Old Alliances Die Hard

On Friday, September 10, 2021, the head of the management board of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, told the morning board meeting that the construction of the second Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea was fully completed. The route, jointly with the existing Nord Stream gas pipeline, will double Russia’s annual gas export capacity and will increase Europe's reliance on Russian energy supplies, at the same time circumventing the countries of Central and Eastern Europe like Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. This ambitious energy project aims to create a German-Russian monopoly over gas supplies in Europe and thus virtual economic and political control over other European nations, which became increasingly dependent on gas energy.

The Nord Stream project echoes the old alliance between Germany and Russia which always aimed to combine German industrial capacity with Russia's unlimited natural resources, in their quest for hegemony in Europe. However, there are also other participants of this project. Gazprom's Western partners are German companies Uniper, BASF (Wintershall unit), but also Austrian company OMV, French energy company Engie, as well as Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell. The whole project is financed by consortium of banks including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Citibank, Credit Swiss, PNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Barclays Bank PLC and ING, among many others. Companies like BASF, which was formed from the splintered I.G. Farben, or banks like Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Citibank or Credit Swiss were involved in financing and profiting from Nazi-German genocidal policies during the Second World War. The Rothschild family, who had co-financed and co-operated with Nazi-Germany (at least through their relationship with the Warburgs or the Krupp company) and who had a major influence over creation of Soviet Russia, were affiliated with the companies that were shareholders of Nord Stream, such as Royal Dutch-Shell or GDF Suez. They were also close to the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, chairman of the Nord Stream Shareholder Committee, who in 2006 joined the advisory board of the investment bank of Rothschild, led by Baron David de Rothschild in Paris.

The birth of the London-Moscow relations

The Nord Stream project manifest perfectly the old alliance between Russia and the Western states and undermines the NATO alliance and even the project of the European Union, both of which have been created in response to Russia’s imperialistic politics. Some will notice further that the Nord Stream project is a continuation of the so called Northern Alliance of England, Prussia, Holland and Russia which is centuries-old and dates back to the times of the foundation of Muscovy Company in the City of London.

On May 11, 1553, three ships in London's Deptford Docks were outfitted and crewed for the expedi-tion that would lay the foundation for the Anglo-Russian relations. The expedition was organised by Merchant Adventurers – first joint stock company in the City of London – that was under governship of Sebastian Cabot, Richard Chancellor and Hugh Willoughby. With the Baltic trade sewn up by Dutch competitors and the Hanseatic League, and Spanish and Portuguese dominating in the southern sea routes, the English merchants were driven north, expecting to find navigable passages through arctic waters, hoping to reach America and the Far East. Richard Chancellor, like many other mariti-me adventurers of that time, was guided and prepared for his journey by Dr John Dee, Queen Elisa-beth’s principal adviser and occult philosopher learnt in alchemy and astronomy.

In the course of the journey, the ships were separated by storm and only the third vessel commanded by Richard Chancellor reached the White Sea and eventually anchored at the harbour near the pre-sent-day Arkhangelsk. When Russian Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, heard of Chancellor's arrival, he imme-diately invited him to visit Muscovy for an audience at the royal court.

Located in the midst of forests and at the intersection of important trade routes, Grand Duchy of Mu-scovy, was an aggressive young state pushing its imperial ambitions. Under Ivan III, known as Ivan the Great, it had finally won their full independence from the Mongol rulers and consolidated the state campaigning against his major remaining rival power in the region, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which then was in dynastic union with the Kingdom of Poland. The Tsar hoped to open up to the Baltic trade but he did not have access to the Baltic sea, which was controlled at the time by Catholic Poland and Lithuania.

When the anti-Catholic English merchants appeared at the Tsar’s court in 1554, Tsar considered it a great trading opportunity that could transform into beneficial anti-Catholic political alliance between the two countries for their mutual benefits. The same year Richard Chancellor returned to the City of London with good news that the Russians had agreed to trade. In 1555, the Company of Merchant Adventurers was re-chartered as the Muscovy Company. In the following years, English merchants were supplying arms to Muscovy under cover of trade, thus supporting its aggressive wars against Catholic Poland and Lithuania and other enemies in her region.

The relations between the Muscovy Company in the City of London, and the rising new state, Duchy of Muscovy, laid the foundation for a strong, long-lasting relationship that would forever change the course of history.

The birth of the ‘Northern Alliance’

Joining forces with protestant merchants of the Netherlands and protestant statesmen of Prussia, the English merchants virtually helped to build the Russian Empire. At the time, England needed bar iron as well as other products, such as sailcloth, hemp and timber for the construction of the Royal Navy, all of which Russia could provide. In Muscovy, the merchants: Englishmen, Dutchmen, Scotsmen and other foreigners swarmed in the so called “German suburb”, which Tsar Aleksey I created in 1652 to shelter protestant Germans. These merchants presented tsarevich Peter with stories of maritime ad-ventures and had discussions of the need for Russia to get access to the seas, so vital for the trade. Therefore, the first step tsarevich Peter took when he became Tsar Peter I, were the campaigns against the Crimean Tatars, which resulted in the capture of the port of Azov. He then embarked on a diplo-matic tour to the protestant states of Europe to learn the art of navigation, navy fleet construction and to get professional cadres.

In the capital of Holland, Russian Tsar Peter I gained practical experience in the largest shipyard in the world which belonged to the Dutch East India Company. In Utrecht he met his great idol, William of Orange and the leading Dutch admiral Gilles Schey, a pupil of the legendary Dutch admiral Ruyter. In England, he met again William of Orange, but in his capacity of king William III of England, who granted him access to the City's shipyards, royal mint and gun foundries. On his return to Russia, Tsar Peter I brought with him from his European tour about 640 Dutchmen and 60 Englishmen, including ship designer Major Leonard van der Stamm; Captain John Perry, a hydraulic engineer to whom Peter assigned responsibility for building the Volga-Don Canal, and Professor Henry Farquharson from the University of Aberdeen, who was to open a School of Mathematics and Navigation in Moscow. Schey had arranged for one of his best admirals, Cornelius Cruys, to go to Russia to supervise the construction of the Russian fleet. By 1698, first Russian Navy base was established at Taganrod, at the Sea of Azov, with almost all ships being manned by foreigners. Dutch officer, Vice Admiral Cruys, was placed in command of the fleet. The Russian army was re-modelled in Prussian style and had foreigners appointed senior Russian officers.

The strong bond between England, Holland, Prussia and Russia, that was based on anti-Catholic sentiments and territorial and trade ambitions, formed the so called “Northern Alliance” that proved fatal for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and many other states in the region. In a subsequent war against Sweden, Tasr Peter I gained his much coveted access to the Baltic sea, becoming the dominant power in the Baltic region, and establishing its permanent Protectorate over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1721, he proudly assumed the title of Emperor of Russia and his country officially became the Russian Empire. In the same century, Prussia, Russia and Austria, all of which had links with the merchant elites of the City of London, gradually partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the next 123 years.

The break-down of the ‘Northern Alliance’

The attempts made by Napoleon Bonaparte, with the assistance of the Polish troops, to break the Northern Alliance were thwarted by the chief banker in the City of London, Nathan Rothschild, whose money subsidized the armies of anti-French coalition of Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia. In the following decades, the Rothschilds remained the prime bankers of the Northern Alliance, helping to surpress various freedom uprisings across Europe, at the same time building the economic power of Britain, Prussia and also France, often at the price of colonial expansion.

Although the Rothschild family has been lending money to Tsarist Russia, their attitude to the Russian regime began to change when Russia started to have greater territorial ambitions in the Balkans and the Black Sea Region, threatening Ottoman Turkey and Britain's commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India. As Russia extended its influence in the Balkans, the Northern Alliance began to crumble.

The rising competition between the British Empire, the German Reich and the Russian Empire resulted eventually in the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and the first great military conflict between the members of the Northern Alliance.

In 1917, German-Jewish agents such as Lev Trotsky were sent to Russia by the German General Staff to take control over the revolutionary forces, form the government and to draw Russia out of war, thus giving rise to a new totalitarian Bolshevik Regime. Despite German success on the Eastern Front, the outcome of the First World War was eventually determined by the German-Jewish bankers operating in the City of London and Washington D.C., who lent support to Britain and France in return of their promise to get control over Palestine.

Nazi-Germany - Soviet Russia alliance

In 1921, British government, encouraged by the Rothschild family, signed a trade agreement with the Bolsheviks and soon Lloyd George called in the British House of Commons for international economic and financial conference in Genoa. The purpose was to discuss the return to the Gold Standard that had been dropped in the course of First World War and to include Germany and Soviet Russia as equal members and thus soften the harsh provisions of the Versailles Treaty. In the course of the April Conference in Genoa, the position of the French delegates caused the negotiations to break down and Soviet foreign minister, Georgi Chicherin, slipped out of the conference together with German-Jewish foreign minister and industrialist, Walther Rathenau, and met in Rapallo, on April 16, 1922. In Rapallo, the parties agreed to cancel all financial claims between the two countries and strengthen the economic and military ties between German Reich and Soviet Russia for their mutual benefits. Thus Germans began providing the Soviets with assistance in creating a Red Army General Staff and in return the Soviets provided them with raw materials and facilities deep inside their territory for building and testing arms and for military training.

To facilitate money transfer from western capitalists, the Bolsheviks formed their first international bank – Ruscombank - based on the investments from German, Swedish, American and British bankers. The foreign banking consortium involved in the Ruskombank represented mainly British capital. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which consisted initially of Soviet Russia, Soviet Byelorussia, Soviet Ukraine, and the Soviet Caucasus. The British government was the first to give the Soviet Union their diplomatic recognition in 1924.

According to the British and American historian, Professor Anthony Sutton, the American support for the Bolsheviks was centred at Equitable Trust Building, 120 Broadway, which was the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Banker's Club and the Morgan-controlled American International Corporation (AIC). The National City Bank (present-day Citibank), had, for example, no fewer than ten directors on the board of AIC. Kuhn, Loeb Co. and the DuPont, each had one director. Because of looming nationalisation of the Caucasus oil fields, the Rothschilds and the Nobles sold their holdings to Walter Teagle, the new head of Standard Oil of New Jersey, controlled by the Rockefeller family, and Henri Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell. These corporate elites needed to ensure they have their agent on ground who would protect their vital economic interests. His name was Anastas Mikoyan. He served as Minister of Foreign Trade and Soviet envoy during the mandates of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, until late 1970-ties.

The purpose of the operations of the Rothschild family, the Rockefeller family and their affiliated partners in financing Nazi-Germany and Soviet Russia, was three-fold: to drive Jews to Palestine and create the state of Israel; to create the Soviet Empire that would abolish nation states and introduce classless society; and to create the environment for the U.S. government to step in and emerge as the new balancing power in the world (politically, militarily and financially) with dollar replacing British pound as new reserve currency.

In August 1939, Nazi-Germany and Soviet Russia signed an economic agreement as well as Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, agreeing a secret supplement dividing Poland and other Central and Baltic European countries into German and Soviet spheres of influence. In September, Nazi-Germany invaded Poland and Soviet Russia joined its ally on the 17th of September, invading Poland's eastern border. This was the start of the Second World War in Europe.

Banking elites profiting from war

Throughout the Second World War, British, American and German banking elites and corporations were profiting from war by supplying belligerent states with credits and equipment. Soviet Russia had major ally in the City of London and Washington D.C., which supplied it with military equippment as well as vital intelligence. In 1942, Victor Rothschild became MI5's security inspector, which gave him access to every major research centre. Because of limited budgets of MI5, he put some of the Dutch Shell laboratories at MI5's disposal. Thus, Victor Rothschild was able to follow everything MI5 was doing and passing the sensitive data to chief of the Soviet Secret police, Lavrentiy Beria, through the network of spies.

At the same time, the U.S. President and communist sympathiser Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed Lend-Lease Act in order to send military equipment first to Britain and then to the Soviet Russia. The Soviets subsequently used their military-industrial complex enlarged with support of the American Lend-Lease programme not only to defeat Nazi-Germany but to maintain its dominance over the countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Averell Harriman, American ambassador to the Soviet Russia and chief Wall Street banker, continued to support the Soviets with the loans for their post-war reconstruction.

This secret co-operation between the City of London and Washington D.C. and the Soviet Russia, which is one of the greatest crimes concealed from the public knowledge, lasted throughout the existence of the Soviet Russia and even its dismatling was organised by the same banking elites and international corporations, who later participated in the predatory privatisation of the state assets in Russia and other post-communist states.

The Stasi-KGB collaboration in the context of Nord Stream

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the German elites in East Germany and the agents of Stasi secret police had closely collaborated with Russian KGB in Europe and all across the globe. At German re-unification, Ost-CDU of East Germany, which was staffed with Stasi agents, merged with CDU of West Germany. When in December 1990 federal election chief of CDU Helmut Kohl was elected Chancellor of reunified Germany, Lothar de Maizière, last leader of East Germany and agent of Stasi, became vice-chairman of CDU. As rumours about his Stasi past began to mount, Lothar de Maizière resigned but managed to secure a post for his protégé, Angela Merkel, a former communist activist in East Germany. In 2005, Angela Merkel won federal elections replacing Gerhard Schröder as Chancellor of Germany. She appointed Thomas Maizière, a cousin of Lothar de Maizière, as chief of the Chancellor's office, and ensured, throughout her chancellorship until her resignation in 2021, that Nord Stream project is duly completed.

It should be suffice to say that the former agent of Stasi, Matthias Warnig, was made Managing Director of Nord Stream project and 26 banks were involved in its construction, including those that once financed Nazi-Germany and Soviet Russia.

In this historical perspective, it is impossible not to see the analogy between the Nord Stream project and the old German-Russian alliance as well as Northern Alliance. The same participants are in play and the same states are silently falling victim to their agenda.

November 2021