Thread by @TheLittleG1

1. The "Focus" (or Focus Group) was an informal pressure and influence group (anti-appeasement group) in 1930s Britain (around 1935-1937), which rallied around Winston Churchill with the aim of combating the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and promoting rearmament.

2. The main financiers and supporters of this group were:
Sir Henry Edouard Strakosch
Sir Robert Waley Cohen
Eugen Spier
Robert Mond
Bernard Baruch
Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild

3. Sir Henry Edouard Strakosch (1871-1943) was an Austrian-born British banker and businessman. Was a Jew. Βegan working for the Anglo-Austrian Bank of South Africa in 1895. Βecame a naturalized British citizen in 1907. He was chairman of the South African goldminers,

4. Union Corporation from 1924. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance during 1925 and 1926. He later served on the Council of India between 1930 and 1937, served as a delegate for India at the Imperial Economic Conference in 1932,

5. and acted as adviser to the Secretary of State for India between 1937 and 1942. He was knighted in 1921. Strakosch was chairman of The Economist between 1929 and 1943 Strakosch provided large financial gifts to Churchill in 1938 and 1940,

6. which enabled Churchill to pay off his vast debts and to withdraw his Kent home Chartwell from sale at a time of severe financial pressures.

7. Sir Robert Waley Cohen was born on 8 September 1877 to a prominent Jewish family. His father was Nathaniel Louis Cohen, a stock broker, and his mother was Julia Matilda Waley. Charles Waley Cohen, a soldier, barrister and Liberal Party politician was his brother,

8. Dorothea Waley Singer, a palaeographer and historian, was his sister. The English jurist and economist Jacob Waley was their maternal grandfather, while orientalist Arthur Waley was their cousin. Robert was educated at Clifton College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

9. Cohen joined the Shell Company, 1901 and negotiated its merger with the Royal Dutch Oil Company, 1906. He was a director of the merged company and chief assistant to its managing director.
Cohen was the petroleum adviser to the Army Council during World War I

10. for which he received a KBE, 1920. He retired from Shell in 1928 but became chairman of the African & Eastern Trade Corporation in 1929. He negotiated a merger with the Niger Company into the United Africa Company in 1929; he resigned in 1931.

11. Although he was generally opposed to Zionism, Cohen was the main creator of the Palestine Corporation, a conglomerate with various diverse business interests. He was vice-chairman of University College, London, and president of the United Synagogue.

12. Eugen Spier was a German Jew who had come to Britain as an entrepreneur before the Nazi rise to power. he also provided financial support to Churchill. Ηe wrote the book
Focus: a footnote to the history of the Thirties. by Eugen Spier First published in 1963

13. Sir Robert Ludwig Mond, (9 September 1867 – 22 October 1938) was a British chemist and archaeologist. Mond was born at Farnworth, Widnes, Lancashire, the elder son of Ludwig Mond, a chemist and industrialist. Mond collaborated with his father in the discovery of the gaseous

14. compound nickel carbonyl. He perfected the industrial production of iron carbonyl, and discovered the first derivative of a metallic carbonyl and a new ruthenium carbonyl. Following his father's heritage he became a director of Brunner Mond & Company

15. Mond then took an interest in the archaeology of Ancient Egypt and worked with some of the major archaeologists of the time. He also performed archaeological work in Palestine and assisted in the foundation of a British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. He was a jew

16.Bernard Baruch became a broker and then a partner in A.A. Housman & Company. There, he amassed a fortune before the age of 30 speculating on the sugar market, which was booming in Hawaii. Baruch founded the Intercontinental Rubber Company of New York,

17. which dominated the guayule rubber market in the U.S. with holdings in Mexico. His partners in the enterprise were Senator Nelson Aldrich, Daniel Guggenheim, John D. Rockefeller Jr., George Foster Peabody, and others.

18. By 1903, Baruch had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of being "The Lone Wolf of Wall Street" because of his refusal to join any financial house. By 1910, he had become one of Wall Street's best-known financiers

19. In 1916, Baruch left Wall Street to advise President Wilson on national defense and terms of peace. He served on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense and in January 1918, became the chairman of the new War Industries Board.

20. With his leadership, the body successfully managed the U.S.'s economic mobilization during World War I. In 1919, Wilson asked Baruch to serve as a staff member at the Paris Peace Conference. Baruch did not approve of the reparations which France and Britain demanded of

21. Germany, and he supported Wilson's opinion that there needed to be new forms of cooperation, as well as the creation of the League of Nations. Baruch was a jew.

22. Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild, GBE, GM, FRS (31 October 1910 – 20 March 1990, was a British scientist, intelligence officer during World War II,

23. and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & Sons, and an advisor to the Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher governments of the UK. He was a member of the prominent Rothschild family.

@UnrollHelper