# Did The "Merchants of Death" Help Bring on WWI? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 4, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281 "2015-07-04T22:43:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/1 "2015-07-04T22:43:41Z")
Upton Sinclair’s novel “Worlds End” is still a good read. the novel traces the life and boyhood experiences of one Lanny Budd, whose father was a salesman for a small Connecticut gun manufacturer. Lanny meets up with the head sales guy for the British arms maker Vickers-Zaharoff (supposedly) had the ear of all of the important european generals, and pressed everyone into an arms race. The so-called “Merchants of Death” were men such as Zaharoff-they kept up a rivalry with the German and french manufacturers, so as to keep the sales coming. My understanding is that after WWI, the US Congrees convened a committee to study the role of these arms salesmen -was it the “NYE Commission”-at any rate, they found little evidence that these guys did anything to bring on the war. Now, the modern world is flooded with arms-and the ME is probably the best market in years. are there modern day “Merchants of Death”? ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/2 "2015-07-04T22:59:27Z")
Doubt it. The great Eric Ambler, Doyen of spy fiction, started off with this theme in his pre-war ( pre-WWII ) works, but in his later works — still more leftist than right — by the disillusioned '70s and '80s disdained it as a simplification, and rather made fun of the concept. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/3 "2015-07-04T23:37:51Z")
Len Deighton (WWII historian as well as novelist) also didn’t think much of the Ambler arms-manufacturers-bringing-on-war theory, noting that British factories in particular were reluctant to take on armament contracts, leading to Britain starting the war with considerable obsolete hardware. Up to and during WWI companies like Krupp certainly benefited handsomely from the European arms race, but they might have been even happier if countries just kept buying and stockpiling arms rather than using them. War, at least long-term, isn’t very good for business. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/4 "2015-07-04T23:42:26Z")
Government demand drove the arms industry, not the other way around. Incidentally, I’d heard the derogatory phrase “merchants of death” before, but I’d presumed it just referred to the obscene profits the arms dealers made- not that they’d actively promoted either an arms race or the war. (Remember the uber-rich “Daddy Warbucks” in Little Orphan Annie?) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/5 "2015-07-04T23:54:42Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Government demand drove the arms industry, not the other way around. I agree. Weapons dealers are only selling what there’s a market for. Governments and other groups are what creates a market for weapons. If people stopped fighting, weapons dealers would just switch to selling a different product. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/6 "2015-07-05T00:14:50Z")
It was a common explanation for the war in the 20s and 30s (even Superman bought into it). I’d guess that most people of that era believed it. That’s why you had things like the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It was thoroughly discredited by the 1950s, if not before. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/7 "2015-07-05T02:07:35Z")
There’s a difference between asserting arms merchants cause arms races vs. observing governments agreeing to stop tit-for-tat escalation arms buying: the classic definition of an arms race. Treaties like SALT, START, and Kellogg-Briand were efforts by governments to negotiate the relative security they couldn’t obtain by out-buying the other guy. If negotiated well and adequately policed to minimize cheating both sides gain in reducing costs, limiting damage of war should come, and generally building trust, even if it’s the teeth-bared trust of two evenly armed adversaries ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/8 "2015-07-05T02:53:29Z")
People needed a villain on which to blame the war because they couldn’t believe that the great powers of Europe were as incredibly stupid as they proved to be. It’s better thought of as an early version of a Conspiracy Theory. [Merchants of death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_death) > [@](#): > > Merchants of death was an epithet used in the U.S. in the 1930s to attack industries and banks that supplied and funded World War I (then called the Great War). The term originated as the title of a book by H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death (1934), an exposé. The term was popular in antiwar circles of both the left and the right, and was used extensively regarding the Senate hearings in 1936 by the Nye Committee.[1] > > The Senate hearing examined how much influence the manufacturers of armaments had in the American decision to enter WWI. 93 hearings were held, over 200 witnesses were called, and little hard evidence was found. What I’m sure made it more believable in the U.S. was that many, many inventors of weaponry after the war found that the minuscule American army didn’t want to pay for modern weaponry and so they entered into negotiations with the European countries who wanted to rearm. Newspapers and popular magazines regularly ran articles and pictures about some astounding new thing with a line in the caption about the possibility of [European country] buying it. My favorite is the [flying tank](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/flying-tanks-that-shed-their-wings/). J. Walter Christie was a good designer and knew tanks. To quote Wikipedia: “He is best known for developing the Christie suspension system used in a number of World War II-era tank designs, most notably the Soviet BT and T-34 series, and the British Covenanter and Crusader Cruiser tanks, as well as the Comet heavy cruiser tank.” None of them got very far, although a few items were adopted by foreign armies in WWII. I don’t think they bothered to pay royalties, though. ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/9 "2015-07-05T04:41:41Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Len Deighton (WWII historian as well as novelist) also didn’t think much of the Ambler arms-manufacturers-bringing-on-war theory, noting that British factories in particular were reluctant to take on armament contracts, leading to Britain starting the war with considerable obsolete hardware. Russia was in a similar situation; the War Ministry ordered a mere 41 rifles in the first six months of 1914. (Source: A People’s Tragedy, Orlando Figes, 1996). Furthermore, they made virtually no plans for enhanced production since it was assumed any war would be short lived. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-merchants-of-death-help-bring-on-wwi/724281/10 "2015-07-05T20:21:50Z")
_The Private Manufacture of Armaments_ by Philip Noel Baker is another one in the same vein. Repeatedly, he argues that if only manufacture were a monopoly of governments then much of the evil would be done away with. Now that most manufacture is done by governments we can say that it hasn’t made much difference. Only Vol.1 was ever published; the manuscript of Vol.2 is apparently deposited with the League of Nations archives in Geneva.