By July of 1944, German military planners and industrialists knew that Germany was effectively defeated, and that surrender was just a matter of time. During August, senior industrialists met in Strasbourg at the Hotel Rotes Haus (“Red House” or Maison Rouge) to plan for Germany’s industrial future – and for the future of Europe after the war.
As Hitler lapsed into lunacy and incoherence after Stalingrad, Martin Bormann set national policy and wrote extensively on how Germany could survive the war, as a powerful industrial force. Although Bormann could not attend the important “Maison Rouge” meeting, it is known that Bormann’s plan was imparted to chief organizer of the meeting, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Scheid.
While Bormann’s extensive documentation on the post-war future of Europe and its future industrial policy did not survive the war, his plan did survive and was put into effect, as the existence of the European Union proves today.
The German industrialists attending the Maison Rouge meeting of August 1944 concentrated on subjects of trade, commerce, and monetary issues, where corporate conglomeration, consolidation, and monopolization would provide a powerful framework to eventually control and dominate Europe. The IG Farben cartel provided the industrial model for that conglomeration and control.*
Gone were flags, banners, and marches, replaced by powerful but anonymous corporate men in business suits, who sought to exert control over Europe in three stages. Stage one mandated financial stabilization of the mark; stage two established a banking system somewhat similar to the current Fed primary dealer banking system (for funding major industry), and stage three was to spread German industrial influence far and wide.
The Bormann-Scheid “Maison Rouge Plan” acknowledged that nation-states must cooperate at a high level where major industry is concerned, with a primary agenda to promote the combined interest of the controlling class. In other words, the idea was to build an industrial Europe (and not a militarized one) in cooperation with the United States as the dominant military power, in opposition to the Soviet Union.
Nonetheless, the European Union as such only formed many years after the war, and the US arose as the world’s dominant military and financial power during that time, while eventually the Soviet Union could not practically and economically compete. So, we tend to think that the Soviet Union was defeated by the west by 1991; however that ‘defeat’ was achieved at considerable strategic cost to the west because maintaining the unipolar moment (as global hegemon) means monetary, economic, and military supremacy must be constantly maintained, with continual complication and risk, on a global basis. Reference:
See: https://theduran.com/challenges-to-the-us-unipolar-moment/
and Link: https://theduran.com/us-power-is-waning/
By 1991, Bormann’s posthumous plan for Europe — which included the United States and Canada versus the Soviet Union — prima facie appeared successful. As Russia developed after 1991 and partnered with the west, Eastern Europe and the Ukraine acquiesced to the Bormann Brotherhood plan over time. All seemed well for the Brotherhood’s plan..
But .. there was a problem…
Beside food and weaponry, since the 1970’s the United States and Europe decimated their manufacturing sector overall, over time. With the notable exception of energy products from the US and Canada, the west destroyed its industrial base from the 1970’s on, believing that financialization of their economies and a pastoral future with less industry is essential (ie let “foriegners” do the work) — so long as its MIC can still fuel Wall Street and the FTSE 100, and fill Congressional and Parliamentary pockets with cash.
At some point (perhaps during the 1980’s and certainly after 911) the west resolutely adopted more aggressive imperial thinking about global dominance. One recent example was when the US lied about supplying Europe with liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in order to provoke Russia, by causing Germany to renege on its contract to take Nordstream 2 gas, because Germany believed the US would supply the LPG the US said it could. Big mistake.
A further example: US/EU-mandated sanctions on many nations while confiscating the wealth of those nations — held by western banks — via an unlawful (and corrupt) political agenda. No doubt, Washington and the UK would take Russia’s resources too if they could, as Washington extant has stolen oil and resources for decades.
Washington and the EU’s behavior is a problem because 80% of the rest of the world has moved on, away from imperial kleptocracy, wary of such hegemonic bullying. 80% of the globe outside the collective west needs real products, needs real commodities, real trade and real cooperation. Contrarily, the real world has no pragmatic need for Netflix, Amazon, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Starlink, Starbucks, Tesla, or any other financially-gamed market mirage.
Compounding that, US/EU sanctions are ineffective; western military power is waning; and the dollar may be relegated from DXY 108 to reality, where inflation highlights the potential worthlessness of the $ US. That’s all a bitter pill for the autocrats of Washington to swallow, or even to contemplate.
Ultimately, whether by cartels and conglomerates, or based on MMT monetary fantasy, the collective west is now the entity that increasingly cannot compete with the rest of the world. That’s why the US must arrest Huawei’s CFO in Canada; and why the USA is now the equivalent of the old USSR, holding political prisoners, deeply in debt, maintaining its influence by subterfuge. The collective west cannot evolve and reform its colonial thinking as Russia once did, when the USSR- Warsaw Pact disbanded and reformed. For the US and its EU military arm NATO to disband voluntarily, is an absolute impossibility for Washington.
But with 80% of the world now embarking on a fair world order in opposition to the collective west’s policies of aggression and destabilization, the United States is on a direct collision course with Russia. That’s because US State and Kiev refused to implement Minsk-2, and because in 2021 US State-NATO refused to respect Russia’s indivisible security, ultimately where US State provoked the conflict in the Ukraine, in the Donbas territories and Crimea, who wish to be independent from Kiev, but protected by Russia.
So where are we now? By western provocation Russia is forced to resolutely, methodically, and militarily protect its allies in the Donbas and Crimea, for however long that takes, ie to liberate those regions from a most corrupt, perverse, brutal, cruel, and authoritarian regime in Kiev. Zelensky has even banned the existence of any opposition political party… some “democracy”. The mega-corruption of Kiev’s authoritarian regime is legend, long known for gun-running, hacking, computer and cyber crime, and financial crime — something that Washington has vowed to defend.
But for Washington there is a greater issue than Kiev’s legendary corruption … that’s the gradual global jettisoning of the US dollar due to duplicity of the US Treasury and Bank of England. The sovereign currency and gold of now-declared “hostile” nations has been forfeited by the United State Treasury and Bank of England on ideologically criminal grounds, and that forfeiture has marginalized faith in western fiat currencies. Thus the euro and GBP have collapsed, making the dollar US appear “strong” by comparison when in fact it is not.
Janet Yellen and henchpersons at the US Treasury are well aware of this currency criminality; any alternative monetary structure — such as the SCO – BRICS and Moscow gold bourse allying with the Shanghai gold exchange – to emerge and challenge the dominance of the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and LBMA, truly is the gauntlet of war.
But western Elites of the .01% of 1% likely sense that MIC profits from this war may exceed the 100% increase in wealth that they experienced due to the pandemic. That’s surely an inducement to war as well … after all the Totalitarian .01% of 1% put US Congress and the Executive into power– and in Europe’s parliaments, too. Likewise, since the US fled Afghanistan in disgrace, American hubris cannot accept another humiliation of the surfeit variety it has received on the battlefield since the “end” of WW2. For all those reasons and many more, Washington is determined to take on and destroy Russia.
What US autocrats must worry about, is whether this war with Russia will remain conventional – a gamble. As Mr Mercouris, analyst of the Duran has stated, “Neocons in Washington have no reverse gear”. Of course, that applies to the EU “leadership” as well, if it may be called that. And with US State’s predilection for war, destruction, and havoc, it appears that the warmonger profiteers of Washington are prepared to — and about to — drive us all over a cliff.
The question is when. We don’t know, but again as political analyst Mr Mercouris has stated, “If you put imbeciles in charge they can do an enormous amount of damage very fast.”
*IG Farben was broken up after the war into lesser corporate components that went on to monopolize and conglomerate again.
Steve Brown