France and Germany's refusal to sanction the Iraq war was popular with their voters and with anti globalization activists. But could their stand have been self interested?

Rodney Atkinson, a respected British opponent of globalization actually supports Tony Blair on the Iraq war and casts it in a surprising new perspective.

He sees the war in terms of the century-old rivalry between Germany and England (and US) for Middle East domination.

In books and web site, Atkinson warns that the German "political class" has not lost its appetite for expansion. He says the European Community is a barely disguised projection of German imperialism, a political recrudescence of the cartels behind Nazi expansion.

In his book, "Europe's Full Circle" Atkinson reveals that the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which defined the European Union, is practically identical to Hitler's 1942 plan for a "European Economic Community." He says the "destruction of 15 democratic constitutions, 15 national parliaments, 12 national currencies and 12 central banks by the European Union was brought about by the same forces twice defeated in the first 50 years of the 20th century."

In his book "Fascist Europe Rising" Atkinson says European fascism fixated on the term "New World Order" in the 1930's-40's because it denoted "power, global ambition, order (i.e. control) and contempt for democratic nationhood."

Atkinson compares current French-German cooperation to the Vichy Nazi arrangement. After Dunkirk, he says the Germans and French agreed that Europe would be one state controlled by Germany with France as junior partner. For example, ex President Francois Mitterand was honoured by the Vichy regime and former Finance Minister Jacques Delors belonged to the French equivalent of Hitler Youth. Both were architects of the EU.

"Multiculturalism" and "diversity" can also be traced to the Nazi policy of "volksgruppenpolitik,"
i.e. nations can be broken down by promoting their constituent ethnic groups.

"Germany's increasing domination of Europe is based on destroying those states that have proved to be stable non-racial nations like the UK, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia,"
Atkinson writes. Only one country will not break apart for it consists of one "volk" only, namely Germany.

This may explain the tolerance given the national aspirations of Mexican Americans in the US Southwest. The US may be dismantled too.

Interestingly, Germany's vision for the Middle East is the same as Israel's: splintering Arab nations along ethnic lines so none are strong enough to challenge global control.

FACTORING THIS IN

Obviously the Europeans had economic ties to the Sadaam Hussein regime. Iraq owed Germany $4.3 billion and Russia $12 billion. Next to Russia, France is Iraq's biggest creditor.

It is useful to see the war not simply in terms of US-Israeli expansion but also in terms of a dispute over who will be top dog in the new world order, the US or Europe. In these terms, some might say the US-UK gambit was brilliant. The US neatly pre-empted its rivals and now controls the world's first and second largest petroleum reserves.

On the other hand, Muslims are aroused in opposition to the United States. Already there are signs the US might placate them at Israel's expense. It might establish a Palestinian state and require Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders. This would test the true power of the "Jewish lobby."

Rodney Atkinson is obviously motivated by well-founded suspicions of German intentions. Living in England he doesn't see that the US is just as repressive as Europe. There isn't much to choose between the two.

He will be disappointed to learn that Tony Blair may use his enhanced popularity as a result of this war to force the UK to adopt the Euro.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF WORLD WAR TWO

World War Two was good business for the world's cartels. It gives the term "internationalism" a new, true dimension.

For example, did you know that American convoys to England were reinsured in Nazi Germany? The German insurance company had the details of cargoes and departure times; and these were passed on to Nazi Intelligence.

James Martin relates this anecdote in his book "All Honourable Men" (1950) which is out-of-print and not in used bookstores. (I got my copy through an interlibrary loan.) Martin was head of the economic warfare branch with the US Dept. of Justice and later with the Economics Division of the US Military Government in Germany.

In the Munich Reinsurance Company files, Martin also found "bundles of photographs, blueprints and detailed descriptions of whole industrial developments in the U.S., many of them obtained through insurance channels. Together they made up the vital statistics of our war economy." (23)

Martin tells how in the 1920's New York bankers such as Dillon Read & Company and Brown Brothers Harriman (where Prescott Bush was President) helped consolidate German industry into giant cartels such as the United Steel Works and I.G. Farben. Less than 100 men linked with the Deutsche and the Dresdner Banks controlled 2/3 of Nazi industry.

These cartels financed the Nazi Party. In particular, they funded the SS Waffin, the elite corps directly responsible to Hitler. The SS ran the concentration camps. The cartels benefited economically from the "extermination through work" program. (85)

"Prewar movies had pictured the goose stepping Nazis as the absolute masters of Germany," Martin writes." Our...questioning of Alfred Krupp and his works managers erased that impression. Adolf Hitler and his Party had never been allowed quite to forget that they had depended on the industrialists to put them in office, and that in future they could go further with the industrialists' help than without it." (83)

The Nazi cartels were all linked to American corporations such as Du Pont, Standard Oil, General Motors, ITT and General Electric. In 1944, Martin found 3600 agreements between German and American companies that denied critical raw materials and patents to the United States in favor of the Nazi war effort. (13)

Martin realized that the enemy was not a political but an economic power. "We began to summarize our picture of an enemy that could survive a military defeat because it did not need or use military weapons." (13)

That enemy survived the war and prospered because its American associates protected it. Martin describes how Dillon Read banker General William H. Draper was put in charge of the Economics Division and thwarted Martin's investigation of American-Nazi links. Draper's first priority was to rehabilitate German industry and industrialists. Confirming Rodney Atkinson, Martin concludes:

"Except for its military outcome, the Nazi experiment appears to have been a success in the eyes of its original sponsors. The unity of German business and finance in backing the Nazis was matched only by the precision with which the Nazi government moved in to support the aims and interests of the dominant financiers and industrialists. They, in turn, have been waging a hard postwar fight to keep the economic lines of the Nazi system intact." (291)

The war was also a success for the Nazi's US partners. During the five war years, the 60 largest corporations in the US more than doubled their total assets. (296)

In conclusion, we have to avoid the tendency to seek good guys and bad guys. We can assume all governments are projections of elite economic power; all are instruments of a bizarre program to dehumanize and enslave us. There is no reason to cheer one side or another.

We can cheer because the Iraq war was relatively short, and our long anxious winter is over.