Did you know? Excerpts from 'The Fatherland' that reveal fascinating insights into the Great European War

Ashkenazi Jew Henry Morgenthau Sr. (left) was part of Woodrow Wilson's administration in the important role of Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time it was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary … and his son, Henry Jr., became Franklin Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary (1934-45). Both were Democrat Party administrations. Grandchildren of Henry Sr. include Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney of Manhattan for 35 years and 'Pulitzer-prize-winning' historian Barbara W. Tuchman. THE FATHERLAND raises an interesting question about Amb. Morgenthau in 1914. -cy

v 1 no 20   Dec. 23, 1914   Page 12

AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU IS “ACTIVE” 

TWICE the United States has narrowly escaped being drawn into the European war. Once when a warning shot was fired across the bow of a launch of the Tennessee from a Turkish fort to impede its entry into mined waters, an act described by Capt. Decker as “not hostile,” though this qualifying statement was suppressed in Washington for several days for mysterious reasons; and again when our [US] ambassador to Turkey, Mr. Henry Morgenthau, informed the Porte that he would demand his passports* unless the British colony in Constantinople was allowed to leave the city.

We read in the London dispatch conveying this information that the English colony was not allowed to leave the city, that “the action of the Turks caused a panic among the British refugees, but the American Ambassador [Morgenthau] assured them he would endeavor to get them away next day.” We read further: “Ambassador Morgenthau formally advised the Turkish Government that unless the British colony was allowed to depart he would demand his passports. The Turks, the letter says, had no desire to fight America as well as the Allies, so they gave in.”

Mr. Morgenthau's “activity” is highly praised in England, we are told, as why on earth should not our interference in this case come in for high praise? Is it not generous and heroic of the United States to threaten to go to war in the cause of humanity? No doubt the English “Colony” of Constantinople would have had to forego its accustomed morning “tub” and its five o'clock teas; no doubt it would have been subjected to all kinds of bally annoyances in a Turkish Concentration Camp. It was a high-minded act of our government to save helpless women and children from the horrors of such a fate. We endorse and applaud Mr. Morgenthau, if his prompt action is to be a precedent for an impartial policy on the part of the administration.

At the outbreak of the war one of the first acts of the English Government was to drive all German, Austrian and Hungarian male residents from their homes and impound them in concentration camps. A mob was unleashed and set upon helpless men, women and children in the streets of London. This mob destroyed their shops, their homes, and killed and maimed many of them in a riot described by the London Mail as outdoing Russian pogroms.

There are upward of 20,000 men in these concentration camps, under conditions which cry to heaven. Their wives and children are beggars in the streets. Our government, although entrusted with the protection of German, Austrian and Hungarian subjects, as well as those of Great Britain, has accomplished little or nothing in alleviating the suffering of these unfortunates.

Bearing this in mind, under what authority did Mr. Morgenthau proceed when he erected the unhindered departure of the English residents of Constantinople into a conditional issue on which he made dependent his demand for his passports as the preliminary step to a state of war between the United States and Turkey?

If the State Department is willing to precipitate this country into war because Englishmen are threatened with concentration camps, why does it not instruct Ambassador Page to display some of Mr. Morgenthau's “activity” in behalf of the suffering Germans in England?

Can you supply the answer, dear reader?

* the traditional ambassadorial request prior to a declaration of war

Page 13

WHERE COMES ALL THE HATE?

Karin Michaelis, the eminent Danish novelist, recently wrote to the Zeit of Vienna a letter condemning the hatred of everything German with which the Danes have been innoculated and in which the younger generation has been reared to manhood. She calls attention to the widespread welcome which Germany and Austria have always extended to the intellectual contributions of Denmark, and how Germany has always received the Danes with open arms. She declares that she has never, during many and protracted visits to Germany and Austria, discovered the slightest tendency of barbarism in the German nation. On the contrary, there is no nation on earth which is at bottom so tender and sympathetic.

“I wish,” writes Karin Michaelis, “that these lines might reach the eyes of all for whom they possess an interest as a sincere tribute from one who, while Germany is called a nation of barbarians, would be proud of the title.”

v.1 no.21 December 30, 1914 Page 3

from THE “TIMES” IN DESPAIR

[…] the New York Times on December 15 announced that “Germany is doomed to sure defeat.” […]

By one blow the Times has forfeited its standing as an American paper, and has proclaimed itself a Tory organ of undisguised British affiliation. It is the Copperhead organ of that party secretly operating within our midst toward the delivery of the United States, bound hand and foot, into the hands of British interests in finance and politics. […]

no. 21 Page 10

from WE DEMAND REAL NEUTRALITY

“The Bryans, the Pages, the Lodges and Gardners […] are following the same tactics as when England destroyed the Dutch republics in South Africa. But for our [American] supplies, our guns, our mules and the recruiting in American ports by British army officers, the Boers would never have been conquered. Their ruin is upon our heads.” […] “These degenerate Americans are bending their necks in meek humility while English warships are blockading our harbors, searching neutral ships for American cargoes, seizing American citizens and placing them in jeopardy of their lives.” […] “They are not neutrals. They are the secret allies of England and Japan. They are prolonging the war. The death of thousands of young Germans will be upon Bryan and Lansing, and the men building submarines and casting guns for the Allies.”

_____________________

A German woman protests the calumny directed against her people. I post this in full because I join in this great writer's cry from the heart.

v.1 no.21 December 30, 1914 Page 9

I PROTEST by Clara Viebig

What George Eliot was to England, Clara Viebig is today to Germany. She is one of the foremost novelists of Europe and her powerful, realistic volumes are read everywhere in the world and have been translated into all the living languages. [Really? Who knew? I've never come across her name, though I'm sure familiar with George Eliot, from high school on, which is just a confirmation that our U.S. culture is built around English culture, with our sympathies directed toward the British side in any conflict. Full disclosure: Viebig was married to a Jewish publisher, who considered himself a German though, I should add. -cy]

IT IS to me like a holy office which I am fulfilling today. I fold my hands before I begin to write down here what moves my soul in its deepest depths; which fills all my thoughts, my feelings, my entire being to such an extent that I often think that my weak woman's body can no longer bear it: Highest indignation, flaming anger seizes me. I want to rage in mighty deeds and can only find an outlet to my feelings in a stream of unrestrained tears. But they are not tears of weakness which I weep and which thousands and thousands of women weep with me—they are tears of bitter resentment. The honor of German women has been attacked. An unheard of insult has been done to us.

We are, then, barbarians, women without morals and shame; that we gave birth to sons who are like savages, nay, even worse than these, like bloodthirsty beasts! That we belong to men who only tear themselves from our arms in order to spear children, dishonor women, murder defenseless people, burn down villages, plunder cities, destroy works of art and then bring welcome booty to us with reeking hands!

I protest in the name of all German women, all mothers, all wives, all brides, all old and young, all rich and poor, all high rank and low, in the name of the most highly educated woman as well as in the name of the most simple workwoman. I protest against the shameless slanders, the monstrous lies which are being spread abroad about our husbands and sons.

When were such lies ever told? When such deception practiced?

I turn over page after page of world history—terrible music of battles roars through them, wild tales are told by the centuries; from the first murder, when Cain killed Abel, until the present day much blood has been spilled on earth; much wrong has been thought, said, done—but never thus slandered.

No, we Germans are not barbarians! We mothers have not given birth to sons who murder for lust; we do not love men who pass through foreign territory as murderous incendiaries. As God is my witness, I would no longer call my son mine if he were capable of even one of the misdeeds which are attributed with inventiveness and cunning by our enemies to our sons. I would spit on a man who stands innocent people against the wall and commands “Fire!” [As the Americans did at Dachau in 1945.]

Our hearts turn when we read what blood-curdling stories about German brutality are served abroad. And do the foreign countries really believe all that: do they not hear the German voice, too?

The voice is raised in honesty, but it cannot yet penetrate. England closes the ear of the nations, she rules all cables; as fluently as France and Russia she composes stories of her own successes and our defeats. But a day will come when the blind will see and the deaf hear. And this day is not long distant. [She is wrong there; it still has not come.] Germany will raise her hands, pierced with bleeding wounds, for she has suffered much: “Peace be with you!” Then many a doubting Thomas will sink to his knees and acknowledge what he did not acknowledge before. [I attribute this mistaken and unhelpful thinking to the medieval German religious idealism, which still hasn't been wiped out of the modern German mentality. -cy] 

But were we ever really understood? I believe not; otherwise it would be unthinkable that we are now so misjudged. I am not speaking of the greatness of our State, of Government and National Economy, of the excellence or non-excellence of our institutions, not of the success of our years of industrious work—none of that falls to my share,—men may do that much better. As a woman, I can only speak of that which lies hidden in the innermost depths of the soul of our people.

This soul of the German people is strangely harmless. It takes a while until it comprehends: they do not wish thee well. If someone will take the trouble to study this soul he will ask himself in shame and wonder: and such are supposed to be monsters? And tender is the soul of our people … much love lives in it. The German warrior loves his wife, his children just as tenderly as the Frenchman loves his family; like the “bourgeois,” our citizen knows no more beautiful culmination to his life's work than to have somewhere a little piece of ground where he can raise a few vegetables and plant his flowers—a little house among the green foliage. But when his peace is taken from him, when the rough hand of war shakes the Fatherland, the latter as the former grasps his weapons. But the German does it without much ado. There is no big talk and no ostentation.

And it seems that such are necessary, otherwise one is not heard. To be too simple is also a fault which conceals greatness in it for him who can and wants to understand.

Shuddering, we mothers can only quietly teach our children: “Be like your brothers and fathers, brave, yet merciful! Fight when you have to fight, but spare when you can spare!”

No, we Germans are not barbarians! If we ever should be then may the sun grow dark above us and our glory set as if it had never been!

___________________

Deja Vu. We find the WW2 atrocities, real and fake, had already appeared in WW1 !

No. 21 Page 31

The FATHERLAND informs Mr. Geo. H. Corey of Scranton, Pennsylvania that “Belgian peasants, under the influence of the sensational false claims made by the press of German atrocities” […] “gouged out the eyes of wounded German soldiers and committed other acts of unbelievable cruelty against German troops.” We can believe this today because we know it was done to German soldiers in the 1940's by Soviet soldiers and partisans, and also by Greek fighters and local people. But more shocking that it was actually done by Belgians too! And it is not doubted - it is documented.

No. 22   Jan. 6, 1915  Page 10

HOW ENGLAND MANUFACTURES “ATROCITY” STORIES

In London recently a young English woman, Kate Hume, was sentenced to three months in the workhouse for forgery in falsifying reports of German atrocities some time early in September. Inspired by hysterical hatred, she supplied the London Times with two letters alleged to have been written by Belgian priests, in which it was stated that her sister, Grace, serving as a hospital nurse in France, had suffered horrible mutilation by the amputation of both breasts by German soldiers. The Times published this tale of horror, and it was promptly cabled to the New York papers. No denial was ever made until Grace Hume, the reputed victim, turned up unharmed at her home in one of the suburbs of London and the priest's letters were found to be forgeries.

No. 24  January 20, 1915  Page 4

BRAVE AMERICAN ACTRESS

MISS FERN ROGERS, the American actress who was playing the leading part in the Drury Lane production of “The Sleeping Beauty” in London, has been forced to resign because of her strong pro-German sentiments. She declared that the Germans are “the dearest people in the world.” Moreover, she didn't believe the stories of German atrocities. [Imagine, an American actress kicked off the stage in London because she speaks well of the enemy of the English government. The intolerance of anything German at that time was as severe as intolerance for “Holocaust denial” now. -cy]

Page 9

GERMANY'S JUST CAUSE

REV. DIXON, an English clergyman, declares in the Manchester Labor Leader: “England is fighting against Europe's most progressive, most scientific nation [Germany], as the ally of Russia, the most repulsive, cruel and despotic nation in Europe. England's aim is to release a horde of barbarians against Europe.”

No. 25   January 27, 1915   Page 8

American Press Prejudices Public Against Germany

During the twelve years of my residence in this country, I have noticed and have often heard it remarked upon by my fellow German-Americans, like myself naturalized citizens of this country […] that most Americans, particularly those of Anglo-Saxon descent, not only do not care to know the truth about German affairs, but usually dislike, if they do not positively refuse to be convinced of, Germany's progress. It seems to me that this is due to the fact that the tremendous influence of the British press and its connections set up anti-German prejudices. I am convinced that but for this powerful influence the true extent of Germany's power, both intellectual and physical, would have been known and appreciated, and that if it had been, a restraining influence would have been exerted by this country, which would have caused the Allies to hesitate and which might even have prevented the war. England, self-centered and selfish, has refused to recognize the progressiveness and accomplishments of Germany, and the press of the United States, as well as of other countries, has underestimated Germany in every way and has consequently been in a false position before its readers which it still seeks to justify by fanning anti-German prejudice. At the crisis, Germany was not understood and only now is the press awakening to the true state of conditions and realizing the error of trusting so blindly a country so cynical and destructive as England.

The American newspaper holds the public in contempt. It is without fear, except of the advertiser, but full of favor to various influences.

The German Public and Its Press

For this the public is in a measure to blame. In Germany false statements soon discredit a paper, the public withdrawing their support. Here the public “stand for it,” probably because it finds no models to turn to of what a newspaper should in reality be.

The freedom of the press in the United States is a growing menace to the freedom of the mind of the public. The news of the war has been a striking proof of the irresponsibility of the press.

[…]

Page 9

“BELGIUM'S OWN FAULT”

The Nordly Set (Northlight), a Danish paper published in New York, prints the following:

“The Swedish professor, Pontus Fahlback, comes out decided in defense of Germany in the Stockholm newspaper, Statsvetens Kaplig Tidskrift, 'Let us hope that France may not be crushed, for its life's strength is not very great. Though Belgium has been placed between hammer and anvil by her own fault, we should not deny her our sympathy. But the other Allies! Servia should receive punishment to the full extreme. With Russia and England we can have absolutely no sympathy.' “

Page 9

A FRANK CONFESSION

(From the Labor Leader, London)

Britain is now supposed to be the champion of small peoples, yet we have the example of Persia before our eyes today. Persia, whose independence was guaranteed by Britain and who has been swallowed by Russia! The neutrality and independence of Korea was guaranteed by Britain, France and Russia, but Korea was seized by Japan and her Queen murdered by Japanese agents. Morocco was divided between France and Spain with the connivance of Britain. Britain, like every other nation, breaks her treaties when convenient to herself.