Consider the generation that was in its prime in the mid-2oth century – the generation that fought World War Two.
Which individual of that time left the most significant and enduring mark on history?
Who, in that narrow sense, was the greatest ‘success story’ of the era?
The first names that spring to mind may well be the political giants of the time, names known to even the most cursory student of modern history: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Hitler might get a mention for some remarkable early victories.
But I beg to differ.
None of those famous leaders was successful in having their preferred narrative of the war become official history, generations later. In a chess analogy, all of them are better viewed as pieces rather than players. Yes, each wielded great power – but their power was relatively circumscribed. All were propelled into war. Once war came, their creative powers were subordinated to the destructive imperative.
However, there was a man, alive at that time, who had a rather more successful war. He commanded no troops directly, but I believe that, along with his associates, this extraordinary individual was able to manipulate the key combatants so they performed in accordance with his general plans. He also achieved a very tangible outcome from the war – delivered soon afterwards – the birth of an entirely new nation, complete with a ‘Get Out of Jail’ card granted at birth. Significantly, his version of the history of that gruesome conflict has become the dominant or ‘official’ history more than two generations later.
As the Second War World recedes into history, memory of "The Holocaust" is promoted with undiminished vigor
The nation in question was the State of Israel, named and declared in 1948, accepted into the UN in the first half of 1949.
The man’s name? Victor Nathaniel Rothschild (later in life, Lord Rothschild)
The “Get Out of Jail Card”? This was the guilt generated through a carefully edited and heavily promoted version of World War Two history, transmuted into sympathy for Jewry in general and Israel in particular
I’m not suggesting Victor Rothschild acted alone, of course. He was no dictator. His true modus operandi behind the scenes is something I can only infer. Rothschild was clearly part of a network – but he was undoubtably a key player within his influential network. It’s possible he was the key player. He had an extraordinarily hands-on role in British national life that’s on the public record, from zoological research at Cambridge to wartime work in the Secret Services. After the war he had a string of roles in the corporate sector and as a senior government adviser. A man who entertained and was courted by British Prime Ministers from Churchill to Thatcher, his network also extended way beyond the British Isles. Rothschild had allies from Moscow to Washington. I speculate he was able to manipulate, rather than be manipulated – far more effectively than other well-known leaders of the times.
Indeed, it’s possible to make a case that World War Two was Victor Rothschild’s war.
The extended network of powerful Jewish interests of which Victor Rothschild was part were, I have come to believe, key players in getting the war started and keeping it going. This is not the ‘mainstream’ historical view, but the people who lobbied hardest for war with Germany left footprints. It’s not really possible to assert that organized Jewry had no role in creating the momentum for war as much of those efforts are on the public record; there can be legitimate dispute over the extent to which it had critical influence on the flow of events as the war began, first in Europe in 1939, then spread to become a truly global conflict in 1941. I think its role was quite central, although making that case satisfactorily would require a longer essay focused on that alone.
After war broke out, Rothschild played a very active personal part in ensuring the gigantic military conflict had his desired outcome: a crushing defeat for Germany.
Last, but by no means least, Rothschild got what he most wanted out of the war – a new nation named Israel – a nation that might appropriately be called Rothschildistan given the intimate relationship between the multinational Rothschild family and the Jewish colonial project in Palestine from as far back as the 1880s.
Victor Rothschild achieved these ends by brilliant, enduring deception that suggests both devilish cunning and utter ruthlessness.
The Second World War was the biggest mass slaughter in history – but there were winners. If any one man emerged as a “winner” from World War Two, it was Victor Rothschild.
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It’s an oddity that even in those rarefied circles on the internet where there’s open and critical discussion about Zionism (some of it ugly bigotry, some not) – websites where the highly significant role of the Rothschild family in the evolution of Zionism is discussed – little attention has been paid to this relatively recent scion of the famous banking family.
It’s odd, because in many ways Victor Nathaniel Rothschild was a very noteworthy character. He’s not long dead – and if Hollywood ever gets the green light, his life story would surely make the blockbuster spy thriller of all time.
The Fifth Man. Biographer Roland Perry pulls back the curtain on Victor Rothschild's remakable life - but how far?
This isn’t mere speculation by a ‘conspiracy theorist’. The life story of Victor Rothschild was the subject of a biography by the well-known Australian non-fiction author Roland Perry entitled The Fifth Man. Published some 15 years ago, about five years after Lord Rothschild’s death, it was republished in paperback by Pan. There were reviews in mainstream media at the time, such as this interesting account in The Independent. It’s still not hard to get hold of a copy. Yet with few exceptions, the book is rarely mentioned. Why?
Perry’s biography of Victor Rothschild is based on considerable reasearch. The author acknowledges co-operation from the Rothschild family.The Fifth Man is well written. Much of the biographical narrative is a compelling read. It’s an account of Victor’s busy life from boyhood, through Cambridge in the 1930s to an important MI5 role during World War Two – then as a major force in shaping the post-war world from the 1940s though to the 1980s. The subject matter is interesting enough. So why isn’t it better known?
Perhaps The Fifth Man occupies a kind of no mans land, where “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” prevails.
The Fifth Man is a book anti-Zionists may dislike, because essentially it’s one long glorification of the life of one of the most effective Zionists of all times. It’s a book that Zionists may also treat with trepidation, because it makes the case that this man, a Lord of the (British) Realm who enjoyed the trappings of high privilege within Anglo-American society and exercised considerable influence over several decades at the highest levels of power… was in reality a traitor to the land he lived in, who hoodwinked friends and most of his associates throughout his adult life, committing high treason against the nation to which he nominally swore allegiance while manipulating events so the new ‘Jewish State’ might be born and fortified.
The name of Perry’s book, The Fifth Man, is a reference to its central – and truly explosive – thesis. This is the proposition that Victor Rothschild was the legendary ‘Fifth Man’ of the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring.
Four other members of the mid-century British KGB spy-ring were publicly outed between the early 1950s and 1979 – first Burgess and McLean in the early 1950s, then Kim Philby in the early 1960s – and finally Anthony Blunt. All four were associates from youthful days at Cambridge University in the early 1930s. They had other co-conspirators too, such as the American Michael Straight whose confession in 1963 was crucial to identifying Blunt as the ‘Fourth Man’. But after Blunt’s confession, rumours persisted of a ‘Fifth Man’ – another key spy from the same Cambridge set who’d also spied for the Soviet Union in World War Two. Various suggestions were made about the identity of the ‘Fifth Man’, but most profiles don’t fit. Roland Perry argues that Fifth Soviet spy was Victor Rothschild. I think he makes a very convincing case. Several mainstream commentators thought so too when reviewing the book (but not all!)
Why on earth, one may ask, would the heir to the world’s wealthiest and most established banking family throw in his lot with Joe Stalin’s Communist Party?
It’s a reasonable question. Roland Perry paints a picture of a man of contradictions living in a dramatic and confusing era. I’m rather sceptical of Perry’s interpretation of Victor Rothschild’s evolving psychology and motivations. It’s true that passionately anti-Hitler views weren’t uncommon in the 1930s, especially within Jewish families. The opinion that the Soviet Union was a much-needed counter-force was also widespread in North America and Britain. Of course, between 1941 and 1945, a pro-Soviet Union bias was also a view congruent with official British foreign policy.
But there’s more to Perry’s book than the tale of a most unlikely Soviet agent who penetrated the deepest recesses of ‘British Intelligence’ during World War Two along with other like-minded communist spies. As big as the story is that Lord Rothschild carried out espionage on behalf of the USSR, it’s not the really big story.
Perry suggests Rothschild had political but essentially altruistic motivations for being part (a central part) of the Cambridge Spy-Ring and directing British secrets to the Soviet Union. I rather doubt it. I suspect Rothschild’s assistance to Stalin was less a gift than a trade. After the war, Rothschild called in the debt for a political favour of historic dimensions.
Victor Rothschild; more than two sides to the man
According to Perry, by 1946 Victor Rothschild had effectively morphed into a Triple agent, with primary loyalty to the soon-to-be-declared Jewish State in Palestine. At that time, I suspect he used his influence with the Soviet Union to gain its support for the Zionist project at an absolutely crucial moment.
In March 1949, infuriated with Jewish Terrorism in Palestine and the unwillingness of the Zionist leadership to agree a fair compromise with the Palestinans, the Labor British Government of the day abstained in the Security Council on recognition of Israel. Egypt voted against – but had no power of veto. The USSR, which did have veto power, voted in favour. UN recognition of the unilaterally declared Israeli State followed via majority vote in the UN General Assembly on May 11th.
The crucial lobbying trick carried off by the Zionist Lobby was to garner the support of the USSR up to mid 1949. This was an extraordinary achievement for Zionist Lobbying. How on earth could Communist nations endorse the partisan, racially discriminatory and separatist creed of Zionism? Yet they did – with the USSR onboard at the crucial time. Had it used its veto power in March 1949, the Security Council could and would have blocked the admission of Israel to the UN.
The Soviet Union’s love-affair with Israel was short-lived. The USSR exploded its first nuclear device in August 1949. Fairly soon after, relations with Israel cooled and it moved closer to support for Arab concerns. But by then, the State of Israel was up and running – a full member of the UN. In politics, timing is all-important.
What leverage might Rothschild and his associates have had to garner deals from Stalin’s USSR over Palestine?
First of all – as the ‘Cambridge spy ring’, they’d sent secrets to Moscow during the war, tapping into Britain’s phenomenal top-secret code-breaking and eavesdropping capability that gave it a crucial edge over Germany during the war. The British spied on German communications; the spy-ring spied on British “intelligence” and the Russians consequently had access to German war plans on the eastern front. According to Perry it gave Stalin a crucial edge in countering the German’s attack plan. Perry writes about this espionage very sympathetically. People who believe it crucial that the USSR prevailed against the Axis powers (which is most people, at least these days) are likely to feel that Rothschild and his fellow conspirators were doing the right thing at the time. One almost wonders why Churchill didn’t authorize these “leaks”. There’s no evidence that he did, as far as I’m aware, but it’s possible..
Even so, the war-time favours to the Soviet Union bestowed by Rothschild and his spy ring might not have been sufficient to keep wily Joe Stalin “honest”. I suspect there was something more – something not delivered until after 1945 that would give Rothschild leverage over the USSR – at least for a few decisive years.
In the post-war era (1945+), relations quickly soured between the Anglo-Americans and Soviet blocs. The USA had demonstrated the power of the atom bomb – and its ruthless willingness to use it. Paranoia in Moscow must have been at fever pitch. Under those circumstances, Stalin might well have been induced to make compromises on what he’d have viewed as a lesser issue in order to even up military gap with the West – at least until the USSR had its own nuclear weapons.
We now know the USSR acquired a “nuclear deterrent” years earlier than might otherwise have been the case as a result of the treachery of a number of American spies. Those spies were identified at the time primarily as Communists. But it was also rather conspicuous that , for the most part, they were also Jewish.
The Fifth Man blurs this post-war history somewhat. Perry doesn’t suggest Rothschild directly secured nuclear secrets for the Russians. Rothschild himself, we’re told, lacked direct access to the Manhattan Project. I suspect that his role was more likely that of a negotiator or broker. He could arrange for espionage in the United States that enabled the Soviet Union develop nuclear weaponry much faster. He was in a position to set a price. That price, I suspect, was recognition of Israel in 1948.
As someone who, at least in his Cambridge days in the early 1930s, affected left-wing views (and may have genuinely held them, at least in part), Victor Rothschild’s public position on Zionism had appeared lukewarm at best until 1946. That apparent indifference may well have been important in his dealings with both British and Soviet power-brokers. Posing as an anti-Zionist would have kept doors open that he needed to access at the time. But in 1946, the chips were down. An opportunity had been fashioned for a complete reversal of Britain’s pre-war Palestine policy as announced in the 1939 White Paper. It was the moment for Rothschild to show his cards in case they wouldn’t be counted.
On 31st July 1946, Victor Rothschild spoke in the House of Lords. IHe gave a polished speech at a time of high drama. A few days before, Irgun Zionist terrorists launched a devastating, pre-meditated bomb attack inside the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Their bombs destroyed major structural supports and much of the building collapsed, killing 91 and injuring 46 more. The incident – in which British, Arabs and Jews all suffered mortalities – triggered a wave of revulsion and anger in Britain. There had been sympathy for the Zionists on both sides of Parliament – but this was going too far!. Even Churchill, then Opposition leader and a longstanding Zionist supporter, was clearly embarrassed. Such a grotesque act of terror was hard even for British Zionists to defend.
Until then, Lord Rothschild’s public persona was that of someone opposed to “political Zionism”.
This is what he said on that day. It’s a speech about Palestine, but it also delves into history
More than the narrative left by Roosevelt or Truman, Churchill or Stalin, what Rothschild said about World War Two on that occasion has since become the official history, opinion enforced by law in more than ten nations, including Germany and France. (emphasis added)
My Lords, it is with considerable embarrassment that I speak on the subject of to-day’s Motion. I am embarrassed because it was only a few months ago that I was a British Army officer. During the war, even though one may not have been very near the front line, it was unfortunately a fairly commonplace occurrence to hear that one’s fellow soldiers had been killed. But there is something dreadful about fellow soldiers being killed in time of peace, and no Jew, quite apart from those who were in the British Army, can fail to feel despair and shame when confronted with the stark fact that his co-religionists, who have traditionally abhorred war and violence, should have been responsible for the deaths of British soldiers. It is also embarrassing for me to say something about the aspirations of the Jews in Palestine when, in fact, I do not entirely share those aspirations. Nevertheless, I feel impelled to say something about the situation in Palestine from a point of view which almost by definition must be strange to nearly everyone in England.
I have noticed that it is customary for noble Lords, when they are speaking in certain debates, to make quite clear what is their personal position in regard to the subject under discussion. I should therefore like to say that I have never been a supporter of Zionism, or what is called political Zionism; nor have I been connected officially or unofficially with any Zionist organization.
It would be a waste of your Lordships’ time to go over the old ground again; for me to try and interpret the Balfour Declaration or Sir Henry MacMahon’s letter, which is said by some to contradict the Balfour Declaration; or to go into the history of Palestine—who got there first; who “kicked” who out, and so on. Such matters have often been discussed before by your Lordships, and in any case there are great authorities in this House on that subject. I need only refer to the noble Viscount, the Leader of the Opposition, and the noble Viscount, the Leader of the Liberal Party, who have already spoken. I should, however, like to say a few words to your Lordships about something rather strange to all of us; that is, the mentality of the Jews in Palestine and the causes of that mentality.
When I put before you their reactions and their interpretation of the Palestine situation, I think it is necessary to remember two basic facts which have had a profound effect on the Jewish mentality. First, whatever the reasons, there are few countries in the world where the Jews have not been harried or persecuted for many hundreds of years. Even in 1946, pogroms go on in Europe—I refer to the one at Kielce in Poland, in July—pogroms based on the old, old story of the Jews murdering Christian children. And Cardinals, in spite of the precepts of many Popes, refuse to condemn such acts, even when the person who invented the story has admitted that it was a lie.
The second basic fact is that almost all the young Jews in Palestine have had fathers, mothers, and relations who were among the six million Jews tortured and gassed to death by Hitler. It is a strange feeling to have had relations put to death in some terrible way. I wonder how many of your Lordships are in the same position that I am, of having had an aunt whom one loved dearly—she was seventy-five years old, and quite blind—clubbed to death by the S.S. on the railway station outside an extermination camp. She had kept a small farm in Hungary for many years, and was much liked by the other farmers in the district. Please do not think that by telling this story I am trying to evoke any personal sympathy. I tell it quite objectively, because I believe such episodes help one to understand the despair and desperation which have led to the unforgettable events of the last few months. When such things happen to people without the advantages we have in England, the results are terrible and the wounds may take long to heal. They need all the understanding and forgiveness of which we are capable, however sorely tried we may be.
But there was more to be superimposed on this intolerable suffering. There was the White Paper. Many Jews felt that it was a betrayal of previous promises. Some were doubtful about their interpretation of these promises and thought they might be biased and illogical, but they were fortified in their beliefs by no less a person than Winston Churchill who said, referring to certain parts of this White Paper: That is a plain breach of a solemn obligation, a breach of faith …. What will those who have been stirring up these Arab agitators think? Will they not be tempted to say, ‘They are on the run again. This is another Munich’.
Naturally, this did not influence any Jew, Zionist or non-Zionist, when the war came; they fought, died, and shed their blood like all other democratic people. But the Palestinian Jews could not help but notice the Arab record during the war; the Rashid Ali rebellion in Iraq, in which a member of the Irwin lost his life while on a special mission for the British. He is now a captain—in the Habbaniyah cemetery. Nor can they forget the Egyptian Minister of Defence who, in 1941, delivered the defence plans for Egypt to the Axis. They cannot help noticing that the Mufti, quite commonly known in the war as an agent of Hitler—and your Lordships will remember that the Mufti trained the Bosnian S.S., and for that reason was at one time wanted as a war criminal by another country—is an honoured guest of a King who has always expressed his sympathies with the Arab cause, and a King in whose country bomb outrages in which British soldiers have been killed are by no means unknown.
Finally, we come to the recent Anglo-American Committee and its recommendations. The Committee recommended that 100,000 Jews should be allowed to enter Palestine. A pre-requisite of this recommendation being implemented was that no further acts of terrorism should take place. The Government added what at any rate appeared to be a further condition, that illegal armies in Palestine should all disarm before these displaced people were allowed into Palestine. The Jews, constrained in Palestine, felt, quite wrongly no doubt, that this added condition was directed against them, rather than against the Arabs, who had all the surrounding countries, such as Transjordan and Syria, in which to prepare for resistance. They remember that one of the reasons for their being armed was to guard themselves against attacks by the Arabs on their communal settlements—attacks which the British authorities admitted they could not prevent. This Jewish Army, the members of which, as your Lordships know, did many acts of valour for England during the war, was actually trained by a national hero of ours, General Wingate. The Haganah became powerful at a time when Jewish settlements were being ruthlessly attacked and pillaged by the Arabs, who have quite recently announced their intention of resisting by force any immigration into Palestine, just as they did before when they were responsible for the growth of this Jewish Army.
In this country, the idea of any organization having an Army of its own is inconceivable. But it is not easy for us to understand the life of someone in a communal settlement in Palestine, where at any moment he may be the victim of a savage and murderous attack. These communal settlements have a special place in Jewish life. Row often have we all heard that the Jews do not work with their hands, cannot till the soil, and are destined for ever to be urban dwellers engaged in small urban business? Palestine, for whatever the reason, is the only country where the Jews, after 2,000 years, have been able to get back to their real business of tilling the soil and living on the land. Can we put ourselves in their position and realize what it means, having at last settled down in what they believe to be the Promised Land, when their fields are burnt and ravaged by gangs of marauding Arabs, while they are utterly unable to defend themselves?
These factors, extermination in Europe during the war, pogroms in Europe after it, and what they believe to be discrimination against them in Palestine, have produced absolute despair and absolute desperation. Now what sort of person is it who has these suicidal feelings? Perhaps this story may give an indication. During the war my work took me into a house in France where there had been an explosion. I learnt there about a Jewish member of the Resistance Movement who was arrested by the Gestapo and asked to give certain information about the whereabouts and names of his colleagues. He, of course, refused. The flesh on his arms, near his shoulders, was carefully cut round with razor blades and the whole skin peeled off as if it were gloves or sticking plaster. The same was then done to his legs. He refused to give any names. He was bricked up in a wall for 48 hours and, on being taken out, was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists with weights attached to his body. He still refused to give the names of his colleagues. He was then sent to an extermination camp and by some ironical miracle escaped, to be mercifully killed in the explosion which I investigated. The courage of that man is difficult to appreciate in the comparative security of England.
How fortunate it is that human beings find it so difficult to appreciate the horrors and miseries that go on in the world. We hear that millions of Indians have starved to death, or that countless Chinese have been drowned in floods. We say, and even perhaps feel for a short time, “How terrible,” and then we go about our business. It is lucky that we can do this because if we could really feel what has happened we should perhaps be unable to go on living. The same applies about the Jew who was skinned alive, or his six million co-religionists who were gassed, tortured, and experimented on by Hitler. We say, “How terrible,” then we forget and go about our business. But, and this is the thing I find so difficult to keep in my mind, not one Jew in Palestine forgets one of these episodes—forgets that the woman in the next settlement had her one-year-old daughter roasted alive in front of her eyes. And when the scales seemed once more to be weighted against them, the last tonuous threads snapped and they said: “There is no hope; therefore let us die fighting as we did against Hitler.“
I believe and pray that the Government’s proposals, which we have heard to-day, may eventually produce a new state of mind in Palestine and hope, given some good will and moderation on both sides. I said at the beginning that I would try and explain to your Lordships the state of mind which has produced the recent events in Palestine. With the many advantages that I have, it is comparatively easy for me to say that I do not entirely share the aspirations of the Jews in Palestine. I am thinking not so much of the material ones as the advantage of being accepted as an Englishman. But even I remember that only a few years ago my grandfather was the first Jew your Lordships allowed to sit in this House, and I therefore felt it my duty to try and explain something of the trials and torments of my co-religionists in Palestine.
The speech contains two references to the 6 million death statistic that has since become akin to an Article of Faith. This helped establish a “fact” – that six million Jews (no less) were murdered by the Nazi’s during World War Two, with many of those deaths occurring though the horrific practice of gassing inside concentration camps. Churchill, De Gaulle and Eisenhower were all to write war memoirs. None of them mentioned those particular ‘facts’ about World War Two (an omission that these days might cause new books to be unpublishable by mainstream western publishing houses). But today, their histories are only incidental to common public perceptions. The leading books on the Jewish experience in World War Two – books available via high street bookstores in western nations – are all supportive of Rothschild’s narrative.
Victor Rothschild evoked sympathy for Jews by alleging unprecedented atrocities had been committed against them during the war (note the term “Holocaust”, not in general usage as a descriptor for Jewish suffering in World War Two for another quarter century, was not used in Rothschild’s speech). He used that sympathy skillfully to explain and rationalize support for Zionism and its goal of a Jewish State in Palestine – even though at that very time the Zionists in Palestine were showing a vicious, lawless streak.
Is it plausible that Rothschild was such a maverick within his family that he really didn’t become a supporter of Zionism until 1946 or shortly before, as he claimed? Roland Perry invites us to take him at his word. I have doubts. In Perry’s analysis, Rothschild was an English gentleman who became a Soviet spy and then, latterly, formed an affinity with the Zionist project. Somehow I doubt that very much. More plausible, I think, is that Victor Rothschild was a supporter of the Zionist project from the outset – and its goals were his primary political motivator from youth. In other words, I suspect that even while he was a Cambridge undergraduate or wartime British intelligence agent, or post-war Lord and public figure, or even while a Soviet spy sending British secrets to the Soviet Union – all along his main goal was the gestation of the Zionist project and the induced birth of the State of Israel in the chaotic post-war period.
That final act of birthing was helped along by an orchestrated symphony of lethal force, bribery, lobbying and persuasion, deception, falsification and a huge amount of chutzpah. Victor, I suspect, wasn’t far from the conductor’s stand at that time.
A book review would be more descriptive of the content as a whole, but my prime intent here is not to review The Fifth Man as such. There’s a webpage of extracts here that serves as a useful introduction to the content.
My main goal in this essay is not to reproduce Perry’s main arguments taken at face value. I don’t think The Fifth Man should be taken at face value. I’ve already given some of my reasons for this. Perry is a fine writer and his book is illuminating – but does it illuminate with true white light? Or does The Fifth Man, as I suspect, have spectral biases causing blind spots?
I’ve no evidence for this, but can’t help wondering if Perry’s project to write The Fifth Man may not be quite what it seems. Rather like the “popular” British economic historian Niall Ferguson, Roland Perry strikes me as something of a Rothschild court historian. I think he may have been tasked to document – and massage – the life and reputation of this very significant man in terms of Zionist and world history, soon after his death. The book tells the world what a clever and important man he was. It’s explosive because it identifies Victor Rothschild as the fifth man of the British KGB spy-ring. But I think that’s just scratching the surface. Even on Perry’s account, Rothschild continued to exert decisive influence on world affairs after 1945 for more than four decades. He describes some of these activities – but what about the things Perry doesn’t tell us? I’d guess that’s where the story gets really interesting.
There are a number of times in the book when the author’s narrative seems highly implausible. I’ve already referred to the unlikely proposition that Victor was a latecomer to Zionism. There are also times where Perry’s analysis is at odds with other sources that I find more credible.
Take, for example, a notable character who appears in The Fifth Man when Perry describes the immediate post-war era: the American spy-master James Jesus Angleton. In Perry’s narrative, Angleton is an upstanding American intelligence agent who Rothschild (the British spook who moonlighted for the USSR) managed to hoodwink. But I’m more inclined to trust the analysis of Michael Collins Piper, author of Final Judgment, who argues Angleton was effectively a Zionist agent. In other words, I believe Angleton and Rothschild went through a charade of upholding the interests of their respective nations (the USA and UK) – but were really on the same third side.
In the late 1940s, British “Intelligence” Agencies were very much the senior partner to the newly established agencies of American spookdom, in history and experience if not in budget. From the outset, on both sides of the Atlantic, these key clandestine state agencies have been infiltrated by Zionists at high levels. Rothschild and Angleton are two examples.
So what if, far from the uncomfortable stand-off between the Rothschild and Angleton as portrayed by Perry, there was in fact close collaboration between the two agents when they met in the 1940s? What if it continued? By 1963, Angleton was intimately involved in the Kennedy assassination and its coverup. It’s hard to believe key Zionists in Britain weren’t informed about the plot to murder John F Kennedy.
Michael Straight - when he went straight, did he also straighten out JFK about Victor Rothschild's multiple masks?
There’s an interesting connection between JFK and Victor Rothschild – the fact that Michael Straight, a Kennedy supporter, willingly debriefed to US intelligence in 1963 about his own role in the Cambridge Communist spy-ring. His was not a major role and ended with the war, unlike Burgess, Maclean and Philby – but his testimony was sufficient to bring the name of Anthony Blunt as the Fourth Man to the attention of US and hence British intelligence. It led to the deal struck by the British Secret State with Anthony Blunt – a deal left in place until 1979 – whereby Blunt’s name as a traitor was withheld from the public notice in return for what Blunt claimed was his “full confession”.
Did Straight also name Victor Rothschild as the fifth man during his debriefing with US intelligence? It is possible he didn’t know of Rothschild’s involvement,. It’s possible he knew and concealed it. But the third possibility is he knew and told all to his US debriefers. If so, was President Kennedy informed? It seems hard to believe he wasn’t. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, a special assistant to the Ppresident, was the first person in the Administration that Michael Straight informed of his prior existence as a part-time Soviet spy.
So.. this is highly speculative – but was Kennedy’s knowledge of Rothschild’s involvement in spying for the USSR a source of concern to the latter? It is at least an interesting line of enquiry – though Roland Perry’s fairly recent biography of Michael Straight, Last of the Cold War Spies – is doubtless not the place to find such inquiry.
When now, in the early decades of the 21st century, Westerners wonder how our “intelligence agencies” seem so biased towards Zionism that they’re effectively batting on the same team, it’s useful to reflect on this history. From at least the middle of the 20th Century – but very likely long before that – there has clearly been deep level penetration of US and British “Intelligence” by Zionists who’ve managed to maintain cover, with a few relatively limited lapses, ever since. The penetration is probably much greater now than it was then. Rothschild’s dog is increasingly wagging our tails.
There’s much more to be said about the subject matter of this essay: a critical reading of The Fifth Man. I’ll keep this article a reasonable length by closing now. But here’s a parting thought…
If Victor Rothschild was really – first and foremost – a Zionist, what of the others in the Cambridge spy-ring? Were the rest of the conspirators truly the Communists they eventually purported to be? Or did they also wear another layer of make-up they never took off in their lifetimes?
Kim Philby is a particularly interesting case in point. Both Kim and his remarkable father St. John Philby have gone into history as great friends of the Arab cause. But spooks are not always what they seem.
To be resumed…
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Footnote: one factoid in The Fifth Man that does get mentioned often is Victor Rothschild’s phenomenal IQ. Apparently it was 184! When I checked the source of this extremely flattering statistic, the footnote indicated it came from Rothschild’s autobiography.
That’s how to be sure you have an impressive historical résumé. Write it yourself 
