Amery's little secret

John Amery was a British fascist who toured the prison camps on behalf of the Nazis during WWII, trying to drum up some British enthusiasm for Adolf and co.

He also broadcast from Berlin, a la Lord Haw Haw, calling for peace between the two countries and Churchill’s removal from power.

One of the leaflets that he distributed in 1943 to the Brits who had been captured and interned in Paris, read as follows:

"Fellow Countrymen: 150,000 of our fellow countrymen are in prison in the home country, because they have declared themselves against this fracticidal war… These men have never been brought to trial Or even allowed to see a lawyer.

American troops… are arriving in increasing numbers in England. Naval bases and Colonies have been handed over to Mr. Roosevelt's administration…

Europe and our country, your wives and children at home are menaced by the invasion of the hordes of Bolshevik barbarity. (At the end of the war, Eastern Europe was almost wholly controlled by Stalin and those who thought as he did). For this reason I have approached the German Government with the proposal to form a British legion against Bolshevism, to be known as the Legion of St. George.

I appeal to all Britishers to answer this call to arms for the defence of all the principles that we Englishmen have been the first to proclaim in the world. The defence of our homes, of our children and of all civilisation against the dragon of Asiatic and Jewish bestiality. The St. George Legion will fight only against the Communists and on no ther front! All men will commence in their present rank and promotion will be open to all men alike, without any distinctions or qualifications, political or otherwise.

Within the limits of the military possibilities the Legion of St. George will fight at the junction of the German-Finish front, beside the troops of the undaunted liberty loving Finish people…

It is up to you civilians to give a hand to show that we intend to take our responsibilities to maintain the integrity of our Empire, by giving the world proof that we have not all sold out to the Jew... we shall save the British Empire from Communism and American rapacity.

We shall show the world that free Englishmen: never, never will be the slaves of a Jewish plutocratic tyranny, that we are worthy descendants of the yeoman that dictated the Magna Charta…

I beg… you put aside all hesitations, all the prejudice, all the lies that have led you where you are... that you take this immense opportunity".

In a 1944 lecture, Amery also said:

"At present... the government of England have associated themselves with Jews to acquire the wealth of the world."

Such treachery as this could not be stomached by a vengeful British government, and, at the end of the war he was arrested in Italy, brought back to England in chains and hanged as a traitor a few days before William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) met a similar fate. His body was buried a lime pit at Pentonville Prison.

His last words just before he was executed, which the BBC reported were:

"In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the powers of darkness which they represent. I am proud to die for my ideals, and I am sorry for the sons of Britain who have died without knowing why."

Albert Pierrepoint later said that Amery, whose career could not have been more different from that of his father, was one of the bravest men he had ever executed.

A few words on the Boer War, during which conflict Leo Amery first rose to national prominence, before we press on.

In This Age of Conflict: And the Source and Technology of Illegitimate Power, the historian, Ivor Benson says:

"If our century of conflict can be said to have began with the Anglo-Boer War, then it is in South Africa that we may have the best chance of seeing more clearly the crucial historical change that was to spark off a great chain reaction of change involving the whole world.

Until that time the record of the British Empire had been one of continuous progress, marred only by the hiving-off of the American colonies. Britain had outpaced all rivals in last century's scramble for colonial possessions, and could boast by the turn of the century to possess an ‘empire on which The Sun never set.’

However, by a mere accident of history, the Boers, who had trekked away from Britain's Cape Colony into South Africa’s virtually unpopulated hinterland, suddenly found themselves to be the owners of the world's richest goldfields. The eagerness of race-nationalists like Cecil John Rhodes and Alfred Milner to add the new Boer Republic of the Transvaal to the British Empire is understandable. In the climate of thought and sentiment then prevailing, not to have tried to grab so valuable a prize would have been virtually unthinkable.

After a war that proved unexpectedly costly both in lives and money, Britain succeeded in adding to its empire both the Transvaal and its ally in the struggle, the Orange Free State republic, but all this happened in circumstances mysteriously different from those that had attended all previous imperial conquests.

It was a war over which the British people were themselves sharply divided; it was a war against which the British Government had been sternly warned by one of the empire’s most loyal servants, General Sir William Butler, then Commander-in-Chief of British forces in South Africa; it was a war which gave rise to a greater outpouring of false communication than any other in British colonial history.

Noticed by few, and by even fewer understood, effective control of the British Empire at a decisive point in history had passed, if only momentarily, out of essentially British hands. Or to put it differently, the centre of gravity of real power in the world had shifted significantly.

That was the mysterious change that was to inaugurate a chain of reaction of more change, first for the British Empire and then for the whole world. More precisely, it was the first clear sign of the commencement of a process of change in the realm of finance, capitalism which was not to be complete before the middle of the 1930s.

Other changes are less readily noticeable, one of the most important of these being radical changes in the methodology of warfare, the human mind itself has become a battleground for warring interests as never before in recorded history. Political warfare, Von Clausewitz’s ‘war by other means,’ there has always been but never before on the scale practised after the turn of the century.

Persuasion there always was as a means of readying a population for war but the world was to encounter in the late 1890s something unprecedented in the quantity and audacity of the lying propaganda that was used in drawing the British people into the Anglo-Boer War.

Only a few of the major historic changes which ensued need be mentioned for our present purposes: the Anglo-Boer War; two World Wars; the Bolshevik Revolution and setting up of the Soviet Union as an industrial and military super-power; the dismantling of the colonial empires and conversion of the former colonies into new nations, few of them economically viable; the delivery of mainland China and other vast areas in the Far East to totalitarian socialist rule; the setting up of the United Nations with its innumerable agencies as the prototype of some form of world government and the progressive undermining of the national sovereignty of all the Western nations."

In a letter to the British Colonial Secretary from South Africa, dated 18 December 1898, General Butler, whom Benson mentions above, stated:

"All the political questions in South Africa and nearly all the information sent from Cape Town are being worked by what I have already described as a colossal syndicate for the spread of false information…

If the Jews were out of the question, it would be easy enough to come to an agreement, but they are apparently intent upon plunging the country into civil strife... indications are too evident here to allow one to doubt the existence of strong undercurrents, the movers of which are bent upon war at all costs for their own selfish ends."

In a June 1899 despatch from South Africa to the War Office, describing the efforts of the South African bankers to foment the upcoming Boer War, Butler descibed the Jewish finaciers as 'the train-layers setting the political gunpowder.'

In The Boer War Remembered, by Mark Weber, we are told:

"In a sense, the Anglo-Boer conflict was less a war between combatants than a military campaign against civilians. The number of Boer women and children who perished in the concentration camps was four times as large as the number of Boer fighting men who died (of all causes) during the war. In fact, more children under the age of 16 perished in the British camps than men were killed in action on both sides.

The boundless greed of the Jewish ‘gold bugs’ coincided with the imperialistic aims of British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, the dreams of gold and Diamond baron Cecil Rhodes, and the political ambitions of Alfred Milner. On the altar of their avarice and ambition, they sacrificed the lives of some 30,000 people who wanted only to live in freedom, as well as 22,000 young men of Britain and her dominions.

At its core, Britain's leaders were willing to sacrifice the lives of many of her own sons, and to kill men, women and children in a far-away continent, to add to the wealth and power of an already immensely wealthy and powerful worldwide empire. Few wars during the past one hundred years were as avoidable, or as patently crass in motivation as was the South African War of 1899-1902."

In his 1979 history, The Boer War, Thomas Packenham states:

"First there is a thin golden thread woven by the ‘gold bugs,’ the Rand millionaires who controlled the richest mines in the world. It has been hitherto assumed by historians that none of the ‘gold bugs' was directly concerned in making the war. But directly concerned they were…

I have found evidence of an informal alliance between Sir Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner, and the firm of Wernher-Beit, the dominant Rand mining house. It was this alliance, I believe, that gave Milner the strength to precipitate the war".

In The War in South Africa, the English economist, John Atkinson Hobson, tells us:

"We are fighting in order to place a small international oligarchy of mine-owners and speculators in power in Pretoria. Englishmen would do well to recognise that the economic and political destinies of South Africa are, and seem likely to remain, in the hands of men most of whom are foreigners by origin, whose trade is finance and whose trade interests are not British…

South Africa presents a unique example of a large press, owned, controlled and operated by a small body of men with the direct aim of bringing about a conflict which shall serve their business interests."

Hobson devotes an entire chapter of his book to mine ownership in the Transvaal. A few of the financial pioneers were Englishmen; he names among these Rhodes, Rudd and J. B. Robinson. These had all made their fortunes in South Africa, but the others, 'the small group of international financiers, chiefly German in origin and Jewish in race.'

However, Rhodes had already sought the monetary assistance of the Rothschilds, in order to buy out his rivals and gain complete control of the diamond industry in Kimberley.

In February 1899, Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, said this in Johannesburg:

"If it were possible to eject the Jew monopolists from this country’s neck and crop without incurring war with Great Britain, then the problem of everlasting peace would be settled in South Africa."

The second Boer War broke out shortly after Kruger said this.

On page 54 of his 1977 opus The Jews, Chaim Bermant, who is Jewish, tells us:

"They were a crucial element in the development of South Africa during the final quarter of the nineteenth century and a considerable proportion of the ‘Uitlanders,' whose restiveness undere Boer rule was to lead to the South African war, were Jews. Among them was ... Barney Barnato ... (who) built up one of the largest fortunes in South Africa and controlled a labour force of one hundred and twenty thousand men."

On page 356 of his 1986 book, Jewish Roots in the South African Economy, the Jewish scholar, Mendel Kaplan, said:

"The marketing of Diamonds, at the outset through individual dealers and later through the big Diamond syndicates, was largely handled by Jews...

The best of them… afterwards made their mark in the gold industry."

On pages 32 and 33 of Esau 's Tears. Modern Antisemitism and the Rise of the Jews, the American historian, Albert Lindemann, says:

"A European-wide body of opinion, cutting across class lines, focused on what was perceived as Jewish ruthlessness and immorality in search of profit. It was often asserted, and much discussed in the press, that the brutal Boer was manipulated to benefit wealthy Jews."

Jan Smuts, the South African Statesman and General, who was to become Prime Minister of that country, once said:

"It is ordained that we, insignificant as we are, should be amongst the first people to begin the struggle against the new world tyranny of capitalism."

Leo Amery was a war correspondent for The Times during the Boer War.

His reports from the front were uniformly jingoistic and anti-Boer, and, in 1902, he was rewarded for his efforts on behalf of the war effort by his being appointed as the Editor of The Times' History of the South African War. It is likely that Amery would have become the Editor of The Times itself but political ambition got in the way.

Professor Carroll Quigley, President Clinton's teacher and mentor at Georgetown University during the mid-1960s, and long time Washington insider, explained that the financial elite maintained global colonialism among their highest aspirations. In order to accomplish this, secret societies were administered largely on behalf of the Jewish Rothschild and Gentile Rhodes dynasties.

The central part of the structure was established by March 1891, using Rhodes' money. Rothschild trustee Lord Alfred Milner directed the organisation that was set up to control the foremost of the societies, the 'Round Table.' This organization 'worked behind the scenes at the highest levels of British government, influencing foreign policy and England's involvement and conduct of WWI' and later WWII.

In chapter 4 of The Anglo-American Establishment, Milner's Kindergarten: 1897-1910, Carroll Quigley, quotes Cecil Rhodes thus:

"Expansion is everything… The world is nearly all parceled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, those vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that".

In the same work Quigley states:

"Amery can be regarded as Milner's political heir. From the beginning of his own political career in 1906 to the death of Milner in 1925, he was more closely associated with Milner's active political life than any other person.

In 1906, when Amery made his first effort to be elected to Parliament, Milner worked actively in support of his candidacy. It is probable that this, in spite of Milner's personal prestige, lost more votes than it gained, for Milner made no effort to conceal his own highly unorthodox ideas.

On 17 December 1906, for example, he spoke at Wolverhampton as follows: ‘Not only am I an Imperialist of the deepest dye and Imperialism, you know, is out of fashion but I actually believe in universal military training... I am a Tariff Reformer and one of a somewhat pronounced type...

I am unable to join in the hue and cry against Socialism. That there is an odious form of Socialism I admit, a Socialism which attacks wealth simply because it is wealth, and lives on the cultivation of class hatred. But that is not the whole story; most assuredly not. There is a nobler Socialism, which so far from springing from envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, is born of genuine sympathy and a lofty and wise conception of what is meant by national life.’

These sentiments may not have won Amery many votes, but they were largely shared by him, and his associations with Milner became steadily more intimate. In his last years of public office, Milner was generally assisted by Amery (1917-1921), and when he died it was Amery who arranged the public memorial service and controlled the distribution of tickets."

In a 1993 autobiography of Leo Amery, Fighting on All Fronts: Leo Amery and the First World War, Patricia A. Ferguson tells us:

"Amery entered the House of Commons in 1911… with an agenda. He aimed to discredit and eventually eliminate classic liberalism… Amery wanted to replace liberalism with social imperialism… he would seek to solve Britain's and, indeed, the empire's social problems by… government intervention.

After the Asquith government fell in December 1916, and Lloyd George became Prime Minister... Amery was called to London by Viscount Milner, his mentor, and spent the rest of the war as a political secretary to the newly formed War Cabinet Secretariat and later to the Supreme War Council inVersailles…

As a War Cabinet secretary Amery found himself at the center of power without official power himself, but near enough to comment on issues and influence others…

Rawlinson was informed in February 1915 that Asquith disapproved of Amery's presence on his staff… After Rawlinson let him go, Amery was invited by Ian Hamilton to join his staff which was just leaving for the Dardanelles.

Asquith then informed Hamilton that he could not approve the appointment of Amery to his staff. Amery applied to Balfour for assistance, and finally Asquith conceded that Amery might be allowed to serve ‘as long as it was not on the personal staff of a senior officer.’

Amery became a regular member of the Balkan section of military intelligence under General Callwell in March 1915.

Amery … wrote to Lord Milner that Greece should be encouraged to enter the war with promises of British assistance and territory taken from their enemy Turkey.

General Callwell… and many of his brother officers insisted that until the army had conscription they would not be able to win the war. Knowing that Amery had been a renowned journalist and a tireless worker for the cause of national service, he wanted Amery to ‘work up the case for conscription,’ especially through private memoranda for members of the Cabinet, but also in the House of Commons and in the Press…

Amery… saw this as an admirable way to deal with the biggest obstacle to winning the war: Asquith's government. For Amery, the liberal enemy at home was almost as dangerous to Britain as the Prussian enemy abroad. He and his friends believed that liberalism was dead, but its carcass was still befouling Britain's life.

In response to a letter from Amery, Fred Oliver agreed with him that: ‘Squiff and Squiffery must go. Liberalism is... a dead foetus in the womb of Government, and more dangerous being dead and putrescent.’

Amery and Milner, who now saw that Kitchener had been a very bad choice for the War Office, could and did criticize the government for their lack of leadership, and for refusing to pass conscription when it was needed.

Amery found on returning from the Balkans that, other than Milner, the Unionists continued to uphold the facade of national unity by keeping criticism of the government to a minimum, and allowing no criticism at all of military issues. But as the months passed he found a small group of Unionists and Liberals whom defeat and frustration had made willing to fight the government on conscription.

Lord Curzon and Lloyd George, members of the government themselves, were also in favor of national service. Amery wasted no time in laying down the gauntlet. On 25th July, in moving the summer recess, Asquith was inspired to give a very laudatory summary of the year's major events. During the debate that followed Amery attacked the smug self-congratulation of the government as a bitter deception.

‘It is a time of immeasurable urgency.... We can not go on drifting as we have been doing. This afternoon I heard the Prime Minister… bidding us to persevere as we have been doing… towards inevitable victory.If we do persevere in conducting the War in the manner in which we have conducted it hitherto, if we persevere in postponing decisions… in waiting and seeing... in half-measures… with this dogged irresolution on every question of importance, the only end of our perseverance must be inevitable defeat.’

Amery continued the fight with a long article in The Times in August. He spoke again in debate in September. Having been accused of dividing the nation by arguing for conscription Amery was stung into replying: ‘When we are told to preserve a united front, the question that occurs to me is this: a united front for what purpose? United in action? United in defeating our enemies? That is the only form of unity that is worth having’…

By December 1915 Britain had lost over three hundred ninety thousand men in the war, with over sixty-one thousand lost just at the Battle of Loos in October, while the House debated national service. At the end of December Asquith promised to bring in some form of compulsory service legislation in the new year.

In January, 1916 Leo Amery invited several of his friends to dinner to discuss current political problems. Besides Milner and Carson, he invited Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, Waldorf Astor, owner of The Observer, and Fred Oliver. This group… was openly called the ‘Monday night cabal’ by its members.

Amery, at the first few meetings, wanted to bring Lloyd George together with Milner and Carson. He believed that these three men held the key to Britain's survival and victory. A. M. Gollin has pointed out that this was not just another ‘ginger group’, whose purpose was to spur Asquith's government to action.

This group's purpose was to bring that government down, and replace it with one to their own liking. In fact, in May 1916 Sir Maurice Hankey, Asquith's War Committee Secretary, warned the Prime Minister that the cabal was planning an intrigue, led by Amery 'the very soul of the Unionist War Committee’ and whose accomplices numbered Milner, Robinson, and Lloyd George.

In February Amery spoke in debate and again in April in secret session. Both times he railed against the government for its paralysis, especially in the realm of national service. It took those debates, more men lost, and several attempts at partial compulsion before Asquith finally introduced a complete Bill for Universal Military Service in early May, which became law by the end of May.

Once the bill was brought in, Amery's real job was completed, and the army sent him east, attached to the staff of the Salonika Army in late May 1915. His duties included evaluating information obtained by spies…

After checking in at home, he wandered down to the House to get some news, and found himself listening to Lloyd George's first speech as Prime Minister… When Amery saw Milner he discovered that he had been appointed one of two political secretaries to the new War Cabinet, under the direction of Sir Maurice Hankey who was superintending the new Cabinet Secretariat.

Still nominally attached to the War Office, Amery's official title was Personal Assistant Military Secretary to the Secretary of State for War temporarily lent to the War Cabinet. Since Amery had been rather forlornly hoping that he would get an under-secretary position in the new government, he did not find this sudden elevation extraordinary, but Hankey did.

Hankey had resisted having Amery, whom he regarded as ‘anti- Russian’ and ‘a scheming little devil’ thrust upon him by Milner. And Hankey was not the only one. Thomas Jones, the chief of the civil side of the Secretariat had written to his wife about the new secretaries; he said that "Amery I rather avoid as a politician and pressman'...

Amery's friend and fellow secretary Mark Sykes had introduced him to a serious consideration of Zionism, which had became a more controversial issue for Britain upon Turkey's entry into the war… His increasing respect for the Jewish settlers in Palestine and his consideration of what a strongly pro-western and Jewish nation could do for Britain strategically in the Middle East led him to be pro-Zionist as well.

Within the Cabinet Milner, Balfour, Smuts, and Lloyd George were very sympathetic to Zionism. As negotiations proceeded between the government and Zionists led by Dr. Chaim Weizmann on the question of a Jewish homeland, Amery, as well as Mark Sykes, took notes at meetings and wrote memoranda on the subject.

In fact, when the Cabinet became divided on the extent of the authority implied in the note which became known as the Balfour Declaration, Amery was asked to redraft the note to meet the objections of both the pro-Jewish and pro-Arab camps. His version, based on two other drafts by Cabinet members, satisfied everyone enough to gain approval, and was finally announced formally on 31 October 1917…

Amery was always on the side of planning and organization, new ideas, and unconventional methods to obtain his ends. In his work for the War Cabinet his earlier world vision predominated and to some extent he was able to further his imperial agenda. Amery had never felt that Britain's future lay in Europe…

The new Supreme War Council was set up at Versailles. Amery was appointed political secretary of the British section, liaison officer with the War Office, and personal representative of Lloyd George and Milner…

It is further evidence of the perception of Amery as schemer that was fairly widespread at the time. Colonel Repington, the Morning Post military correspondent, wrote a letter to the Morning Post in which he accused Lloyd George of starving the Western Front of men, using figures Repington could only have obtained from within the War Office…

But Hankey's biographer states that Hankey's anger at Amery having interviewed several people probably stemmed from his suspicions that Amery had talked to Repington and leaked the information. He points out that Hankey recorded that Derby was ‘indignant about the Amery episode.’ This accords with the earlier fears of Hankey, Tom Jones, and Walter Long that as a former journalist Amery could not be trusted…

When Milner moved into the War Office, Amery's position shifted so that, although he was still the secretary to the 'X' committee and sometimes vetted for Hankey with the War Cabinet, he spent most of his time working directly for Milner and living in London…

In his memoir he recalled: ‘My conception of a balanced world of inherently stable and largely self-regarding units stood no chance against President Wilson's facile slogan of self-determination, pressed home to its limits by the victorious smaller nations…

Amery began to work on the armistice terms. On 1 October the British and their Arab allies took Damascus; by the end of October Turkey capitulated, and Austria soon followed suit. Milner and Amery went to Versailles on 24 October to draft the Turkish armistice terms which Lloyd George subsequently approved….

What then was the compass of Amery's political powers? He had to some degree influenced the choice of Kitchener for Minister of War and the scope of recruiting schemes. He had written a case for conscription and brought the power brokers of both major parties together to bring down Asquith's government. He had encouraged Lloyd George in his struggle against the military clique, made the case for alternative theaters of war, and suggested Milner and Smuts for positions to which they were later appointed. More importantly, Amery seems to have changed the mood of the Unionist War Committee in its crucial meeting on 8 May 1918, and carried the day for Lloyd George.

In the struggle within Britain, Amery had been on the winning side. Amery had not yet held a position in the government, but during the war his influence was telling in several situations…

On 11 November Amery was already busy both with peace conference details and with writing campaign literature… Although Amery's future was far from assured at the end of 1918, the first of his career goals had been achieved: to his mind the election had spelled the end of nineteenth century liberalism and individualism, and for that he rejoiced greatly…

As junior minister in the Admiralty he led the 'revolt of the under-secretaries' in the Conservative party which toppled the Lloyd George coalition government in 1922. In the 1920s he served as First Lord of the Admiralty and then as Colonial and Dominions Secretary".

In July 1923, Amery, as 1st Lord of the Admiralty, in a Memorandum on Treaties of Mutual Guarantee and the Reduction of Armaments, stated:

"The dangers which confront us are in the Pacific, on the Afghan Frontier, in the Middle East, in Africa. In none of these are we likely to receive any assistance from the European Powers, whose peace we guarantee, that would justify the reduction of our exiguous forces by one ship or one battalion. In Europe, on the other hand, except for the possible menace of air invasion from France, we are in no danger whatever."

Got that wrong then, Leo. In the same memorandum he asserts:

"The people of the United States rejected the League of Nations because, reading the clauses of the Covenant literally, as they are accustomed to read the articles of their own constitution, they feared that they would be involved by it in commitments and responsibilities which they were not prepared to face. We, here and elsewhere in the Empire, accepted the League because we believed… that the method of conference and discussion among nations would tend to promote peace by better mutual understanding…

If we are told that our acceptance of the League compels us to draw from those very clauses the conclusions which America rejected, and that the general obligation to work for peace and disarmament is to issue in a rigid compact for the maintenance of the present territorial settlement, and for intervention in every case of 'aggression', then I am certain that the people of this country and of the Dominions will decide that the United States were right.

In their misgivings, and will come to regard the League of Nations as a League for repression and interference of which we should do well to wash our hands as speedily and as completely as possible."

Which non-interferential advice is commendable, if somewhat odd given his previous record.

However, by 7 November 1933, now relegated to the backbenches, Amery is stirring the pot:

"Germany wants to rearm. Germany means to rearm. Germany is going to rearm, and nobody is going to stop her. The Disarmament Convention is dead and no one is going to be able to galvanize it into life…

I believe that if only we would stop this wild-goose chase after… world disarmament and peace, and leave Europe to settle her own affairs, the profound desire of the peoples of Europe for peace, the economic forces which are bringing them together, will themselves, through the ordinary flexible adjustments of international intercourse, bring about a much more lasting and real solution."

After six years of war and 55 million deaths, Amery’s vision of 'a much more lasting and real solution' would be realised.

In her Amery autobiography, Patricia A. Ferguson continues:

"Amery left the cabinet in 1929 and did not serve in any governments in the 1930s. During these years he was a vocal opponent of disarmament and became a leader of an anti-appeasement faction after 1938. In that capacity he led the attack on Neville Chamberlain that brought down his government in 1940. Finally,as Secretary of State for India in Winston Churchill's war cabinet, he fought Churchill's obstructionism and charted the course for the transfer of power in 1947." (Amery had been born in India, in 1873)

In his 1955 autobiography, My Political Life, Amery described his role in forcing a reluctant Chamberlain to declare war on Germany:

"We met to rush through the Military Service Bill and were then told to wait for the Prime Minister's statement.

It was nearly eight before Chamberlain came to tell us, in a flat, embarrassed voice, first of all that Mussolini's project for a conference could not be entertained while Poland was subject to invasion; secondly that we were discussing with the French within what time limit it would be necessary for our Governments to know whether the German Government were prepared to withdraw from Poland; in that case we should be willing to regard the position open for discussion between the Polish and German Governments on the understanding that Poland's vital interests were safeguarded and internationally guaranteed; finally that we did not recognize the reunion of Danzig to the Reich which the Reichstag had confirmed by law the day before…

Whatever lay behind Chamberlain's statement it was essential that someone should do what he had failed to do… That was to voice the feelings of the House and of the whole country. Arthur Greenwood rose to speak for the Opposition.

I dreaded a purely partisan speech, and called out to him across the floor of the House: 'Speak for England'. The House broke up in confusion and dismay."

This is how A. J. P. Taylor, Britain’s preeminent historian of the second half of the twentieth century, describes the above events in his 1961 history, Origins of the Second World War.

"In the evening of 2 September Chamberlain was still entertaining the House of Commons with hypothetical negotiations: ‘If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty's Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the Polish frontier. That is to say, the way would be open to discussion between the German and Polish Governments on the matters at issue'...

Leo Amery called to Arthur Greenwood, acting leader of the Opposition: ‘Speak for England’… Ministers, led by Simon, warned Chamberlain that the government would fall unless it sent an ultimatum to Hitler before the House met again."

On 7 May 1940, Leo Amery attacked Neville Chamberlain, his own Prime Minister, once more in the House of Commons during the debate on the Norwegian Campaign.

"The Prime Minister gave us a reasoned, argumentative case for our failure… Wars are won, not by explanation after the event, but by foresight, by clear decision and by swift action…

We must have, first of all, a right organization of government… It must represent all the elements of real political power in this country, whether in this House or not… The time has come, in other words, for a real National Government…

It must always be left to some individual leader, working perhaps with a few others, to Express that will by selecting his colleagues so as to form a Government which will correspond to the will of the House and enjoy its confidence…

Just as our peace-time system is unsuitable for war conditions, so does it tend to breed peacetime statesmen who are not too well fitted for the conduct of war. Facility in debate, ability to state a case, caution in advancing an unpopular view, compromise and procrastination are the natural qualities, I might almost say, virtues, of a political leader in time of peace. They are fatal qualities in war…

For the Government of the last ten years to have bred a band of warrior statesmen would have been little short of a miracle. We have waited for eight months, and the miracle has not come to pass. Can we afford to wait any longer?

Somehow or other we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory... I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine…

This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go’."

Thus was Amery's old school friend and long-time comrade in Imperialist, Judaeophilic arms, Winston Churchill, ushered into power.

So, what have we learned about Leo Amery?

He 'entered the House of Commons in 1911… with an agenda.' He aimed to discredit and eventually eliminate 'classic liberalism' replacing it with 'social imperialism,' believing thereby that this would 'solve Britain's and, indeed, the empire's social problems by government intervention.'

Vicount Milner, closest associate and protegee of Britain’s 'greatest' imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, was Amery’s 'mentor.' He was 'regarded as Milner's political heir' and 'he was more closely associated with Milner's active political life than any other person.' He was 'a political secretary to the newly formed War Cabinet Secretariat and later to the Supreme War Council in Versailles,' during WWI.

Prime Minister Asquith 'disapproved of Amery's presence' on the staff of both Generals Rawlinson and Hamilton.

Amery criticized the government 'for their lack of leadership, and for refusing to pass conscription when it was needed' and he was 'accused of dividing the nation by arguing for conscription.'

'Amery Lloyd George, Milner and Carson were the three men who held the key to Britain's survival' and victory and that, according to A. M. Gollin 'this group's purpose was to bring that government down, and replace it with one to their own liking.' The War Committee Secretary had identified Amery as the leader of this 'cabal.'

Amery, in February and April, 1915 'railed against the government for its paralysis, especially in the realm of national service.'

Sir Maurice Hankey, the War Committee Secretary, resisted the appointment of Amery to the post of political secretary to the War Cabinet, describing him as 'anti-Russian' and 'a scheming little devil.' Thomas Jones, the chief of the civil side of the Secretariat said that 'Amery I rather avoid as a politician and pressman.'

Amery was a friend of Mark Sykes and that he introduced him to a serious consideration of Zionism, and the he soon became 'pro-Zionist as well.' In this regard, he was in accord with Milner, Balfour, Smuts, and Lloyd George.

Amery was asked to 'redraft the Balfour Declaration,' the note officially presented by the British Government to Lord Rothschild, which guarateed the Jews a homeland in Palestine, and that 'his version… satisfied everyone enough to gain approval.'

'Amery was always on the side of… new ideas, and unconventional methods to obtain his ends.' He 'never felt that Britain's future lay in Europe.' He was appointed 'political secretary of the British section, liaison officer with the War Office, and personal representative of Lloyd George and Milner.'

We learn that 'the perception of Amery as schemer… was fairly widespread at the time,' and that Maurice Hankey beieved that Amery had passed secret information to Colonel Repington which he then disclosed in the Morning Post.

Lord Derby was 'indignant about the Amery episode' and that this accorded 'with the earlier fears of Hankey, Tom Jones, and Walter Long that as a former journalist Amery could not be trusted.'

Amery was involved in work upon the terms of the armistice with Germany and that 'Milner and Amery went to Versailles on 24 October to draft the Turkish armistice terms which Lloyd George subsequently approved.'

We learn that 'he had to some degree influenced the choice of Kitchener for Minister of War and the scope of recruiting schemes.' We learn that 'he had written a case for conscription and brought the power brokers of both major parties together to bring down Asquith's government.' We learn that 'he had encouraged Lloyd George in his struggle against the military clique, made the case for alternative theaters of war, and suggested Milner and Smuts for positions to which they were later appointed.'

We learn that 'Amery seems to have changed the mood of the Unionist War Committee in its crucial meeting on 8 May 1918, and carried the day for Lloyd George.' We learn that 'to his mind the (1918) election had spelled the end of nineteenth century liberalism and individualism.'

Amery led the 'revolt of the under-secretaries' in the Conservative party which toppled the Lloyd George coalition government in 1922.

As early as 1933, he was warning of Germany’s intention to rearm and he thought that 'world disarmament and peace' was nothing more than a 'wild-goose chase,' in the House of Commons.

On the day before WWII broke out, when Chamberlain was still trying to avert war, Amery was prepared to humiliate his own leader when he loudly suggested that the leader of the opposition 'Speak for England.'

We learn that he was 'a leader of an anti-appeasement faction after 1938.' He led the attack on Neville Chamberlain that brought down his government in 1940, which led to Churchill’s becoming Prime Minister.

We know that Amery’s son, John, was hanged as a traitor in 1946. We know that, as Secretary of State for India in Winston Churchill's war cabinet, he 'charted the course for the transfer of power' in India.

What we now know is this:

A 'scheming little devil' almost no one has ever heard of, had the most profound influence on the outcome of world events in the first half of the twentieth century.

Without Leo Amery’s constant chivvying, criticism and double dealing, WWI might have ended in 1916, when the Germans, who were winning the war at the time, offered to pack up and go home. Instead of which Asquith and co. stood down and the militarists won the day. If the war had ended in 1916, the lives of five million soldiers would have been saved and a further twenty million world wide deaths from the Spanish flu, which began in the Belgian trenches in 1918, might have been prevented.

Without The Balfour Declaration, which Amery wrote, the American Jews would not have persuaded Wilson to enter the war on behalf of the allies and the war might have petered out much sooner, as suggested in the paragraph above. Certainly any peace agreement would not have dealt so unjustly with Germany had the war ended in stalemate, as it most likely would have done if America had stayed out of it. The conditions whereby WWII became an inevitability, would not, therefore, have come to pass.

The Balfour Declaration gave world Jewry a tenuous legal basis for their claim upon a Palestinian terrory which did not belong to them. In fact, as the British government had promised to create a homeland for the Jews within the borders of a country which did not belong to them either, the legalities of the situation were always pretty flimsy.

However, without Balfour’s promise, the world might not have been embroiled in the terrible, troublous Middle East conflicts that have plagued the area since the time Britain took charge of those territories that had previously been governed by the Turks and the Jews began to flood into the area against the wishes of the Arab majority.

Chamberlain might just have maintained his courage, in the face of Washington’s furious, year long, behind the scenes clamour for war, and prevented WWII from breaking out, had Leo Amery not attacked his leader on 2 September 1939, when, from the government front benches, he encouraged the leader of the opposition, Arthur Greenwood, to 'Speak for England.'

Without Leo Amery’s 'go, go, for God’s sake go' speech in May 1940, which so humiliated the ailing Chamberlain, the old man might not have stepped down and Churchill might not have come to power. If he had not, WWII would, almost certainly, have petered out in the West in 1940 and around tens of millions of lives might well have been saved.

It is a grotesque irony that the Norwegian campaign, whose disastrous conclusion created the political climate necessary for Chamberlain’s resignation, was the brainchild of Winston Churchill. It was he who insisted that the feeble, ill thought out attack be launched. Chamberlain and the military strategists had been against it.

In 1915, when Churchill sprung another of his hair-brained schemes upon the world, he was sacked as First Lord of the Admiralty when the Dardanelles campaign failed utterly to attain its objectives. However, by the time the gung-ho incompetent had been removed to a place where he could do no more harm, around 45,000 British, French, Australian, New Zealand and Indian boys had been slaughtered and almost 100,000 had been injured on the Gallipoli beaches.

It was a different world in 1940, however, and strategic buffoon, though Churchill was, he was the only parliamentarian available and willing to continue a war that almost all of those who would do the dying and many of those who would send them off to die had never wanted in the first place.

From the beginning of the war until the day Chamberlain left office, he and Hitler had maintained an unspoken 'gentleman’s agreement' that strategic targets only would be attacked by their various armed forces.

On the very day Churchill became prime Minster, the indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population of Germany began. Hitler did not retaliate in earnest for some time. When he did, the attack upon London would become known as the Blitz.

The mass bombing of Germany by Churchill and his bloodthirsty cohort 'Bomber' Harris, followed by the non-stop, night and day attacks that occurred once the Americans joined the war, killed at least ten times as many German civilians as were lost in the Blitz.

This was never mentioned by the American media during the build up to their entry into the war. Indeed, it is now known that Churchill set Harris upon the civilian centres of Germany in order to provoke a retaliation in kind which could be used by American media to convince a reluctant nation of the righteousness of a war against the brutal Hitler regime.

Leo Amery was a leading light of the secret organisation which came to be known as 'The Focus.'

The Focus had its origins in a group called the Anti-Nazi Council, which was formed in America in 1933 by Samuel Untermeyer.

IN earlier times, the price this man had exacted from President Woodrow Wilson for expunging Wilson's infidelities with the wife of a former colleague at Princeton from the public record was the appointment of the first Jew to the Supreme Court. Once Louis Brandeis had been elevated, he became Wilson's most trusted confidant and he was instrumental in persuading the high-minded academic to enter WWI on behalf of Britain and the Allies.

Untermeyer called for a world wide boycott of German goods in 1933 and, if German Jewry hadn't balked against the idea, this would, almost certainly, have come about. As Germany was only sixty or so percent self-sufficient in food at the time, the consequences of such a bringing-to-heel might have been disastrous. Indeed a banner headline in The Daily Express of the time read:JUDAEA DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY.

The overall goal of The Focus was to bring down the Hitler regime and to restore the status quo in Europe. Any and all means were to be used to achieve this. The movers and shakers of World Jewry ensured that the cashbox was always full and the sweeteners were dispensed with unquestioned regularity.

Churchill benefited hugely from this generosity. Indeed, when The Focus first intervened, he was on the point of selling his country home in Kent in order to pay off his enormous debts. Once the various shadowy benefactors stepped in, such monetary worries were permanently taken care of.

In 'Churchill’s War,' vol. i: The Struggle for Power,' David Irving tells us thus how various Jewish benefactors clubbed together to bankroll Churchill into backing their anti-Hitler campaign.

"Playing rough in a speech at Horsham on July 23 he appealed over Attlee’s head to trade unionists and Leftist intellectuals. 'All the left wing intelligentsia,' he would triumph four months later to his son Randolph, 'are coming to look to me for protection, and I will give it wholeheartedly in return for their aid in the rearmament of Britain.'

On the day after the Horsham speech the ten top members of the Anti Nazi Council trooped into Morpeth Mansions, his London pied-à-terre, for a second conspiratorial luncheon. In response to Churchill’s wishes for a less negative title, they now called themselves the Focus...

There were embarrassed coughs when the organising secretary of the A.N.C., A. H. Richards, inquired where the money for all this was to come from; Mr Churchill appeared angry at the question...

Funds had been arranged two days earlier at a private dinner in North London, hosted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Its vice-president Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, chairman of British Shell, was a charismatic Zionist extrovert who would become, in the words of his authorised biographer Robert Henriques, the 'veritable dynamic force of Focus.'

At a dinner on July 22 [1936] at his home, Caen Wood Towers, he launched the initial secret £50,000 fund for the Focus. His associates signed immediate cheques for £25,000 and pledged the rest. It was a colossal sum for such an organisation to butter around in 1936 - five times the annual budget of the British Council".

This is what The Focus's most grateful obligant had to say of its precursor in a 1936 letter to his son, Randolph:

"The basis of The Anti-Nazi League is, of course, Jewish resentment."

On 12 January 1999, under the heading, Balfour Declaration's Author Was A Secret Jew, The Jerusalem Post presented the following article to the world:

"Leopold Amery, the author of the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 document from British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild which laid the groundwork for the establishment of the State of Israel, was a secret Jew.

This has been disclosed in just-published research by William Rubinstein, professor of modern history at the University of Wales, who says Amery hid his Jewish background. Ironically, one of Amery's sons, John, achieved infamy when he defected to Nazi Germany and was hanged for treason in London after World War II. The other son, Julian, succeeded his father as a member of Parliament and was a staunch supporter of Israel…

In his 1955 autobiography, Amery, who was assistant secretary to the British war cabinet in 1917, said his own father, Charles Frederick Amery, came from an old English family. His mother, Elisabeth Leitner Amery, he wrote, was part of a stream of Hungarian exiles who fled first to Constantinople and then to England.

According to Rubinstein's research, Amery's mother was born to Jewish parents in 1841 and was named Elisabeth Joanna Saphir. The family lived in Pest, which later became part of Budapest and contained the city's first Jewish quarter.Both of her parents were Jewish, says Rubinstein, who adds that Amery himself changed his middle name from Moritz to Maurice in an attempt to disguise its origins.

As assistant secretary to the war cabinet, Amery not only drafted the Balfour Declaration, but also was responsible for establishing the Jewish Legion, the first organized Jewish fighting force since Roman times, which proved to be the forerunner of the modern Israel Defense Forces.

Later, as secretary of state for dominion affairs from 1925 to 1929, he spearheaded what many regard as the most impressive period of peaceful growth in pre-state Palestine. But his most significant contribution to British politics was a powerful speech in parliament which is thought to have played a key role in precipitating the departure of prime minister… Chamberlain in 1940 and the accession to power of Winston Churchill…

Rubinstein, whose disclosures are contained in the February edition of History Today, describes Amery's deception as ‘possibly the most remarkable example of concealment of identity in 20th century British political history.’

Rubinstein, who suspects that both of Amery's sons knew of their Jewish origins, believes Leopold Amery decided to conceal his own Jewishness… because of the obstacles it might have posed at the time to his political ambitions".

I think William Rubinstein is wrong whe he ‘suspects that both of Amery's sons knew of their Jewish origins’.

I don’t think a man like Leopold Amery would have confided his secret to anyone at that time, not even his son, John. In May 1944, John said:

"At present ... the government of England have associated themselves with Jews to acquire the wealth of the world."

Not something that you would expect someone who knew the truth of his origins to say. I think John Amery went to his death unaware of his racial antecedents. However, as far as I’m concerned, whether or not he knew his father was a Jew is immaterial. He believed himself to be fighting for the land of his birth when he tried to persuade his fellow Britons to take up arms against the Bolsheviks instead of the Nazis.

When John Amery was hanged as a traitor in 1946, he died an Englishman. When Leo Amery passed away in 1955, he died a Jew. Why was Leo Amery a Jew and his son not? Talmudic law states that anyone born of a Jewish woman is a Jew. John Amery’s mother was not Jewish, Leo’s was.

If you had to choose a traitor to stand for election as 'traitor of the month' and you had only John and Leo to choose from, I reckon that your choice would significantly affect your chances of getting an invitation to the next British Board of Jewish Deputies ball.