Accountants, not bosses
No other name permeates the conspiracy literature of the 19th and 20th centuries as strongly as Rothschild.
Conspiracy authors and regular historians alike have failed in reconstructing the past of empires because they are not trained in intelligence matters. Anybody truly familiar with the spy world should understand that empires had been relying on vast intelligence networks for thousands of years. These networks were not supposed to have official names and headquarters and documented government budgets. According to regular historians, real spying began in the 20th century and was ad hoc and amateurish for quite a while. Even the mighty British empire supposedly was content with a tiny interior and exterior service. This is patently absurd.
Conspiracy authors adopted this view with one exception: They say a tiny group of jews were master spies while everybody else was stupid. What were the techniques used by those jewish individuals? Conspiracy authors talk about courier systems, some basic divide-and-conquer and loans.
With ease the “Elders of Zion” allegedly took over the British Empire and then the USA. From the time of these alleged seizures of power, conspiracy writers regard all of Britain and America’s domestic and foreign policy sins as sins of the Jewish conspiracy. Everything is then considered as proof of the existence of the conspiracy. Members of this cult belief system see evidence everywhere and anyone rejecting this must be a passive or active supporter of the conspiracy.
The recruit
Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a small trader from Frankfurt’s Judengasse, had to wear the yellow badge every time he left his house, be back by nightfall, pay Jewish tax when crossing the bridge over the Main river, and take off his hat and bow whenever asked. In principle, the reason for locking up the Jews was to generate more tax revenue. Protection money was paid, just like to the Mafia. Life in the tightly packed ghetto was latently threatened by major fires, epidemics, and pogroms (massacres), which inevitably gave rise to the naked, psychopathic ambition in some individuals to escape the ghetto and gain power in the cold and cruel world outside. The more power Mayer and his sons were granted by the nobility, the more they realized how far they could fall at any time if they fell from grace. The populations of Germany, France or Great Britain would have felt malicious glee if they had read in the newspaper one day that a rich Jewish family called the Rothschilds had been expropriated and thrown back into the ghetto. The Jews had no country of their own to which the Rothschilds could have fled if necessary, there was no influential Jewish lobby in Europe, there was no secure legal citizenship and they were completely at the mercy of the ruling nobility. Mayer had lost both his parents in an outbreak of smallpox at the age of eleven, although the chance of survival would have been much better outside the ghetto. After attending a religious school, which did not excite Mayer as much as the business world, at the age of 13 he went to the Oppenheim bank in Hanover, home of the British royal family, to learn the advanced forms of commerce and learned of the advantages of being a court factor. One of the Oppenheims served in this capacity to the Elector Clemens August I of Bavaria, supplying the court with luxury goods such as rare gold coins. Mayer Amschel returned to Frankfurt around 1764, at the age of twenty, where the laws against Jews were stricter but the business opportunities were greater. His contact, whom he had met at Oppenheim, was General von Estorff, and through this channel he was able to sell some coins (at an extremely reduced rate) to the Hereditary Prince William of Hesse-Kassel in Hanau. William’s mother was Princess Mary, a daughter of King George II of Great Britain. Wilhelm and his father had already amassed an extremely large fortune by selling Hessian soldiers for the American War of Independence and were considered some of the richest princes of their time. The close relatives of the British crown paid millions, insane sums at the time, which was not only simple nepotism, but established Wilhelm as an outpost of the British Empire on German soil. His passion was money and fathering illegitimate children (estimated at 40 of them), while his wife Wilhelmine Caroline of Denmark was completely averse to sex. After a few coin sales in which Rothschild had to make losses, he finally got the title of court factor, or “court supplier to His Illustrious Highness”, with which he could advertise his business and through which his reputation in the Judengasse increased exponentially.
In 1770, with his new social status, he was allowed to marry the young Gutle Schnapper, daughter of a court factor of the Principality of Saxe-Meiningen, which was created through the division of the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha. Nevertheless, he did not speak German properly and could not write it. Hereditary Prince Wilhelm already had half a dozen Jewish middlemen on hand and also used established companies such as the Bethmann brothers for his finances, so that Rothschild was not able to gain access to this closed society for years. Mayer moved into a new house in Judengasse, half of which was occupied by the Schiff family, who later became influential bankers in America. The idea was to have as many children as possible who would continue to build up the family’s fortune, but only about half of the 20 children survived under the harsh conditions of Judengasse, because child mortality there was significantly higher than in the rest of Frankfurt. For 20 years Rothschild had failed to win orders from Landgrave William, but then he befriended his clever finance officer Carl Friedrich Buderus von Carlshausen at court and finally got his foot in the door. The onslaught of French troops forced William to spend money on a few battalions to protect himself and his wealth, and his losses were quickly replaced by another deal with his relatives on the British throne: the rental of another 8,000 Hessian soldiers for the British Empire.
Rothschild imported clothing and other goods from England for sale in Germany, charging extortionate prices, particularly during wartime, due to shortages. Finally, some restrictions on Jews had been lifted and he was allowed to rent warehouses in Frankfurt for his British goods. Napoleon’s advance and requests for credit from William’s Danish relatives made it increasingly necessary to hide money and make payments by secret means. The perfect front men for the loan to the Danes were Rothschild and a Jew named Lawaertz. Buderus would have been far too obvious as a middleman and stayed in the background. Even though Wilhelm did not participate generously in the war against France, he turned down the lucrative French offers to defect. Half of the European monarchs and a number of princes and other rulers owed money to Wilhelm because he operated like a major bank. If Napoleon won, the loans would not be repaid and he would have to flee. The worst possible case occurred: Napoleon marched through Germany and Wilhelm’s wealth and treasures had to be transported as quickly as possible in all directions to save them from the French. Around 50 crates had to be left behind and Wilhelm fled to his relatives in Denmark. Carl Buderus managed to bribe the new French governor to get back some of the 50 crates that had been confiscated. Four of them, some of them filled with important contracts and documents, were taken to a special hiding place at Rothschild’s house in Frankfurt’s Judengasse. Mayer’s most capable son, Nathan, who looked like a Brit with red hair and blue eyes but spoke poor English, worked from Manchester and then from London, where he met the richest Jew in all of England, Levi Cohen, whose children later married into almost all of the leading Jewish families in England, including the Rothschilds. Buderus received a title of nobility from Wilhelm for successfully saving most of the wealth and was given special power of attorney for the Landgrave’s business in exile in Denmark. Mayer Rothschild was to take on the task of collecting the repayments of outstanding loans, which was only possible with the help of his sons, sophisticated smuggling techniques and protection money payments without being caught by the French. The Rothschilds had at times incurred Wilhelm’s displeasure with their arrogance and risked their lucrative business, but elsewhere they also had relationships with nobles such as the Thurn and Taxis family, Karl Theodor von Dalberg and the Brentanos. Buderus had to explain to Wilhelm at length why it made sense to use the Rothschilds as straw men and middlemen: they were more thorough, more discreet, more punctual, more ambitious. Nevertheless, it was only possible to involve Nathan Rothschild in important business behind the Landgrave’s back, such as trading in safe British government securities (Konsols). The trade had made Mayer one of the richest men in Frankfurt and the demands and desires to form a dynasty like the nobles grew accordingly and as a result his N children could only marry within their own family if they wanted to participate in the family business. Nathan was instrumental in buying up gold from the East India Company (British Empire) and immediately selling it back to the British government, enabling the Duke of Wellington to pay his troops fighting Napoleon.
Nathan also took on the risky task of smuggling the gold and for this purpose bought the protection of the Grand Duke of Dalberg, on whose help the Rothschilds had already relied on several times. Further support came from the powerful Thurn and Taxis family, who dominated the letter and parcel post business. Amschel died, Napoleon was pushed back and Nathan again played a reliable role in supplying the Duke of Wellington. The British Treasury even entrusted Nathan with processing huge payments to Britain’s continental allies. It would have been pointless to steal the money and make a run for it, because the British were anything but novices and the Rothschilds wanted to ingratiate themselves with the Empire and not let the slightest doubt arise about their loyalty. This major financial operation was led by the influential politician and paymaster John Charles Herries, but the Rothschilds were rewarded for their inventiveness and efficiency with one million British pounds. The Rothschilds’ courier system, which was used to transport all kinds of information at lightning speed, could not keep up with the British Empire’s secret service network and was certainly closely monitored by the nobility. The famous Battle of Waterloo, which sealed Napoleon’s downfall, led to false legends about Nathan that persist in conspiracy literature to this day and serve as an explanation of how the Rothschild clan, which had started modestly in the Jewish ghetto just a generation earlier, seized financial power and left the nobility behind. Various versions of how, when and where Nathan found out who would emerge victorious from the Battle of Waterloo circulated over time, with one pamphlet telling the cinematic tale that Nathan was the quickest to receive the information and fooled the stock market into thinking Napoleon was the victor. After prices plummeted due to panic selling, he suddenly made massive purchases and earned around 20 million pounds through this insider trading. This version is almost entirely a fairy tale. Several newspapers immediately reported on the battle’s outcome in special editions. Nathan soon received a copy through his courier system, he informed the British nobleman Lord Castlereagh and then simply bought a bunch of British bonds, which rose in value by two percent relatively quickly. That was all. He had already been rich through his work for the British Empire. However, the current conspiracy literature still claims that Nathan, the son of a Jewish ghetto shopkeeper, made an incredible fortune in a lightning-fast operation at the expense of all the other big businessmen, while the nobles had to watch with their mouths open, and the foundation was laid for the Rothschilds to take over power over the British Empire. The fairy tale of Nathan’s Waterloo rip-off was an invention of the French journalist Georges Mathieu-Dairnvaell. After Landgrave Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel was able to move back into his luxurious Wilhelmshöhe castle, Rothschild dutifully paid back all the money entrusted to him, with interest. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Rothschilds were the richest private bankers in Europe, but their wealth was completely dependent on their position as obedient confidants of the British Empire. The Rothschilds’ performance in precious metal smuggling, money laundering and operating a clearing house for money flows was impressive from the perspective of the British crown. Nevertheless, it was a matter of course to keep these newly rich Jews on a short leash and to ensure that they did not become too arbitrary with their money and skills at some point. The nobles could have arrested Nathan at any time after his work was done and dispossessed him under any pretext. Conversely, the Rothschilds had no real means of exerting pressure against the phalanx of the nobility, the secret societies, the parliaments, the courts and the police. What about the Jewish networks that existed at the time? Old Mayer Rothschild also conferred with representatives from other Jewish communities in Frankfurt’s Judengasse, but the police always kept their eyes and ears open.
There are only unproven legends about powerful Jewish conspirator groups at that time; the few Rothschild men had their hands full with their business and were definitely not allowed to use their money to change Europe’s power politics as they saw fit. Only under the guidance of the British crown did the brothers take steps in France and Austria. They sent their extremely arrogant design of a family coat of arms to Austria for their new noble titles, which included the imperial eagle, the British leopard, the Hessian lion and five arrows (for the five brothers). Of course, this audacity was rejected. The Rothschilds sought contact with Friedrich von Gentz, the influential Jewish advisor to Prince Metternich. Meanwhile, the Rothschilds’ services were no longer in such demand as they had been during wartime and older, established banks were often given preference for large deals. In a surprising move, the Rothschilds themselves became involved in a gigantic French loan deal. Nathan’s family and private life was limited to influential Jewish families and extended to a significant extent to the higher British nobility. Now and then a diplomat or the Duke of Wellington would show up. Nathan’s small, modest house in St. Swithin’s Lane in London was also incongruous with his status as one of the richest bankers in Europe. Was he not the one who possessed the great wealth? Was he never more than a front man? It is also striking that he practically never gave money to charities, not even to the Jewish synagogues, although he was formally rolling in money. It is said that he behaved arrogantly towards foreign princes in his office. He subsequently granted loans worth millions of British pounds to various monarchs in Europe. If Nathan and his brothers were indeed largely front men for the British crown, what advantage would this arrangement have had? It would have concealed the British influence behind the granting of loans and aroused less suspicion, because the Jewish bankers were seen by the public as simply rich snobs who were interested in nothing other than interest and dividends. If a bank (majority owned) by the British crown had offered these loans instead, ulterior motives for power politics would have been suspected, especially if these loans were granted to various noble houses that were competitors of the British, but also competed with each other and waged war against each other. One would think twice about starting a war if one knew that the far-away bankers were financing both sides of the conflict. Against the background of this theory that the Rothschild bank was a front company of the British crown, it makes even more sense that Nathan lived for the longest time in a rather modest house in England rather than in a palace, it makes more sense that he had mainly Jewish friends and it also makes more sense that he behaved demonstratively arrogantly towards European noble houses. If he had lived in a palace in the neighborhood of the British nobility and had behaved in a flattering manner towards other noble houses, suspicion would have arisen immediately. Carl Rothschild, who was considered to be somewhat slow-witted and shy (but was the exact opposite), gained the trust of the Austrians and Italians with important loans and settled with his wife in a palace in Naples, where he received guests such as Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, favorite uncle of the British Queen Victoria and later King of Belgium. Leopold played a key role in the creation of the Masonic Grand Lodge “Grand Orient de Belgique” (1833) and laid the foundation for the later lodge system. His son Leopold II ruled the African state of Congo in an absolutist manner and was responsible for several million deaths there. Anyone who did not work enough as a (child) slave had his hands chopped off as punishment. Amschel was the only strict believer among his brothers who still ate exclusively kosher food and retained the look of a rabbi. He stayed in Frankfurt, worked on the territory of Prussia and even rose to become a kind of finance minister with access to explosive information, and he continued his relationships with Buderus and the Hessen-Kassel family. His mother, who was over seventy years old, did not dare to leave the Frankfurt ghetto out of superstition, and she made a statement whose significance has been greatly exaggerated in conspiracy literature: When a neighbor expressed his fear that there might be another war, she waved it off and said that was nonsense because her sons would not grant the necessary loans. In conspiracy books it sounds as if her sons would rule Europe, but that is not the case at all. pt did not correspond to the reality of the time.
The brothers were a target for the animosity of many different people and thus served to conceal the actual balance of power. The infamous information courier system with carrier pigeons, supply points for horses and fast boats had not reinvented the wheel either. This network also transported messages from other people and was theoretically able to read this foreign correspondence, but of course disinformation also circulated and codes were used, so we cannot say that the Rothschilds were able to challenge the nobility for the empire. While Salomon Rothschild dealt with the Austrians, his brother James was responsible for major financial operations in France to support the new King Louis XVIII, but experienced more than one near-disaster because there were more sharks competing for the best deals and using tricks. The unrest in France cost the Rothschilds 17 million guilders, and rumors were already circulating that they were about to go bankrupt. The family’s rapid courier system prevented the catastrophe, and according to former French ambassador Talleyrand, the Rothschilds always diligently shared their information with the English authorities. It can be assumed that the British Crown was also always aware of what the Rothschilds’ many agents in France were able to find out about the danger of revolution. James managed to get his confidant Casimir Périer, the son of Claude-Nicolas Perier, in whose Château de Vizille the famous meeting of the Estates of Dauphiné took place in preparation for the French Revolution, appointed as the new French Finance Minister. Let us remember that the British Crown was interested in overthrowing the old French monarchy and secretly supporting the revolution. Adam Weisshaupt had been set up for this purpose, and his Illuminati order was then exposed by the Bavarian police for negligence. Nathan was the star, the leader, clever, creative and determined. But how much of his success was his own work and how much was the work of the British Crown? Of course, it is possible that he was able to give the British Empire new impulses and ideas about banking, but it is much more likely that important decisions and tactics were whispered to him. Unlike today, when only conspiracy theorists talk about the family, Nathan and his brothers were the focus of mass media coverage, a target of hatred, a go-to person for petitioners and ultra-celebrities of high society. All the excesses that were previously reserved for the high nobility were demonstratively practiced by the Rothschilds, as was the way they married: of the 12 sons of the famous five brothers, nine married within their own family, although their daughters, described as exceptionally beautiful, attracted the interest of various noble families. Anyone who married a Christian was practically disinherited and only a few marriages with other powerful Jewish families were considered acceptable over time. Hannah was never forgiven and when her son had an accident, it was seen as “God’s punishment”. But Nathan, despite following family traditions, also suffered a severe and final blow of fate in the form of a common boil caused by the bacteria Staphylococcus Aureus. While the established nobility had thousands of members, the Rothschild clan was very small and therefore vulnerable. Nathan’s son Lionel demanded that he and his family finally be allowed to officially use the title of baron, which the new Queen Victoria granted him. A close friendship developed with the politician and later Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who had Jewish roots but belonged to the Anglican Church. The remaining four old brothers were still the bosses and moved into large palaces, with James as their leader. The nobility of Austria, Italy and Prussia considered the Rothschilds to be homeless Jewish upstarts who were only interested in profit and with whom they could increase their own money and stabilize the state budget. The ability to raise money quickly was like a drug that was needed more and more, and the more access the Rothschilds were given to the courts, the more they gained access to sensitive information. The parties were also far more than just showing off and private pleasures, but more access to information and rumors. The Rothschild women, who were excluded from the family business, cultivated friendships with influential people and probably also ache have heard of. James was estimated to have had a fortune of 50 million British pounds; unheard of at the time. With Salomon he had entered the railway business late in the 1840s. By comparison: Johann Jakob Astor, another alleged “self-made man” and possible front man of the British Empire, left the sum of 20 million dollars (today’s equivalent of about 100 billion dollars) in America when he died in 1848. The Rothschilds worked the European territory and left America to other rich families. At that time the Rothschilds were still busy preventing wars, such as between France and Austria, which earned them the reputation of putting profits above honor and promoting peace only out of self-interest.
Only later did they work on loans for war and gain the opposite reputation of profiting from war, although it would have been impossible to interfere in the political affairs of Europe to such an extent without the permission of the British Crown. Otto von Bismarck looked at the situation soberly and tried to establish solid relations with the bank, which later proved to be the downfall of the German Empire. In private letters, the Rothschilds talked about coordinating with “Windsor and King Leopold”. The public generally did not see the Rothschilds’ connection to the British as being much different from their connection to the noble houses of Prussia, Austria or Italy. A serious mistake. The renewed revolution in France in 1848 drove out the king and led to the proclamation of the republic, which put James Rothschild’s finances at risk, such as the 82 million francs he had invested and the railway shares, which fell in value. The revolution had also spread to Germany, Austria and Hungary. James immediately became friends with the new dictator Eugène Cavaignac in Paris, but it was Louis Napoleon, descendant of Bonaparte, who ultimately became president of the new republic. Only two monarchies were untouched by the upheavals of 1848: the related British and Russian monarchies. Of course, it is necessary to examine more closely the extent to which these two empires and the Rothschilds were involved in the destabilization of mainland Europe. The Rothschilds also organized 16 million pounds for the massive Crimean War, which ushered in the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. It is not clear whether and to what extent the bankers were privy to the larger geopolitical plans. It is quite possible that the British crown simply whispered to them what loans they should provide, when, where and for whom. The new generation of Rothschilds were patronizing in the Jewish communities and put pressure on them to repeal anti-Jewish laws, which of course also meant self-interest and benefit for the British crown, because money brought loyalty and with loyalty more money could be made, favors could be called back and information could be obtained. Mayer Rothschild had Mentmore Towers built, a decadent ostentatious building designed to distract from the established aristocracy. Baron James de Rothschild had a larger version of the chateau built, called Ferrières. Lionel went into politics and was elected six times in London without taking the obligatory oath to the Christian faith, meaning he was blocked each time. It was not until 1858 that he entered Parliament, but he never made a single speech there. Baron James tried to build a relationship with Louis Napoleon, the descendant of Bonaparte, against whom the Rothschilds had fought with their financial network by quietly channeling money from the British crown to troops on the mainland. Rothschild’s rival Achille Fould from the Fould and Oppenheim bank became French finance minister and stole the Rothschilds’ friends, the Jewish-Portuguese investors from the Pereiras family. Perhaps Émile Pereire only appeared to have defected to Fould, but that is just pure speculation. The new idea of Pereire, built up by the Rothschilds, was a kind of semi-socialist people’s bank called “Crédit Mobilier”, which served countless small savers and was able to raise capital without the help of large foreign banks. Ultimately, however, large international shareholders dominated here too. James had a relationship with General Changamier, head of the National Guard, who would have been able to overthrow Napoleon, but it is not known whether such plans were discussed between the two. The general was also in love with James’ wife, which was of course even more suspicious, and so Napoleon had him deposed and arrested, dissolved the National Assembly, ruled from then on as a dictator and in the next step had himself made emperor. Other private affairs smacked of classic spying. onage: Baron James’ wife threw the most popular parties and Eugénie de Montijo, whom Napoleon was keen to marry, was cultivated. During the massive Crimean War in the middle of the 19th century, a kind of precursor to the coming world wars, the Rothschilds organized and guaranteed large loans for France and Britain, which was no surprise to anyone and was no secret. The decision about the conflict and the military objectives were not under the control of the bankers. Afterwards, the Ottoman Empire was practically doomed. In 1855, three of the four remaining brothers died: Carl, Salomon and Amschel. It is a very unlikely coincidence, which, together with the previous premature death of Nathan, suggests that the circumstances of the deaths should be examined more closely for possible signs of murder. There were many unscrupulous competitors and the family did not have a huge security service to protect against poisoning or the like.
The competitor Crédit Mobilier was initially extremely successful, and in Austria Salomon Rothschild’s son Anselm prepared a very similar project called “Kreditanstalt”. The leaders of the third generation were the cousins Alphonse, Anselm, Lionel and Mayer Carl. The family tradition regarding marriages was largely observed, just as the important aristocratic families of Europe had done for centuries. Crédit Mobilier financed Napoleon’s war against Austria and as a result got into serious trouble; its shares fell by half and mismanagement dragged everything down the drain. Fould had become extremely suspicious of the Pereires he had recruited and had to recommend that Napoleon approach the Rothschilds again. Lionel Rothschild was proposed for a “peerage”, a serious title of nobility including a seat in the House of Lords, but Queen Victoria refused on the artificial grounds that the Rothschilds had made their money with foreign governments and through speculation on the stock market and were therefore not eligible for such a patriotic status. In reality, the Rothschilds had only been able to rise to become important bankers because of contracts from the British Empire and the House of Hesse-Kassel, and the pressing suspicion is that they were working as front men for the British crown. The Queen apparently made it a point to deny any overly close connection between the bankers and the Empire and to create the impression as clearly as possible that these rich Jews only cared about their money and not about Britain. A clear move. Other noble families in Europe would hardly have been so willing to use the services of the Rothschilds if it had been assumed that the bank was just a front organization for the British aristocracy. Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales, married Alexandra of Denmark in keeping with his status and complained bitterly that he was only given £100,000 a year by Parliament (the other dukes received double that at most) while the Rothschilds built palaces worth millions. It all seems to have been part of a strategy to make the nobility recede into the background and not attract the envy of the population. We are talking about one of the most powerful and greedy empires of all time, which ruled the seas, subjugated countries like China and India and traded at gunpoint. It would have been very easy to use the Rothschilds as royal accountants in the first place, rather than allowing the upstarts to amass millions. It would also have been extremely easy to steal much of the Rothschilds’ wealth under some pretext, such as suspicion of collaboration with England’s enemies. By far the easiest and most effective way would have been to use the Rothschilds as front men. In the public perception, the aristocracy was neither exceptionally rich nor did it significantly influence politics, but this elaborate deception was of the utmost importance. The Prince of Wales had met Lionel’s sons, Nathaniel, Alfred and Leo, at the elite Cambridge University, and had relationships with other Rothschilds and other Jewish families such as the Sassoons (who had also been built up by the British Empire). The Rothschilds paid the Prince of Wales’ debts and invested his money. Alphonse Rothschild’s information network stretched from Napoleon III to Otto von Bismarck and Empress Eugenie. Bismarck often visited the Rothschilds’ Chateau Ferrières during his time as ambassador to Paris. Bismarck later became Prime Minister of Prussia and had a huge continental land power at his disposal, which made the British very nervous. He brought them h Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark, with the Danish nobility of course being closely related to the British nobility and to German families such as Hesse-Kassel, who in turn were closely connected to the Rothschilds. War broke out between Prussia and Austria, which Austria lost very quickly. Gerson von Bleichröder, the Rothschilds’ confidant, had become Bismarck’s banker and Bismarck used the Rothschilds’ information network instead of setting up his own secret service. The French expected a war against Prussia next and therefore sent the French Rothschilds to England so that England could have a calming influence on Prussia.
Nevertheless, open conflict broke out and the French suffered a decisive defeat at Sedan after only six weeks. Gerson Bleichröder and other bankers had already collected the loans for the Prussian-Austrian War and Bleichröder was also significantly involved in the negotiations and settlement of the French reparations payments after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Bismarck and Field Marshal von Moltke promptly made the Rothschild castle of Ferrières their temporary headquarters and then moved to Versailles. The representatives of the new French Republic had to negotiate meekly and sought the advice of Alphonse Rothschild, whereupon reparations payments amounting to 5 billion francs were processed by Alphonse and his cousins with the usual efficiency and with the usual commissions. The German troops evacuated France, the old French rulers were out of the way to the delight of the British crown, and the Germans’ joy was not to last too long. The Rothschilds built more palaces like Waddesdon, bought more racehorses and produced more expensive wine. Hannah Rothschild married Lord Rosebery, the future Prime Minister, and was only the third Rothschild lady from the British branch to marry a Christian and break with her family tradition. Lionel’s biggest deal came in 1875, four years before his death, with the Suez Canal, which was of great strategic interest to the British Empire. Four million pounds flowed from the Rothschilds, secured by the British government, for shares in the canal. The transactions were carried out quietly as usual, using roundabout routes so as not to alarm the markets, and with huge profits. The suspicion arises that when the British Crown borrowed money from the Rothschilds, it was actually lending itself to itself, giving the impression that it was notoriously short of money. If the British aristocracy had carried out these transactions themselves and owned these riches themselves, the British people would have taken to the barricades. In the 1870s, things were very busy for the bankers, because in addition to the core business of banking, they were involved in railways, natural resources and diamonds, although limited to Europe, the Middle East and parts of Russia. The USA was handled by other, mostly non-Jewish families. A Rothschild loan went to the Russian Tsar and in return they received a permit to drill for oil in Baku. This gave them a similar amount of power in the oil business as the Rockefellers in America with Standard Oil, but before this industry really dominated, the Rothschilds sold the B’nito Petroelum Company to the Royal Dutch Shell Combine of the Dutch royal family, which was related to the British aristocracy. Gerson Bleichröder also brokered further, urgently needed money to the Russian Tsars, who were also related to the British Empire. If Prussia or the German Empire or the Turks had known in time what a global colossus was forming, some decisions would probably have been made differently. Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild finally received his peerage and his family still intermarried with a few exceptions, such as Leo, who married a sister from the Jewish Sassoon family, which had been built up by the British Empire. The young Winston Churchill was a regular guest at Rothschild’s and formed a long-lasting relationship with the bankers. Nathaniel Rothschild dramatically scaled back his bank’s operations, favoring simple, safe investments, while competitors like Barings bitterly regretted their adventures in the markets. Alfred Rothschild served for a while as director of the Bank of England, which conspiracy literature generously misinterprets as a takeover of the central bank. He eventually violated privacy to see if he was being ripped off in the sale of a painting and lost his job as a result. Edmond, one of the few staunchly religious members of the family, financed Jewish settlements in Palestine as an experiment to see if this was even sustainable. the considerable sum of six million pounds. Other Rothschilds and other influential Jews were not very enthusiastic about the desolate spot in the desert and preferred areas in the USA or Western Europe as the new homeland of the Jews. Later, however, the tiny state of Israel was created, secured by guarantees from the British and Americans. It is not known which Rothschild made the following statement:
“A Zionist is an American Jew who gives an English Jew money to bring a Polish Jew to Palestine.”
225,000 Jews from Russia flocked to Western Europe because of the anti-Jewish laws under the Tsars and not every Jewish migrant was interested in going to the desert. The settlements were in chaos and there was ingratitude towards Edmond, who in turn complained that the settlers used large subsidies to go on vacation and have hired Muslims work the fields. There was also a dispute over the sabbatical year stipulated in the faith, during which the fields were to be neglected. Rothschild threatened to send the settlers back to Russia. After the collapse of the Rothschild bank in Naples, the branch in Frankfurt was also closed because there were no sons there and no one else wanted to move there. The tensions between Russia, England and France on the one hand, and Germany on the other, conjured up the coming downfall of the Prussian land power. After the old powers in France had already been eliminated, it was now the turn of the German Empire and Austria. Once again, the Rothschilds were busy financing the coming (world) war, without being involved in any recognizable way in the military and geopolitical decisions. The British Empire had restricted the Rothschilds to banks and industry and never granted them access to the high levels of the nobility and the military. The current conspiracy literature spreads the myth that the Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers organized the world war themselves and controlled both America and Great Britain. What almost no conspiracy theorist knows is that the Rothschilds themselves fought and died at the front in the war. James de Rothschild, son of Edmond, joined the armies of France, Canada and Britain. Eugene served at the front in Russia and was seriously wounded in the leg. Evelyn died fighting the Turks in Palestine. Lionel Walter and another Rothschild also died in battle. All of this does not fit at all with the myth that the Rothschilds, as secret kings, instigated and managed the war from a safe distance. It is highly questionable whether they chose to serve at the front out of a sense of duty, or because they were looking for an adventure, or perhaps because the British crown insisted on it. After all, members of the British nobility had repeatedly had to fight for the Empire with their own hands in the past. After the war, Austria was no longer a real great power, the currency collapsed and the population had shrunk dramatically, France was badly hit, Germany was exhausted. The Rothschilds subsequently stabilized France’s currency with the help of J.P. Morgan of New York. After the war, the Rothschild clan became increasingly occupied with distractions and pleasures. Three leading men from the family had died in the war and a large amount of money had to be paid to the British government in a special tax (so-called “death duties”). Alfred also broke with family tradition and left his money to his daughter Almina Wombwell, who was married to the Earl of Carnarvon. The large, decadent houses in London were sold or demolished, and most of the chateaus in the country were also sold. They were still high society and a power in banking, but the phase of demonstratively celebrated luxury was over and more family members devoted themselves to other fields such as medicine, racehorses, expeditions and the study of insects. In the 1930s, there were only two active bankers in the clan, Lionel and Anthony, and the Rothschild bank was “only” in the top 10, no longer the undisputed number one. Victor Rothschild helped a number of Jewish refugees, while the British establishment feigned sympathy for the Nazis outside of official channels.
Baron Louis Rothschild from Austria even ended up in prison because of the Nazis; other Rothschilds fled to Switzerland and France. Three Rothschilds served at the front again in the spring of 1940. Two were taken prisoner and were lucky enough to be treated as officers. Guy Rothschild fought his way through the Nazis and was able to escape. h through to Dunkirk, where he had to be evacuated along with the British troops by the Expeditionary Force and almost died at sea. This does not fit at all with the myth of the all-powerful Rothschilds. The central legends of conspiracy literature do not stand up to closer scrutiny and new ones have simply been created over time to focus on Jewish clans. Even the entire British aristocracy has been accused of having Jewish ancestry on the Internet, without any solid evidence. All sorts of important figures have already been falsely described as Jews. An article in the London Times newspaper and Moshe Kohn in an article in the Jerusalem Post claimed that Churchill had Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side, but there is no evidence of this in the many different biographical studies on the Churchills. Author Shane Leslie is said to have planned an expose. Evidence? None. The legal revisionist David Irving repeated the legend in his book “Churchill’s War” and cites only the old article by Moshe Kohn as a source, which ironically makes fun of revisionists like Irving and provides no evidence of Churchill’s alleged Jewish ancestors. While several Rothschilds almost died in the war, the Hesse-Kassel family, which had made the rise of the Rothschilds possible in the first place, had it much easier and was one of the richest clans in Europe in 1939. Prince Philip did not have to go to the front, but was instead able to take part in espionage by playing the role of a supporter of Hitler and, because of his marriage to the daughter of the Italian king, taking on the duties of a special ambassador between Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. After the war, he was considered the richest man in Germany and the richest prince in Europe. Victor, on the other hand, defused bombs and wrote military manuals on the subject. After the war, he moved back into his house at 23 Avenue de Marigny in the middle of Paris. The family continued to be involved in big business, but the days of palaces and Bentleys were over. Jacob married Serena Dunn, the non-Jewish descendant of the Earl of Rosslyn and the Canadian ultra-rich Sir James Dunn. London investment banker Nathaniel Rothschild broke family tradition a few years ago and married a nude model, even though he is the only son of Lord Rothschild and was expected to marry into the moneyed aristocracy. The Daily Mail reported that Nathaniel had found the model with the help of the dating app “Happn”. A little-heard, marijuana-smoking rapper named Jay Electronica from the New Orleans ghetto became the partner of Kate Rothschild, whose previous marriage to the wealthy Ben Goldsmith had failed. Experts assumed that she received none of her ex-husband’s fortune. Jay’s rap career so far consists of little profound talk about the meaning of life and a record deal with Jay Z’s label, but without having released a major album. He is also a member of the bizarre Muslim sect “5 Percent Nation”. Ben, the son of the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith and Lady Annabel, married Kate in 2003, daughter of the late Amschel Rothschild and Anita Patience Guinness. She ominously stated that her relationship with Jay “saved her life in many ways”. There were also suspicions that he was too close to model Cara Delevigne. Amschel Rothschild came late into the banking industry and was more interested in racing throughout his life. In July 1996 he was found hanged in the Hotel Bristol in Paris. The important patriarchs were Baron Éric Alain Robert David de Rothschild and David René James de Rothschild. The latter is married to the Italian Princess Olimpia Anna Aldobrandini. One of the banks that most used the services of Panamanian accounts and shell companies (Panama Papers) is Rothschild Trust Guernsey Limited. Guernsey, the second largest of the British Channel Islands, is not part of the United Kingdom, nor a crown colony, but is directly subordinate to the British crown as a “crown possession”. Rothschild Trust Guernsey Limited operates as a subsidiary of Rothschild Bank AG, based in Zurich, which in turn belongs to Rothschild Holding AG in Zurich, which in turn is more than two-thirds owned by Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG in Zug, Switzerland, which in turn is majority controlled by Rothschild & Co. and thus by members of the Rothschild families and their companies. The stories of other influential Jewish clans and banking houses apart from the Rothschilds all revolve around upstarts who are provided with contracts and relationships by the Anglo-American empire. t were. The Sassoons were built up by the British. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was an American investment bank whose founder Loeb came from a humble background and was given contracts during the American Civil War. To supply the Union Army. Jakob Heinrich Schiff from Frankfurt am Main joined and brought more experience with him as he was born into wealthy circles. Schiff was only able to set up a large investment bank because he had connections to the railroad industry, which was owned by non-Jewish oligarchs such as the Vanderbilts or the Harrimans.
The fractional reserve banking system of the British colonial empire
The British Empire was only moderately successful around 1615 under the rule of the House of Stewart. The population was not particularly large, there was a lack of money everywhere and there was nowhere near as much going on in the colonies as one would have hoped. 200 years later, under the leadership of the Guelphs, Wettins and Reginars, Britain was the most powerful player in the world and “Britannia rules the waves” was a feared slogan. The secret of success consisted of a superior family intelligence service that had hardly been researched at all, control over modern science by the “Royal Society” and the parallel British Freemasonry, as well as covert control over a system of pseudo-private banks, special economic zones such as the City of London, offshore islands, the new central bank and the new fractional reserve banking. At its peak, the colonial empire officially comprised up to 25% of the land mass and 25% of the world’s people. Without highly professional intelligence services, it would not have been possible to hold colonies such as India with little personnel. It is estimated that in India only 0.05% of the population were British. The greatest mistake the old Roman Empire made was to act as one in a contiguous territory with long, sometimes difficult to defend external borders, instead of splitting up into individual parts and concealing a central authority. For the average citizen, our current monetary system is quite absurd and disadvantageous. A central bank has the sole monopoly on the legal tender with which taxes must be paid, and private commercial banks can lend out many times more for every euro they deposit with the central bank. For the British Empire, this “fractional reserve banking system” was already the key to success, as this system was superior to those of other nations. In order to reduce the not inconsiderable risk of collapse, it was necessary to secretly control politicians, the central bank and the most important private commercial banks. The Rothschild and Barings banks, for example, are highly suspected of having been front organizations of the nobility, and they are not the only ones. The Kleinwort Benson bank goes back to Heinrich Kleinwort, a grandfather of Sir Alexander Drake Kleinwort, 1st Baronet. In 1786, Heinrich in Holstein formed a partnership with Otto Müller to finance trade with England. In 1786, Robert Benson, a Quaker, founded Rathbone & Benson with William Rathbone IV. The company acquired the bullion dealer Sharps Pixley in 1966, securing a seat on the London Gold Price Manipulation Committee, which met twice a day in the offices of N M Rothschild & Sons. The central bank, the Bank of England, was founded by Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, in 1694, under Queen Anne of the Stewarts, who was already backed by the Guelphs. Montagu was a member of the Privy Council, bore the Order of the Garter and was President of the Royal Society. Under the Guelph King George I, he was made Viscount Sunbury and Earl of Halifax, a Knight of the Garter and First Lord of the Treasury. The bank’s original home was in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, where archaeologists found the remains of a Roman temple of Mithras during reconstruction in 1954. The ruins of the Mithraeum are perhaps the most famous of all 20th century Roman discoveries in the City of London and can be visited by the public. The bank moved to its current location in Threadneedle Street in 1734 and slowly acquired neighbouring land thereafter. The chief architect, Sir John Soane, was a member of the Royal Academy and Royal Society, as well as a Freemason who extended the Freemasons Hall in London by building a new gallery. There are only a few specially trained architects capable of fulfilling the complicated structural wishes of the Freemasons, which date back to buildings of ancient empires such as Rome, Greece or Egypt. The Bank of England is protected by its royal charter status and the Official Secrets Act. From In 1858, the nobility, through the Bank of England, dared to relax restrictions and establish further large, apparently private banks. Banking has been inextricably linked with secret services and noble families since ancient times. Banks existed as early as ancient Mesopotamia, and several clay tablets were found on which the details of credit transactions were meticulously recorded. The Babylonian Egibi family were bankers for generations, but the leading, actual lenders were the kings and the religious ruling caste. The Egibis worked for the government of Nebuchadnezzar II. And one can imagine how security mechanisms had to be built in even then to prevent the rule from collapsing and bankers from cooking up their own soup or even conspiring with foreign powers. In the Middle Ages, it was common for the nobility to use Jews as front men for credit transactions because Jews were not subject to the Christian ban on interest, were controllable due to a lack of a secure legal status, and, according to anti-Semitic prejudices, were supposed to play the role of “debt collectors” and usurers so that people’s anger would be directed against Jews rather than against the nobility. But there were also some non-Jewish bankers. In Venice in the 1500s, Jews were only allowed to live in a special area and anyone who stayed in Venice for a longer period of time had to wear a yellow scarf or some other yellow symbol. For the average Christian citizen of Venice, this simply seemed to be an expression of Christian antipathy towards Jews, but for secret services it had a completely different reason: Anyone marked in this way could be observed and followed more easily on the street. If the Jews had to live close together, this was even easier and they could get by with a manageable number of informers. Money was so important that they wanted to protect themselves with counter-espionage.
During the war between Venice and the Turkish-Ottoman Caliphate, Venice ordered the confiscation of Jewish property and even the arrest of Jews. This nasty precautionary measure was probably due to the fact that Jews had also settled among the Turks and suspicious contacts were to be strictly prevented. After the war, the Jews were released and their property returned to them. The historian Niall Ferguson stresses that for a long time the moneylenders did not have the power to ensure and enforce the repayment of loans. But he then says that the moneylenders solved this problem by becoming ever larger. He refuses to touch on the secret service level and repeats the great myth that private banks could become systemically important without being subject to total control. Florentine banks such as Peruzzi and Bardi went bankrupt because, among other things, the British king did not repay the loans. The Medici, on the other hand, flourished for quite a while longer, but a lot of their business was also secret. Noble families ruled in Italy. Later, Holland, England and Sweden became the new centres of banking. The central bank, the Bank of England, was founded in 1694 under Queen Anne. With her, the Guelphs already had more or less control of the British throne. Anne married Prince George of Denmark, her sister married William of Orange. The House of Orange-Nassau worked together with the Guelphs. Denmark had already infiltrated Scotland and married a Danish princess to King James. Masonic lodges existed in Scotland from a very early stage. In 1714, the Hanoverian Guelph George I ascended to the British throne and in 1717 Freemasonry was re-established to cover up Scottish traces. The Spanish crown relied too heavily on precious metals and could not keep up with the British. As nice as the idea of a medium of exchange with intrinsic value is, it is relatively inflexible. Banks such as Barings and Rothschild provided Britain with fresh money, even from small investors, to finance wars. Of equal strategic importance was Baring’s transfer of British government money to Allied governments to support their war efforts. This work, which was at times secret and sensitive, required expert knowledge of money transfers and a solid correspondent network. It again underlined the government’s trust in Baring. Other countries increasingly copied the British central banking system because it was more effective. This was not, as conspiracy literature claims, an international seizure of power by Jews. France under Napoleon had used a traditional system of taxing conquered peoples. According to legend, Nathan Rothschild made a fortune from the Battle of Waterloo. In reality, the battle was a fiasco for the Rothschilds: Britain raised money through the bond market and then converted the money into gold, which At some point, the only thing that could be done on the transit route was to transport or smuggle gold to Portugal, where the fighting was raging. Before 1811, Nathan Rothschild was only involved in the textile trade. He had experience with smuggling and the family had a network in Europe, so he was given the corresponding secret contract by the British Empire. This contract was so important that control mechanisms must have been in place. Nathan’s father had been carefully built up by Hesse-Kassel and protected Hesse-Kassel’s wealth from Napoleon. Every cent was apparently paid back. If Mayer Amschel Rothschild had taken anything, he would have been a dead man. Napoleon had to retreat, but then made a comeback and Nathan Rothschild bought a lot of gold on behalf of the British crown because another extensive war was expected, but this turned out to be a miscalculation. The Battle of Waterloo brought a quick end to the conflict, the Rothschilds were sitting on too much gold, and the price of gold would soon fall dramatically. Nathan bought British bonds, held them for over a year and then sold them at a profit, around 600 million British pounds in today’s money. The Rothschilds then played an important role mainly in the bond market and also marketed bonds from other countries. Nathan died in 1836 and his “private wealth” was estimated at 0.62% of the British national income. The family members had to marry mainly within their own family, which was probably a requirement that the nobility had ordered. When you build up a new clan, such as a banker, you want to avoid this clan falling apart again soon and only caring about private luxury. The Rothschilds were ideal for an international espionage program because they had headquarters in several countries and could have a say in which staff were hired by the government in France, for example. According to the propaganda that was circulated, many people thought that Jews only cared about money and other Jews had no homeland and thus no loyalty to any great power. With the help of conspiracy literature, the actual structure of the British Empire and its actual history were obscured and instead the reader was fed the fairy tale that a few “wise men of Zion” had taken over Britain and America. The history of the first two US central banks was also falsified retroactively and at the same time with the third central bank (Federal Reserve) there was another such propaganda campaign. The John Birch Society became one of the most important centers of the modern conspiracy media.
Pretty families
The high nobility married in very small circles and built up a number of lower aristocratic families and upper middle class families. In Hanover, the place of origin of the British Guelph kings from George I onwards, the so-called “pretty families” such as the Barings were cultivated. In 1717, Johann Baring, who came from Bremen, emigrated to England. His sons John and Francis founded the bank John & Francis Baring & Co in London in 1770 (since 1806 Baring Brothers and Comp.), which became an important financier of government projects in the 19th century. Francis Baring was made a baronet in 1793. His nephew William Baring, whose mother belonged to the Gould family, was granted a special coat of arms under the name Baring-Gould in 1795. Numerous descendants of the company founder were admitted to the British nobility and founded various lines. The family’s descendants also include Diana, Princess of Wales, whose great-grandmother was Margaret Baring (1868–1906), the daughter of Edward Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke, and through her also her son Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. In the 19th century, Barings became the leading London bank alongside Rothschild. The Rothschilds, in turn, were built up by the noble Hesse-Kassel family. It is abundantly clear that the nobility controlled the bankers and not the other way around. The high nobility was anything but naive, as is portrayed in the usual conspiracy literature and sometimes in historical research. The fight against France and colonies such as India would never have been possible without excellent planning and outstanding secret services. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is descended from an illegitimate child from the highest circles: through his great-great-great-grandparents Adelheid Pauline Karoline von Rottenburg (1805–1872), illegitimate daughter of Prince Paul of Württemberg, and Karl Maximilian Freiherr von Pfeffel (1811–1890), Boris Johnson is related to Queen Elisabeth and Prince Charles through the Royal House of Württemberg. Paul of Württemberg’s mother was Auguste Karoline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whose mother in turn was Augusta of Hanover, a niece of King George III and also related to Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Hanover is the origin of the modern British Guelph royal house and ruled up to and including Queen Victoria. After that, the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha line took over. Boris Johnson went through the elite training schools of Eton and Oxford University. In Oxford, Johnson was a member of the elite Bullingdon Club, as were other later top politicians, business moguls such as Nathaniel Philip Rothschild and even King Edward VII. Boris Johnson should actually be called Kemal, because he has Turkish roots. His great-grandfather Ali Kemal was briefly Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 and was assassinated in 1922 at the instigation of Nureddin Pasha. Johnson’s grandfather Osman Ali then fled to London and took the name “Wilfred Johnson”. Ali Kemal took part in the revolution against the Ottoman Empire and its Sultan Abdülhamit II and it is clear that British espionage was heavily involved in the revolution. In Paris, Kemal became acquainted with the Young Turks, who had been set up by the British services in the form of Masonic lodges. He was later considered an opponent of Atatürk and was murdered on the orders of Nureddin Pasha, two years before the caliphate collapsed completely. Boris Johnson’s (supposed) political opponent in Brexit was the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The Albrecht family (her birth name) is one of the so-called “Pretty Families of the Electorate of Hanover”.
Further reading:
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets 1798-1848 by Niall Ferguson
Till Time’s Last Sand: A History of the Bank of England 1694-2013, David Kynaston
