By Deanna Spingola
Oil greed generates war! International banksters, in London and New York, had quickly recognized that control of petroleum was essential to power and profit. After Britain’s Rothschild-orchestrated depression of 1873 (coincided with the U.S. stock market crash of September 18, 1873), a growing divergence existed "between the depressed economy of the British Empire and the emerging industrial economies of Continental Europe," especially the very proficient German Reich. Crashes, depressions, recessions, deflations or inflations (elastic dollars) are all contrived cash manipulations that allow the banksters to subtly seize public and private resources at fire-sale prices.
As the Ottoman Empire declined, Britain and France benefited by extending their influence into Turkish territory. They devised massive projects such as railroads and the Suez Canal which kept the Arab countries deeply in debt to British and French banks. By the twentieth century, Britain ruled Egypt, Sudan, and parts of the Persian Gulf. France controlled Lebanon and Syria. Iran was divided between the British and Russians. The dismemberment of the Ottoman territories (from Turkey to the Arabian Peninsula) was the top priority of the imperialist powers. Germany, another industrialized country was a late arrival to the imperial buffet table but was far less aggressive and exploitive.
By 1885, German engineer, Gottlieb Daimler, used petroleum to "drive a road vehicle." Two of the "most modern and efficient port facilities in all of Europe" were in Germany: Hamburg and Bremen-Bremerhaven. Germany had contracted to build several railroad lines, first engineered by Wilhelm von Pressel in 1872. To finance the project, Sultan Abdul Hamid II asked George von Siemens of the Deutsche Bank which was a very progressive bank that, early on, invested heavily in electricity and power plants. The railroad would link Berlin to Baghdad, the intellectual center of the Arab world. The project would mutually benefit Germany, Turkey and the area now known as Iraq. In 1903, Germany obtained the mineral rights over the land on both sides of the proposed Baghdad railway line.
The railway would provide direct access to Middle East oil and bypass the British and French controlled Suez Canal. Germany was moving ahead and clearly threatened Britain’s global hegemony. "Internal combustion engines would soon revolutionize every aspect of human life, and control over the oil needed to fuel them would henceforth be the key to world power. Oil had been discovered and utilized around the Caspian Sea, in the Dutch East Indies, and in the United States, but neither Britain nor any of its colonies produced or showed any promise of producing it. If the British could not find oil somewhere, they would no longer be able to rule the waves or much of anything else."

In 1901, Muzzaffar al-Din Shah of Persia (Iran) sold the "special and exclusive privilege to obtain, exploit, develop, render suitable for trade, carry away and sell natural gas and petroleum …for a term of sixty years" to William Knox D'Arcy, a London-based financier. This concession, later known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, turned into "a blunt instrument of British imperial policy" and "shaped all of subsequent Iranian history." D’Arcy acquired this Persian oil concession for a measly $20,000. "He had made a fortune prospecting for gold in Australia but was not satisfied. He sensed that oil would prove even more valuable than gold and knew that Iran was, in the words of one geologist who had surveyed its terrain, ‘unquestionably petroliferous territory.’"
The British, who had enjoyed naval superiority since 1815, were threatened by German competition and monopolization of the North Atlantic by the German lines Hamburg-Amerika and Norddeutscher Lloyd. In 1903, Cunard chairman Lord Inverclyde received a 20-year loan at 2.5% interest, authorized by British Prime Minister Balfour, for £2.6 million to construct the Lusitania and Mauretania, the largest and fastest liners afloat. Upon completion, the government paid Cunard a "subsidy of £150 000 for maintaining both ships in a state of war readiness." However, in August 1914, the Lusitania, because of size and fuel consumption remained a merchant vessel.
In 1902, American conglomerate, the International Mercantile Marine Co. (owned by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1910 Jekyll Island attendee) absorbed Cunard’s British rival, the White Star Line. Morgan "fortuitously" sold the line before the stock market crash for a nice profit in 1926. Morgan despised uncooperative competition and always eliminated it. He purchased many of the White Star Line's rival shipping companies in order to control shipping prices. Construction of the White Star Line’s Titanic began March 31, 1909. The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic on April 15, 1912. Emergency response was too late, there were an inadequate number of lifeboats and other suspicious factors existed. Over 1500 people perished, including some influential people who allegedly opposed the formation of the Federal Reserve (America’s war checkbook): Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss and John Jacob Astor. An American and British Commissioner's Inquiry was held – "the loss of the said ship was due to collision with an iceberg, brought about by the excessive speed at which the ship was being navigated." Truth is rarely discovered by any Bankster-controlled government that convenes a commission. People who probe too deeply or otherwise disappoint their handlers get spitzered.
By 1905, the British were beginning to realize that petroleum was more efficient, less labor-intensive and strategically important. They imported it from America (Standard Oil), Mexico (dominated by the U.S.) or Russia. Britain kept ships in the gulf to deter others from India, one of the countries they had looted for years. They had major control of the Suez Canal (opened in 1869) via an 1875 "loan" from the Rothschild banking family. Britain was not only a step behind in energy sources but also in her technological, agricultural and industrial accomplishments.
"In 1912 a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the question of oil supplies in the context of naval requirements. It agreed with Churchill that: ‘We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the oil which we require.’" In 1912, the Turkish Petroleum Company was created by British, Dutch and German group and was given a concession to prospect for oil in the Baghdad and Mosul wilayet. In 1913, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, "anticipated" a world war and knew that he would need oil-powered ships to win. On June 17, 1914, he urged the British government to spend £2 million to buy 51 percent of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, financed in part by the Rothschild Bank. This transaction gave Britain a major interest in the Turkish Petroleum Company at the same time.
Churchill’s father, Randolph, was an intimate friend of Nathaniel Rothschild. British foreign policy and Rothschild foreign policy were one and the same. The interests of Britain became inseparable from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the only oil producing enterprise in the Middle East until 1927. During the first few years, Britain "extracted millions of barrels of oil in Iran," treated thousands of indigenous workers like slaves, "established a network of filling stations throughout the United Kingdom and sold oil to countries across Europe and as far away as Australia." Britain, experts at imperial exploitation, all but drained the life’s blood out of that desert land. The company has been known by various names: Anglo-Iranian, British Petroleum, or just BP (merged with Standard Oil).
Wars for oil or resource seizure require meticulous political planning. These plans typically include contrived emotionally-charged incidents for the purpose of gaining acceptance for organized mass slaughter from the propagandized populaces. One such incident was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent of Austria and his wife, Duchess Sophie, who were killed in Sarajevo (capital of Bosnia) on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Serbian, one of the six designated assassins, who belonged to the secret Black Hand Society. This influential terrorist brotherhood, created by army officers, used a skull and bones insignia and had a constitution. The Skull and Bones representation should never be taken lightly! The deaths of two people, plus ongoing politically-provoked powder keg issues, ignited a war that caused a dramatic increase in unemployment, diseases, poverty, decline of agriculture leading to famine, currency devaluation, emergence of new countries, the disintegration of governments, disruption of communications and the death and grievous injuries of millions.
German and Austria-Hungarian citizens viewed the assassination as a police matter that could be settled peacefully, without diplomatic clashes. However, the politicians had other ideas. Demands and accusations were made; lies were told and the situation accelerated. Serbia failed to meet the demands, known as the July Ultimatum, so politicians in Austria-Hungary declared war on July 28, 1914 on the grounds that Serbia had a role in the assassinations. Then politicians in Russia declared war on Germany on July 29, 1914. Then politicians in Germany declared war on Russia on August 4, 1914. Then prophetic politicians (Winston Churchill) in Britain entered the war on August 4, 1914 allegedly to protect Belgian neutrality. Then politicians in Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 6, 1914. Citizens never declare war – they just fight and die in them! Henry Kissinger, a typical elitist, referred to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. Military alliances, forged earlier to create a "balance of power" (to benefit Britain), based on bankster’s loans, investments or imperialist objectives, divided Europe into two hostile camps. Among others, they included the secretive Franco-Russian Alliance Military Convention, (August 18, 1892) the Triple Entente, (1907, Britain, France, Russia) the Triple Alliance (1882 Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) and the Entente Cordiale (1904, Britain, France). Predictably, most of Europe was soon ensnared in war.

In January 1914, six months before Ferdinand’s assassination, Britain was bankrupt. Consequently, Bank of England notes became legal tender (on a temporary emergency basis) and all gold was removed from circulation. Additionally, Britain introduced the progressive income tax in 1902 to appropriate the citizen’s resources. England’s gold reserves then went to the Rothschild-owned Bank of England to use for profit-producing warfare. To siphon additional gold, America would be brought into the war.
Before Ferdinand’s assassination, on May 23, 1914 the London Petroleum Review published a map of "Mesopotamia" showing all of the oilfields that would soon fall into Britain’s hands at the end of the bloody battle. "Mesopotamia," (became known as Iraq in the seventh century), is where the Germans had contracted to build that railroad that distressed the British so much. The Germans were also interested in cotton, oil, farming and trade with the locals, not just a railroad.
War was declared and by March 1915, Germany was running out of money, energy and food (due to a British blockade) and wanted to declare peace. But without Germany’s participation, Britain’s ambition to control oil at the end of the war would not materialize, Germany wouldn’t be crushed, the downfall of the Ottoman Empire would not occur, America’s gold would not be seized and the bankster’s profits would cease. The recently appointed head of the new American-based privately-owned Federal Reserve, Paul M. Warburg, came to Germany’s rescue with a source of credit arranged through his brother, Max M. Warburg, director of the family business – M. M. Warburg & Company (founded 1798). Both the Warburgs and the Schroders began their banking institutions in Hamburg, Germany after approval by the Accepting Houses Committee associated with the Bank of England which is controlled by the House of Rothschild.
To solve Germany’s food problem and keep the war going, the J. Henry Schroder Banking Company financed a "humanitarian" food program – the Belgium Relief Commission from 1915 to 1918. Germany, on her way to France, had invaded and occupied the neutral Belgium on August 3-4, 1914. Food was shipped, allegedly to the starving Belgians (due to the British blockade) but was actually sent to Germany, via the Rothschild railway lines. As their director for this "relief" effort, the Rothschilds selected American-born Herbert Hoover, residing in Britain. Hoover purchased and otherwise acquired and shipped food, from America, in partnership with Emilie Francqui, director of Société Générale de Belgique (a private banking corporation). Francqui had received a letter of permission from the German Governor General von der Goltz dated October 16, 1914. Francqui was later said to be "the richest man in Belgium, and among the twelve richest men in Europe." The Relief Commission was set up as a commercial endeavor to generously enrich Hoover and Francqui. Belgium was overcharged for food it allegedly received. This sham kept the war going for two additional years. By then, the U.S. had entered the war, an absolute necessity for participation in the Paris Versailles Treaty (signed June 1919).
Francqui, alleged to be involved in the atrocities committed in the Congo, and Hoover had been associated in a "number of scandals" including the attempted seizure of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (the Kaiping mines) in Tientsin, China, which purportedly set off the Boxer Rebellion which was an effort to expel all foreign businessmen from China. Hoover had been the mining company’s chief engineer but was still an employee (agent) for British-based Bewick, Moreing, and Company. Francqui had swindled Americans out of the Hankow-Canton railroad concession in China in 1901. Hoover purportedly used the mining company to transport 200,000 Chinese workers to the Congo to work Francqui’s copper mines. Because of other shady dealings, Hoover had been barred from dealing on the London Stock Exchange. Hoover’s associate, Stanley Rowe, got a ten-year prison sentence but Hoover escaped such consequences, showing once again that it helps to have friends in high places. He later became president of the United States, with the financial backing of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Company, Warburg Brothers, and the directors of Kuhn Loeb.

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A Century of War, Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by William Engdahl, pgs. 11-18
Behind the War on Iraq: Research Unit for Political Economy, Monthly Review. Volume: 55. Issue: 1. May 2003. Page 20
Hysteria Part 2. Hidden Motives: Millions of Murders from the Orient Express
A Century of War, Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by William Engdahl, pgs. 16-27
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer, Publisher: Wiley. Hoboken, NJ. 2003. Pg. 47-49Ibid. Pg. 33
A Century of War, Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by William Engdahl, pgs. 16-27
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer, Publisher: Wiley. Hoboken, NJ. 2003. Pg. 47-49
The Lusitania Timeline
White Star, Time Magazine, December 6, 1926
The White Star Line: Beginning Years
British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry Report on the Loss of the "Titanic."
A Century of War, Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by William Engdahl, pgs. 16-27
The Primacy of Oil in Britain’s Iraq Policy by Peter Sluglett
World War I
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer, Publisher: Wiley. Hoboken, NJ. 2003. Pg. 47-49
Who's Who: Gavrilo Princip
Black Hand-Secret Society
The Constitution of the Ujedinjenje ili Smrt - Unification or Death
WW1 Text history
Military Men Are Dumb, Stupid Animals, Portland Independent Media Center, June 7, 2003
The Franco-Russian Alliance Military Convention - August 18, 1892
Triple Entente
First Treaty of Alliance between Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy. Vienna, May 20, 1882
The Entente Cordiale Between The United Kingdom and France
A Century of War, Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by William Engdahl, pgs. 35-40
Ibid
German Economic Penetration in the Middle East, 1870-1914 by W. O. Henderson, The Economic History Review, Vol. 18, No. 1/2 (1948), pp. 54
Secrets Of The Federal Reserve - The London Connection by Eustace Mullins
Ibid
A Short History of The Round Table by Will Banyan, Nexus Magazine, Volume 12, Number 1 (December 2004-January2005)
February 19, 1901: Memorandum Relating to the Reorganization of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company
The Pall Mall Gazette on the Kaiping Mines in 1903
Herbert Hoover's Story on the Kaiping Mines
The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover, Under Two Flags by John Hamill, William Faro, Inc. New York, 1931, pg. 160
Secrets Of The Federal Reserve - The London Connection by Eustace Mullins
Original Source