Chapter 53 7. Expensive wars and cheap money

Churchill once famously said: It is far more difficult to start a war than to end it.At first glance, this statement sounds unreasonable, but after careful taste, it is found that it is indeed a wise saying.Ending a war often only requires secret representatives of the warring governments to sit together and bargain. It is nothing more than the conditions for ending the conflict. You may lose a little, or make a little profit. There is no deal that cannot be negotiated. But waging war is much more difficult. Building social consensus is an extremely labor-intensive task in a democratic society, which really worries international bankers.

As Merton pointed out: in their eyes (international bankers) there is no war and peace, no slogans and declarations, no sacrifice or honor, and they ignore these things that confuse the eyes of the world. Napoleon, who saw clearly the nature of international bankers, once said sharply: Money has no motherland, and financiers don't know what patriotism and nobility are. Their only purpose is to make profits. The American people, who have been looted by Wall Street bankers, are not so easy to be fooled after World War I and the Great Depression in 1929. No one wants to be cannon fodder for bankers and send their children to Europe There was a war, and the whole country was filled with an atmosphere of isolationism hated by the bankers.

In 1935, a special committee led by Senator Nye released a report of more than 1,400 pages thick, disclosing in detail the secrets of the United States' participation in World War I, and enumerating the conspiracy and conspiracy of bankers and arms companies in the process of participating in the war. Illegal acts, coupled with the revelations of various scandals on Wall Street during the stock market crash in 2009 by the Morgan hearing not long ago, made the people's anti-war sentiment extremely strong.At this time, Millis's best-selling book "The Road to War" aroused the public's heated debate on the issue of participation in the war.Under this public opinion, the United States passed three neutrality bills from 1935 to 1937, strictly prohibiting the United States from being tricked into war again.

In terms of the domestic economy, Roosevelt's New Deal has been in place for more than five years. The U.S. economy has not improved, and the unemployment rate is still as high as 17%. By 1938, the U.S. fell into a severe recession again. Both the bankers and Roosevelt believed that only the super-deficit finance advocated by Keynes and the frantic issuance of cheap money could save the economy, and only large-scale wars could achieve this effect. After the abolition of the gold standard in 1933, all obstacles to war had been removed, and everything was ready except for a pretext for war.

Georgetown University history professor Charles.Townser believed that the war against Japan had been planned long before Roosevelt came to power in 1933.In 1932, the U.S. Navy had already demonstrated that an attack from sixty miles off Pearl Harbor could severely damage the Pacific Fleet.U.S. intelligence had deciphered the Japanese military code in August 1940 and was able to decode all previously intercepted Japanese telegram records.The code-breaking machines made in the United States were sent all over the world, but Pearl Harbor, the largest US naval base in the Pacific Ocean, was missed.Many historians believe that Roosevelt knew in advance that the Japanese navy would attack Pearl Harbor.

On January 13, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill issued a statement in Casablanca that Germany must surrender unconditionally. This statement surprised the forces in Germany that opposed Hitler and advocated peace with the Allies.Germany originally put forward the conditions for peace with the Allies as early as August 1942. Germany returned to the borders before September 1, 1939 to end this war that Germany would lose. The forces in Germany that advocated the overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi regime were already planning a military coup. Roosevelt's statement dealt a severe blow to the influence of the anti-war forces in Germany.Kissinger explained Roosevelt's motivation for the Casablanca Declaration this way:

Roosevelt made this statement (Germany must surrender unconditionally) for several reasons.He worried that discussing the terms of peace with Germany might cause differences among the allies. He hoped that the allies would concentrate on winning the war first.However, the most basic reason was that Roosevelt was trying to prevent future revisionists in Germany from claiming that Germany had been deceived by empty promises before the armistice. What Kissinger said is certainly true, but the fact is that the cruel and costly war was prolonged for more than two years, and countless lives and wealth were reduced to ashes.Among them were the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis, a considerable number of whom would very likely have survived had the war ended in 1943. right to speak.

However, the international bankers who have just warmed up just now can easily end the good chance of making a fortune.When the war was finally extinguished in August 1945, the U.S. national debt soared from a mere $16 billion in 1930 to $269 billion in 1946, according to Keynes The claims of deficit finance and cheap money were finally validated in the smoke of World War II.International bankers had another windfall in World War II.