Category File
Secret Diplomacy
2 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The WWI ConspiracyColonel House's own diary records him and King George V discussing the sinking of the Lusitania on the morning it happened. James Corbett's 2018 documentary The WWI Conspiracy builds on documents like that one: the Rhodes wills, Edward Grey's secret staff talks with France, and the October 1915 letter in which Woodrow Wilson added the word "probably" to a promise that America would join the war. From them it argues that a British imperial network founded by Cecil Rhodes engineered the First World War.
- The "Astor" Fur MonopolyThis theory claims that John Jacob Astor, while building his fur empire, entered into private arrangements with British or British-Canadian interests that went beyond commerce and amounted to a hidden partition plan for North America. In the strongest version, Astor is said to have coordinated with British power brokers so that American and British elites would divide the continent between them, with the Pacific Northwest and interior fur country effectively forming the western half of a managed Anglo-American order. The documented history does show that Astor made private deals with British-Canadian fur traders, used commerce to advance territorial influence, and operated in the middle of real Anglo-American boundary disputes. What remains unproven is the specific claim that he personally negotiated a secret treaty to split the United States in half.
- The "Spanish Marriage" ConspiracyThis theory held that Louis-Philippe of France was using dynastic marriage in Spain not simply to influence Madrid, but to build a vast Orléanist bloc stretching across the western half of Europe. In its strongest form, the theory claimed that by marrying Queen Isabella II and her sister in ways favorable to French interests, Louis-Philippe hoped to create a future Franco-Spanish “super-kingdom” under the House of Orléans. The historical record clearly shows that the 1846 Spanish Marriages were deeply entangled with dynastic ambition, Anglo-French rivalry, and fears of continental balance-of-power shifts. What remains unproven is the larger claim that Louis-Philippe had a finished master plan for a single combined super-state.
- The Bismarck-Pope Secret PactThis theory holds that Otto von Bismarck and the papacy, despite their public Kulturkampf conflict, were secretly converging on a common goal: the containment of liberal democracy, radical parliamentarianism, and mass politics in Europe. In its strongest form, the theory argues that the fierce anti-Catholic struggle of the 1870s was eventually superseded by a quiet understanding that throne and altar, state and church, could cooperate against socialism and democratic upheaval. The documented record does show a real transition from open conflict to negotiated accommodation after Pope Leo XIII’s election in 1878 and Bismarck’s political turn away from the National Liberals. What remains unproven is the larger allegation that this amounted to a covert anti-democratic alliance spanning Europe.