “The Lies about World War II,” written by Paul Craig Roberts. He says, as I have, that the attack on Poland by Germany was initiated after Britain interjected itself into negotiations between Poland and Germany, blocking any possible compromise. While certainly a war, this was not WWII. “World War II was initiated by the British and French, declaration of war on Germany, not by a surprise blitzkrieg from Germany.”
An inside look at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s anti-white exhibit funded by the Federal Government
By Lindsay Shepherd – November 8, 2023 FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsAppLinkedin
A social media post about a hateful, anti-white exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery called “Conceptions of White” recently went viral, so naturally, I had to go see it for myself.
After you fork over your $30 admission fee (geez) and take the stairs to the third floor, the first thing to catch your eye is the giant phrase on the wall that reads, “When you’re the problem, we’re the solution.” The text is accompanied by a large headshot of a white male.
Gallery attendees then have the opportunity to interact with an AI program on a set of tablets.
“Stop talking. Never share an uninvited opinion again,” text on the wall reads. When you look into the tablet, a mute symbol is superimposed over your mouth.
“Check privilege. Learn whether you’re special or just lucky,” the text reads. Upon looking into the tablet, a halo that says “Undeserving” appears over your head.
“Get curious. Vocalize your own ignorance.”
The tablet prompts me to say aloud, “I know nothing.”
I sauntered over to the gallery security guard.
“Do people find this funny?” I asked her, gesturing at the tablet display. After all, the artist behind the work had described it as “tongue-in-cheek.”
“No,” she said, with a sheepish smile.
“They don’t like it?”
“No,” she shook her head.
I asked her whether this exhibit has been popular so far, but the answer was another negative.
“The Emily Carr exhibit is popular though,” she offered, referring to the famous Canadian painter.
I walked by some schizophrenic ramblings and pictures on the wall about how because statues from Ancient Rome and Greece had curly hair, they were probably not white people.
I arrived at a computer station with a webcam.
“Aryan Recognition Tool: How Aryan Are You?” the screen read.
The computer program claimed to measure how your face compared to the facial measurements of “the most infamous leaders of the Third Reich.”
Sign me up!
“Could face recognition be used to detect genocidal predators, or even casual racists? Find out whether your face matches any of the 1,900 examples of Aryans we’ve gathered.”
I was so eager to do so, but darn! An “out of order” sign was propped up in front of the facial recognition camera.
On to the next.
The next major installation was a timeline that spanned about 15 feet long.
“An incomplete timeline of the circumstances that influenced the emergence – and evolution – of White racial identity,” it read.
I learned that as a white Canadian born in the mid-1990s, my identity is defined by slavery, scientific racism, Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden,” colonialism, the Ku Klux Klan, the Third Reich, the “alt-right,” and Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
The last items in the timeline of white terribleness were “2013: Black Lives Matter founded” and “2021: January 6 Insurrection.” I chortled.
I was exhausted at this point, and still so very dismayed that I paid $30 only for the Aryan facial recognition tool to be out of order.
The final installation was a short film that purported to be about reflecting the “current state of White identity in America.”
What followed was a 30-minute compilation of internet meme videos spliced with scenes of racial violence, guns, and creepy staring.
On the way out of the screening room, I asked a couple visiting Vancouver from Australia whether they liked the exhibit.
“I was horrified. Horrified, devastated, saddened,” the man said, before praising the exhibit and trailing off about “violence” and “so many wars.”
The man had been successfully programmed into hating his heritage.
We are a culture that preaches self-love: individuals should be self-confident, self-respecting, self-reliant. But how can white people love themselves if they are told repeatedly that they are oppressors, purveyors of violence, and racists just for existing?
Especially when it is the high-culture institutions like galleries, museums, and universities beating them over the head with this message? The “Conceptions of White” exhibit also received government funding through the Canada Council for the Arts.
The exhibit was palpably hateful and designed to demoralize. I left the gallery not inspired and infused with joie de vivre, but rather drained: it was as if I had just exited a zone of concentrated psychological warfare, and I had fortunately come out alive with my critical thinking faculties still intact.
The security guard had spoken highly of the Emily Carr exhibit, so I went upstairs to the fourth floor to gaze upon something beautiful for a change.
I read the paragraphs of text about Emily Carr’s life that accompanied her paintings.
“Carr proclaimed to document a ‘disappearing Indigenous culture’ by undertaking frequent sketching trips in the province and painting totemic sculptures and villages,” the text read.
“She was sincere in her effort to represent Indigenous villages and culture in her work, but naive of her own colonial response to Indigenous cultures and the exploitative and romanticizing effect of her artwork.”
Sigh.
Even up at this exhibit, the artist is scolded for “romanticizing,” by painting vibrant and expressive landscapes.
I’d had enough.
My trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery: 0 out of 5 stars.
The Climate is Indeed Changing – Grab a Warm Jacket
By Brian C. JoondephOver the past few years, we have been lectured to by professed scientists to “follow the science,” echoed by the corporate media that often sees financial gain in following particular views of science.
For example, Pfizer is alleged to sponsor 15 television news shows, a sure fire way to get their version of “the science” (and their products) out to the masses.
Much of the COVID dogma broadcast by the medical establishment and health authorities turned out to be wrong, from masks and lockdowns to vaccine efficacy and safety. Yet these views could not be challenged without threat of losing one’s employment or licensure, in the case of health care workers. And as time goes by, we learn that much “science” was propaganda.
People are catching on, perhaps explaining why, “Less than 3% of eligible Americans have gotten the new COVID booster this fall” according to the CDC.
Or Steve Kirsch’s recent unsettling analysis, “The data is clear and consistent. The COVID vaccine killed 3.5X as many people as the COVID virus.”
What are other examples of science morphing into propaganda? How about global warming, a.k.a. climate change?
Image: A healthy dose of global warming on my back deck the morning of Oct. 29, 2023
Climate change scolds insist that the Earth is heating up and will be uninhabitable in just a few years. For decades, climate “scientists” have predicted doomsday apocalypse scenarios a decade away, none of which thus far have come to pass.
Failed past predictions should question the credibility of any future predictions, but there is no accountability for a string of failed prognostications over the decades.
What climate scientists conveniently ignore is the cyclic nature of climate.
The Climate4you website explains clearly:
From time to time the planet has been affected by millions of years with relatively cold climate, each such period leading to a long succession of glacial and interglacial periods. During the last couple of millions of years, planet Earth has been in such a cold stage. The last (until now) ice age ended around 11,600 years ago, and we are for the time living in a so-called interglacial period, until the next ice age will begin some time into the future.
Climate4you screenshot of Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from Antarctica. // Per creator, freely available for download
The Earth’s temperature falls, then rises, then falls again, in a regular pattern. These cycles occurred long before humans roamed the planet, driving SUVs and having backyard barbecues.
Climate “scientists” only look at the far-right side of the graph, the portion that resembles a hockey stick, ignoring all that came before, the rhythmic and consistent rise and fall of global temperatures.
A simple question for the scientists would be what is the “normal” temperature? There is no absolute normal as the temperate waxes and wanes on a time scale far longer than man’s influence.
Based on the above graph, “normal” is far cooler than temperatures today. An eyeball estimate is that we are now 6 degrees C, or 11 degrees F warmer than the average over the last half million years. Stock up on sweaters!
Where is the analysis of why this pattern is regular and predictable, based not on a few decades of measurement but instead a half a million years?
Obviously, there are forces beyond human activity, such as solar activity, changes in the Earth’s orbit, altered tilting of the Earth’s axis, or activity far beneath the Earth in the yet unexplored molten core.
Instead the media and climate scientists follow the Congressional bartender who warns that climate will “destroy the planet” in a dozen years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost.
And that was four years ago. What may destroy the planet is her political party and the neocons pushing World War 3 in Ukraine and the Middle East, not her doomsday climate apocalypse.
Instead, we are facing, based on the graph, a long period of global cooling and another ice age. In fact, humans today are enjoying an interglacial period of relative warmth that typically lasts for 10-15,000 years, preceded by and followed by a 100,000-year glacial period where it will get quite cold.
Another graph from Climate4you shows the air temperature at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet,
Image: Climate4you screenshot // freely available for download, per creator
This is in essence a magnified view of the far-right temperature peak on the first graph above, looking back only 11,000 years. Even within the present interglacial warm period, there are rising and falling temperatures indicative of mini-ice ages with shorter warm periods in between.
These occurred during human activity, although not at the scale of today as there were no cars, gas stoves, airplanes, or air conditioners during the Roman Empire, biblical times, or the Middle Ages.
Also noteworthy is the downward temperature trend line over the past 4000 years, with each warming and subsequent cooling period a bit colder than the preceding one, showing a clear downward trend.
Based on the real science of looking at past data and trends, we are currently in a warm period that may last a few more years, but when it ends will usher in another mini-ice age colder than the preceding ones.
And at some point, in the not too distant future, we will likely enter another glacial period when man made global warming might be necessary for survival.
These mini-ice ages can cause plagues, declines of empires, loss of indigenous peoples and mass migration due to poor plant growth and starvation. The fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, around the year 500 A.D., correspond to one of those cool periods on the above graph.
The mini-ice age of around 1500 A.D. led to the fall the Ming Dynasty, freezing of the River Thames, and generalized famine. History teaches us that civilizations and humans prosper during warmer periods, and struggle when temperatures drop and kill off food crops.
These concerns are small potatoes compared to the major ice ages.
As the Chicago Tribune noted:
Twenty thousand years ago, Chicago was encased in ice roughly 3,000 feet thick — twice the height of Willis Tower. All that’s left of the colossal ice sheet that sprawled over much of North America and formed the Great Lakes is a kernel of ice in the Canadian Arctic — and it’s dwindling fast.
It may be dwindling fast as we are in an interglacial warm period where this is expected, but fear not Chicago Tribune, history demonstrates that in a matter of time, your office and city will again be under more than a half-mile thick ice sheet.
Shouldn’t scientists and government agencies be looking forward to how humankind will manage and survive the next cooling period and mini-ice age, not to mention the future glacial period which is on schedule in the next few centuries based on historical precedent?
Rather than listening to ill-informed progressive legislators or cranky Swedish teenage climate scolds, here is where it would be helpful for government agencies and the media to truly “follow the science.”
The only “consensus” in climate science is that governments must spend taxpayer dollars and increase centralized power in an ill-fated effort to stop Mother Nature and planetary forces. Any efforts of Al Gore, Bill Gates, King Charles, or Greta Thunberg is mere spitting in the wind of Earth’s billions of years of climate cycles.
The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and has survived just fine. Human life represents a micro-blip in the Earth’s lifespan, and it is the ultimate in hubris for humans to believe they influence forces beyond their wildest comprehension.
Dozens of scientists say we have hit the tipping point… again. It is amazing how often we’ve hit this tipping point, yet things don’t seem to be as dire as “they” predicted. From CNN via Yahoo News:
Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries.
Then, former climate scientist at NASA James Hansen said it is far worse than he originally anticipated in 1988:
In a recent statement released by Hansen alongside two other scientists, Hansen predicted the warming of the planet to accelerate in the coming years, musing about a ‘new climate frontier.’
…
Of the lack of response by humanity as a whole, Hansen added, ‘It means we are damned fools. We have to taste it to believe it.’
Yet, Hansen has a tough time explaining why we had a global cooling period from 1940-1970. His best guess? Aerosols. From NASA:
‘I think the cooling that Earth experienced through the middle of the twentieth century was due in part to natural variability,’ he said. ‘But there’s another factor made by humans which probably contributed, and could even be the dominant cause: aerosols.’
So, if aerosols can override all the things we are told cause warming, why don’t we just use aerosols to cool the earth instead of destroying industries that produce reasonably priced energy and which have greatly improved our quality and length of life?
We were told 1970 was also a tipping point, and billions would soon die from an impending ice age, because the earth had been cooling for 30 years.
The media operatives have been warning the public of a “tipping point” since at least 1989, and as always, the window of time to solve the problem was rapidly diminishing:
Over the last 30 years, the media has made this clear. ‘A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000,’ wrote Peter James Spielmann of the Associated Press in 1989. ‘UN scientists warn time is running out to tackle global warming. Scientists say eight years left to avoid worst effects,’ wrote David Adam in the Guardian in 2007. ‘We have 10 years left to save the world, says climate expert,’ wrote HuffPost’s Laura Paddison in 2020.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Antarctica had the coldest six months on record, six degrees colder than the average of the last 40 years.
California had record snow in 2023, a weather event—not a transition to electric vehicles or less crude oil consumption—which alleviated the state’s long drought.
Texas also had record cold in February 2021.
And in 2023, Los Angeles had the coldest May and June on record. How could a big city like LA—with lots of cars and people, and notorious smog—set record low temperatures for months if everything we are told caused warming actually did?
Why doesn’t the media highlight record snow and cold periods to show natural variability? The answer is that it wouldn’t scare people, and the green pushers would lose all public support.
My wife and I just took a 5,000-mile trip out to the West. It would help if journalists took a similar trip to see that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally, instead of just repeating what they are told.
Here are a few places I saw and what I learned:
Lake Tahoe has gone through millions of years of change including earthquakes, volcanoes, and glacial activity. All natural!
Yosemite National Park was formed two million years ago when a huge sheet of ice melted. The warmup, which had to be significant, did not destroy the planet.
CA, UT, NV, and AZ are all covered by massive deserts that have been there long before humans and our use of natural resources could have caused them.
Here are more than 1,600 scientists who will never get a voice on or in mainstream media outlets, because they are scientists who say that there is no climate emergency, and assure the public that the climate is changing cyclically and naturally as it always has.
Kamala says that a huge number of young people have climate anxiety. I wonder why! Maybe they wouldn’t be depressed if they were told the truth that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally.
It is pathetic that we see what is going on in China, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Israel, and North Korea, that we see rampant crime with the open border… but our “president” says the greatest existential threat is a predicted temperature rise (of one or two degrees) based on easily-manipulated computer models that have been consistently wrong.
It is even more pathetic when most people posing as journalists, entertainers, and educators just repeat the leftist talking points instead of asking questions and doing research. That makes them dangerous to our survival as a great and prosperous country.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, and LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph
