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THE two concluding volumes of The Intimate Papers of Colonel House begin with the entrance of the United States into the World War and end with Colonel House’s attempt to secure some compromise on the basis of which the Senate might ratify the Versailles Treaty, including the Covenant of the League of Nations. Their central theme is American participation in the war and the Peace Conference, in so far as the papers of Colonel House shed light on the American effort and Wilsonian policies. Readers of the two preceding volumes will remember that Colonel House, although not an officeholder, occupied a special position in relation to Wilson’s administration at the time the United States became a belligerent. He had been chosen by the President as his personal representative and sent on three separate missions to the European Governments in 1914 and the two following years. As Wilson’s representative he had come in close contact with European leaders during the period of American neutrality.

It was natural that, during the war, President Wilson should look to House for advice on every matter that touched American relations with the Allies and especially on all problems of war aims. He selected him as chief of the organization for preparing the American case at the Peace Conference, appointed him head of the American War Mission to Europe for the coordination of military and industrial efforts, asked him to draft a constitution for a league of nations, and again sent him to Europe as American representative on the Supreme War Council when it arranged the armistice with Germany. At the Peace Conference, House was Commissioner Plenipotentiary, and, because of his intimate personal relations with European statesmen, was constantly used by the President to conduct the most delicate negotiations. During Wilson’s absence from Paris and his illness, the President selected him to take his place on the Supreme Council.

This article was translated from the German by Ingrid Rimland.Comments in heavy black are by Gerry Frederics.
Some months ago Ernst* asked me to do a report on Allied atrocities during and after World War II, and toward that end, he sent me some information, among them a book in German titled, “Alliierte Kriegsverbrechen” – Allied War Crimes.
• This refers to Ernst Zuendel, the famed German Canadian freedom fighter.
I started reading it and underlining certain passages, but not for long-because I realized that I was getting nauseated. It was a compilation of first-person testimony as to what happened when the Allies (particularly the Red Army) started to carve up a prostrated and defeated Germany.
I made several attempts to finish this assignment, but I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t do it. Even now, I feel a moral obligation to finish it, but even thinking about it makes my palms clammy and my heart race. People in the West have simply no idea what went on in Europe after the Allies began to push the Germans back – from 1943 on!
I have given the material below a lot of thought as to whether or not I should send it to my ZGram readers. It isn’t pretty reading. It was published recently in Der Freiwillige, June 1995, pages 10-11, under the title In Their Terror All Were Alike, written (or edited) by Hans Koppe.
“. . . Since the same old stories of war crimes allegedly committed by the Germans are being parroted over and over again in prayer-wheel fashion, particularly by the younger generations who are too lazy (or deliberately unwilling) to obtain a real grasp of the subject through the study of documents from the archives of our former enemies’ documents which are both accessible and irrefutable – we wish to call to mind the following report which first appeared 30 years ago in the Deutschland Journal of April 23, on p. 7 of issue 17.

1. The American Jewish Yearbook of September 14, 1939 until October 2, 1940 (volume 41) states in all of Europe: 5,589,837 Jews.

2a. If Russia is included: 9,394,837 Jews (The Spotlight October 1979, page 7)

3. The same Jewish Yearbook of 1939, page 583: World Jewry: 16,180,000

4. New York Times of February 22, 1948 “from their own secret census”: between 16,150,000 and 19,200, 000

5. A publication of the American Jewish Committee dated 1940: “in 1933: 15,315,359”.

6. Prof. Arthur Rupin of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: in 1938: 16,717,000

7. The World Almanac of 1945: 15,192,089

8, The World Almanac of 1946: 15,753,638

9. The American Jewish Committee in the World Almanac of 1949: 16,643,120

10. Rabbi Soetendorp in his TV-interview on the Netherlands network in March 1980: World Jewry demography: 14 million Jews in 1980.

A year and a month after the Potsdam Declaration was published, Secretary of State Byrnes suddenly left the Paris peace conference and went to Stuttgart where among the German people he attempted to justify and defend America’s policy toward the defeated Reich.
This willingness to place a value on German public opinion marked a fundamental and welcome turning point in our official attitude, for previously we were carrying out our mission in Germany with utter disregard for what the Germans might think of it or us.
The change did not arise from any newly discovered fondness for our defeated subjects. Mr. Byrnes had put his finger on the real reason when he said: “It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between East and West.”
That is precisely what had already happened. Belatedly, we had come to realize that while we were busily and blindly alienating the German people by carrying out one of the most brutal and terrifying peace programs ever inflicted on a defeated nation, Russia, who had been egging us on, was quietly preparing to come forward as their champion and to offer them an avenue of escape from us through the establishment of a unified, revived, and Communist Reich to be joined to the Soviet Union. This had been made clear by Molotov in July at Paris.
Germany is more than a mere pawn in the struggle for power between world ambitious Communist Russia and the West, she is the major price. World Communism has long coveted Germany as the brightest jewel in its crown. The Kremlin knows and we know that all Europe would have to fall before the combined might of a union between Soviet Russia and a resuscitated Reich.
Such an eventuality cannot be tolerated by Britain who, with a hostile Europe at her back, would find her very existence threatened. Nor could we countenance such a threat to England, because treatment of the British Isles as our first line of defence in the Atlantic is one of the imperatives of our present foreign policy.
Union between Soviet Russia and a sovietized Germany would mean war. To prevent war, we must therefore prevent the fruition of Russia’s design. Hence, it becomes necessary that we attract Germany to our side and keep her there.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 20TH CENTURY the two most important anti-Communists in the United States government were Secretary of the Navy and later Secretary of Defence, James V. Forrestal, and Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.  But they had a great deal more in common than that.  The following passage is from pages 147-148 of the 1966 book, The Death of James Forrestal, written anonymously by someone using the pen name, Cornell Simpson:*
There were extraordinary parallels in the lives and deaths of McCarthy and Forrestal—two Irish-Catholic Americans who both rose by their bootstraps to high office in Washington, D.C., and who successively spearheaded the fight against the worldwide Communist conspiracy.  Each man was the victim of smear attacks that rose to a pitch of vituperation and vileness previously unmatched in this century.  Each man was pathologically hated by every left-winger and subversive in America.  Each man died at a most “convenient” and strategic time.  And each death beyond doubt altered the course of history.
Appropriately, it was Forrestal who personally alerted freshman Senator McCarthy to the Communist menace and “named names” to him of key persons in our federal government who were consistently shaping our policies and programs to benefit Soviet Russia.  It was Forrestal who thus directly inspired McCarthy’s subsequent exposés of Communist influence and subversion in the federal government.
After Forrestal met his violent end, McCarthy moved up to the front lines.  And when McCarthy began publicly exposing Communists in the State Department, the Communist party at once openly proclaimed in the Daily Worker and elsewhere that McCarthy was now the Communists’ main enemy.  The Daily Worker also called on all Communists and left-wing elements to unite in and give top priority to the fight against “McCarthyism.”
For years, McCarthy continued his important work of investigating and unmasking individual Communists infiltrated into department after department of our federal government—and of exposing and opposing many of the executive department’s foreign and domestic policies.  He also wrote two well-documented anti-Communist books.  He had two more such books in the works when he died.

IN AUGUST, 1925, ON THE OCCASION OF THE WRITING OF THE SECOND VOLUME, I formulated the fundamental ideas of a National Socialist foreign policy, in the brief time afforded by the circumstances. Within the framework of that book I dealt especially with the question of the Southern Tyrol, which gave rise to attacks against the Movement as violent as they were groundless. In 1926, I found myself forced to have this part of the second volume published as a special edition. I did not believe that by so doing I would convert those opponents who, in the hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol, saw primarily a welcome means for the struggle against the hated National Socialist Movement. Such people cannot be taught better because the question of truth or error, right or wrong, plays absolutely no part for them. As soon as an issue seems suitable for exploitation, partly for political party purposes, partly even for their highly personal interests, the truthfulness or rightness of the matter at hand is altogether irrelevant.

This is all the more the case if they can thereby inflict damage on the cause of the general awakening of our Folk. For the men responsible for the destruction of Germany, dating from the time of the collapse, are her present rulers, and their attitude of that time has not changed in any respect up to now. Just as at that time they cold heartedly sacrificed Germany for the sake of doctrinaire party views or for their own selfish advantage, today they likewise vent their hatred against anyone who contradicts their interests, even though he may have, a thousandfold, all the grounds for a German resurgence on his side. Even more. As soon as they believe the revival of our Folk, represented by a certain name, can be seen, they usually take a position against everything that could emanate from such a name. The most useful proposals, indeed the most patently correct suggestions, are boycotted simply because their spokesman, as a name, seems to be linked to general ideas which they presume they must combat on the basis of their political party and personal views. To want to convert such people is hopeless.

Hence in 1926, when my brochure on the Southern Tyrol was printed, I naturally gave not a second’s thought to the idea that I could make an impression on those who, in consequence of their general philosophical and political attitude, already regarded me as their most vehement opponent. At that time I did entertain the hope that at least some of them, who were not at the outset malicious opponents of our National Socialist foreign policy, would first examine our view in this field and judge it afterward. Without a doubt this has also happened in many cases. Today I can point out with satisfaction that a great number of men, even among those in public political life, have revised their former attitude with respect to German foreign policy. Even when they believed they could not side with our standpoint in particulars, they nevertheless recognised the honourable intentions that guide us here. During the last two years, of course, it has become clearer to me that my writing of that time was in fact structured on general National Socialist insights as a premise.

A SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT VERSION of the Rhodesian drama, in which the Zionist role is explained at some length, is presented in a book published in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia: Majuta by a Jew, B.A. Kosmin, with the sub-title: A History of the Jewish Community in Zimbabwe.

The author makes no secret of .the fact that in Rhodesia long before the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) the terms Jew and Zionist were, as he puts it, “almost interchangeable.” He tells us that in 1967, when . the Rhodesians were already feeling the bite of UN-imposed economic sanctions, the, President of the Central African Zionist Organization (CAZO), Mr. A.E. Abramson led a delegation to Prime Minister Ian Smith “to inform him of their planned manpower and financial aid to Israel”, a move which, he adds, “achieved the desired results.”

In the 1930’s, says Dr. Kosmin, the per capita monetary contribution of Rhodesian Jews to the Zionist cause was the highest in the world, “a tradition maintained into the 1970’s in spite of sanctions, which had virtually placed the country in a state of siege.”

Equally disproportionate, it would seem, was the attention lavished on Rhodesia, with its tiny Jewish population, by the world’s Zionist leaders: we read that visitors to the country included Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Nahum Sokolov, Moshe Sharett, Nahum Goldmann, Norman Bentwich, Cecil Roth, Generals Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon, Chaim Hertzog and Ezer Weizmann.

WHILE 10 MEN A WEEK ARE BEING EXECUTED by American hangmen on sentences by American Judges after prosecution by American prosecutors, the trials are being assailed by another American judge who made an official examination of procedure against war criminals.

Edward Leroy van Roden, president judge of the orphans court of Delaware County, Pa., whose official report is under War Department suppression, is charging in lectures and after dinner speeches that shocking third degree methods were used to obtain confessions from those placed on trial at Dachau military courts. The courts were held where the Nazis had spread terror among inmates of a concentration camp.

SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT on July 4, 1984, the headquarters of the Institute for Historical Review was attacked by terrorists. They did their job almost to perfection: IHR’s office were destroyed, and ninety per cent of its inventory of books and tapes wiped out. To this day the attackers have not been apprehended, and the authorities — local, state, and federal — have supplied little indication that they ever will be.

The destruction of IHR’s offices and stocks meant a crippling blow for Historical Revisionism, the world-wide movement to bring history into accord with the facts in precisely those areas in which it has been distorted to serve the interests of a powerful international Establishment, an Establishment all the more insidious for its pious espousal of freedom of the press. That one of the few independent voices for truth in history on the planet was silenced by flames on America’s Independence Day in the year made infamous by George Orwell must have brought a cynical smile to the face of more than one enemy of historical truth: the terrorists, whose national loyalties certainly lie elsewhere than in America, chose the date well. Had IHR succumbed to the arsonists, what a superb validation of the Orwellian dictum: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”!

One of the chief casualties of the fire was the text of the book you now hold in your hands. Too badly charred to be reproduced for printing plates, over six hundred pages of The Forced War had to be laboriously reset, reproofed, and re-corrected. That this has now been achieved, despite the enormous losses and extra costs imposed by the arson, despite the Institute’s dislocation and its continued harassment, legal and otherwise, by the foes of historical truth, represents a great triumph for honest historiography, for The Forced War, more than a quarter century after it was written, remains the classic refutation of the thesis of Germany’s “sole guilt” in the origins and outbreak of the Second World War.

By attacking one of the chief taboos of our supposedly irreverent and enlightened century, David Hoggan, the author of The Forced War, unquestionably damaged his prospects as a professional academic. Trained as a diplomatic historian at Harvard under William Langer and Michael Karpovich, with rare linguistic qualifications, Hoggan never obtained tenure. Such are the rewards for independent thought, backed by thorough research, in the “land of the free.”

The Forced War was published in West Germany in 1961 as Der erzwungene Krieg by the Verlag der Deutschen Hochschullehrer-Zeitung (now Grabert Verlag) in Tübingen. There it found an enthusiastic reception among Germans, academics and laymen, who had been oppressed by years of postwar propaganda, imposed by the victor nations and cultivated by the West German government, to the effect that the German leadership had criminally provoked an “aggressive” war in 1939. Der erzwungene Krieg has since gone through thirteen printings and sold over fifty thousand copies. The famous German writer and historian Armin Mohler declared that Hoggan had brought World War II Revisionism out of the ghetto” in Germany.

WHEN THE VARIOUS LETTERS AND ARTICLES from which I have quoted were written and published, my gloomy prognostications about the coming change in the diplomatic and military status of Britain and Germany were ridiculed.

The German declaration of rearmament in the teeth of the Treaty of Versailles, the re-entry into the Rhinelands, the re-nationalisation of German waterways were treated by Ministers of State and members of the public with extraordinary complacency. Not until Signor Mussolini had shaken all confidence in ‘collective security’ and Herr Hitler had attached to the Reich both Austria and a large part of Czecho-Slovakia, and had threatened the British Empire with war in the process, did my prophecies of 1933 and 1934 cease to be derided.

When Herr Hitler took open power in the January of 1933, I realised that his psychology was very different from that of our own statesmen and very different from that of the men who had led the German republic.

Here was a man whose life had been hard. In boyhood and youth he had been poor and thwarted. In early manhood he had been a serving soldier performing the most dangerous of front-line tasks, those of a battalion runner. He had been decorated for gallantry, had been wounded and gassed. In the years of later manhood he, with other ex-servicemen, had seen his country thrust down into the very mud of world disrepute. He had suffered from the ineptitude of those charged with the Government of his country. He had been affronted by the spectacle of members of an alien race flourishing in Germany and Austria while his own countrymen were in penury. He had attained power only by the use of force combined with a new application of rhetorical and propagandist powers.