Title: The Despicable Degenerates of Lucre and the State Department Investigation of the Sisson Documents, 1918-1921
Description: This is a study of the so-called German-Bolshevik conspiracy as reported by Edgar Sisson to George Creel (the Sisson Documents) and the investigation that followed by the US Department of State (1918-21). The documents were forgeries but the US State Department never confirmed this conclusion and instead kept the results of its investigation silent until their work was given to the US National Archives for historical study. This study examined the State Department documents in the National Archives and determined that there was more than enough information before 1922 to question the Sisson Documents authenticity. But why were these findings not released to the general public? Was it because President Woodrow Wilson used the Sisson Documents in part to justify Allied intervention into Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918? Was it because Lenin and Trotsky negotiated a Bolshevik peace treaty with Germany that pulled Russia out of World War I? The original Sisson Documents were found in a White House safe in 1952 and later examined by Russian scholar and diplomat, George F. Kennan, who finally confirmed that they were clever forgeries.

The thesis includes facsim. of: The German-Bolshevik conspiracy / issued by the Committee on Public Information, George Creel, chairman. -- [Washington? : 1918] -- 30 p. : facsims. ; 31 cm. -- (War information series) -- "A series of communications between the German Imperial government and the Russian Bolshevik government, and between the Bolsheviks themselves, also the report thereon made to George Creel by Edgar Sisson, the committee's special representative in Russia during the winter of 1917-18. There is also included, in Part II, a report by a committee appointed by the National Board for Historical Service to examine into the genuineness of these documents."
Subjects: Committee on Public Information, Creel Committee, German-Bolshevik Conspiracy, Russian History, Sisson Documents, US Department of State, US State Department, National Board for Historical Service, World War, 1914-1918, Public opinion - United States - Foreign relations - 1913-1921.
Places: Russia
People: Woodrow Wilson; Lenin; Trotsky; George Creel; Edgar Grant Sisson; John Reed; George F. Kennan
Time periods: 1918-1921