WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION -- EXCERPT RE PANCHO VILLA

by Antony C. Sutton

Pancho Villa's Skull Table of Contents

Excerpt from Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony C. Sutton

Another case of revolution supported by New York financial institutions concerned that of Mexico in 1915-16. Von Rintelen, a German espionage agent in the United States,⁶ was accused during his May 1917 trial in New York City of attempting to "embroil" the U.S. with Mexico and Japan in order to divert ammunition then flowing to the Allies in Europe.⁷ Payment for the ammunition that was shipped from the United States to the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, was made through Guaranty Trust Company. Von Rintelen's adviser, Sommerfeld, paid $380,000 via Guaranty Trust and Mississippi Valley Trust Company to the Western Cartridge Company of Alton, Illinois, for ammunition shipped to El Paso, for forwarding to Villa. This was in mid-1915. On January 10, 1916, Villa murdered seventeen American miners at Santa Isabel and on March 9, 1916, Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, and killed eighteen more Americans.

Wall Street involvement in these Mexican border raids was the subject of a letter (October 6, 1916) from Lincoln Steffens, an American Communist, to Colonel House, an aide to Woodrow Wilson:

My dear Colonel House:

Just before I left New York last Monday, I was told convincingly that "Wall Street" had completed arrangements for one more raid of Mexican bandits into the United States: to be so timed and so atrocious that it would settle the election ....⁸

Once in power in Mexico, the Carranza government purchased additional arms in the United States. The American Gun Company contracted to ship 5,000 Mausers and a shipment license was issued by the War Trade Board for 15,000 guns and 15,000,000 rounds of ammunition. The American ambassador to Mexico, Fletcher, "flatly refused to recommend or sanction the shipment of any munitions, rifles, etc., to Carranza."⁹ However, intervention by Secretary of State Robert Lansing reduced the barrier to one of a temporary delay, and "in a short while ... [the American Gun Company] would be permitted to make the shipment and deliver."¹⁰

The raids upon the U.S. by the Villa and the Carranza forces were reported in the New York Times as the "Texas Revolution" (a kind of dry run for the Bolshevik Revolution) and were undertaken jointly by Germans and Bolsheviks. The testimony of John A. Walls, district attorney of Brownsville, Texas, before the 1919 Fall Committee yielded documentary evidence of the link between Bolshevik interests in the United States, German activity, and the Carranza forces in Mexico.¹¹ Consequently, the Carranza government, the first in the world with a Soviet-type constitution (which was written by Trotskyites), was a government with support on Wall Street. The Carranza revolution probably could not have succeeded without American munitions and Carranza would not have remained in power as long as he did without American help.¹²

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⁶Later codirector with Hjalmar Schacht (Hitler's banker) and Emil Wittenberg, of the Nationalbank für Deutschland.

⁷United States, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, 1920.

⁸Lincoln Steffens, The Letters of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941, I:386

⁹U.S., Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, 1920, pts. 2, 18, p. 681.

¹⁰Ibid.

¹¹New York Times, January 23, 1919.

¹²U.S., Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, op. cit., pp. 795-96.

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