X: Obama: A Looming World Tragedy 373that Hitler should direct his aggressive intentions eastward in the direction of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. The essence of this British policy was to play Hitler against Stalin by
encouraging Hitler to go east, and to hope to get rid of both of them that way, thereby guaranteeing
the British Empire in another century or more of world domination. There was a parallel British
policy of appeasement towards Japan, with the goal of embroiling Japan and the United States in the
Pacific war for the greater glory of London. The British aristocracy was hysterically convinced that
Hitler was a one-way gun who could only fire into the sunrise, never into the sunset. Naturally, this
policy was sheer lunacy, and was destined to blow up in the faces of the British sooner rather than
later. The center of this policy was notoriously the Astor family and their social circles, known as
the Cliveden Set, which was the immediate social milieu inhabited by Sir Neville Chamberlain.
Cliveden was a country house frequented on weekends not only by the Prime Minister, but also by
Lord Astor and Lady Astor’s guests, who included Lord Lothian, Lord Brand, Lord Halifax, the
future foreign Secretary, and many more.^195 This is the faction referred to by Carroll Quigley as the
Milner group, and they were closely allied to other aristocrats like the Duke of Hamilton, the
nobleman whom Rudolf Hess was seeking to visit when he parachuted into Britain a few weeks
before the Nazi attack on the Soviets.
All of this is amply documented for those willing to take a look. Carroll Quigley of Georgetown,
Bill Clinton’s history professor, wrote that the Astor group in question ...was known in those days
as the Round Table Group, and later came to be called, somewhat inaccurately, the Cliveden Set,
after the country estate of Lord and Lady Astor. It included Lord Milner, Leopold Amery, and
Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham), as well as Lord Lothian, Smuts, Lord Astor, Lord Brand (brother
in law of Lady Astor and managing director of Lazard Brothers, the international bankers), Lionel
Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson (editor of The Times), and their associates. The group wielded great
influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London, The
Observer,. the influential and highly anonymous quarterly review known as The Round Table
(founded in 1910 with money supplied by Sir Abe Bailey and the Rhodes Trust, and with Lothian as
editor), and it dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, called ‘Chatham House” (of
which Sir Abe Bailey and the Astors were the chief financial supporters, while Lionel Curtis was
the actual founder), the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and All Souls College, Oxford.”^196
The Daily Express published a picture of Lady Astor’s Cliveden estate under the headline “Mr.
Chamberlain spent the week-end here — and why.” The article began ominously by noting that
“France has her ‘Cagoulards,’ the hooded men who are supposed to be plotting a Fascist uprising
there. And England has her ‘Cliveden Set,’ who are supposed to be plotting a Fascist regime here.
Brrrrr!” wrote the Daily Express, which went on to dismiss the whole story as “a first-rate bogey.”
(Daily Express, March 28, 1938)
Cockburn loved to mock the Cliveden group as the “cagloulords” — Astor, Astor, Lothian,
Londonderry, Brand, and Halifax. Cockburn’s original thesis was that the Astor group viewed
Hitler as a “one-way gun” — one which, they hoped, would only fire east towards Moscow. The
infamy of Cliveden soon reached the United States. Hedley Donovan informed the readers of the
Washington Post, under the headline “Empire’s New Leaders Friendly to Fascism,” that “the
energetic Lady Astor occupies a position of great influence in Britain’s councils.” Donovan told his
readers to prepare to read soon in their morning newspapers a news item like the following: “The
British government has given its blessing to Hitler’s impending annexation of German-speaking
Czechoslovakia, it was learned here from a source close to Cliveden.” (Washington Post, April 3,
1938) The Minneapolis Journal noted that “the Tory press have been shouting for years to let Hitler
have his own way for central Europe and Russia. (April 3, 1938) The Philadelphia Record