Helfferich of the Deustche Bank once said of the rivalry between 19th century Germany and Great Britian, which led to world war 1:
Ever since Germany became the politically and economically strongest Continental power, did England feel threatened more from Germany than any other land in its global economic position and its naval supremacy. Since that point, the English-German differences were unbridgeable, and susceptible to no agreement in any one single question.
Today Germany no longer looks as if it were on the verge of achieving global dominance as was the case in the late 19th century and early 20th century; neither is Great Britian now the world's superpower. Global rivalry in the 21st century has evolved into a subtle and complex rivalry between the US/UK and China/ Russia. FW Ergdhal points out in his essay oil and WW1 that the 1st world war between Germany and Great Britain was more about oil than most people would like to think. This is much clearer in the rivalry between the Chinese and Americans, especially in regard to the rush for oil among other natural resources on the African continent. The so called Arab Spring which has been featured by the Western media as some kind of spontaneous democratic revolution sprouting from the fustrated hopes, dreams and ambitions of fustrated Arab youth oppressed by evil tyrants can be more honestly compared to the political turmoil of the Ottoman Empire especially in the Balkans which led to the rise of the Young Turks to power in Turkey in 1908. This political turmoil was due ofcourse to the natural decay of a decadent Turkish Ottoman civilization; but alot of it was, as with the case of the completely engineered Arab Spring, the crafty manipulations of British intelligence, employed on behalf of empire.
By the late 19th century, the British Empire was in decline. Great Britain however remained supreme in its dominance of world banking and its navy which was the largest in the world. It was in the area of industrial growth which the Germans were able to completely outdo the British. The death of Brithish Empire was a slow and painful one; it begun around the 1850s and accellerated with The Great Depression, a period of Economic stagnation which lasted 25 years, ending only in 1896. During the period of Decline the Germans were making remarkable advancements in industrial growth and output, advancements which even today remain apparent, especially compared to the British who today still remain an economy based largely on Finance rather than industrial output:
From 1850 to 1913, German total domestic output increased five-fold. Per capita output increased in the same period by 250%. The population began to experience a steady increase in its living standard, as real industrial wages doubled between 1871 and 1913.
In the decades before 1914, in terms of fuelling world industry and transportation, coal was king. In 1890, Germany produced 88 million tons of coal while Britain, produced more than double as much at 182 million tons. By 1910, the German output of coal had climbed to 219 million tons, while Britain had only a slight lead at 264 million tons. Steel was at the center of Germany's growth, with the rapidly-merging electrical power and chemicals industries close behind. Using the innovation of the Gilchrist Thomas steel-making process, which capitalized on the high-phosphorus ores of Lorraine, German steel output increased 1,000% in the twenty years from 1880 to 1900, leaving British steel output far behind. At the same time the cost of making Germany's steel dropped to one -tenth the cost of the 1860's. By 1913 Germany was smelting almost two times the amount of pig iron as British foundries.
The Alarm within Great Britain at the German threat only increased when the Germans through Admiral von Tirpitz embarked on a plan to build a German Dreadnaught-class blue water navy to challenge British sea supremacy. The British reacted by trying to modernise their Navy through switching from engines powered by coal to those powered by oil, which at the time had little commercial value. This idea was the brainchild of the British admiral Lord Fisher, who argued that oil technology was cheaper and more efficient. This was a dangerous plan as Britain had an abundance of coal but were unaware of any oil within their island territories at the time. The British Admiral Lord Fisher had made an address stressing on the need to switch from coal technology to oil technology in September 1882; he was made Britain's First Sea Lord ( supreme naval commander) by 1904; by 1912 under his recommendation the first British battleship using only oil fuel, the Queen Elizabeth, was begun. Winston Churchhill who had replaced Fisher as supreme naval commander said:
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 1899 the British had secured oil rights in Kuwait; by 1909 they had secured oilrights in Iran. However their plans to secure oil supplies for the oil powered naval fleet for the leaner and meaner British empire of the future were endangered by the German Rail Revolution. The Germans between 1870 to 1913 had doubled their kilometres of track in its bid to become one of the world's greatest Industrial powers. And apparently it worked as:
The German electrical industry grew to dominate half of all international trade in electrical goods by 1913. German chemical industry became the world's leader in analine dye production, pharmaceuticals and chemical fertilizers
But it did not stop there; the Germans had intentions of expanding this industrial growth by securing external sources for raw materials for their national industries and also by securing overseas markets for their industrial ouput. This they attempted to carry out with an ambitious railway plan meant to link Berlin to the Ottoman empire of the Turks. The Ottoman Empire at the time was known as the Sick man of Europe, and was seen as the last frontier for colonial exploitation after the world had been carved up between the Colonial European powers, mostly the Spanish, French and British. By November 27 1899, the Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II had awarded the Deustche Bank a concession for a railway from Konia to Baghdad and to the Persian Gulf.This ofcourse would mean the British supply of oil in Kuwait and Persia would have been under threat; as such a railway network would make it easy for the Germans to deploy their military in an attempt to sabotage the British supply of oil to nearby kuwait or Persia.
Berlin-Baghdad Railway
The British immediately went to work to defeat the German plan. They arranged peace agremments with other rival powers, Russia and France--The Triple Entente, in an attempt to isolate the Germans, who were left with only the Austria-Hungary empire as an ally. And then come in the Young Turk Revolution which ousted the Abdul Hamid II. It was ofcourse supposedly a democratic revolution started by youth whose hopes and dreams and ambitions were being continually thwarted by a decadent sultan. Well, maybe the Sultan & his empire were really decadent; maybe the emerging educated elites of Turkey as represented by the Young Turks were really fustrated, but there is more to the story than that says F W Engdahl:
The success of the so-called Young Turk revolution of 1908-9 in forcing the Sultan to reinstate a constitutional monarchy with a parliament unleashed a series of destabilizing revolts in the Balkan provinces of the empire. British intelligence was actively engaged in pushing events along. The Young Turk revolutions of 1908 and 1909, which ended the reign of Abdul Hamid in the Ottoman Empire, offered France and Great Britain an unprecedented opportunity to assume moral and political leadership in the Near East. Many members of the Committee of Union and Progress, the revolutionary party, had been educated in western European universities--chiefly in Paris--and had come to be staunch admirers of French and English institutions.[28] In 1908, as Constantinople was under the chaotic rule of the secular Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Anglo-Turkish relations were quite warm. The British Ambassador, Sir Gerald Lowther, at least in the initial days after the takeover in 1908, extended unlimited British support for the revolution. He told the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, “Things have gone as well as they could.” [29] The role of the Yung Turks, most of whom were members of various European freemason lodges, is a rich and important story beyond the scope of this brief essay. Initially at least the Young Turk regime viewed the agreements between the Sultan and the Germans on the Baghdad Railway and oil rights to be a symbol of the corruption and destruction of Turkish national resources.
So with the rise of the Young Turks came an acceleration of the events which destablised the Balkan part of the Ottoman empire. It eventually led to the Turkish loss of the Balkans; which meant the German railway could not be realised. In the case of the so called Arab Spring we see something quite similar. British and American intelligence fomenting supposed democratic revolutions in a strategic oilweathy region where they vie for power with rivals such as the Russians and the Chinese. In the case of Libya ( where China and Russia were the biggest players), this resulted in a Barbaric war which culminated with the deliberate and gruesome lynching of Qaddafi, directed by Western intelligence. The 1st important victim of the revolution was Egypt. There, groups of young activists many of whose leaders were trained and funded by the USA through the National Endowment for Democracy gathered in Tahrir Square demanding democracy. They were mostly middle class and educated youth with access to the social media; They had no program of Systematic demands which would inspire the rest of Egyptian Society, just the Western media and Aljazeera wasting precious tv time on them, making them look like something relevant or representative of all the Egyptian people. But they were able to achieve what they wantedthe Ousting of Mubarak, a leader far from perfect but very strong who seemed more and more intent on seeking closer relations with Iran which is in the Bulls Eye of the Anglo-Americans. Unsurprisingly these same used and manipulated crowds of protestors are now back on the streets asking the Military Regime they begged to oust Mubarak to oust itself.
In both Egypt and Libya (which supplies 3% of the world's oil supply), however the stated objectives of the Anglo-americans have been achieved. The Strong Independent and in the case of libya hostile, regime has been replaced with an unstable or puppet regime. In the case of Libya the new Prime Minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, surprise surprise isa Big Oil-Goon with numerous ties to Western Oil Corporations. In other words a pathetic puppet. No matter how evil one cannot help sometimes but admire or at least respect the sheer genius of this demoniacal Anglo-American Imperialist elite. But something that ought to worry us is the fact that the Balkans accelerated by Bristish manipulations led to world war I. With Anglo-Amercan plans to strike out against Iran and Syria, it won't be too imprudent to wonder if this Arab Spring is a precursor to World War III?
Ever since Germany became the politically and economically strongest Continental power, did England feel threatened more from Germany than any other land in its global economic position and its naval supremacy. Since that point, the English-German differences were unbridgeable, and susceptible to no agreement in any one single question.
Today Germany no longer looks as if it were on the verge of achieving global dominance as was the case in the late 19th century and early 20th century; neither is Great Britian now the world's superpower. Global rivalry in the 21st century has evolved into a subtle and complex rivalry between the US/UK and China/ Russia. FW Ergdhal points out in his essay oil and WW1 that the 1st world war between Germany and Great Britain was more about oil than most people would like to think. This is much clearer in the rivalry between the Chinese and Americans, especially in regard to the rush for oil among other natural resources on the African continent. The so called Arab Spring which has been featured by the Western media as some kind of spontaneous democratic revolution sprouting from the fustrated hopes, dreams and ambitions of fustrated Arab youth oppressed by evil tyrants can be more honestly compared to the political turmoil of the Ottoman Empire especially in the Balkans which led to the rise of the Young Turks to power in Turkey in 1908. This political turmoil was due ofcourse to the natural decay of a decadent Turkish Ottoman civilization; but alot of it was, as with the case of the completely engineered Arab Spring, the crafty manipulations of British intelligence, employed on behalf of empire.
By the late 19th century, the British Empire was in decline. Great Britain however remained supreme in its dominance of world banking and its navy which was the largest in the world. It was in the area of industrial growth which the Germans were able to completely outdo the British. The death of Brithish Empire was a slow and painful one; it begun around the 1850s and accellerated with The Great Depression, a period of Economic stagnation which lasted 25 years, ending only in 1896. During the period of Decline the Germans were making remarkable advancements in industrial growth and output, advancements which even today remain apparent, especially compared to the British who today still remain an economy based largely on Finance rather than industrial output:
From 1850 to 1913, German total domestic output increased five-fold. Per capita output increased in the same period by 250%. The population began to experience a steady increase in its living standard, as real industrial wages doubled between 1871 and 1913.
In the decades before 1914, in terms of fuelling world industry and transportation, coal was king. In 1890, Germany produced 88 million tons of coal while Britain, produced more than double as much at 182 million tons. By 1910, the German output of coal had climbed to 219 million tons, while Britain had only a slight lead at 264 million tons. Steel was at the center of Germany's growth, with the rapidly-merging electrical power and chemicals industries close behind. Using the innovation of the Gilchrist Thomas steel-making process, which capitalized on the high-phosphorus ores of Lorraine, German steel output increased 1,000% in the twenty years from 1880 to 1900, leaving British steel output far behind. At the same time the cost of making Germany's steel dropped to one -tenth the cost of the 1860's. By 1913 Germany was smelting almost two times the amount of pig iron as British foundries.
The Alarm within Great Britain at the German threat only increased when the Germans through Admiral von Tirpitz embarked on a plan to build a German Dreadnaught-class blue water navy to challenge British sea supremacy. The British reacted by trying to modernise their Navy through switching from engines powered by coal to those powered by oil, which at the time had little commercial value. This idea was the brainchild of the British admiral Lord Fisher, who argued that oil technology was cheaper and more efficient. This was a dangerous plan as Britain had an abundance of coal but were unaware of any oil within their island territories at the time. The British Admiral Lord Fisher had made an address stressing on the need to switch from coal technology to oil technology in September 1882; he was made Britain's First Sea Lord ( supreme naval commander) by 1904; by 1912 under his recommendation the first British battleship using only oil fuel, the Queen Elizabeth, was begun. Winston Churchhill who had replaced Fisher as supreme naval commander said:
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 1899 the British had secured oil rights in Kuwait; by 1909 they had secured oilrights in Iran. However their plans to secure oil supplies for the oil powered naval fleet for the leaner and meaner British empire of the future were endangered by the German Rail Revolution. The Germans between 1870 to 1913 had doubled their kilometres of track in its bid to become one of the world's greatest Industrial powers. And apparently it worked as:
The German electrical industry grew to dominate half of all international trade in electrical goods by 1913. German chemical industry became the world's leader in analine dye production, pharmaceuticals and chemical fertilizers
But it did not stop there; the Germans had intentions of expanding this industrial growth by securing external sources for raw materials for their national industries and also by securing overseas markets for their industrial ouput. This they attempted to carry out with an ambitious railway plan meant to link Berlin to the Ottoman empire of the Turks. The Ottoman Empire at the time was known as the Sick man of Europe, and was seen as the last frontier for colonial exploitation after the world had been carved up between the Colonial European powers, mostly the Spanish, French and British. By November 27 1899, the Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II had awarded the Deustche Bank a concession for a railway from Konia to Baghdad and to the Persian Gulf.This ofcourse would mean the British supply of oil in Kuwait and Persia would have been under threat; as such a railway network would make it easy for the Germans to deploy their military in an attempt to sabotage the British supply of oil to nearby kuwait or Persia.
Berlin-Baghdad Railway
The British immediately went to work to defeat the German plan. They arranged peace agremments with other rival powers, Russia and France--The Triple Entente, in an attempt to isolate the Germans, who were left with only the Austria-Hungary empire as an ally. And then come in the Young Turk Revolution which ousted the Abdul Hamid II. It was ofcourse supposedly a democratic revolution started by youth whose hopes and dreams and ambitions were being continually thwarted by a decadent sultan. Well, maybe the Sultan & his empire were really decadent; maybe the emerging educated elites of Turkey as represented by the Young Turks were really fustrated, but there is more to the story than that says F W Engdahl:
The success of the so-called Young Turk revolution of 1908-9 in forcing the Sultan to reinstate a constitutional monarchy with a parliament unleashed a series of destabilizing revolts in the Balkan provinces of the empire. British intelligence was actively engaged in pushing events along. The Young Turk revolutions of 1908 and 1909, which ended the reign of Abdul Hamid in the Ottoman Empire, offered France and Great Britain an unprecedented opportunity to assume moral and political leadership in the Near East. Many members of the Committee of Union and Progress, the revolutionary party, had been educated in western European universities--chiefly in Paris--and had come to be staunch admirers of French and English institutions.[28] In 1908, as Constantinople was under the chaotic rule of the secular Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Anglo-Turkish relations were quite warm. The British Ambassador, Sir Gerald Lowther, at least in the initial days after the takeover in 1908, extended unlimited British support for the revolution. He told the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, “Things have gone as well as they could.” [29] The role of the Yung Turks, most of whom were members of various European freemason lodges, is a rich and important story beyond the scope of this brief essay. Initially at least the Young Turk regime viewed the agreements between the Sultan and the Germans on the Baghdad Railway and oil rights to be a symbol of the corruption and destruction of Turkish national resources.
So with the rise of the Young Turks came an acceleration of the events which destablised the Balkan part of the Ottoman empire. It eventually led to the Turkish loss of the Balkans; which meant the German railway could not be realised. In the case of the so called Arab Spring we see something quite similar. British and American intelligence fomenting supposed democratic revolutions in a strategic oilweathy region where they vie for power with rivals such as the Russians and the Chinese. In the case of Libya ( where China and Russia were the biggest players), this resulted in a Barbaric war which culminated with the deliberate and gruesome lynching of Qaddafi, directed by Western intelligence. The 1st important victim of the revolution was Egypt. There, groups of young activists many of whose leaders were trained and funded by the USA through the National Endowment for Democracy gathered in Tahrir Square demanding democracy. They were mostly middle class and educated youth with access to the social media; They had no program of Systematic demands which would inspire the rest of Egyptian Society, just the Western media and Aljazeera wasting precious tv time on them, making them look like something relevant or representative of all the Egyptian people. But they were able to achieve what they wantedthe Ousting of Mubarak, a leader far from perfect but very strong who seemed more and more intent on seeking closer relations with Iran which is in the Bulls Eye of the Anglo-Americans. Unsurprisingly these same used and manipulated crowds of protestors are now back on the streets asking the Military Regime they begged to oust Mubarak to oust itself.
In both Egypt and Libya (which supplies 3% of the world's oil supply), however the stated objectives of the Anglo-americans have been achieved. The Strong Independent and in the case of libya hostile, regime has been replaced with an unstable or puppet regime. In the case of Libya the new Prime Minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, surprise surprise isa Big Oil-Goon with numerous ties to Western Oil Corporations. In other words a pathetic puppet. No matter how evil one cannot help sometimes but admire or at least respect the sheer genius of this demoniacal Anglo-American Imperialist elite. But something that ought to worry us is the fact that the Balkans accelerated by Bristish manipulations led to world war I. With Anglo-Amercan plans to strike out against Iran and Syria, it won't be too imprudent to wonder if this Arab Spring is a precursor to World War III?
