As many of my readers know, I'm not a one-trick pony author, constantly regurgitating variations on a similar theme of the same basic subject. I much more prefer to dive into the little known-about aspects of history, rummage around and then see what surfaces.This is one such example of what happens when one stirs the mud at the bottom of the pond.
This book starts around the turn of the 20th century when Vittorio Emanuele Cuniberti (1854 – 1913) an Italian military officer and naval engineer envisioned the concept of the all big gun battleship. He recorded his thoughts in an article he wrote for Jane’s Fighting Ships in 1903. The vessel Cuniberti envisaged would be nothing less than a colossus of the seas. His main idea was that this ship would carry only one calibre of gun - the twelve-inch - the largest available.
This heavily armoured titan would be impervious to all but the twelve-inch guns of the enemy. Cuniberti saw the enemy’s small calibre guns as having no effect on his design. Cuniberti’s vessel had twelve large calibre guns and would have a significant advantage over the then-standard four of the enemy ship. His ship would be fast so that she could choose her point of attack. Cuniberti saw this ship able to discharge such a massive broadside, all of one large calibre, that she would engulf first one enemy ship, then move on to the next, and the next, disdainfully destroying an entire enemy fleet. He conjectured that the effect of a squadron of six colossi would give a fleet such overwhelming power to deter all possible opponents.
At this time, the political atmosphere in Britain was explosive; for the first time since Trafalgar, there was a severe challenge to the Royal Navy. A short distance across the North Sea, the German Navy, was building a powerful fleet. Behind that fleet lay the overwhelming power of the German Army. Behind Britain’s, sea shield lay the numerically small British Army.
The challenge to Britain was severe. Admiral Sir John ‘Jacky’ Fisher, Royal Navy, was the driving force behind the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought. The ship was completed in a year and day and was launched in 1906. Dreadnought’s speed was ensured by using the revolutionary turbine engines devised by Sir Charles Parsons.
Immediately this vessel defined the era. Thereafter all battleships following its design would be referred to, generically, as ‘dreadnoughts’.
Jacky Fisher never gave any credit to Cuniberti or any foreigner for that matter. The Americans were publishing articles about potential designs, and the General Board was reviewing several options, but USS South Carolina and USS Michigan were not authorised until March 1905, and neither were laid down until December 1906. Neither were the Japanese building the Satsuma class, which wasn’t ordered until 1904 and laid down in 1905.
To say the threat from the dreadnought concept worried other nations is an understatement - it petrified them! It was now a race to match, and hopefully, beat the British Royal Navy - then came the Great War which brought forth even more advances.
The horrors of the war brought forth campaigns for peace, at the same time as there were clamourings within certain quarters that America should consider itself first. The 1920s were to become a battle between disparate groups - hawks, doves, imperialists, isolationists, politicians, military men - all had vested interests, and all had a drum to bang. There were calls from the so-called ‘Isolationists’ for keeping out of any future conflicts with what was seen as ‘the old world’. Within the American politico-military establishment was a growing body of opinion termed ‘Imperialists’ who thought that they - the United States of America - could and should be the world’s only super-power. Coupled with this was the anti-British emotions stirred up by convicted criminal and jail escapee Éamon de Valera.
Throughout the 1920s there was a whole series of peace and re-armament conferences in which the Imperialists metaphorically fought with the Isolationists for control over hearts, minds and the military-industrial complex. If the Imperialists within the US Navy won this clandestine battle, then they would achieve their aims to become the world’s super-power.
It became clear as the decade wore on that the Imperialists were not going to gain a clear-cut victory, so other, more direct means would be needed - and it is at this point that the story moves from being an entrée to the main course. The majority of this book has been compiled using just three contemporary, primary-source sets of documents from NARA - the National Archives & Records Administration. The first is what was called War Plan Red, a scheme for the USA to invade Canada and the Caribbean and then destroy the Royal Navy which in turn would destroy the British Empire. The second is a group of files called ‘SPOBS - The Special Observers Group’, an organisation that evolved from a large number of MilitaryAttachés based in and operating out of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. This group, in turn, developed into what was recorded in the third set of files, detailing what was termed the USAFBI - the United States Armed Forces in the British Isles. With the eventual coming of American troops to the UK, this was to become the ETO - European Theater of Operations.
Recent times show that much of mainstream America has forgotten just how much it admired and promoted the activities of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party. Thousands of Americans paraded through the streets and even more joined organisations like the American Bund. Over twenty-seven million listeners tuned in every week to hear the rantings of Charles Edward Coughlin a Canadian-American Roman Catholic priest who was based in the United States near Detroit. Commonly known as Father Coughlin, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. In 1934, he established a political organisation called the National Union for Social Justice. Its platform called for monetary reforms, nationalisation of major industries and railroads, and protection of labour rights. Coughlin began to use his radio program to broadcast antisemitic commentary. In the late 1930s, he supported some of the fascist policies of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. The broadcasts have been described as “a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture”. His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, using the slogan “Social Justice”. There are future echoes of Coughlin's playbook today in both the style, if not the substance of today's right-wing US media.
As early as 1939 the American military establishment created an intelligence-gathering machine of ever-growing dimensions within their Embassy in London under the ambassadorship of Joseph Patrick Kennedy Snr.
This was well before the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which was the wartime intelligence agency of the USA during World War Two, and a predecessor of the modern Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to gather intelligence and to coordinate espionage activities for all branches of the US Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
The difficulty here is in trying to determine if the Military Attachés and SPOBS activities could be termed as ‘spying’, for according to the discovered documents, they were operating - at least in the early days in Great Britain - with the full permission and knowledge of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary. This, of course, goes against the definition of the word - a spy being a person employed by a government or other organisation to obtain information on an enemy or competitor secretly. That said, their intelligence-gathering activities spread out from Great Britain as far as the Middle East, Africa, South America, Russia and Asia - far beyond the terms of the original brief. It also did not cease with the outbreak of peace in 1945. The advent of the ‘Cold War’ between East and West brought forth a whole new range of subterfuge and behind the scenes activities by the CIA that had been formed on 18 September 1947.
The USA and the Soviet Union fought a whole series of wars by proxy around the world, ranging from The Far East, through Africa to Central and Southern America - often in countries that were formerly part of the British Empire. Although the subject of many books in its own right, this too is investigated to put things in context.
So, were the Americans allies - or spies? Certainly, the SPOBS bled Great Britain white of data and information, sending it all back to the War Department in Washington under the guise of preparing to help. It was also something of a blueprint that America was to use in one form or another to ‘encourage’ regime change around the world through the seventy years or so after World War Two, and continues on today.
Writing this has proved to be challenging - reading it may be the same. The difficulties, as usual with much of my work, springs from the differences of our so-called ‘common language’. Color becomes colour, program becomes programme, and of course, American phrasing is often different from English. Then there is the dreaded use of plane instead of aircraft; I don’t care what anyone says, a plane is a cutting tool used to smooth wood in my books!
I had access to well over 60,000 pages of contemporary primary source documentation, many of which had introductions to the files written in the style of my hero, Sir Humphrey Appleby GCB KBE MVO. This was further complicated - especially in the latter part of this work - by using primary source documents written by Americans, but at least typed out in part by British civilians, resulting in the strange mix of British and American spellings and phrasing appearing on the same carbon copy! It is a standard convention that quotes are sacrosanct, so these anomalies remain untouched.
The title is an imprint of Frontline Books, part of the Pen & Sword group and is available here> https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Secret-US-Plan-to-Overthrow-the-British-Empire-Hardback/p/17661
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