German Optics fo British Rubber

This topic has 18 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 23 July 2018 at 09:01 by Brian G.

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21 July 2018 at 21:42 #363276
Neil Wyatt
Moderator
@neilwyatt
Anyone else listening to Radio 4?

Apparently the exchange of British rubber for German binoculars was a genuine deal during the first world war.

greatwarproject.org/2015/07/20/a-clear-case-of-trading-with-the-enemy/

Neil
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21 July 2018 at 21:42 #35237
Neil Wyatt
Moderator
@neilwyatt
21 July 2018 at 22:04 #363278
Michael Gilligan
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@michaelgilligan61133
This may be of interest: **LINK**

http://home.europa.com/~telscope/Ross/British.binoculars.WWI.by.T.Wayland.pdf

MichaelG.
21 July 2018 at 22:16 #363279
Mick B1
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@mickb1
I've come across reference to the attempt in Fred Watson's booklet on Binoculars (ISBN 0-7478-0292-0), but I don't know that it actually went ahead.

Presumably any binoculars so supplied would've been taken on through the emergency programme as 'S.1' grade specials, registration numbered and Broad Arrow marked as WD property. The WW1 Zeisses with British markings I've seen usually also show evidence of pre-war private purchase.

The majority of 'specials' distributed through this programme tend to be civilian, older-design (and for most purposes, inferior) Galilean glasses, of both British and French make – though there are also good-quality prismatics from both countries.

I didn't hear the radio programme – did it produce evidence the deal was carried through?

Thanks to Michael for that link! I'd not seen the document before.

Edited By Mick B1 on 21/07/2018 22:25:53
21 July 2018 at 22:51 #363280
blowlamp
Participant
@blowlamp
That probably shouldn't come as any great surprise. Dontcha know that banks finance both sides of a war?

Martin.
22 July 2018 at 11:14 #363333
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
The capitalists made a fortune out of WW1 while the plebs did the dying so it was a profitable enterprise for the owners of mass production enterprises and banks

We don't really see much 20s and 30s stuff nowadays but occasionally you will see people making references to the warmongering capitalists

WW2 started off looking like it could make a few bob again but then degenerated into a massive loss for everyone except the USA capitalists

A recent example was the Iran contra scandal

It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment (and give it to the contras). The Iranian recipients also promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the hostages

Bear in mind that this deal was done in the 1980s when the USA and Israel were meant to be the totally implacable enemies of the Iranians

Putting it simply

Never believe a thing the bosses tell you, ever
22 July 2018 at 11:34 #363335
KWIL
Participant
@kwil
Mods, this is verging on politics AGAIN.
22 July 2018 at 11:53 #363341
blowlamp
Participant
@blowlamp
Posted by KWIL on 22/07/2018 11:34:35:

Mods, this is verging on politics AGAIN.

That must mean some people want to talk about it. What's the problem?

Martin.
22 July 2018 at 11:59 #363343
DMB
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@dmb
FREE SPEECH!
22 July 2018 at 12:16 #363345
Michael Gilligan
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@michaelgilligan61133
Posted by KWIL on 22/07/2018 11:34:35:

Mods, this is verging on politics AGAIN.

.

The opening post [by a Moderator] was effectively about politics, so perhaps this is not surprising.

MichaelG.
22 July 2018 at 12:29 #363346
Hopper
Participant
@hopper
History is history. Politics is part of it. Whaddayagunnado? Ban history on a site dedicated to replicating 100-year-old steam engines and the like?

The multinational corporations were happy to trade with both sides in WW2. I knew an old Dutch guy who worked as a boy in Holland in the war processing punch cards that were the computer system of the day for processing the movements etc of the Jewish population to various camps. All supplied by IBM.
22 July 2018 at 14:38 #363358
Mick B1
Participant
@mickb1
…And I heard that ITT owned Focke-Wulf right through WW2, through a holding company in Switzerland. Doesn't mean the ITT board could've stopped the output of FW190s or Condors.
22 July 2018 at 15:10 #363362
blowlamp
Participant
@blowlamp
Posted by Mick B1 on 22/07/2018 14:38:39:

…And I heard that ITT owned Focke-Wulf right through WW2, through a holding company in Switzerland. Doesn't mean the ITT board could've stopped the output of FW190s or Condors.

So enough of a connection to syphon off the profit, but not enough of a connection to prevent these killing machines being built & used against their 'own people'.

Check out the bizarre compensation twist they got in the sixties for damage sustained to their aircraft factory because of allied bombing.

Martin.
22 July 2018 at 17:33 #363378
Mick B1
Participant
@mickb1
With US attitudes hardening after the Lusitania sinking, cotton (clothing and nitrocellulose propellants) and chemical fertilisers (source of nitrates for explosives, but also vital to German agriculture) would have become at least as critical as rubber to Germany – so the binos for rubber negotiation will likely have been earlier than spring 1915.
22 July 2018 at 18:14 #363384
SillyOldDuffer
Moderator
@sillyoldduffer
When the shooting starts all manner of strange things happen. War brings out the best and the absolute worst in people. The first casualty is the truth.

In murky circumstances, Vickers famously paid Krupps a royalty of 1s 2d per fuse after the Great War and the royalty was charged to the British government rather than paid from profits. Tax free. Another scandal involved large quantities of British cement imported via neutral Holland to make German pill-boxes.

After WW1 the US Government lost a patent infringement case brought against them by Mauser because the Springfield Rifle, ahem, was rather more of a copy than was legal. Rommel's desert war against the British in North Africa was funded by the Greeks. (The forcibly extracted loan had to repaid by Germany, who also honoured National Socialist pension agreements.)

Arguably WW1 was won by the Royal Navy. They applied a strict blockade, which coupled with bad harvests, caused starvation and serious materiel shortages in Germany. Because the war ended with an Armistice rather than a surrender, the blockade was maintained throughout peace negotiations resulting in the RN killing large numbers of civilians after war was over.

There's a sick logic to all this. Needs must when the devil drives.

Dave
22 July 2018 at 18:53 #363391
Samsaranda
Participant
@samsaranda
Some of the biggest profits from armaments used during the First World War were made by Armstrong’s of Newcastle, later to be Vickers Armstrong’s, it’s only governments, who pay for all the paraphernalia, who end up bankrupted and we the public suffer the austerity having already made huge sacrifices.

Dave W
22 July 2018 at 20:49 #363404
Jon Lawes
Participant
@jonlawes51698
On the ranges at Larkhill one of the Observation posts overlooking the shell landing points has a set of German U-Boat binos on a tripod, complete with Eagle insignia. No one could remember where it had come from but it was suspected from a captured U-Boat during WW2. The optics were so perfectly crystal it was like an extension of your own eyes. Amazing.
23 July 2018 at 08:43 #363433
Ady1
Participant
@ady1
That ITT connection is intruiging, a real life catch 22 story

In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II

**LINK**
23 July 2018 at 09:01 #363439
Brian G
Participant
@briang
General Motors is an interesting case, had it attempted to stop production at Opel in 1939/40, would it also have had to do the same at Vauxhall (who were developing the Churchill tank) in order to maintain US neutrality? (Assuming of course that either the German or British governments allowed it).

Churchill seemed to have a magic way of persuading the US to bend its neutrality almost to breaking point, from the Bethlehem Steel turrets delivered in 1914 (although naming the monitors HMS Farragut, HMS General Grant etc. was a step too far) to the destroyers for bases agreement of 1940.

Brian

(Edit: missing question mark added)

Edited By Brian G on 23/07/2018 09:02:05
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