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Remember this on remembrance day

Concord

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It is worth remembering who profited from World War 1. And every war since.

Simply put; businesses, banks and their shareholders (who included many politicians). The bankers financed both sides of the conflict, and businesses sold equipment and weapons to both sides of the conflict, all the while pretending to be acting in the nation's interests and pushing for war. All these businesses and banks still operate today and are very well known names.

Four years later, with an astounding 19 million people dead and 23 million wounded, it was ironically named "the war to end war" (H.G. Wells). But profits had been glorious. Then, and ever since (including WW2...80 million dead), big business and banks (in collusion with greedy politicians and witless populations extolling patriotism and nationalism), constantly push countries into wars, to become ever more rich and powerful, at the expense of millions of dead and wounded...both soldiers and civilians.

Difficult to fathom, while researching this subject...but It was a fact then, and it still goes on today. They were, and we are, being tricked. Let's remember that, on remembrance day.

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It's not my entire view on life by a long shot, @Meat Grinder. It's my view on war. It's not my view on all business either. It's my view of certain big businesses and banks that involve themselves in world affairs that lead to wars. And it is indeed cynical, in that I believe certain powerful people are motivated purely by self-interest, at the expense of others.
 
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler...WW1 veteran. At the time of his death in 1940, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
 
Yep, Smedley was not one to mince words. Nor was he one to shirk his duties.
The Romans said, "Si vis pacem, para bellum" (If you want peace, prepare for war) but I agree that profit and greed are part and parcel of national war.

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There are plenty of examples of big business and bankers maneuvering countries into war, then and now.
The link is not always obvious and easy to see, but are a fulcrum of events.

I will assemble some salient examples and post them here when I have time this weekend.
 
I didn't have time to assemble facts today, but I will share the next book on my reading list.

"Trading With the Enemy: An Exposé of The Nazi-American Money-Plot 1933-1949" by Charles Higham.

From the cover:

"Here is the extraordinary true story of the American businessmen and government officials who dealt with the Nazis for profit or through conviction throughout the Second World War: Ford. Standard Oil, Chase Bank and members of the State Department were among those who shared in the spoils. Meticulously documented and dispassionately told, this is an alarming story. At its centre is 'The Fraternity', an influential international group associated with the Rockefeller or Morgan banks and linked by the ideology of Business as Usual.

Higham starts with an account of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland - a Nazi-controlled bank presided over by an American, Thomas H. McKittrick, even in 1944. While Americans were dying in the war, McKittrick sat down with his German, Japanese, Italian, British and American executive staff to discuss the gold bars that had been sent to the Bank earlier that year by the Nazi government for use by its leaders after the war. This was gold that had been looted from the banks of Austria, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia or melted down from teeth fillings, eyeglass frames, and wedding rings of millions of murdered Jews.

But that is only one of the cases detailed in this book. We have Standard Oil shipping enemy fuel through Switzerland for the Nazi occupation forces in France; Ford trucks transporting German troops; I.T.T. helping supply the rocket bombs that marauded much of London ; and I.T.T. building the Focke-Wulfs that dropped those bombs. Long and shocking is the list of diplomats and businessmen alike who had their own ways of profiting from the war."
 
@Hedgehog

What I have read while researching this subject is that international business and banking directors as well as politicians and royals were directly involved in supporting and funding the NAZI rise to power and their war machine.

Likewise, there were similar events creating WW1. It's late here, so I won't go into much detail, but one example is industrialists actively seeking ways to fan the flames of the arms race that was building before the war started. This included trusted advisers to the government lying about the state of the enemy's armaments to create fear and sales. Just one of several examples.

In addition, wars are created for money even today.

 
@Concord - I have no doubt that unethical men and women gleefully profit regularly from the chaos of war. However, such mendacity does not diminish the sacrificial honor merited to those who served and most especially those who died substantively insuring the defense and protection pursuant to the liberties of their progeny and countrymen.
 
Of course money will be made from war...….. Yes you could be right about financing Germany, Before Germany became the power that they became I believe the country was in a bad way with unemployment and Finances, that I feel is where the finance came in not for making War, I think the blame lays with Hitler for the way that events went, It's pretty obvious that some one comes along in control of the country and puts people back to work they will follow Them …...… @Concord
 
@Concord - I have no doubt that unethical men and women gleefully profit regularly from the chaos of war. However, such mendacity does not diminish the sacrificial honor merited to those who served and most especially those who died substantively insuring the defense and protection pursuant to the liberties of their progeny and countrymen.
Of course. And it is for their sake, that all shady dealings need to be exposed - in the past, and now.

Of course money will be made from war...….. Yes you could be right about financing Germany, Before Germany became the power that they became I believe the country was in a bad way with unemployment and Finances, that I feel is where the finance came in not for making War, I think the blame lays with Hitler for the way that events went, It's pretty obvious that some one comes along in control of the country and puts people back to work they will follow Them …...… @Concord
I saw a very interesting interview with some political professor recently. He said that the reason so many total-or-near fascists were being elected into power in the past few years (Brazil the most recent), was because the populations of the world were completely fed-up with the system, felt that their politicians were utterly corrupt and completely out of touch, and that they were desperate for change. A dangerous situation - and fascist style governments are definitely not a 'fix'.
 
October 3rd 2010, Germany paid its last term of WW1 warreparations: € 69.9 million.
 
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