Believe it or Not! Congress once sought to nationalize the arms industry

[RufusTFirefly]

In 1934, Gerald Nye, a Republican senator from North Dakota, chaired the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, popularly known as the "Merchants of Death Committee." As Wikipedia correctly states, "The committee investigated the financial and banking interests which underlay United States' involvement in World War I..."

A key goal of the Committee was to nationalize the arms industry. Needless to say, its efforts were thwarted.

At the time, there was a widespread belief that so-called "merchants of death" spearheaded a profit-driven effort to encourage U.S. intervention into World War I. The Committee named names and came to some forceful conclusions, most of which are just as relevant today:

The committee finds, under the head of the effect of armament, on peace, that some of the munitions companies have occasionally had opportunities to intensify the fears of people for their neighbors and have used them to their own profit.

The committee finds, further, that the very quality which in civilian life tends to lead toward progressive civilization, namely the improvements of machinery, has been used by the munitions makers to scare nations into a continued frantic expenditure for the latest improvements in devices of warfare. The constant message of the traveling salesman of the munitions companies to the rest of the world has been that they now had available for sale something new, more dangerous and more deadly than ever before and that the potential enemy was or would be buying it.

While the evidence before this committee does not show that wars have been started solely because of the activities of munitions makers and their agents, it is also true that wars rarely have one single cause, and the committee finds it to be against the peace of the world for selfishly interested organizations to be left free to goad and frighten nations into military activity.

The committee finds, further, that munitions companies engaged in bribery find themselves involved in the civil and military politics of other nations, and that this is an unwarranted form of intrusion into the affairs of other nations and undesirable representation of the character and methods of the people of the United States.

The Committee's investigation ended rather abruptly after losing its funding under what could only be called dubious circumstances.

According to the U.S. Senate site (quoted via Wikipedia):

The investigation came to an abrupt end early in 1936. The Senate cut off committee funding after Chairman Nye blundered into an attack on the late Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. Nye suggested that Wilson had withheld essential information from Congress as it considered a declaration of war. Democratic leaders, including Appropriations Committee Chairman Carter Glass of Virginia, unleashed a furious response against Nye for 'dirtdaubing the sepulcher of Woodrow Wilson.' Standing before cheering colleagues in a packed Senate Chamber, Glass slammed his fist onto his desk until blood dripped from his knuckles.

Somehow we are supposed to accept that a thorough and damning investigation of immoral profiteering was suddenly abandoned after nearly two years because legitimate questions surrounding President Woodrow Wilson's motivations in taking the country into war (after making nonintervention the principal plank of his re-election campaign) offended a senator from Virginia to such a degree that he pulled the plug on the Committee's funding??

[scarletwoman]

1. Wow! This is a fantastic post!

A piece of history I knew nothing about! If only the committee had succeeded - what a far different world would have resulted.

Thank you so much for posting this!

[RufusTFirefly]

2. You're welcome! That was one fascinating, tumultuous year in general. n/t

[scarletwoman]

3. I'm giving this a kick - hope more people read your OP. (nt)

[RufusTFirefly]

5. Thx! Here's a little more info

Last edited Fri Jul 18, 2014, 11:55 PM - Edit history (2)

Dorothy Detzer, the executive secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, led a successful campaign for a Senate investigation of the American munitions industry. During 1932-33 the W.I.L.P.F. and other peace societies had repeatedly called for such an inquiry. In January 1934, after both the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency and the National Recovery Administration refused to accept the job, Miss Detzer convinced Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota to do it. A forty-one-year-old veteran of eight years in the Senate, Nye was an isolationist and a progressive with a penchant for crusades against public evils. With four years to go in his term and no munitions industry in North Dakota to oppose him, Nye accepted an assignment shunned by his Senate colleagues. Administration approval, together with a barrage of telegrams, letters, and deputations to Senators, resulted in Senate agreement on April 12 to an investigation.

In addition to Nye, the Munitions Investigating Committee included Arthur H. Vandenberg (R) of Michigan, James P. Pope (D) of Idaho, Homer T. Bone (D) of Washington, Joel B. Clark (D) of Missouri, Walter F. George (D) of Georgia and W. Warren Barbour (R) of New Jersey. John T. Flynn, a writer with the New Republic magazine, was appointed as an advisor and Alger Hiss (!!) was the committee's legal assistant.

The 1934 book Merchants of Death was a best-seller and a Book of the Month Club selection and had an influence on the formation of the Nye Committee. On April 14, 1934, H.C. Englebrecht, author of Merchants of Death, spoke at a conference of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. "Armament is an industry that knows no politics, friends, right or wrong - but only customers, " he said. "If you can pay, you can buy."

"In every war," said Englebrecht, "the armaments maker who sells internationally is arming a potential enemy of his own country - and that, practically if not legally, is treason."

According to Harvard historian Jill Lepore, Nye’s hearings were “the most rigorous inquiry into the arms industry that any branch of the federal government has ever conducted.” He convened 93 hearings on the subject. Nye’s proposed solution was for weapons manufacturing to be limited to the government: “The removal of the element of profit from war,” he explained “would materially remove the danger of more war.”

The United States had entered the war, the Committee concluded, neither to save the world for democracy nor to defend its own interests, but as the result of the intrigues of profiteers. According to Nye:

“When Americans went into the fray, they little thought that they were there and fighting to save the skins of American bankers who had bet too boldly on the outcome of war and had two billions of dollars of loans to the Allies in jeopardy.”

Nye’s isolationism, which was increasingly difficult to defend with the growing menace of Nazi Germany, ultimately undermined his pursuit of profiteering in the arms industry.

[steve2470]

4. good info thanks ! That committee would be impossible to convene today nt

[Cal Carpenter]

6. "War is a Racket" By Major General Smedley Butler (speech 1933, published 1935)

Really, the first line says it all.

https://archive.org/stream/WarIsARacket/WarIsARacket_djvu.txt

WAR IS A RACKET

By Major General Smedley Butler

Contents

Chapter 1: War Is A Racket
Chapter 2: Who Makes The Profits?
Chapter 3: Who Pays The Bills?
Chapter 4: How To Smash This Racket!
Chapter 5: To Hell With War!


WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one
international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the
losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of
the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit
of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge
fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new
millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That
many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war
millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench?
How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of
them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun
bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were
wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This
newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung
dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies.
Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its
attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I
retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering,
as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

https://archive.org/stream/WarIsARacket/WarIsARacket_djvu.txt

...much more at link...

(This is in the public domain so I believe it is okay to post more than four paragraphs. Full text is at the link.)

[RufusTFirefly]

7. Excellent! Butler testified before Congress (in closed session, at first) later that same year.

Nov. 1934. Two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Gen. Smedley Butler began testifying in secret to the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities (aka the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) about an alleged plot by wealthy industrialists to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Butler claimed that the American Liberty League (co-founded by former New York Governor and Presidential candidate Al Smith) was the primary organization behind the plot. He added that the main backers were the Du Pont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Butler also named Prescott Bush, a future U.S. Senator and the father and grandfather of two U.S. Presidents, as one of the conspirators.

Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, claiming to be backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M.P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year. All the parties alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in the story, calling it a “joke and a fantasy”

Source: The greatest man you have never known.

[Cal Carpenter]

8. Thanks!

I'll take any opportunity to post a link to War is a Racket, and this was perfect.

A little historical perspective is great so thanks for starting the thread.

[johnnyreb]

9. 2-day KICK and rec!

Thank you RufusTFirefly for teaching me this!!

- "Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry",
- popularly known as the "Merchants of Death Committee"
- maybe also the "Nye Committee"

1934, wow.

A spoken word mp3 for the thread - 2m16s:
http://www.sonicyouth.com/prmp3/War_After_War.mp3

[SidDithers]

10. Did FDR kill the investigation?...nt

Sid

[RufusTFirefly]

12. Nope. A majority Democratic Congress voted to take away the funding

Whether FDR was lobbying behind the scenes, I don't know.

One of the problems with isolationists during the ascent of fascism is that they fell into two radically distinct camps. Some were true believers in a peaceful world. Others secretly (or not-so-secretly) approved of the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, and (later) Spain, particularly as a counter-balance to what they saw as an even greater communist threat, and thus had no real objections to Mussolini or Hitler (in fact, many, like GM and IBM, were happy to do business with him). Congressman Nye fell into the former category. He was a progressive Republican. (Once upon a time, there really was such a thing.) America Firsters like Charles Lindbergh and many of the country's top industrialists, regrettably, fell into the latter category.

[JEB]

11. The war racketeers have been calling the shots

here in the USA for a long time. They favor escalating all disagreements to armed conflict.