What are the top reasons for war? At first thought, imperial governments or self-defense may come to mind. The truth is most wars are ultimately about money, oil, and power. To prevent and end war, peacemakers need to understand the money system that war-profiteers use to make a “killing.”

The same "banksters" or money trust that designed the Federal Reserve have for over two centuries profited from war. Senator Louis McFadden (1876-1936) documented direct involvement in wars in the 19^th century. The list of 20^th century involvement in promoting wars is long and includes the Lusitania operation in World War I, funding both Germany and England during WW II, helping to create the conditions for the Korean War in 1953 (Korea was intentionally divided in 1945), and beating the drums for war in Vietnam just to name a few. For dozens of current examples on how war debt is driven up by corporations such as Halliburton, see the documentary Iraq for Sale.

Should it be a surprise to anyone that international bankers scheme to profit from wars?

The cycle of debt often starts with selling weapons. Governments go in debt to buy weapons. The weapons manufacturers make money on the sale and the bankers profit from interest on the weapons-generated debt. The weapon sales accelerate if the weapons buyer, usually a government, is faced with a perceived or real threat. The country that buys the most weapons is the U.S. (total weapons purchases exceed the combined sum of all other nations). Not surprisingly, government officials, paid experts (often former government officials), and corporate owned media promote calls for war as agents of this agenda to drive up U.S. debt.

Bankers profit from wars

President George Washington and other founders of our country had first-hand experience with how banking families in Europe bankrolled military actions for their personal gain. In his farewell address on September 17, 1796 George Washington warned Americans to be on guard against alliances with Europe. The history of how bankers have started and continued wars is painfully long. We need only look at past wars, to see a trail of blood money. In the Middle Ages the Knights Templars, most known as a military arm for expanding Christianity, performed the role as a private central bank for the Crusades. Relatively few Knights Templars were soldiers and most members worked in their banking business.

The Knights Templars and other financiers of war are not representative of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or Hinduism. The financiers of war are international and value money more than human life. The Rothschild banking dynasty is highlighted in this article because they became the leading banking force as a result of Wellington's war with Napolean, have profited from numerous conflicts, and led the creation of the Federal Reserve.¹ Their involvement in World War I is a classic example of war profiteering. 

How World War I started

As with most wars, World War I started many years before the first shot was fired. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War resulted in France's defeat by Germany. After the war, the triple alliance was formed consisting of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy. Another factor was the policy of Weltpolitic or the global imperial policy of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. The Moroccan crisis of 1905 to 1911 also was a factor leading to World War I. There were additional wars that involved Serbia and led to increased tension with Austria.

On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo. The Black Hand Serbian secret society, with connections to powerful English and French intelligence, took credit. World War I had begun. France, England and Austria took on the war debt. While many paid the price with at least 20 million killed, war profiteers made a financial killing.

President Woodrow Wilson claimed the main cause of World War I was the wealthy had too much control over Germany, Russia and Austria. Lenin went on record that the banking merchants orchestrated the war.² We now know that at least at this high level, both Wilson and Lenin were correct. Financial interests, cloaked in good intentions and nationalism, fueled World War I.

False flag operation Lusitania

How did the United States get pulled into World War I? Citizens of the U.S. were successfully fooled to enter the war in 1917 by a series of cleverly orchestrated efforts. President Woodrow Wilson was directly involved in the deceptions and formally sanctioned the U.S. participation in the war in a secret agreement with England on March 9, 1916. We know about this agreement today because the agreement was leaked and confirmed by Sir Edward Grey, Ambassador Walter Hines Page, C. Hartley Grattan, and Colonel Edward Mandell House.

The focus of this article is on the centerpiece of the pro-war propaganda which preceded the 1916 secret agreement and involved sinking a passenger ship named the Lusitania.

Three German spies attempted to confirm that the 90 tons of unrefrigerated butter destined for a British naval base were weapons and ammunition.³  The spies were detained on the ship. The weapons loaded on the Lusitania were seen by the German dock workers and reported to the German embassy. To warn Americans about the weapons shipment, the Imperial German Embassy attempted to place an advertisement in 50 East Coast newspapers. The ads were printed with a date of April 22, 1915, but the US State Department blocked all the ads except one. George Viereck, the man who placed the ads for the embassy, protested to the State Department on April 26 that the ads were blocked. Viereck met with Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and produced copies of the Lusitania's supplementary manifests. Bryan, impressed by the evidence that the Lusitania had carried weapons, cleared publication of the warning. Someone higher than the Secretary of State, likely Colonel House and President Wilson, overruled Bryan. Nonetheless one ad slipped past the State Department censorship. The single that slipped past the government censors appeared in the Des Moines Register (and is shown on the left).

The warning read: "NOTICE! Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 22, 1915."

Captain Dow, the Lusitania captain immediately before Captain Turner, resigned on March 8, 1915 because he was no longer willing "to carry the responsibility of mixing passengers with munitions or contraband."⁴ Captain Dow had a close call just two days earlier and was aware the rules of naval warfare changed in October 1914 when Churchill issued orders that British merchant ships with munitions or contraband must ram U-boats. Prior to this change by Churchill, both England and Germany adhered to Cruiser Rules. Cruiser Rules enabled crews and passengers to escape in lifeboats before being fired on. With the new Churchill ram rules, the German U-boats could no longer surface to issue a warning and fired while submerged. Churchill explained his ruthlessness with:

"The first British countermove, made on my responsibility...was to deter the Germans from surface attack. The submerged U-boat had to rely increasingly on underwater attack and thus ran the greater risk of mistaking neutral for British ships and of drowning neutral crews and thus embroiling Germany with other Great Powers."⁵

The above combined with the next Churchill quote speaks volumes about what really happened and why.

"There are many kinds of maneuvers in war...There are maneuvers in time, in diplomacy, in mechanics, in psychology; all of which are removed from the battlefield, but react often decisively upon it...The maneuver which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle."⁶

On May 7, 1915, the Lusitania slowed to 75% speed hoping the English escort vessel the Juno would arrive. Unknown to Captain Turner of the Lusitania, Winston Churchill had ordered the Juno to return to port. Churchill’s order left the Lusitania alone and unprotected in a known area with U boats. To put this in perspective, England had deciphered the German communications code on December 14, 1914. The level of detail known by the British Admiralty was so precise that U boat names and general locations were known. For example, the British Admiralty knew U-30 left the area for Germany on May 4^th and the U-27 left the area because of jammed blow planes.⁷

In a 1981 book, Seven Days to Disaster: The Sinking of the Lusitania by Des Hickey and Gus Smith, they reported that one of the crewmen on the U-20 responsible for passing the order to fire to the torpedo room was Charles Voegele. Voegele refused to kill civilians of a neutral country, and upon returning to Germany was court-martialed and imprisoned for three years. One torpedo was fired on May 7 and the warhead's 300 pounds of explosives detonated upon contact with the Lusitania. The Lusitania’s Captain Turner reported the first explosion sounded "like a heavy door being slammed shut" and was followed by a much larger explosion that rocked the ship. Turner wrote in the log "an unusually heavy detonation."⁸ The Lusitania sunk 15-18 minutes later.

On May 28, 1915, Germany's official response to the U.S. government's protest states the German government has no intention to attack U.S. vessels which are not guilty of hostile acts.⁹ The Imperial German government wrote the Lusitania "was one of the largest and fastest English commerce steamers, constructed with government funds as auxiliary cruisers, and is expressly included in the navy list published by the British Admiralty. It is, moreover, known to the Imperial government from reliable information furnished by its officials and neutral passengers that for some time practically all the more valuable English merchant vessels have been provided with guns, ammunition and other weapons, and reinforced with a crew specially practiced in manning guns. According to reports at hand here, the Lusitania when she left New York undoubtedly had guns on board which were mounted under decks and masked." The official letter from the German government also spells out that the Lusitania had 5,400 cases of ammunition that would be used to kill German soldiers. An exceptionally noteworthy section of the letter states the British merchant marine ships received secret instruction in February by the British Admiralty to seek protection behind neutral flags and when so disguised attack German submarines by ramming them.

The German official response that war contraband was on board explains the second explosion.¹⁰

Despite British denials, weapon are recovered

The banking families involved and Britain's leaders, even a century later, still fear the negative repercussions from Americans when they learn they were tricked into World War I.

For decades, the British and American governments have denied that there were weapons on the Lusitania. The site was declared a protective site, denying divers access. To further frustrate the ability to determine what the Lusitania carried, since 1946 the Royal Navy repeatedly dropped depth charges on top of the Lusitania as a site for target practice. In 1968, to keep the truth secret, the British Secret Service unsuccessfully attempted to buy the salvage rights to the Lusitania. In 1993 PBS Online visited the wreck and found previous visitors had tampered with the evidence.¹¹ While the British government aggressively worked to distort the truth, weapons were confirmed in July 2006 when Victor Quirke of the Cork Sub Aqua Club found 15,000 rounds of .303 bullets in the bow section of the ship.

On April 2, 2007, Cyber Diver News Network reported the American owner of the Lusitania, F. Gregg Bemis, Jr., won the case to conduct salvage operations almost a century after the sinking. The Arts and Heritage Ministry did not protest the use of the Lusitania as a target for British depth charges but did "help" respect the sanctity of of the site by opposing salvage operations.

The first casualty of war is the truth

Authors have written for many years that 1,201 people were sacrificed on the Lusitania to create a reason for the US to enter World War I. Historian Howard Zinn wrote in A People's History of the United States, that the Lusitania carried 1,248 cases of 3-inch shells, 4,927 boxes of cartridges (1,000 rounds in each box), and 2,000 more cases of small-arms ammunition. Colin Simpson claims Churchill conspired to put the Lusitania in danger with the hope of sparking an incident to bring America into World War I. Historian Patrick Beesely supports Simpson's assessment.¹² Christopher Hitchens' book, Blood Class and Nostalgia, further proves the responsibility of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in a deliberate action to pull America into World War I.  History professor Ralph Raico and senior scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute notes¹³ Churchill wrote the week prior to the Lusitania sinking that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany."

The two sides of the Goetz coin

Winston Churchill did say and do many things to pull America into World War I. He attempted to mislead both the British and American public that the Lusitania was premeditated. Churchill did this for several reasons including to distract people from reports that the Juno destroyer protection was removed. He attributed the lack of destroyer protection as being confused with internal disputes within the Admiralty about a bumbled Gallipoli campaign in the Ottoman Empire. His Lusitania war propaganda included misinforming the public that multiple torpedoes were fired to explain how the ship sunk in 18 minutes and further fuel hatred for the German people. Churchill also had over 250,000 reproductions of the Karl Goetz coin made. Most descriptions of the coin show only the reverse side of the Goetz coin with the Lusitania sinking and the inscription, "The liner Lusitania sunk by a German Submarine May 5, 1915." Goetz corrected the date to May 7, 1915 in a second edition, but the incorrect date was the version reproduced by Churchill as proof of a premeditated attack on a civilian ship.

A closer look at the above coin reveals the inscription "No Contraband Goods!" and shows weapons falling off the deck into the sea.

The truth of the Goetz coin's meaning was never to celebrate the killing of civilians or reward the sailors involved for murdering civilians but to condemn the greed of the financiers who orchestrated the Lusitania tragedy.¹⁴ This accurate interpretation of the coin requires knowledge of the front side of the coin. The front shows a skeleton representing death behind a Cunard customer service window. The tickets sold in the transaction symbolizes the money not only made by Cunard, but by all financiers who tricked passengers to go onboard. On the coin the German Ambassador to the U.S., Count Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff, wears a hat and raises a finger to warn passengers that weapons are on the ship. A person next to him reads a newspaper with the headline "U Boat Danger" representing the warning written by the German government. Above the ambassador's image are the words "Geschaft Uber Alles" which means "Business Above All."

Winston Churchill and Nathan Mayer Rothschild

Winston Churchill, when in charge of the Admiralty, worked closely with his benefactor Sir Nathan Mayer Rothschild. There are a few notable Nathan Mayer Rothschilds in history, so the following is provided to prevent confusion. Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1840-1915) was the nephew of Anthony Nathan de Rothschild (1810-1876) who had no sons but was the son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836). Nathan Mayer Rothschild was the fourth child of Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) who founded the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild died before the Lusitania sunk and was part of a syndicate with J.P. Morgan working to buy up the North Atlantic shipping lines. His intelligence agents in the U.S. warned that Germany's émigrés to America, absent a Lusitania-like disaster, would be effective at keeping the U.S. out of World War.¹⁸ Before his death, "Lord" Nathan Mayer Rothschild had access to the admiralty reports on German naval operations.

British Commander Joseph Kenworthy was present in the high-command map room as the Lusitania headed toward a known U-boat position. He had been previously asked by Churchill to write a paper on the political fallout of an ocean liner being sunk and killing American passengers. In 1927 he wrote, The Freedom of the Seas revealing "The Lusitania was sent at considerably reduced speed into an area where a U-boat was known to be waiting and with her escorts withdrawn." Colonel House, meeting with King George V just hours before the Lusitania was sunk, discussed the likely American reaction to the King's question "Suppose they should sink the Lusitania with American passengers on board...."¹⁹

The 1915 Lusitania leads to war being declared in 1917

Berlin announced on January 31, 1917 that its submarines would sink all ships aiding Britain. The Berlin announcement, combined with the previous Lusitania sinking, was still not enough for America to enter the war. The British Intelligence service manufactured another bombshell in the form of a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to the German Minister to Mexico. The telegram, presented to Woodrow Wilson on February 24, 1917, offered Mexico money to attack the U.S. The numerous British propaganda campaigns ultimately proved successful and on April 6, 1917 the U.S. did declare war on Germany. This technique was used as recently as 2002, when a British intelligence report²⁰ helped fool Americans that Iraq had weapons of Mass Destruction.

He said: "Some people who think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lender. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.

These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this Country to finance Japan in a war against Russia…Mr. Chairman, there should be no partisanship in matters concerning banking and currency affairs in this Country, and I do not speak with any.”²¹

On November 21, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who had been President Woodrow Wilson’s assistant secretary of the Navy, wrote to Colonel House: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson, and I am not wholly excepting the administration of W.W. (Woodrow Wilson). The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States -- only on a far bigger broader basis."²² Colonel House knew the truth of the matter because he and his father, Thomas William House, were confidential American agents of banking interests in London believed to be the Rothschilds. Colonel House is famous in history for being the person that selected Woodrow Wilson to be the 1913 Democratic party candidate for president.²³

The Federal Reserve private banking cartel enforced by public law was replicated on a global scale with the creation of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).²⁴ The BIS was established by the Hague agreements of 1930 and is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. The privately owned BIS coordinates with 55 member central banks include the Fed. The BIS owners facilitate global monetary control by helping manage Gresham’s Law that bad money drives out good.²⁵ Bad money refers to fiat money that is not backed by assets with value such as money backed by gold or silver.

In summary, the people who profit from war make a "killing"

The Federal Reserve, evolved as a "front" for European banking families following failed past attempts to seize control of the Bank of the United States and the refusal in 1845 when several states elected to discontinue repaying debt to foreign banks. The European banking families needed their private banking cartel to be enforced by U.S. law and achieved this with their design of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.²⁶

The cycle of debt often starts with selling weapons. Governments go in debt to buy weapons. The weapons manufacturers make money on the sale and the bankers make a financial "killing" on the interest from the weapons-generated debt. The weapon sales accelerate if a government is faced with a perceived or real threat. False reports are produced, often by the hidden hand of war profiteers, to trick the citizens of a country to support the call for war. The country in the world that buys the most weapons is the U.S. To understand how debt is driven up by war today, see the documentary Iraq for Sale.²⁷

Not surprisingly, we are heading toward a cliff due to a privately owned central bank with owners that benefit from military spending. When people understand that without economic justice peace is not possible, a brighter future is possible.

Peace be with you! Dave Dionisi

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