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REAL conspiracies

El Greco

Summer worshipper
El Greco
Joined
Nov 11, 2003
Messages
17,604
What do you think has been the greatest REAL conspiracy ever ? What about the 20th century ?
 
I would call the 9/11 hijackers a pretty sucessful conspiracy. Depending on what you are calling a conspiracy, Al Qaeda has has, in general, proven to be a pretty successful band of conspirators whose actions have had some far reashing effects.

The Bosnian anarchists who assasinated Franz Ferdinand and preciptated WWI also pulled off a conpiracy with some pretty far reaching consequences.

A lesser known conspiracy that was pretty bold was the a conspiracy between the US government and The Mafia to protect the New York docks from sabotage. The same government/mafia contacts helped in the Allied invasion of Sicily.
 
Let's make some definitions here.. I propose that to qualify, it must have been successful at its objective, and then discovered and well documented afterwards. For "Greatest" we could consider size (number of people that had to participate or be influenced into silence), or possibly impact (how big of a change did the conspiracy cause)...
 
Nyarlathotep said:
I would call the 9/11 hijackers a pretty sucessful conspiracy. Depending on what you are calling a conspiracy, Al Qaeda has has, in general, proven to be a pretty successful band of conspirators whose actions have had some far reashing effects.

The Bosnian anarchists who assasinated Franz Ferdinand and preciptated WWI also pulled off a conpiracy with some pretty far reaching consequences.

A lesser known conspiracy that was pretty bold was the a conspiracy between the US government and The Mafia to protect the New York docks from sabotage. The same government/mafia contacts helped in the Allied invasion of Sicily.
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have to agree with all that.
 
For eastern europe:
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact or Nazi-Soviet Pact

Although officially labeled a "non-aggression treaty", the pact included a secret protocol, in which the independent countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania were divided into spheres of interest of the parties. The secret protocol explicitly assumed "territorial and political rearrangements" in the areas of these countries. Subsequently all the mentioned countries were invaded, occupied or forced to cede part of their territory by either the Soviet Union, Germany, or both.
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For Finland:
On November 26 1939, the Soviets staged the Shelling of Mainila, an incident in which Soviet artillery shelled areas near the Russian village of Mainila, then announced that a Finnish artillery attack had killed Soviet troops. The Soviet Union demanded that Finns apologise for the incident and move their forces 20-25 km from the border. The Finns denied any responsibility for the attack and refused to give in. The Soviet Union used it as an excuse to withdraw from the non-aggression pact. On November 30, Soviet forces attacked with 23 divisions, totalling 450,000 men
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a_unique_person said:
It certainly was a conspiracy, but it didn't work out to well for the participants.
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Not in the short-term, but in the longer-term it served Soviet interests. The failure of the initial campaign provided many valuable lessons. The success of the later campaign captured strategically vital ground north of Leningrad, which might have fallen without it.

That said, I agree with Kerberos that it was a common sort of pretext, much like the "Polish attack" on Germany in 1939.
 
One might consider the Manhattan Project and the Enigma as being consipacies as they were carried out by Governments in secret from their own people. However, I am not sure how far one could carry that analogy, as during wartime it is expected that "Secrets" will be kept well-guarded.

Still, being able to build the first working Nuclear reactor right in the Middle of chicago and to build a brand-new city in the Middle of Tennessee (Oak Ridge) and keep it out of the limelight is pretty good, even for a Government...
 
the repubicans managing to convince the US people that "liberal" is a dirty word.....:)
 
How about the USSR collapse? The country had the world convinced it had an economy on par with the US. It wasn't until later we found out that the country's money reserves never existed.
 
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