Verdun 1916: Quando a morte se fartou
(Fabricio Gustavo Dillenburg)
Erich von Falkenhayn, comandante do Estado-Maior alemão, como seu adversário francês, também almejava um rompimento com a guerra de posições, livrando-se da maldição da guerra estática que impedia manobras, fundamentais para garantir, novamente, a iniciativa. De fato, o início de 1916 dava claros indícios, para os alemães, de que o inimigo agiria com mais vigor, principalmente porque, como tudo levava a crer, os britânicos seriam incorporados às ações com maior amplitude de coordenação.
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Segundo suas memórias, Falkenhayn estudou laboriosamente o terreno, buscando um objetivo no qual fosse possível colocar os franceses em uma armadilha mortal. Desejava encontrar um ponto no qual os franceses se vissem obrigados a alocar todos os recursos disponíveis, forçando uma luta desesperada que consumisse a sua capacidade de resistência. Seu conceito de guerra, segundo suas próprias palavras, era esvair a nação inimiga, sangrando suas melhores tropas.
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Uma decisão, entre os comandantes alemães, foi tomada: a fortaleza de Verdun seria o alvo e, o instrumento, o V Exército - orgulhoso representante das mais duras tradições prussianas - sob o comando do príncipe herdeiro Guilherme e do General Schmidt von Knobelsdorf. Partindo do pressuposto de que as intenções de Falkenhayn eram verdadeiras, o propósito não seria, necessariamente, tomar o local, mas prover uma área de extermínio, na qual a artilharia e a infantaria alemãs pudessem agir com maciço poder de destruição.
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A tensão sobre a França, entrementes, se fazia sentir, quase ao ponto da ruptura, e não havia um aliado próximo - com exceção dos próprios ingleses - para lhe socorrer. A pressão pontual poderia fazer com que o exército francês, já debilitado, se esvaísse em recursos, sem chance de retraimento, sob pena de perder o próprio país. Para Falkenhayn, que queria evitar, num primeiro momento, "a melhor espada inglesa", não restava dúvidas: o sul do Somme (Belfort ou Verdun) - setor que manteria a Grã-Bretanha fora do combate imediato - deveria ser o túmulo das forças francesas.
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Verdun era um antigo ponto forte, dividido ao meio pelo rio Meuse (Mosa), considerado a porta de entrada para o centro do país. No centro da área havia uma cidadela, erguida no século XVII e reforçada no século XIX, que contava com instalações subterrâneas para as tropas. Além de seus muros, distante, aproximadamente, oito quilômetros, construiu-se um anel reforçado por cerca de trinta pontos-fortes, sendo quase dois terços protegidos sob a terra. Torres móveis, com canhões de 75 a 155mm, serviam como defesa ativa. Mas, infelizmente para os franceses, não havia coesão entre os fortes, construídos em dureza, armamento e posicionamento variáveis.
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Com seus grandes espaços arborizados e suas bucólicas colinas, sem artilharia, Verdun foi recheada com trincheiras, solução paliativa às suas torres desnudadas. No momento crucial, quando o ataque alemão foi iniciado, menos de trezentas armas, carentes de munição, estavam disponíveis.
O inimigo estava ciente das dificuldades da França em socorrer Verdun com tropas oriundas da retaguarda, devido ao precário sistema de transporte na área, algo que os alemães poderiam compensar muito bem, pois administravam uma estrada de ferro a menos de vinte quilômetros da cidadela. Além disso, era evidente a importância de Verdun para os franceses, sobretudo por seu caráter psicológico.
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Linhas telefônicas não haviam sido completamente instaladas, a comunicação entre as trincheiras era medonha e abrigos contra ataques de artilharia eram raros e esparsos. Quando o General Philippe Pétain foi designado para substituir Herr, poucos dias antes do ataque alemão, mostrou-se indignado com o estado das coisas.
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Em 12 de fevereiro de 1916, as forças alemãs já haviam deslocado 1.400 peças de artilharia e pelo menos nove divisões, dispostas em uma frente estabelecida a leste do Meuse, contra duas divisões francesas e, comparativamente, apenas um quarto do número de canhões. Faziam parte das forças germânicas, inclusive, o monstruoso morteiro Grosse Bertha, de 420 mm, apoiado por morteiros austríacos de 305 mm e canhões navais e 380 mm, além dos novíssimos lança-chamas. Uma repentina queda de neve, contudo, seguida de forte neblina, impediu que o ataque iniciasse na data marcada, favorecendo um pouco a defesa, que corria contra o tempo para melhorar suas posições.
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A situação, bastante desfavorável à França, era reforçada pela total segurança logística germânica, cujas tropas estavam servidas por nada menos do que uma dúzia de linhas ferroviárias, a maioria de bitola larga, além de disporem de três pontes e considerável apoio aéreo. Comparativamente, os franceses possuíam apenas uma ferrovia de bitola estreita e uma estrada. Outras duas vias de acesso estavam inacessíveis: uma havia sido capturada, a outra podia ser bloqueada pelo fogo da artilharia alemã.
A ofensiva, que teve início sob a palavra-chave Gericht (tribunal), deu-se em 21 de fevereiro de 1916. Embora tenha enfurecido o comando alemão, a semana e meia de atraso, devido ao tempo ruim, representou para os franceses um auxílio impagável para reforçar Verdun com tropas, alimentos, munição e equipamento (insuficientes, apesar da percepção geral de que haveria, ali, um ataque). Às 7h15min da manhã, afinal, esgotou-se o seu tempo e o inferno se abriu às margens do Meuse. O primeiro tiro foi dado por um canhão Krupp de 380 mm, que atingiu a catedral de Verdun, distante 32 km. Nas horas que se seguiram, mais de dois milhões de obuses caíram sobre a cidadela, matando 20 mil franceses, literalmente engolidos pela terra em convulsão. Povoados, bosques, aldeias foram aplainados pelo fogo da artilharia.
A ideia do príncipe herdeiro Guilherme era, simplesmente, usar os canhões para abrir um rombo nas defesas e lançar, por ele, sua infantaria em carga. O plano foi aceito por Falkenhayn mas, com receio de que Verdun fosse tomada muito rapidamente - eliminando a possibilidade de uma batalha prolongada capaz de destruir as forças francesas - as reservas que deveriam estar disponíveis para o V Exército, no caso de sucesso no rompimento, foram seguras pelo Comando.
Aplicando seu planejamento à risca, com um ótimo sistema de observação - e, apesar do bombardeio sistemático - os alemães verificaram que muitas posições francesas permaneciam guarnecidas. Renovou-se, portanto, a carga de artilharia, desta vez com o auxílio de morteiros, buscando os pontos que permaneciam como ameaça. Cautelosas, patrulhas de combate varreram, então, à frente, em busca de lacunas nas defesas, e encontraram o inimigo aturdido e desorganizado. Comunicado, o Comando agiu.
A investida foi devastadora, embora não definitiva. Um impressionante bombardeio de área prenunciou o deslocamento de 140 mil alemães, contra-atacados por incursões francesas audaciosas, mas pouco efetivas.
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A fortaleza de Douaumont foi uma das primeiras a cair, tomada em total surpresa: a grande maioria dos 63 homens da guarnição, num daqueles momentos surreais da guerra, assistia a uma palestra quando chegou uma patrulha de dez alemães. A plateia foi trancada na sala por um sargento do 24º Regimento de Brandenburgo que penetrara no forte, aparentemente sem ser incomodado. Somente um dos canhões chegou a dar combate, mas logo silenciou. Foi um desastre humilhante para os franceses, já que abriu um importante espaço de penetração para o exército inimigo.
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O início da primavera trouxe muita lama, transformando a região em um colossal atoleiro, enquanto os franceses lançavam tudo que tinham contra os alemães, tentando segurá-los. A situação continuava desesperadora, mas pelo menos uma relativa equivalência numérica foi obtida em artilharia e aviação, enquanto os fortes que ainda restavam eram rearmados, às pressas, com o que havia disponível.
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Em março e abril, Falkenhayn deu ímpeto a duas outras ofensivas, dando vazão a avanços e recuos visando os flancos, entre colinas bombardeadas incessantemente por ambas as artilharias. As trincheiras foram soterradas e os buracos abertos pelos obuses passaram a servir de abrigo aos combatentes. Faziam-lhes companhia, nesses espaços, restos de corpos semienterrados na lama.
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Se o objetivo germânico, de sangrar as tropas francesas até seu limite, estava sendo um sucesso, os alemães também mergulhavam no mesmo destino. Não havia dúvidas de que, se o ritmo da carnificina continuasse, logo não haveria mais quaisquer reservas, e a operação toda se tornaria um desastre total.
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[Falkenhayn] buscou promover um assalto decisivo às defesas e tomar, de uma vez por todas, Verdun. No início de junho, avançou sobre Thiaumont, Vaux e Souville, sob o fogo de sua artilharia, equipada com obuses carregados com gás fosgênio (dicloreto de carbonila).
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Nos sanguinários embates que se seguiram, Fort Vaux destacou-se pela resistência. A fortaleza foi martelada incessantemente, até que o avanço conquistou a área superior. Nos túneis que ocupavam os subterrâneos, a luta se estendeu até o início de junho, num mortal jogo de gato e rato no qual os combates aconteciam, frequentemente, corpo-a-corpo. Enfraquecidos, os franceses foram, mais uma vez, derrotados.
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Pétain solicitou a Joffre para abandonar o setor, o que lhe foi negado. Para os franceses, Verdun se tornara o que Ypres fora para os britânicos, e a retirada estava fora de questão. Restava-lhe resistir, o que foi feito usando todos os meios disponíveis e, em desespero, a artilharia, principalmente nos arredores de Souville. A paisagem tornou-se lunar.
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Mas Falkenhayn também se via em apuros. Começou a se dar conta da armadilha em que se metera, e metera seus homens. Não havia mais como retroceder, e não possuía forças suficientes para um golpe final.
Em 1º de Julho, com a abertura da planejada Batalha do Somme, as coisas começaram a complicar para os alemães. Tropas tiveram que ser deslocadas para cobrir contra-ataques, e o ímpeto alemão arrefeceu, salvando Verdun da derrota.
Na frente oriental, o General Alexei Brusilov comandou um ataque aos austríacos, desestruturando suas defesas e obrigando os alemães a voltarem seus esforços para impedir o desmantelamento da frente. Falkenhayn viu-se obrigado a deslocar três divisões, interrompendo o processo já penoso de manter terreno e enterrando, definitivamente, os planos de conquista da área. Pela falha em concluir a tomada do objetivo, ele foi substituído pelo Marechal Paul von Hindenburg.
Fracionada em duas frentes, as forças alemãs perderam a força concentrada necessária para decidir a batalha. Em outubro, pregando a teoria de Foch, sobre o poder da artilharia, os franceses iniciaram uma série de contra-ataques no perímetro de Verdun. Com intenso uso de bombardeio, a infantaria francesa conseguiu fincar pé no terreno. Os Fortes de Douaumont e Vaux foram retomados em outubro e novembro; em dezembro, os germânicos estavam sendo empurrados às suas linhas originais. Logo, estavam na defensiva, lutando para sustentar suas posições. Sua moral nunca mais voltou a ser a mesma.
Batalha de atrito sem igual, Verdun passou a representar a vontade de defesa do solo pátrio, acima de quaisquer sacrifícios. Do ponto de vista humano, foi a mais longa e sangrenta batalha da História.
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A batalha foi cruel ao extremo, de certa forma despropositada em seus objetivos, uma mostra do que comandos inflexíveis podem provocar a um exército, e sem verdadeiros vencedores. Contudo, não foi somente uma chacina. Como parte de um todo bastante complexo, Verdun serviu para que as táticas de combate fossem exploradas e melhoradas, principalmente no que diz respeito ao uso da artilharia como apoio imprescindível ao avanço da infantaria, o que seria, posteriormente, estendido ao uso primitivo da aviação. A flexibilidade tática tornar-se-ia uma necessidade, com as percepções derivadas dos sangrentos (e muitas vezes inúteis) combates, e ficou absolutamente claro que a principal qualidade desejável ao soldado era a resistência, sob condições que seriam, sob outras circunstâncias, intoleráveis ao ser humano.
Fonte:
http://www.nucleomilitarblog.com/2014/03/batalha-de-verdun.html (PDF)
Mais:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19p9kv
http://gottmituns.net/2013/03/18/german-veterans-of-verdun-video-interviews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj3n02CQJiU
Trechos de H.G.J. Moseley: The Life And Letters Of An English Physicist (1974), de J.L. Heilbron.
In 1912, encouraged by a travel grant of £15,000, the British Association for the Advancement of Science agreed to hold its meeting for 1914 in Australia. After several changes of mind Harry [Moseley] decided that he was far enough ahead of that "horde of hungry Germans," his competitors, to spare the time to attend, and on June 12, 1914, he and Amabel, who went to see the scenery and some Australian cousins, sailed from Liverpool.
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[...] reading a paper at Sydney on "High Frequency Spectra" and in participating at Melbourne in an unusually well-attended session on the structure of the atom.
Rutherford opened the discussion by emphasizing the important corroboration of the nuclear model supplied by α scattering and van den Broek's hypothesis, securely anchored by Moseley's formulae.
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The quick mobilization of the Australians and their strong feeling for the mother country intensified Moseley's own sense of duty, and the unquestioning patriotism instilled by the public schools. He left the commonwealth - whose sons he would meet soon enough again - on August 29, on the first ship he could get after delivering his paper at Sydney.
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Moseley had then been on active military service for precisely three months. He had begun to train on his return voyage, "reading up a smattering from War Office manuals, and practicing flag wagging, Morse and semaphore while crossing the Pacific".
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Harry had decided to commission himself in the Royal Engineers. The Engineers preferred engineers, and declined. That of course did not discourage Harry at all. "[I am] trying to pull private strings," he wrote Margery on October 10, "but unfortunately find them working rather rustily at present, since nobody seems to know which is the right string to pull." [...] on October 17, Harry arrived at Aldershot.
After a month's "strenuous and interesting" training, in which he learned to signal by semaphore and ride without stirrups, Harry was transferred to an "incredibly gloomy" camp at Bulford on the Salisbury Plain. There he lived in the mud with "splendid fellows, very keen and well-educated," who were learning to set up military communications systems. He did not find the work altogether "amusing," however, and for a few weeks after Christmas he labored as hard to leave the Engineers as he had to enter them. The cause of his infidelity was his first airplane flight, which he made on a day miraculously free from rain. He immediately decided to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. He then encountered an object even he could not budge: the inefficiency and indifference of the military bureaucracy. It took ten days for his application to proceed through the Engineers, the War Office and the "flying hierarchy to the people really concerned, who have written back through the same channel to enquire my weight. No doubt [he complained to Amabel] more enquiries will follow through the same chain concerning my eyesight and my moral character etc. each at an interval of ten days. If only the channel could be short circuited..."
In the middle of February Harry's company was attached to the 13th Infantry Division at Woking. He himself became responsible for the communications of one of the division's brigades, the 38th, "quite an interesting little job," he wrote Rutherford, since "I and my 26 men will be quite on our own as soon as we get to the Front."
At the beginning of April, when the 38th was enjoying springtime maneuvers in the Surrey countryside, General Sir Ian Hamilton was assembling an army in the eastern Mediterranean for an invasion of the peninsula of Gallipoli.
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On June 7 the government agreed to Hamilton's request for more units and ordered three divisions of the New Army, including the 13th, to the East. Harry, who had inferred from the delay in shipping his brigade that it was reserved for the Mediterranean, had his suspicions confirmed by orders to draw sunhats and tropical kits. [...] prepared, and armed with a .32 caliber revolver and an air cushion, he set sail from Avonmouth on June 15, 1915.
It soon became excessively hot. Alexandria, which he reached by June 27, was "full of heat flies native troops and Australians"; it reminded him of his mortality, and there he composed his will, leaving his entire estate to the Royal Society of London. [...] "We moved yesterday [13 July 15] to a place where the road is worse than the flies. Sand in boots clothes mouth eyes hair. Sand in the food and the water and the air." There were also bullets and dysentery. Harry undertook to protect his flock from both, from the first by inculcating "prudence by example," from the second by Spartan diets and great doses of chlorodyne supplied by Amabel for the purpose. He lost three men to dysentery and one to the Turks.
After three weeks at Helles the 38th proceeded to the harbor of Murdos, on the island of Lemnos, a staging area about seventy miles from Anzac. There Harry spent a few pleasant days swimming in the Mediterranean and hiking in the parched and barren hills, which he found to be "thick with worked flints." With fresh eggs and fruit collected from a nearby village and amenities like Bovril and silk pyjamas commanded from Amabel, he made himself almost comfortable.
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The 38th managed to hold the Farm and part of the hill for the 8th and 9th of August, but it never reached Chanuk Bair.
Early on the morning of the 10th the enemy counterattacked. Machine guns raked Farm Hill from the high ground to the right while 30,000 Turks poured over Chanuk Bair. They annihilated the 6/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, a battalion from the 38th which had replaced the exhausted New Zealanders on Rhododendron Hill. [...] "So desperate a battle cannot be described. The Turks came on again and again, fighting magnificently, calling upon the name of God. Our men stood to it, and maintained, by many a deed of daring, the old traditions of their race. There was no flinching. They died in the ranks where they stood." Brigadier-General Baldwin and his brigade-major fell in the front line. So did the brigade signal officer, second lieutenant Moseley*, the most promising of all the English physicists of his generation.
[* shot in the head by a Turkish sniper while in the act of telephoning a military order (Wikipedia)]
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Moseley's death was widely reported. Belligerents on both sides paused to observe his passing. After recovering themselves the British scientists used his death as a strong stick for bullying (as Harry would have said) the War Office: "The loss of this young man on the battlefield," said Rutherford, "(is) a striking example of the misuse of scientific talent." "To use such a man as a subaltern [is] economically equivalent to using the Lusitania to carry a pound of butter from Ramsgate to Margate." It came out that the Royal Society had sought his return; that papers had gone forward, but too late. These facts, together with references to Harry's "immortal discovery" lifted from a lecture by Oliver Lodge, who had himself lost a son in the war, were retailed in the daily press under captions like "Sacrifice of a Genius" and "Too Valuable To Die." There is little doubt that Harry's death helped Rutherford and his colleagues convince the public that scientific brains, being a national and even a military asset, should be conserved in time of war.
Had the War Office a clear conception of the military value of physicists, it would have asked Harry (as it did Rutherford and Bragg) to develop a weapon against submarines or (as it did Tizard) to improve the performance of bombers. He would have refused both. Well meaning and influential friends did in fact arrange for him to work on aircraft design; he replied that, since the operation was run entirely by civilians, nothing would have pleased him better, had he happened to be physically unfit. As it was, nothing could keep him from the front. He and the 5,000 other Old Etonians who rushed to the colors with him thought it their duty to be under fire. As Harry's old school fellow Charles Lister put it when declining a safe job as an interpreter: "The date of my birth determines that I should take active service." He too pulled strings to enter a combat division and died in the Mediterranean.
Harry received several posthumous honors, most notably a gold medal, the premio Matteucci, from the Società Italiana delle Scienze. Commemorative plaques were put up in Manchester and at Eton, where a verse by Eggar records Harry's first exposure to X radiation. At Summer Fields one of the four competitive "leagues" into which the school is divided proudly took the name Moseley. A certain Professor Hamer, of the University of Pittsburgh, proposed that element 43, of whose imminent discovery he had heard inklings, be called "Moseleyum," "a name," he said, "better and more international in character like true science itself than a latinized name of the discoverer's own kingdom or republic." His suggestion was ignored, except by the editors of Nature, who observed that it would be a fitting tribute, despite its want of precedent and euphony. Today, after "Lawrencium," "Mendelevium," and "Nobelium," there can be no reservation on either count; and we may hope eventually to see "Moseleyum" attached to a deserving element beyond uranium.
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As Harry had foreseen, his work, X-ray spectroscopy, contributed importantly to the decisive solution to the problem of atomic structure. Most directly, Moseley's law secured the cardinal result of the English School of atom builders, namely the identification of the rank of an element in the periodic table (Z) with the number of electrons (n) in its constituent atoms. [...] By the war's end most physicists had altogether forgotten the reservations of Hicks, Lindemann and Nicholson; and Moseley's law, recognized (to use the words of de Broglie) as "one of the greatest advances yet made in natural philosophy," was widely taken as proof of the doctrine of atomic number, and as the best available evidence for the equality of n and Z.
Moseley's legacy also contributed to several key improvements in the quantum theory of the atom.
Mais:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2013/08/12/henry-moseley-single-most-costly-death-war
http://neuroquantology.com/data-cms/articles/20191023125647pm158.pdf
Trechos de The Diary Of Vaslav Nijinsky.
This Diary is Nijinsky's message to mankind. His expressed desire to have it published during his lifetime was fulfilled when it first appeared in 1936. [...]
The Diary was written during 1918-19 in St. Moritz where we had retired to await the end of the war. Isolated from the world, from all possibilities of exercising his art, my husband tried to reach the masses through other artistic mediums. He took up drawing and music, created choreographies, and finally wrote his Diary.
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Millions of years have gone by since the creation of man. Men think that God is where technical inventions are most advanced. God was already there when there was no mechanism. Steel is a necessary thing, but it is also a terrible thing. An aeroplane is a terrible thing. I flew in an aeroplane and cried in it. I do not know why, but I felt that aeroplanes destroy birds. All birds fly away at the sight of an aeroplane. An aeroplane is a useful thing but it must not be exaggerated. It is a thing coming from God and therefore I like it, but it must not be used for the purposes of war. An aeroplane should express goodwill. I like aeroplanes and will therefore fly in them where there are no birds. I love birds. I do not want to frighten them. A well-known flyer was flying in Switzerland and flew into an eagle.
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One must not kill tsars, emperors, and kings. I like tsars and the aristocrats, but their deeds are not always good deeds.
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War has not stopped through the thinking of men. I know how one could stop war. Wilson wants to stop war but men do not understand him. He wants tolerance in politics, therefore he does not like war. He did not want war. Lloyd George is a simple man, but he has a great brain. But his brain destroys feeling and therefore he has no wisdom in politics. Lloyd George is a difficult man.
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The murderer goes to death; those who start war are murderers because they kill millions of innocent people. I am a man in a million. I am not alone, because I feel more than a million others.
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I lived at my mother-in-law's during the war. Once I wanted to walk into a restaurant but an inner force kept me back. I stopped suddenly before a small restaurant frequented by working people. I wanted to enter but I did not like to as I was not a workman.
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I liked Paris cocottes when I was with Diaghilev. He thought me stupid, but I used to run to them. I ran about Paris looking for cheap cocottes, but I was afraid people would notice my actions. I know that those women have no disease as they are under special police supervision.
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I want Wilson to succeed in his undertakings, because they are near the truth. I feel the near death of Wilson. I was afraid for Clemenceau, too, because Clemenceau is a good man. His policy is stupid and therefore his life hangs on a hair. Men feel his mistakes. He is not aware of this and therefore his life is in danger. I love Clemenceau, because he is a child. I know children who do awful things, without wanting to. Lloyd George does not know that he will be found out, and therefore holds his head very high. I want to lower his head. I like him, but I must write the truth. I know that if he reads these notes, he will understand me. I know that Clemenceau is honest; he is the policy of France. He is a hard-working man, but he was mistaken when he sent France to her death. He is a man who seeks goodness, a child with a tremendous brain.
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Paderewski became a politician but he is a pianist. I like pianists who play with feeling. Music with feeling is Godlike. I do not like pure technique without feeling.
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During the World War every man was a criminal. The governments shielded the criminals, because the crimes of the governments were executed by them. God does not shield a government which wages war. He does not want war and has therefore sent horrors on mankind.
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I am neither Russian nor Pole. I am a man. I am not a foreigner or a cosmopolitan. I love the Russian soil. I will build a dam in Russia. I understand Gogol loved Russia. So do I. Russia feels more than any other country. She is the mother of all countries, and loves everyone. Russia is not a problem of politics. I know that many people in Russia will understand me. Russia is not Bolshevik. Russia is my mother. I love my mother. My mother lives in Russia. She is Polish, but she eats Russian bread and Schzi [sour cabbage soup]. I want love for my Russia although I know her shortcomings. She has destroyed the plan of war. The war would have ended earlier if she had not let in the Maximalists. The Russian people are like children. One must love them and govern them well.
If everyone will listen to me, there will be no more war.
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I have devoted a great deal of time during the war to dancing and have made great progress. I want to show the public how successfully I studied [...].
I am very fond of French artists and I wish I could dance for them. I know that a lot of French artists were killed in the war - many fathers died, leaving their children and wives without bread. I know too that the government is unable to provide for them all, therefore I would like to dance for the poor French artists. I want to dance for the Polish and other artists, too, when I go to the other countries.
The Poles love France because France gave them their Soul - so did the Poles: they died for France on the battlefields. The war has united the two nations. France knows the heroic deeds of the Poles.
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I understood that men urge horses and people on, till they fall down like stones, exhausted. I decided, like the horse, that they could beat us with a whip as much as they liked, but we would still do what we feel, because we want to live. The horse walked and so did I. In the sleigh a fat man was sitting with his wife, who was bored. So was the driver. Everyone was bored. I was not, because I was not thinking, I was feeling. I walked and walked, I came to the village of St. Moritz and stopped outside the telegraph office. I did not read the war bulletins.
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I am writing in small handwriting because paper is expensive - this is the trick of the shops. They take advantage of the war. They are afraid that it will end soon. The shops say that the war has forced them to increase their prices.
- - -
They are ringing and ringing. I do not know who is calling as I do not like speaking on the telephone. [...] I am writing, crying, and thinking of my wife, who went out thinking that I am a barbarian of Russian origin. She heard these words in Hungary, when Russia was at war with Hungary. I was interned there. I lived there and composed the Theory of the Dance. I danced very little because I was sad, sad because I thought that my wife did not love me. I got engaged in Rio de Janeiro; I married suddenly in South America.
- - -
It is over a year and a half since I have been able to communicate with her [wife]. She might think that I danced lately in England. Probably she will be frightened lest I be harmed on account of the revolution, as they might think I belong to the revolutionaries. [...] She knows I dislike forcefulness. She knows that even when I was a boy I disliked to fight with my classmates.
- - -
Clemenceau will suffer, but I hope he will see through the whole company of diplomats and will be able to protect France. I love France and wish her well. I can see through the whole clique which has started the war. Clemenceau is a rich man and is not in need of anything, and so I feel that he has not been "bought." The Lloyd Georgians buy people, not only with money but with promises. Clemenceau thought that it would be good for France to get Alsace-Lorraine; this question can only be settled peacefully. Clemenceau understood Wilson and has consented to his plan. The French like the Alsatians and many families are weeping; they feel that it is unjust that they should not belong to French territory. The French do not like the Germans - I know how one can develop dislike for German people and I know who taught France to say Boche. One must not quarrel! German children are crying for their fathers too.
- - -
Man's intelligence dies with his body, as it is limited. People say that intelligence has created everything; the aeroplanes, Zeppelins.
- - -
My mother and sister escaped from Moscow to get away from the Maximalists. They were tired of the Civil War, and escaped together with Kotchetovsky, my brother-in-law, and their daughter Ira, leaving all their belongings behind.
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIUTNtMGI5MkJwM28 (subtitles)
VISÃO HISTÓRIA
26 de Fevereiro de 2009
I Guerra Mundial - Portugal nas trincheiras
Quando passam 90 anos sobre o Tratado de Versalhes, que traçou as fronteiras e definiu as relações internacionais depois da Primeira Guerra Mundial, este quarto número da VISÃO História é dedicado àquele que terá sido o mais dramaticamente absurdo de todos os conflitos bélicos, com especial incidência na participação que Portugal teve nele.
Com efeito, as rivalidades entre as grandes potências de 1914 prendiam-se exclusivamente com o choque dos interesses económicos (onde a componente colonial desempenhava um importante papel), nada tendo que ver com diferenças ideológicas insanáveis semelhantes às que oporiam mais tarde as democracias e as ditaduras, o capitalismo e o comunismo ou o liberalismo e o fundamentalismo. Em 1914, ano terminal da Belle Époque e do poderio europeu sobre o planeta, havia apenas a vontade de um bloco de países afirmar a sua supremacia sobre outro bloco de sistema sociopolítico semelhante, e vice-versa.
Portugal, onde a jovem República triunfara menos de quatro anos antes sobre uma monarquia quase oito vezes secular, não era obviamente uma potência com ambições de domínio mundial, mas nem por isso deixava de desempenhar papel de relevo no acesso às riquezas africanas. O receio de ficar excluído do banquete dos vencedores, a cuja sobremesa seriam partilhadas as colónias, impulsionava para a guerra, ao lado da "velha aliada" Inglaterra, este nosso país já então claramente periférico. O desejo de afirmação internacional do novo regime republicano, aliado a interesses político-partidários do momento, faria o resto.
A nossa participação na hecatombe mundial seria uma vitória de Pirro: as colónias foram mantidas, mas à custa de 7 mil mortos (carne para canhão maioritariamente analfabeta que desconhecia a razão por que lutava) e de uma crise económico-financeira de amplitude sem precedentes, que haveria de abrir a porta a uma ditadura de 48 anos.
Permaneceu, por isso, durante muitas décadas, na memória colectiva portuguesa, a lembrança simultaneamente doce e amarga da Grande Guerra - assim chamada antes da eclosão da Segunda Guerra Mundial, e ainda depois disso, por hábito de duas décadas. Raras eram as famílias que não tinham sido directamente visitadas pela morte, num País onde pululavam os monumentos e as avenidas e praças dedicadas aos "Combatentes da Grande Guerra" e onde passou a ser venerado o "Soldado Desconhecido" sepultado no Mosteiro da Batalha. A participação portuguesa no conflito era diariamente lembrada em todo o tipo de situações pelo menos ate à década de 50, antes de Salazar ter enviado tropas para Angola "rapidamente e em força", inaugurando a segunda aventura guerreira portuguesa do século XX - esta, em contraste com a anterior, isolada e fora de época.
Hoje, a Primeira Guerra Mundial está praticamente esquecida entre nós, ao ponto de muitos jovens a confundirem com a Segunda ou, quando não é esse o caso, desconhecerem que Portugal participou nela.
Foi essa lacuna que pretendemos colmatar, em parceria com o Museu da Presidência da República, que está a organizar uma exposição sobre o tema.
- - -
Todos os textos são ilustrados com muitas fotos da época, assinadas nomeadamente pelo grande fotógrafo Joshua Benoliel (1873-1932), pioneiro da reportagem fotográfica em Portugal e considerado por muitos o maior fotor-repórter português do século XX, e por Arnaldo Garcez (1885-1964), o único fotógrafo autorizado a acompanhar os soldados portugueses na frente de combate do Norte de França. Alguns destes documentos iconográficos são praticamente inéditos, já que não eram publicados há muitas décadas.
Fonte:
http://visao.sapo.pt/i-guerra-mundial-portugal-nas-trincheiras=f497266
Mais:
https://www.publico.pt/noticia/o-duro-fado-de-portugal-na-guerra-do-mundo
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeVv993EJvO4-0ROhHLGaeGb
http://www.portugal1914.org
Trechos de The Fall Of The Ottomans (2015), de Eugene Rogan.
Spring brought a new wave of optimism to the Ottoman Empire in 1914. Victory in the Second Balkan War and the recovery of Edirne and Eastern Thrace had done wonders for national confidence. After years of wartime austerity, the Ottoman economy was the first beneficiary of peace. Demobilized soldiers returned to the workforce. Farmers predicted record harvests. A building boom was reported in towns across the Turkish and Arab provinces. Trade resumed with renewed vigour once the sea lanes were cleared of warships and mines. With the expansion of foreign trade came novel inventions of the modern age that, within the year, would be converted from civilian to military use.
The advent of the automobile shattered the tranquillity of Istanbul's streets. Until 1908, cars had been banned from the Ottoman Empire. When they were finally permitted after the Young Turk Revolution, the pioneers of Ottoman motoring encountered many obstacles. By and large, the streets of the empire were unpaved. Garages to service and fuel cars were few and far between. And there was no highway code, with chauffeurs disagreeing over such basic issues as the side of the road on which they should drive. Not surprisingly, very few cars had been sold in the Ottoman Empire since 1908. By the end of 1913, when there were already 1 million cars on the road in the United States, American consular officials estimated there were no more than 500 automobiles in the Ottoman Empire as a whole - with 250 of those in Istanbul. In a remote provincial town like Baghdad, you could literally count the number of cars on one hand. Yet by mid-1914, the imperial capital was beginning to experience its first traffic jams as "limousines, touring cars, motor trucks, gasoline driven delivery wagons and hospital ambulances" jostled for space.
The airplane also made its first appearance in the Ottoman Empire in the Young Turk era. [...]
The first Turkish pilots were sent to Europe for training in 1911. By 1914, Turkish aviators were beginning to claim the skies above the Ottoman Empire. In February, Lieutenant Fethi Bey, accompanied by one of Enver Pasha's aides, Sadik Bey, attempted to fly from Istanbul across Anatolia and Syria to Egypt. Their plane, a Blériot design named the Muavenet-i Milliye (National Assistance) covered one twenty-five-mile leg, from Tarsus to Adana, in twenty minutes, at a speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. Crowds on the ground clapped as the plane flew overhead. They managed to reach Damascus safely, but their plane experienced engine problems on the flight to Jerusalem and crashed to the east of the Sea of Galilee, killing both pilots. Fethi Bey and Sadik Bey were laid to rest next to Saladdin's tomb in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, Turkey's first airmen to die in military service. A second air mission ended in a similar result before two pilots, Salim Bey and Kemal Bey, finally managed to complete the journey from Istanbul to Egypt in May 1914.
- - -
The spread of mechanized transport fed the sense of optimism growing in the Ottoman Empire in the spring of 1914. With the negotiation of a $100 million public loan from France in May, the Ottoman government secured the means to invest in major public works projects that would bring electricity, public lighting, urban tramways, intercity railroads, and modern port facilities to all of the provinces of the empire. The announcement of the French loan fed widespread expectations of a commercial and industrial boom.
- - -
The Ottoman government commissioned two state-of-the-art dreadnoughts from the British shipbuilders Vickers and Armstrong in August 1911, scheduled for delivery in July 1914. The orders were placed as part of a British naval mission to help modernize the Ottoman fleet.
- - -
The outbreak of war in Europe provoked alarm across the Ottoman Empire - from the cabinet offices of the Sublime Porte through the towns and countryside of Anatolia and the Arab lands. The need for a defensive alliance to assure the territorial integrity of the empire became critical. The Young Turks knew from Cemal's reports that there was no prospect of such an agreement with France. His trust in Britain was likewise soon to be betrayed.
- - -
Russia, then Britain and France recalled their ambassadors from Istanbul before declaring war on 2 November.
The Ottoman Empire was at war. All that remained was to raise the banner of jihad.
- - -
On 1 August, the Ministry of War dispatched Enver Pasha's call to arms by telegraph across the empire. Village headmen and leaders of town quarters posted notices in public squares and on mosque doors. "Mobilization has been declared," the posters trumpeted. "All eligible men to arms!" All men, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, aged twenty-one to forty-five, were given five days to report to the nearest recruiting office. Local officials were told to encourage martial enthusiasm by "beating drums, showing joy and gladness and not despair and neglect".
No amount of drum beating or official displays of joy could overcome the foreboding among Arab villagers when mobilization was first announced. A Shiite Muslim cleric in the southern Lebanese village of Nabatiyya captured the public dismay in his diary on 3 August 1914:
"The people were deeply troubled and agitated by the news [of general mobilization]. They gathered in small groups in public spaces, astonished and bewildered, as if confronting the Day of Judgement. Some wanted to flee - but where could they go? Others wanted to escape, but there was no way out. Then we heard that war had broken out between Germany and Austria on one side, and the Allies on the other side. This only increased the fear and alarm of the outbreak of a murderous war that would devour the cultivated lands and the dry earth."
Similar reactions were recorded across the Ottoman Empire. Shops closed in Aleppo on 3 August in response to the mobilization orders. As one resident noted, "Great uneasiness prevails throughout this city." In the Black Sea port of Trabzon, the American consul recorded, "The decree of general mobilization came like a thunderbolt." Though anyone evading conscription faced the death penalty, many young men preferred to take their chances and go into hiding rather than face what they believed to be a more certain death fighting with the Ottoman army.
In the imperial capital Istanbul, the call to arms was announced in each quarter by the town crier, popularly known as "Bekçi Baba". In daytime, Bekçi Baba delivered water to urban neighbourhoods. At night, he served as watchman over the streets of the quarter. It was Bekçi Baba who sounded the alarm when fire broke out, and it was Bekçi Baba who summoned men for war.
Irfan Orga remembered how his father was called to war by Bekçi Baba. The mobilization that had started in the summer of 1914 accelerated after the Ottoman entry into the war, with ever-older men being called up. Orga went outside into the November cold with his father to hear the crier's announcement and watched as Bekçi Baba rounded the corner and stopped beneath the street lamp "to shout his shattering news": "Men born between 1880 and 1885 must report to the recruiting centre within the next forty-eight hours. Who fails to do so will be prosecuted."
One of the men of the household shouted out, "What does it mean, Bekçi Baba?"
"War! War! Don't you know your country is at war?" he roared.
The capital's recruitment centres, flooded with men of military age, were in a state of confusion. Harassed officials bellowed instructions to civilians, who were herded like cattle, hungry, hopeless, and apathetic. It could take days for conscripts to be processed for service.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeWKYLfYzoRX-W2LXeh1ES_g
Puccini
Trechos de Puccini: A Biography (2002), de Mary Jane Phillips-Matz.
By the end of 1914 several European countries were at war. [...] Italy declared its neutrality that same month, and Puccini
also claimed to be neutral. Under other circumstances, his stance might have remaimed a private matter; but other artists -
Italian, French, and English - were rushing to support patriotic causes. He was first approached in November by Hall Caine,
an English writer, who was collecting statements to protest Germany's aggression in Belgium. Many important composers rushed
to help, but Puccini did not. Instead, he described his neutrality in a personal letter to Caine, saying he had refused all
requests to sign such protests or take part in benefits. Those who knew the music business saw this as his private campaign
to prevent boycotts of his works and keep his royalties flowing.
- - -
[...] "All I know," I said, "is that they like your music. It is the same with the soldiers. Sometimes they like their
music gay, and then at other times they like music with deep religious feelings."
It was not much of an answer. But Giacomo seized on it.
"You see, it's all there, gentlemen," he exclaimed. "The important thing is that human emotions are not changed by the wars.
Life is fundamentally simple, and so is my music. The wars pay attention to frontiers, but people don't." (Del
Fiorentino, pp. 167-68)
Never physically threatened by the conflict, Puccini fell into a profound depression during the war, as Del Fiorentino saw.
To Adami he wrote,
Loneliness is as wide as the sea; it is as smooth as a lake; it is as black as night; and it is also as green as bile! My
present indecision exhausts me, wears me out, irritates, and depresses me... I am turning into an imbecile, like a rock, that
stands silent and turns gray as it is weathered by time... The Austrians have my crown, and I no longer have it: I'm like the
king in the Tarot cards. What about music? I don't answer. [It's] gone with the wind, like the ashes of suicides that
drift away. [Tito] Ricordi's proposals humiliate me. All said, this state of affairs can't continue. I am alone. You
can imagine what fun! Nicche has been called back into service and has left. Tonio is in Milan. Let me hear from you. I won't
tell you to come because I know you can't. But if you were free, what joy you would give me! (GP to GA, March 11, 1915,
in Adami, p. 196)
On October 10, 1915, with Italy already in the war, Puccini made a private statement about Italian art, one he never tried to
publish.
"Although I recognize great merit in these French musicians, the direct followers of the Russians, yet I say that our art
is, must be, and has been the ruler of the world, and insist that we Italians are [not so cruel] as foreigners.
Italian geniality, even if it is less rich in technique, imposes itself on the world. And [should] we seek to
depreciate it by accepting, desiring, and encouraging conglomerations and intrigues of notes? No! Clear Italian light must
restore our [strength]." (GP to Carlo Vanbianchi, October 10, 1915, in Charles Hamilton catalogue for Auction No.
146, May 20, 1981)
Puccini's neutrality and his failure to help with benefits and fund-raisers would eventually have cost him Toscanini's
friendship in any case.
- - -
The opera [La Rondine] was completely finished in October 1915. In trying to arrange the world premiere, he faced
several problems, because he was contractually obligated to present it in Austria, where he now could not travel. Because his
operas were boycotted in Germany, he might even be denied permission to give it in Vienna at all. For a while, it seemed
La Rondine might never reach the stage. Worse, he needed the income at a time when opera companies had shortened their
seasons or canceled them altogether.
- - -
[...] the problem started with Puccini's complicated arrangements about the rights. He had been able to meet the Austrian
impresarios in Switzerland before all travel had been stopped, and he renegotiated his contract during that meeting. No
longer required to give the world premiere in Vienna, where the war prevented its production, he had to cede his rights for
Austria, Germany, and the United States, three major markets. [...] In the end, however, this long dispute was
resolved.
- - -
News of the premiere and the planned cast of La Rondine appeared in a dispatch from Paris, dated January 1917. It also
appeared in the February 10 number of Musical America, which announced that the Polish soprano Rosa Raisa would sing
Magda. According to Raisa's biographer, Charles Mintzer, the threat of submarines was so great that she could not cross the
Atlantic, and another singer had to be engaged.
- - -
He wrote to Schnabl:
"I am may troubled about going to Milan. I am not used to the new Italy; and Milan is the university of new ways." (GP
to RSR, December 25, 1920, in Gara, pp. 499-500)
La Scala could not reopen until December 26, 1921, when Toscanini conducted Falstaff. Bicchi remembered Puccini
reading about the opening night in the Corriere della Sera and seizing the occasion to make sarcastic comments about
Toscanini. However concerned the composer may have been about Italy, he was even more worried about the European theaters,
especially those where his works had been banned during the war. Naturally, some of his most popular operas recovered
quickly, but others fought to stay alive.
* * *
Trechos de The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, And Modernity (2007), de Alexandra Wilson.
La Rondine (1917) was seen as a lightweight quasi-operetta, condemned as a hybrid work and even an "enemy opera" in a
time of conflict. Finally, just as Puccini's status as national composer seemed to be in profound danger, Gianni
Schicchi (1918) was hailed as the ray of light Italy needed as it emerged from the First World War.
- - -
The Futurists also had other agendas. Their first intention was to stage a protest against the Austrians, in order to further
their campaign for Italian entry into the First World War: the performance of Fanciulla on 15 September 1914 coincided
with the Battle of the Marne. Their second aim was to express their hostility towards a composer and an audience that
represented everything that they held in contempt. Marinetti's disdain for the past - manifested most vehemently in his
instruction to his followers to "set fire to the bookshelves of the libraries! ... Deviate the route of canals to flood the
museums!" - also informed his attitude towards Puccini, the most prominent composer keeping alive an art form that, in the
eyes of the Futurists, was nauseating and obsolete. The Futurists were enraged by the fact that Puccini and his audience were
able to enjoy a glittering social event without apparent thought for the conflict taking place a few hundred miles away to
the north. Once again, Puccini had become embroiled in a political debate despite his intentions.
At the end of the first act of Fanciulla the audience at the Dal Verme that night were rising to their feet to applaud
the singers and the maestro when, suddenly, an uproar was heard from the balcony. Amid loud cries of "Down with Austria!",
"Down with Puccini!", "Long live Marinetti!", one man unfurled an Italian flag, whilst another set fire to an Austrian
standard. Confusion ensued as the protestors were apprehended and ushered from the theatre; the orchestra struck up the
Marcia Reale, and the rest of the evening's performance passed uneventfully. The incident was reported in the Milanese
press, but Puccini's later biographers do not mention it; evidently they felt it to be insignificant or were eager to cover
it up. The event may have been glossed over as an embarrassment, but reading Marinetti's own account of the night reveals the
strength of the avant garde's contempt for Puccini, for his audience and for opera as an institution. Marinetti painted a
heroic picture of the demonstration, using a machine-gun-like style of prose to convey the excitement and dynamism of the
occasion.
- - -
By the spring of 1915 Italy had herself "accepted the sorry necessity of war" and joined the Allied campaign. Meanwhile, the
image of Puccini as a cowardly neutralist promoted by Marinetti had not disappeared. Out of a commercially minded desire to
avoid alienating German and Austrian audiences, Puccini had refused to sign artists' petitions protesting against German
aggression towards Belgium in late 1914 and the bombardment of Reims at the beginning of 1915. The Parisian press, and
principally the extreme right-wing Leon Daudet of the Action Française, accused Puccini of disloyalty to the allied cause.
Daudet was to attack Puccini again two years later when he produced an "enemy opera", La Rondine, originally
commissioned as an operetta by the Karltheater in Vienna but moved to neutral Monaco on account of the hostilities. Puccini's
new opera once again called into question his status as a national or international composer, not only because, like
Fanciulla, it was first performed abroad, but also because of the generic questions that it raised.
- - -
After a war that had left Italy battered and bruised, Gianni Schicchi seemed a reaffirmation of a healthy, positive
Italianness, a work "destined joyously to gladden the restless spirits of the twentieth century". Not only had Puccini
produced his sunniest opera to date, composed in a "single burst of inspiration" in the manner advocated by Verdi (unlike the
"episodic" Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica), but it was the first he had set in Italy since Tosca.
Furthermore, it was based on a work by Dante, that most iconic of Italian cultural heroes. Gianni Schicchi was thus
widely hailed as a national masterpiece, even drawing praise from the ultra-nationalistic Idea Nazionale, which
applauded the composer for his return to an Italian subject "after so many useless Japanese, American, Parisian digressions".
The critic for this newspaper welcomed Schicchi as a truly Italian opera, which had emerged from the grey operatic
scene of the past few years, and which represented "our people, our refinement, our accents, clear Italian vivacity":
finally, the critic wrote, the Italian people could breathe once more.
- - -
[...] members of the generation born around 1880, had advocated Italy's entry into the First World War, which they hoped
would provide the "struggle" and "purpose" that they had so long craved, and act as a stimulus for national reinvigoration.
In the event, however, the "great collective war" had not been the glorious Italian victory for which they had hoped: Italy
had suffered great losses on the Alpine Front.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeVXgJF6RF9-JmjfkUJDjuSA
1914: The start of World War I. In this war, the German Rothschilds loan money to the Germans, the British Rothschilds loan money to the British, and the French Rothschilds loan money to the French. Futhermore, the Rothschilds have control of the three European news agencies, Wolff (est. 1849) in Germany, Reuters (est. 1851) in England, and Havas (est. 1835) in France. The Rothschilds use Wolff to manipulate the German people into a fervour for war. From around this time, the Rothschilds are rarely reported in the media, because they own the media.
1916: On June 4, Ashkenazi Jew Louis Dembitz Brandeis is appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Wilson as per his agreed blackmail payment to Samuel Untermyer some three years earlier. Justice Brandeis is also the elected leader of the Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs, a position he has held since 1914. The middle of World War I Germany was winning the war as they were being financed by the Rothschilds to a greater extent than France, Italy and England, because Rothschilds, did not want to support the Tsar in Russia, and of course Russia was on the same side as France, Italy and England. Then a significant event occurred. Germany, although they were winning the war and not one foreign soldier had set foot on their soil, offered armistice to Britain with no requirement of reparations. The Rothschilds were anxious to make sure this didn't happen as they were expecting to make far more money off this war, so they played another card they had up their sleeve.
Whilst the British were considering Germany's offer, Rothschild agent Louis Brandeis sends a Zionist delegation from America to Britain to promise to bring America into the war on the side of the British, provided the British agree to give the land of Palestine to the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds wanted Palestine for the following reason: They had great business interests in the far east and desired their own state in that area along with their own military which they could use as an aggressor to any state that threatened those interests. The British subsequently agree to the deal for Palestine and the Zionists in London contact their counterparts in America and inform them of this fact. Suddenly all the major newspapers in America that up to that point had been pro-German turned on Germany running propaganda pieces such as: German soldiers were killing Red Cross nurses; German soldiers were cutting off babies hands, etc, in order to manipulate the American public against the Germans.
This same year, President Woodrow Wilson ran a re-election campaign under the slogan "Re-Elect The Man Who Will Keep Your Sons Out Of The War." On December 12, Germany and her allies offer peace terms to end the war.
1917: As a result of Germany's offer of peace the Rothschild war machine goes into overdrive in America, spreading propaganda which leads to President Wilson under the instructions of American Zionist leader and Supreme Court Justice, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, reneging on his promise to the electorate and taking America into the First World War on April 6. As per the Rothschild Zionist promise to the British, to take America into the war, they decide they want something in writing from the British to prove that they will uphold their side of the bargain. The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour therefore drafts a letter which is commonly known as the "Balfour Declaration".
- - -
The Rothschilds order the execution, by the Bolsheviks they control, of Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family in Russia, even though the Tsar had already abdicated on March 2. This is both to get control of the country and an act of revenge for Tsar Alexander I blocking their world government plan in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, and Tsar Alexander II siding with President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. It is extremely important for them to slaughter the entire family including women and children in order to make good on the promise to do so made by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1815. It is designed to show the world what happens if you ever attempt to cross the Rothschilds.
U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway informs Congress that J.P. Morgan is a Rothschild front and has taken control of the American media industry. He states, "In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press ... They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers ... An agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month, an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."
1919: In January, Ashkenazi Jews Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are killed as they attempt to lead another Rothschild funded Communist coup, this time in Berlin, Germany. The Versailles peace conference is held to decide reparations that the Germans need to pay to the victors following the end of the First World War. A delegation of 117 Zionists headed up by Ashkenazi Jew Bernard Baruch bring up the subject of the promise of Palestine for them. At this point the Germans realised why America had turned on them and under whose influence, the Rothschilds.
The Germans, naturally, felt they had been betrayed by the Zionists. This is because, at the time the Rothschilds made their deal with Britain for Palestine, in exchange for bringing America into the war, Germany was the most friendly country in the world towards the Jews, indeed the German Emancipation Edict of 1822 guaranteed Jews in Germany all civil rights enjoyed by Germans. Also, Germany was the only country in Europe which did not place restrictions on Jews, even giving them refuge when they had to flee from Russia after their first attempted Communist coup failed there in 1905.
Nevertheless, the Rothschilds had held up their side of the bargain to spill the blood of millions of innocents and as a result, Palestine is confirmed as a Jewish homeland, and whilst its handover to the Rothschilds takes place it is to remain under the control of Britain as the Rothschilds control Britain. At that time less than one percent of the population of Palestine was Jewish. Interestingly, the host of the Versailles peace conference is its boss, Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The Versailles peace conference is also used as an attempt by the Rothschilds to set up a world government under the pretext of ending all wars (which they create). This was called the "League of Nations." Fortunately not enough countries accepted it and so it soon died.
On March 29th The Times of London reports on the Bolsheviks in Russia, "One of the curious features of the Bolshevist movement is the high percentage of non-Russian elements among its leaders. Of the twenty or thirty commissaries, or leaders, who provide the central machinery of the Bolshevist movement, not less than 75% were Jews." It is reported that the Rothschilds were angry with the Russians because they were not prepared to allow them to form a central bank within their nation. They therefore gathered groups of Jewish spies and sent them into Russia to drum up a revolution for the benefit of the common man, which was actually a takeover of Russia by a Rothschild-controlled elite. These Jewish spies were, in age-old deceptive Ashkenazi tradition, given Russian names, for example Trotsky was a member of the first group and his original name was [Lev] Bronstein. These groups were sent to areas throughout Russia to incite riots and rebellion.
Fonte:
http://thedaysofnoah.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/the-rothschild-the-secret-creators-of-world-war-1
Mais:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement
