Prolonging the Agony: How The Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years
Executive summary
Prolonging the Agony argues that a cohesive Anglo‑American “Secret Elite” deliberately extended World War I from a plausible end in 1915 to 1918 for geopolitical and financial gain, supplying documents and contemporary sources to support that thesis [1]. The claim rests on reconstruction of behind‑the‑scenes alliances, economic flows and propaganda campaigns, but published coverage of the book and its summaries also make clear the argument is revisionist and contested [2] [3].
1. The core allegation: an Anglo‑American clique engineered extension of the war
The central claim of Macgregor and Docherty’s Prolonging the Agony is that a small cohort of influential Anglo‑American financiers, officials and cultural gatekeepers – described in the book as “The Secret Elite” – intentionally prolonged fighting beyond the spring of 1915, using covert channels and influence to keep Germany in the field until 1918 [1] [4]. Multiple sales pages and reviews summarize the thesis as one of deliberate orchestration: the authors trace decisions, alliances and concealed strategies that turned what “could have ended in 1915” into a catastrophic four‑year continuation [2] [5].
2. Mechanisms the book attributes to prolongation
According to the book’s publicity and excerpted descriptions, the alleged mechanisms include covert financial support and trade (supplying food, munitions, oil and money), manipulation of political narratives through newspapers and parliamentary speeches, and the exercise of influence by non‑elected gray eminences within transatlantic elite networks [6] [1] [7]. Review summaries emphasize the authors’ use of government papers, memoirs and contemporary press to build a circumstantial case that economic channels and propaganda made “peace untenable” while making war profitable [2] [4].
3. Purported motives and beneficiaries
The promotional text frames two principal motives: the destruction of Germany as an economic rival to preserve Anglo imperial advantage, and war profiteering by banking and industrial interests seeking vast post‑war gains, with the war’s prolongation facilitating both [6] [8]. Commentaries and publisher blurbs portray the project as exposing the “banking cartels” and elite networks that shaped postwar outcomes — from territorial arrangements to influence over the official history taught afterwards [1] [2].
4. Evidence, historiography and the book’s methodological posture
Public descriptions claim the authors scoured government papers, uncensored memoirs, speeches and major newspapers to assemble their narrative, and the book promises names, dates and mechanisms to substantiate its charge [1] [2]. However, the available reporting here is promotional and secondary: bookstore listings and reviews reiterate the thesis and describe voluminous material presented by the authors, but these summaries do not allow readers to evaluate the primary evidence, the authors’ use of counterfactual reasoning, or how they handle mainstream historiography that attributes prolongation to operational, diplomatic and political constraints rather than a coherent conspiracy [7] [3].
5. Alternative views and limits of the reporting
Contemporary mainstream historians typically explain WWI’s length through military stalemate, command failures, domestic politics, and the scale of mobilization — explanations not fully represented in the promotional materials cited here; the sources provided do not include peer‑reviewed rebuttals or archival citations that allow independent verification of the central conspiracy claim [2] [3]. Reviews and sellers repeatedly call the work “revisionist” and “circumstantial,” and even sympathetic summaries concede parts of the case are less analytical and more reconstructive, suggesting reasonable debate about causation remains [8] [3].
Conclusion
Prolonging the Agony presents a sweeping, well‑publicized revisionist case that an Anglo‑American establishment deliberately extended WWI for imperial and financial ends and marshals an impressive array of documentary sources according to its promoters, but the accessible reporting here is promotional and secondary; it documents the claim and the evidence the authors say they used without providing independent scholarly adjudication, and mainstream historiography and methodological scrutiny are not represented in these excerpts [1] [2] [3].