Douglas Reed

Douglas Reed (1895–1976) was a British journalist, playwright, novelist and author of a number of books of political analysis. His book Insanity Fair (1938) was one of the most influential in publicising the state of Europe and the megalomania of Adolf Hitler before the Second World War. Beginning in the 1940s, and for the rest of his life, Reed became convinced that there existed a "hidden hand" governing World Affairs, and that this hidden hand was Jewish, though it involved some non-Jewish characters. Reed believed in a long-term Zionist conspiracy to impose a world government on an enslaved humanity. He was also staunchly anti-Communist, believed that there existed a Communist-Zionist-Supercapitalist nexus, and argued that National Socialism was a "stooge or stalking horse" meant to further both the aims of the Communist Empire and the Zionist ambition, reasoning that "for great successes, which they could not otherwise achieve, Soviet Communism and Political Zionism needed an apparent antithesis, as a heavyweight champion needs a sparring partner." Thus, when he died, The Times described him in an obituary as a "virulent anti-Semite", though Reed himself claimed that he drew a distinction between opposition to Zionism and anti-Semitism, and was not against the Jewish Race, but rather, was against the Jewish Religion, which he believed was a master race ideology. He put forth this view, and his views on it's effect on history, in his book The Controversy of Zion, which presented Judaism as the imposition of an imperialistic Levititical priesthood from Babylon in response to the universalist tendencies in Israel and other cultures, and delivered an assault on Communism and Zionism as offsprings of the 18th Century Illuminati's desire for World Revolution. He said in The Controversy of Zion:

The true start of this affair occurred on a day in 458 BC which this narrative will reach in its sixth chapter. On that day the petty Palestinian tribe of Judah (earlier disowned by the Israelites) produced a racial creed, the disruptive effect of which on subsequent human affairs may have exceeded that of explosives or epidemics. This was the day on which the theory of the master-race was set up as "the Law".

...

The creed which was given force of daily law in Judah in 458 BC was then and still is unique in the world. It rested on the assertion, attributed to the tribal deity (Jehovah), that "the Israelites" (in fact, the Judahites) were his "chosen people" who, if they did all his "statutes and judgments", would be set over all other peoples and be established in a "promised land". Out of this theory, whether by forethought or unforeseen necessity, grew the pendent theories of "captivity" and "destruction". If Jehovah were to be worshipped, as he demanded, at a certain place in a specified land, all his worshippers had to live there.

Obviously all of them could not live there, but if they lived elsewhere, whether by constraint or their own choice, they automatically became "captives" of "the stranger", whom they had to "root out", "pull down" and "destroy". Given this basic tenet of the creed, it made no difference whether the "captors" were conquerors or friendly hosts; their ordained lot was to be destruction or enslavement.

Before they were destroyed or enslaved, they were, for a time, to be "captors" of the Judahites, not in their own right, but because the Judahites, having failed in "observance", deserved punishment. In this way, Jehovah revealed himself as the one-God of all-peoples: though he "knew" only the "chosen people", he would employ the heathen to punish them for their "transgressions", before meting out the foreordained destruction to these heathen.

Biography

At the age of 13, Reed began working as an office boy, and at 19 a bank clerk. At the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted in the British Army. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, gaining a single kill in aerial combat and severely burning his face in a flying accident. (Insanity Fair, 1938) Around 1921 he began working as a telephonist and clerk for The Times. At the age of 30, he became a sub-editor. In 1927 he became assistant correspondent in Berlin, later transferring to Vienna as chief central European correspondent. He went on to report from various European centres including Warsaw, Moscow, Prague, Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Budapest.

Reed resigned his job in protest against the appeasement of Hitler after the Munich Agreement of 1938. In Somewhere South of Suez: A Further Survey of the Grand Design of the Twentieth Century (1949), Reed wrote that his resignation came in response to press censorship which prevented him from fully reporting "the facts about Hitler and National Socialism." He believed that by becoming a "journalist without a newspaper," he would be free to write as he chose. Reed spent the duration of the Second World War in England; in 1948, he moved to Durban, South Africa.

Reed was vociferously anti-Nazi. His text The Burning of the Reichstag (1934), stemming from his experiences as witness to the fire and The Times special correspondent at the trial, was one of the first to suggest that Hitler was behind the Reichstag fire, and used it as a false flag operation to consolidate power. In Britain, he was one of the greatest opponents of appeasement, believing that the Hitler program was one of destructive expansion. His book Insanity Fair was the first to predict the Anchluss, and won him instant world fame. For Reed, Hitler was an "epileptic mongrel", a "professional perjuror", "the greatest traitor and renegade that Germany ever had" and a "liar who believes in nothing". Reed initially feared Nazism because he believed that Hitler's actions meant war, and that the Nazis would unleash a destructive fury over Europe, but as he explored the "Jewish Question" in world affairs, he began to believe that the Nazis were ultimately controlled by the Communist-Zionist "hidden hand". In opposition to Hitler, he promoted Otto Strasser, writing two biographies of him based on interviews - Nemisis? The Story of Otto Strasser (1940), and The Prisoner of Ottawa (1953). For Reed, Strasser was a "Conservative Revolutionary", a Christian National Socialist who opposed Hitler's belief in Nordic racial superiority by arguing that European people were a mixture of four or five races, and they should develop into a federation of equal nations and not one subject to German domination. Reed believed that Strasser represented a legitimate movement of National revival, as opposed to Hitler, who he believed to be a destructive maniac and (beginning with his post-war texts) a front for conspiratorial Jewish interests. His unique interpretation of Hitler's ulterior motives is apparent in his 1953 text The Prisoner of Ottawa, in which he devoted particular attention to Hitler's stint as the go between from the soldiers in the barracks and the mostly Jewish Communist leaders who took over Munich in 1919. In addition to his two biographies of Strasser, Reed also translated and introduced Otto Strasser's book History in My Time (1940).

After the publication of Insanity Fair and coinciding with his texts on the Strasser brothers, Reed developed increasing antipathy to the Jewish people, viewing them to be racial supremacists, and in his subsequent anti-Nazi writings argued that Jews were mirror images of Nazis in their social organization. In his 1939 book, Disgrace Abounding, Reed declared, in a chapter entitled "How Odd of God", that anti-gentilism (not anti-Semitism) prevents assimiliation of Jews, that "this keeps them welded together as alien communities in foreign lands, communities ultimately hostile to the Gentile.". In his 1941 book, A Prophet At Home, he argued that "The anti-Jewish teaching of National Socialism was but the direct inversion of the anti-Gentile teaching of the Hebrew religion, and this statement of the case cannot be refuted; it never is refuted, but is always ignored." The last book exploring these themes while still focusing on National Socialism was Lest We Regret (1943), which suggested that Jewish politics had a subversive effect on Great Britain, suggested that the Jewish community was inflating the effect to which Hitler's policies endangered them for propaganda purposes, and stated that the statements of Zionists concerning their political ambitions were "indistinguishable from Hitlerist speeches, save in the substitution of 'Jewish' for 'German'", and that Zionists would eventually take over the entire Middle East. He also discussed an incident he first reported in A Prophet At Home, where the Rabbi of Prague proclaimed in 1939 that "Hitler is the Jewish Messiah, because he will cause all those countries of the world to be opened to the Jews, which are closed to them now."

After WWII, Reed settled in South Africa, and became increasingly alienated from mainstream political discourse. His work then went beyond National Socialism to what he perceived to be the greater problem of Communism, and the influence of the Zionist movement. He started to believe that World War II only benefited the forces of Communism and Zionism, and he began to see Zionism as a subversive movement. Reed flirted with conspiratorial anti-Zionism in From Smoke to Smother (1948), and the nucleus of the ideas that permeated The Controversy of Zion presented themselves in his 1949 text, Somewhere South of Suez, which, in addition to its conspiratorial arguments, explored the thesis of the Khazarian origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, and included the observation that:

During all that period and to the present time, it was not possible freely to report or discuss a third vital matter: Zionist Nationalism. In this case the freedom of the press has become a fallacy during the past two decades ... When I came to America I found that this ban, for such it is in practice, prevailed even more rigidly than in my own country.... In daily usage, no American or British newspaper, apparently, now dares to print a line of news or comment unfavorable to the Zionist ambition ... The inference to me is plain: the Zionist Nationalists are powerful enough to govern governments in the great countries of the remaining West!

The text that completely alienated Reed from mainstream discourse was Far and Wide (1951). The first part of the text, "The American Scene", was an autobiographical account of his travels in the United States, combining observations on American culture and history in light of his experiences in Europe. Included in this section is the speculation that the World Revolutionary conspiracy that he chronicled in his later works was involved in the assassination of Lincoln, in order to prevent reconciliation, and a comparison between the conditions imposed on the South after the Civil War to the conditions imposed on the Eastern European countries by the Soviet Union after World War II. The second part of his text, "Behind the Scene", was the one which brought him the most trouble. In that section, he declared that America was held hostage by servitude to Communism and Zionism. In a chapter of that section entitled "Zionism Paramount", he explored Zionism's role in the world wars. He then began to question much of the Holocaust, arguing that the number of Jews killed had been inflated for propaganda purposes, citing various encyclopedias and almanacs, and stating "no proof can be given that six million Jews 'perished'; proof can be adduced that so many could not have perished." Reed believed that as long as Zionism remained in power, we would never have a clear picture of these events. He then argued that Zionists held immense propaganda power in the United States, and portrayed the Anti-Defamation League as a sort of secret police, claiming that it kept black lists and worked to destroy its political opponents.

In a chapter entitled "Communism Penetrant", Reed first discussed at length the case of Whittaker Chambers vs. Alger Hiss, and the associated controversy concerning Communist infiltration in the United States. He then argued that Franklin Delano Roosevelt consciously worked to subvert Constitutional safeguards, helped further the aims of World Communism, and ultimately served higher circles. He asked, "What real purpose did Mr. Roosevelt promote through the way he used his imperial powers?", and then noted:

He furthered the main principles of a plan for the redistribution of the earth published in 1942 (but clearly prepared much earlier) by a mysterious 'Group for a New World Order', headed by a Mr. Moritz Gomberg. What this group proposed was startling at the time but proved farsighted. The main recommendations were that the Communist Empire should be extended from the Pacific to the Rhine, with China, Korea, Indo-China, Siam and Malaya in its orbit; and that a Hebrew State should be set up on the soil of 'Palestine, Transjordan and the adjoining territories'. These two projects were largely realized. Canada and numerous 'strategic islands' were to pass to the United States (the reader should keep these 'strategic islands' in mind). The remaining countries of Western Europe were to disappear in a 'United States of Europe' (this scheme is being vigorously pursued at present). The African continent was to become a 'Union of Republics'. The British Commonwealth was to be left much reduced, the Dutch West Indies joining Australia and New Zealand in it. The scheme looks like a blueprint of the second stage in a grand operation of three stages, and substantial parts of it were achieved; what was not then accomplished is being energetically attempted now.

He subsequently cited Admiral William D. Leahy's text I was There (1950) to argue that "Mr. Roosevelt's grand design was for a large apportionment of the globe between the Communist Empire and the United States, at the expense of the British Commonwealth and French Empire. Support of Communism in China, too, was primarily intended to prevent a British revival there and in the planning of the Pacific campaign everything was done to exclude the British and make China and Japan into a Soviet-American sphere of influence."

He then argued that Roosevelt was a puppet of Harry Hopkins and higher circles, and that Hopkins consciously subverted Western interests in favor of Communism.

After writing Far and Wide, Douglas Reed spent three years in the New York Central Library researching the material for his text The Controversy of Zion. He finished the text in 1956, but it was considered to be too controversial for publication. The small right-wing South African publisher Dolphin Press Ltd., published the book in 1978, after Reed's death. Reed stated in the last chapter of that text, "The Climacteric":

During the writing of the book I have had small expectation, for the reasons I have given, that it would be published when it was ready; at this stage of "the Jewish century" that seems unlikely. If it does not appear now, I believe it will still be valid in five, ten or more years, and I expect it to be published one day or another because I anticipate the collapse, sooner or later, of the virtual law of heresy which has prevented open discussion of "the Jewish question" during the past three decades. Some day the subject will be freely debated again and something of what this book records will then be relevant.

Richard Thurlow attacked Reed as an "anti-Nazi anti-Semite" in an eponymous article in the journal Patterns of Prejudice. He attacked Reed's belief that Nazism was a Communist and Zionist front, stating that "for Reed the actions of organized Jewry were about as repugnant as those of Hitler. Therefore he refused to believe that Hitler could be a real antisemite, because two such evil forces could not be opposed to each other." Thurlow chastised Reed for ascribing legitimacy to the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and arguing that the political program contained within that text was being implemented. Thurlow also attacked Reed's belief that Zionists exaggerated the suffering of Jews under Hitler for propaganda purposes as bordering on Holocaust denial. Thurlow believed that the conspiratorial view of history that Reed put forth in The Controversy of Zion, which presented Jews as destructive, supremacist subversives, had genocidal implications, stating that it "was only [Reed's] Christianity, and his strong ethical sense, which prevented him from seeing the ultimate logic of his beliefs."

Reed himself believed that the Jewish people as a whole are essentially held captive by their own leaders who influence them to act as a destructive force in the world. He thought that by shining a light on the destructive nature of Communism and Zionism, he would prevent further misery, and put forth that view in the epilogue to The Controversy of Zion.

Reed was an extremely close friend of Ivor Benson, a conspiratorial anti-Communist who was the information advisor for Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front. Like Benson, he believed that Rhodesia was preserving old European civilization against the forces of Communism. He argued this position in his texts The Battle for Rhodesia (1966) and The Siege of South Africa (1975).

Works

• The Burning of the Reichstag, Gollancz, 1934.
• Insanity Fair: A European Cavalcade (autobiography), Random House, 1938 (published in England as Insanity Fair, J. Cape, 1938).
• Disgrace Abounding, J. Cape, 1939.
• Fire and Bomb: A comparison between the burning of the Reichstag and the bomb explosion at Munich, J. Cape, 1940.
• Nemesis? The Story of Otto Strasser, Houghton, 1940 (published in England as The Story of Otto Strasser and the Black Front, J. Cape, 1940).
• A Prophet at Home, J. Cape, 1941.
• History in My Time by Otto Strasser (translated from the German by Douglas Reed), J. Cape, 1941.
• All Our Tomorrows, J. Cape, 1942.
• Lest We Regret, J. Cape, 1943.
• From Smoke to Smother (1938-1948): A Sequel to Insanity Fair, J. Cape, 1948.
• Somewhere South of Suez: A further survey of the grand design of the twentieth century, Devin-Adair, 1951.
• Far and Wide, J. Cape, 1951.
• The Prisoner of Ottawa: Otto Strasser, J. Cape, 1953.
• The Battle for Rhodesia, Haum, 1966, Devin-Adair, 1967, reprinted as Insanity Fair '67, Gibbs, 1967.
• The Siege of Southern Africa, Macmillan South Africa, 1974.
• Behind the Scene (Part 2 of Far and Wide), Dolphin Press, 1975; Noontide Press, 1976.
• The Grand Design of the 20th Century, Dolphin Press, 1977.
• The Controversy of Zion, Veritas, 1985.

Novels:

• The Next Horizon: Or, Yeomans' Progress, J. Cape, 1945, published in the United States as Yeoman's Progress, Bobbs-merrill, 1946.
• Galanty Show, J. Cape, 1947.
• Reasons of Health, J. Cape, 1949.
• Rule of Three, J. Cape, 1950.

Author of Downfall (three-act play), J. Cape, 1942, Appleton, 1943.

References

• Thurlow, Richard; "Anti-Nazi Antisemite: The Case of Douglas Reed", in Patterns of Prejudice (London, vol. 18, no. 1, (January 1984), pp. 23–34.

External links

• Douglas Reed.co.uk Comprehensive compilation of his works

See also

• The Times
• Ivor Benson
• Augustin Barruel
• Nesta Webster
• Robert Wilton
• Otto Strasser
• Benjamin Disraeli
• Mikhail Bakunin
• Joseph Kastein
• Chaim Weizmann
• Edward M. House
• Harry Hopkins
• Bernard Baruch