James Corbett, “The Corbett Report (Episode 347: The WWI Conspiracy – Part One: To Start A War)” (November 2018)
At this time of writing, a century has passed since World War I ended, and swept with it into history beliefs in never-ending scientific and technological advancement and empires in Europe (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia). An entire generation of young men was brutally destroyed with grave repercussions for societies across the world that would last for decades to come (and which may still do, in the form of politically conservative societies and cultures with mediocre political cultures and leaders). Yet the ultimate causes of that war remain as puzzling and controversial as they did one hundred years ago.
The conventional narrative of what led to World War I – the various alliances formed by the major European powers that eventually fell into two opposed sides, each jealous of their own political, economic and military power; the competition among these powers for more resources and hence more territory; the nationalism of various ethnic groups in central and southeast Europe, governed by a weak Ottoman empire, which could be exploited by its enemies; the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo in 1914 – is well known but does not explain why an incident in a small provincial town should have been the tinderbox event that set off a series of chain-reaction events resulting in all-out war. This documentary, the first of a three-episode series made by The Corbett Report, looks at the background of historical events and trends beginning in the early 1890s, when in 1891, three men – the diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, newspaper editor William T Stead and aristocrat Lord Esher (Reginald Brett), a confidant to Queen Victoria and later King Edward VII and George V, met to discuss and form a plan to extend British rule throughout the world and reclaim the United States as an integral part of the British empire.
The plan which also involves the formation of a secret society (the Round Table Movement / Milner Group) , complete with an inner circle privy to esoteric knowledge and an outer circle of helpers who will be allowed to know only what is necessary for them to be of value, sounds completely outlandish but as the documentary outlines, it is carried out very cleverly and progressively, spanning two decades, co-opting Russia and France as allies against Germany, Britain’s main political, military and economic rival, and with the collusion of the British press. Firstly, the funding of the plan is secured by the British waging war against the Boers in southern Africa that results in the separate colonies and republics in that region becoming one unit (South Africa) under British control, and the gold wealth of that unit coming under the control of the British South Africa Company. The Boer War was incredibly brutal, with over 66,000 civilian casualties of whom 26,000 were Boer women and children who died in concentration camps along with another 20,000+ black Africans out of some 115,000 also interred in concentration camps. Secondly, British news propaganda increasingly paints Germany as a hostile and malevolent enemy seeking to stir up trouble in different parts of the world, even in areas where the British are the actual trouble-makers. Third, the British assist Japan against Russia when war breaks out between those two powers in 1905 by denying the use of the Suez Canal to the Russian naval fleet and forcing it to travel around Africa and through the Indian Ocean up towards Japan; Japan was able to crush an exhausted Russian fleet. In this way, Japan becomes a valuable ally to the British in the Far East.
The documentary presents its case well, that a Deep State formed within the British political establishment in the later 19th century and schemed to create conflicts, even wars, to achieve its goal of isolating Germany and targeting that nation for war. The voice-over narrative is delivered at a fairly leisurely pace and interviews with historians back up the documentary’s premise. Archival film footage, photographs and maps of the period help to delineate the world in which European imperial powers dominated all continents.
I would add only that the British desire to put the United States into its proper place as a colony within its empire preceded the machinations of Cecil Rhodes and his fellow conspirators; the British are known to have assisted the Confederate States of America during the US Civil War (1861 – 1865) to ensure the break-up of the US into two weak states that could easily be dominated by a foreign power.
Though the events covered by the documentary occurred over 100 years ago, they are worth viewing as the strategy used by the British to demonise Germany is much the same as the current British-American strategy to demonise and isolate Russia. Again, the English-language news media is being used to suppress truth and to incite public hostility against Russia and its allies in Asia and the Middle East.