The fall of Granada in 1492 can be considered as a watershed for Europe. From that moment a series of events was set in motion that would change the shape of Europe for ever.
The expulsion of Jews from Spain resulted in a European-wide dispersal of Sephardic Jews (from the Hebrew word "Sefarad" applied to Spain). Many Jews chose to convert and remain where they were. These were known as "conversos" or "maranos"(meaning those whose conversion was merely a matter of convenience and not of belief).
In the same year as Granada fell, Christopher Columbus made a landfall on islands of the Caribbean. For a long period, according to Columbus, he had "consorted much with Jews". While three "maranos", Luis de Santagel, (an important merchant), Gabriel Sanchez and Juan Cabrero exercised great influence on Queen Isabella with tales of the gold of the Indies.
In 1507, Martin Luther took priestly orders and in 1515 Pope Leo X, anxious to complete St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, still after seventy years nowhere complete, turned to the late mediaeval method of raising funds, the issue of an indulgence.
An indulgence was in effect an insurance against purgatory. There was nothing unusual about this. Every worthy institution sought money from indulgences at the time. No hospital could have functioned without them. This, however, was an exceptionally ambitious scheme which required pan-European co-operation.
The Pope approached Jakob Fugger of Augsburg head of the banking business which financed the most powerful people in Europe,including the Spanish monarchy. Fugger agreed to broker the deal.
Luther was not the first theologian to express unease about what had happened to the original worthy aims of the indulgence system. Reputedly he spoke out in 1517 and thus started (without obvious intention on his part) a tremendous upheaval, that lasted well into the seventeenth century.
One of the results of this "Reformation" was the splintering off from the old church into various other components: Protestants, Lutherans, Anglicans, Hussites, Hutterites, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists, etc. It also resulted in the Bible becoming much more important than it had been hitherto and thus allowed Jews more prominence.
Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 but were allowed to return under the Protectorate of Cromwell subsequent to the execution of Charles I. Oliver Cromwell had been in correspondence for some time with Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel in Amsterdam.
During this time of upheaval, three kings lost their lives and by the end of the Thirty Years War, the face and the faith of much of Europe had changed.
Many scholars began to draw on esoteric literature and hermetic books, notably the Jewish Cabbala.
Out of this appeared Freemasonry, which reputedly began as a movement in late sixteenth-century Scotland under James V1 when there was a sudden surge of interest in building. From the 1590s many Scottish notables joined trade "lodges" of masons and builders drawing on rich resource of esoteric literature from which the Freemasons constructed their impressively "ancient" history, that began to be transmitted throughout Europe and eventually beyond as their organisation spread.
In 1776, Adam Weishaupt (code named "Spartacus"), under the auspices of Mayer Amschel Rothschild founded a secret society called the "Order of the Illuminati". Its expressed objectives being:
The Society of the "Illuminati" was destined for a short life, when a courier was struck by lightening in 1785. Examination of his saddle bags caused Bavarian officials to arrest any members of the society they could find.
By this time Freemasonry had become a secret society within a secret society, whereby the majority of members (pledged to the strictest secrecy) had little idea who wielded the power.
By the late nineteenth century further "societies" were established: The Fabian Society, founded in 1884 in Great Britain, the Theosophical Society founded in 1893, the Institute of International Affairs founded in 1919 to name a few.
The French Revolution was sparked off by the "Necklace Conspiracy" in which the jewellers, Bassenge and Bohmer, with Cagliostro, (a Freemason) were the front players. The net result was that the Jews stepped in to fill the vacuum created by the destruction of the aristocracy.
The Napoleonic Wars were financed on both sides by the Rothschilds.
The establishment, in 1913, of the Federal Reserve Board system, had brought the United States under the control of the great financial houses.
Ivan Manasevich was behind Rasputin in the lead up to the Russian Revolution and the three Bolschevik leaders, Marx, Trotsky and Lenin, were all Jewish.
The partners of the New York international lending house of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., were the instigators and financiers of the Bolshevik regime. They and their European affiliates were Trotsky's paymasters.
Trotsky was granted safe-conduct for his return home from Newfoundland by the British War Cabinet because Britain was seeking a million pound loan from the United States which made it necessary to be amenable to the will of the New York Money Power.
Many of the big names in the Bolschevik entourage under Stalin were Jewish or with Jewish connections. The deaths of millions of Russians lie at their door.
No less indicative of the "new power" was the fact that Paul Warburg, partner of the firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Co. accompanied President Wilson to the Versailles Peace Conference as financial adviser to the American delegation, while the German delegation employed as financial adviser a partner in the Hamburg lending house run by Paul Warburg's brother, Max Warburg.
The British Government soon became aware of the result of entanglement in an unpayable debt. "Lord" Reading (previous name: Rufus Isaacs) in 1917 contracted on behalf of the United Kingdom a huge dollar loan, repayable on call and in gold in a quantity the nation never had possessed.
In 1922 the manipulations of the Federal Reserve Board caused a nation-wide depression that soon spread to Europe.
The simple truth is that the "Great Depression" was deliberately plotted by the lending-houses of the United States and Europe to further their drive for a monopoly of economic and political power.
As a result the financial houses bought up, or otherwise acquired, a huge variety of enterprises.
However, the money-lenders overplayed their hand. The six million German unemployed, victims of the depression, resulted in a formidable revolt against the Money Power. The Third Reich was built up on an anti-communist basis and the belief that if goods were available for exchange between nations there would be no need for either party to resort to international lending houses to finance the deal. To aggravate matters the Third Reich set to work to repay its external debt and thereby regain control over its own economic destiny.
One thing alone could quench rebellion of such magnitude - war.
Spain, meantime, was in the throes a bloody civil war, which ended in the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a Nationalist government under General Francisco Franco y Bahamonde while France was under the premiership of Leon Blum.
There is a widespread belief that when Hitler invaded Poland, Great Britain was committed by treaty to the defence of Poland. That is not true. The British commitment was to the French in the event of France being involved in a European conflict and it was France which had undertaken to defend Poland - an undertaking the French Government was extremely reluctant to discharge.
A series of secret meetings took place in the Savoy Hotel in London to create a "war" party. Its leaders were: Winston Churchill, Duff Cooper, Anthony Eden and, representing the interests of International Finance, Israel Moses Sieff.
The British Government therefore acted in France's default and declared war. Not until some hours later were the French persuaded to follow suit.
During the first years of the war, America was building up her strength, while Great Britain was dissipating hers and becoming increasingly dependent on the United States.
Certainly behind Roosevelt was the cold, calculating brain of Bernard Mannes Baruch.
President de Gaulle was regarded as a redoubtable opponent of the Money Power. There was no obvious military reason why de Gaulle, as a Major-General in the French Army, was placed in command of the Free French forces. But when he arrived in Great Britain his patron, Guy de Rothschild, was there to meet him. When he became President of France his Prime Minister and right-hand man was M. Pompadou, the chief functionary of Rothschild Freres.
The end of the Second World War showed a change in the world map. The British Empire no longer existed and England, supposedly one of the victors, was now under the leash of the New York money power while Germany was burdened with an enormous debt, destined to finance Israel, peopled now by Jews recently released from the concentration camps.
The real victors out of all the misery of war, as had always been the case, were those who financed it.
The pattern continued. World opinion, softened by the judicious propaganda of the "Holocaust", condoned the foundation of Israel, and the attack on Iraq while the noose tightened.