The Rothschilds have always evidently been proud of their family’s financial and social success and they have not been shy about building monuments to their own glory.
By the end of the 19th century, the family owned, or had built, at least 41 palaces, “of a scale and luxury perhaps unparalleled even by the richest royal families”, [19] as Wikipedia puts it.
Ferguson comments: “They were advertise-ments for Rothschild power, five-star hotels for influential guests, private art galleries: in short, centres for corporate hospitality”. [20] Writing in 1836, Heine described James de Rothschild’s house in Paris as “the Versailles of the absolute sovereignty of money”. [21] In London, Alfred Rothschild had his own personal train, a private orchestra, a circus of which he was the ringmaster and a carriage pulled by four zebras. [22] Such was the family’s status that the Metro-politan Police ensured that their carriages had right of way as they drove through the streets of London. [23] The Rothschilds, who had achieved noble status both in Britain and in Europe, became known for their lavish entertaining and fancy high-society balls. [24] For millions of people across Europe and North America, the 1930s meant misery, as they were plunged into desperate poverty by the Great Depression, for which the banking dynasty must bear some responsibility.
“Venal parliaments and gold-hoarding central banks bear at least some of the blame for the 1929-32 world crisis: the French Rothschilds were represented in both”, [25] comments Ferguson.
But all was hunky-dory for the family them-selves, as he explains. “For Guy [de Rothschild], the 1930s meant golf, American cars, dancing at Biarritz and baccarat at Deauville. Philippe [de Rothschild] built himself a seaside villa at Arcachon, the better to entertain other men’s wives, and helped his father to squander yet more money by building his own theatre in the rue Pigalle (a suitably louche location)”. [26] Inevitably, perhaps, their ultra-rich lifestyle was increasingly accompanied by a certain sense of superiority, even arrogance.
Remarks Ferguson: “Having risen so far by their own efforts the Rothschilds considered themselves in many ways superior to the aristocracy, not least in financial terms”. [27] In France, Maurice de Rothschild stood for election using the slogan “my name is my platform” on his posters and letting voters know that governments could do nothing without his family, who were in fact “the real” finance ministry. [28] The Rothschilds were generally indifferent, even hostile, to the little people, way below them in the social pecking order.
For instance, they argued against land reform to increase the number of small proprietors in the British Isles [29] and Natty Rothschild sneered at “the much pampered and not over-worked British workman”. [30] Alphonse de Rothschild made this unfortu-nate family trait even plainer when he declared in 1897: “I am sure that, generally speaking, working people are very satisfied with their lot... “One has to distinguish between good and bad workers. Those who demand the eight hour day are the lazy, incapable ones. The others, the steady serious fathers of families, want to be able to work long enough to provide for themselves and their family. “But if they were all compelled to work only eight hours a day do you know what the majority of them would do? Well they would drink!... What else would you expect them to do?” [31] Open racial and religious prejudice was very widespread in the 19th century, as the Rothschilds had themselves discovered to their cost. But they were not immune to the same failing themselves.
Alphonse de Rothschild, asked by a friend in March 1866 why he worked so hard to make more money when he was already enormously rich, replied: “Ah! You don’t know the pleasure of feeling heaps of Christians under one’s boots!”.
[32] In 1876 public opinion in Britain was out-raged by the “Bulgarian atrocities” in which up to 15,000 Bulgarian Christians were killed by Turks. [33] Ferguson remarks: “By its very nature, this appeal on behalf of the Balkan Christians was of limited interest to the Rothschilds”. [34] Indeed the family regarded the Slav nation-alist cause as in contradiction to the interests of their fellow Jews and Lionel Rothschild was scathing about “all these public meetings” [35] about the plight of the Christians. This is not to say that the Rothschilds’ relationship to other Jews was straightforward.
Not only their wealth but their genealogy set them apart from the rest of European Jewry.
For many generations the family followed a 8 policy of deliberate in-breeding, marrying not just within their own faith but within their own immediate kinship group.
Of 21 marriages involving descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild between 1824 and 1877, no fewer than fifteen were between his direct descendants. [36] This meant, for instance, that when Natty Rothschild married Emma Rothschild, he was marrying the daughter of both his father’s sister and his mother’s brother. [37] The mentality of the family is well illus-trated by Charlotte de Rothschild’s reaction on hearing of her brother’s engagement to their cousin’s daughter: “My good parents will certainly be pleased that he has not chosen a stranger. For us Jews, and particularly for us Rothschilds, it is better not to come into contact with other families, as it always leads to unpleasantness and costs money”. [38] The Rothschilds took on the role of leaders of the Jewish community, even “Kings of the Jews” [39] – a position later reinforced by their key role in the Balfour Declaration which paved the way for the state of Israel, with the 1917 document being addressed to, and apparently also drafted by, the family. [40] But, at the same time, their aristocratic and quasi-royal status, along with their vast wealth, separated them from the mass of Jewish people, with whom they had little in common and to whom they considered themselves altogether superior.
For instance, Mayer Carl Rothschild showed little empathy for his fellow Jews when he told German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1875:
“As for anti-semitic feeling the Jews themselves are to blame, and the present agitation must be ascribed to their arrogance, vanity and unspeakable insolence”. [41] One group the Rothschilds particularly disliked were the nouveaux riches – “Jewish bankers and businessmen who had made their fortunes more recently than the Rothschilds”, [42] as Ferguson puts it.
Another was the Ostjuden, eastern Jews, of whom 2.5 million fled anti-semitic repression and pogroms in Russia and elsewhere from the early 1880s and sought refuge in Western Europe. [43] The Rothschilds did not welcome the arrival of these co-religionists and actively took part in organisations which raised funds for their return to Eastern Europe or their onward emigration to South Africa, Canada or Argentina. [44] And their strong public opposition to the Tsarist regime’s anti-Jewish policies did not prevent them from playing a central role [45] in the Franco-Russian entente of the 1890s. For the Rothschilds, matters of solidarity always came second to their own personal pecuniary interests, as can also be seen from their initial rejection of an approach by Viennese playwright and journalist Theodor Herzl, in the 1890s, for help in funding a new Jewish state.
He fumed that the Rothschilds were “vulgar, contemptuous, egotistical people” and “a national misfortune for the Jews”, calling for a mobilisation of the Jewish masses for “a battle against the powerful Jews”. [46] The problem was that, as well as potentially calling into question the Rothschilds’ long-cultivated national loyalties, Herzl’s plan for a Jewish state featured proposals for controls of the banking system which did not in the least appeal to this family of financiers. [47] Herzl was not the only prominent Jew to harshly criticise the Rothschilds. In 1839 the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums launched a bitter attack against the Rothschilds, accusing them of positively harming the cause of Jewish emancipation.
This Jewish newspaper wrote: “Well we know to our dismay that the repulsive attitude towards the Jews in Germany, which had almost disappeared completely at the time of the Wars of Liberation, increased with the increase in the House of Rothschild; and that the latter’s great wealth and [that of] their partners have adversely affected the Jewish cause, so that as the former grew so the latter sank all the further... We must sharply separate the Jewish cause from the whole House of Rothschild and their consorts”. [48] And in the 1870s the Jüdische Zeitschrift in Vienna even accused the Rothschilds of employing anti-semites in preference to Jews.
[49] The most shocking instance of Rothschild contempt for the little people of their own faith came with their reaction to the Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of Nazi Germany.
In France, Robert de Rothschild declared in 1935: “Immigrants, like guests, must learn how to behave and not criticise too much... and if they aren’t happy here, they’d do better to leave”. [50] And Victor Rothschild told a meeting of the Earl Baldwin Fund for Refugees at the Mansion House, London, in December 1938: “In spite of humanitarian feelings, we probably all agree that there is something unsatisfactory in refugees encroaching on the privacy of our country, even for relatively short periods of time”. [51] As will already be becoming clear, self-interest has always sat at the core of the Rothschild family project, with political and cultural allegiances regarded as matters of expedience rather than articles of faith.
Nathan Rothschild is described by Ferguson as not being “the kind of man to turn down good business on ideological grounds” [52] while Anselm Rothschild, when chided for being “too devoted an Austrian”, replied that he was “far more a devoted pro-Rothschild”. [53] Stockbroker Ernest Feydeau wrote of James de Rothschild: “He kept abreast of the slightest pieces of news – political, financial, commercial and industrial – from all quarters of the globe; he did his best to profit from these, quite instinc-tively, missing no opportunity for gain, no matter how small”. [54] Bouvier explains that the Rothschilds, unhampered by ideology, had no ethical problem with backing any kind of regime.
“For them it was above all a matter of using political circumstances so as to extend and consolidate their network”, [55] he writes.
“The Rothschilds did not want to run any risk. It wasn’t political principles that they defended, but their own security”. [56] On a personal level, this cynicism meant that they regarded even their own social ascent as a mere tool, says Ferguson. “Titles and honors were ‘part of the racket’, helpful in giving the brothers access to the corridors of power. Playing host was an uncomfortable duty, to the same end: much of it was corporate hospitality, as we would now say”. [57] On an international level it meant they never had any qualms about backing both sides in a conflict, as Bouvier sets out in relation to the 19th century clash between Italy and imperial Austria.
“But what was it all about, other than to conduct business? Who cared whether this was with Turin or Vienna?... The Rothschilds quite naturally pursued an ‘Austrian’ policy in Vienna and an ‘Italian’ one in Turin”. [58] The rights and wrongs of the conflict were of no interest to them, he says. Their sole aim was to profit from the situation in as many ways as they could. [59]
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family [20] Ferguson, p. 47.
93 [21] Bouvier, p. 276.
[22] Bouvier, p. 277.
[23] Virginia Cowles, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune (London: Future Publications Ltd, 1973), p. 153, cit. Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, p. 22.
[24] https://therake.com/stories/icons/party-animals-the-rothschild-surrealist-ball/0 [25] Ferguson, p. 464.
[26] Ferguson, p. 467.
[27] Ferguson, p. 250.
[28] Ferguson, p. 463.
[29] Ferguson, p. 427.
[30] Ferguson, p. 426.
[31] Ferguson, p. 337.
[32] Ferguson, p. 228.
[33] Ferguson, p. 305.
[34] Ferguson, p. 306.
[35] Ferguson, p. 306.
[36] Ferguson, p. xxvi.
[37] Ferguson, p. 244.
[38] Ferguson, p. 12.
[39] Ferguson, p. 252.
[40] Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty, Prolonging the Agony:
How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2018), pp.
400-401. [41] Ferguson, p. 271.
[42] Ferguson, pp. 271-72.
[43] Ferguson, p. 272.
[44] Ferguson, pp. 278-79.
[45] Ferguson, p. 409. [46] Ferguson, p. 280.
[47] Ferguson, pp. 281-82.
[48] Ferguson, p. 21.
[49] Ferguson, p. 262.
[50] Ferguson, p. 474.
[51] Ferguson, p. 473.
[52] Ferguson, p. xxiii.
[53] Ferguson, p. 149.
[54] Ferguson, p. 57.
[55] Bouvier, p. 70.
[56] Bouvier, p. 79.
94 [57] Ferguson, p. xxv.
[58] Bouvier, p. 193.
[59] Bouvier, p. 193.
Enemies of the People
Paul Cudenec
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