The Nye Committee's Pursuit of the Merchants of Death

1935 Portrayal of the Merchants of Death

On a hot Tuesday morning following Labor Day in 1934, several hundred people crowded into the Caucus Room of the Senate Office Building to witness the opening of an investigation that journalists were already calling “historic.” Although World War I had been over for 16 years, the inquiry promised to reopen an intense debate about whether the nation should ever have gotten involved in that costly conflict.

The so-called Senate Munitions Committee came into being because of widespread reports that manufacturers of armaments had unduly influenced the American decision to enter the war in 1917. These weapons suppliers had reaped enormous profits at the cost of more than 53,000 American battle deaths and 116,000 total military deaths. As local conflicts reignited in Europe through the early 1930s, suggesting the possibility of a second world war, concern spread that these arms manufacturers would again drag the United States into a struggle that was none of its business. The time had come for a full congressional inquiry.  In early 1934 an expose  was published, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry by H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen. Publications about the same time identified British arms dealer Basil Zaharoff (1849-1936) as a premier example of the species. The term "Merchants of Death" vividly captured long held views of pacifist and socialist antiwar proponents, so they immediately began using it promiscuously. The further popular embrace of its delightfully slanderous and lurid tone led to a wave of  calls for a governmental investigation.

Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota

To lead the seven-member special committee, the Senate’s Democratic majority chose a Republican—42-year-old North Dakota senator Gerald P. Nye (1892-1971). Typical of western agrarian progressives, Nye energetically opposed U.S. involvement in foreign wars. He promised, “When the Senate investigation is over, we shall see that war and preparation for war is not a matter of national honor and national defense, but a matter of profit for the few.”  Nye and his committee would become forever linked to the Merchants of Death despite the fact the expression does not appear in the committee's official records or final report.

Over the next 18 months, the Nye Committee held 93 hearings, questioning more than 200 witnesses, including J. P. Morgan, Jr., and Pierre du Pont. Committee members found little hard evidence of an active conspiracy among arms makers, yet the panel’s reports did little to weaken the popular prejudice against “greedy munitions interests.”

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 “dirt-daubing 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.

Basil Zaharoff — First Identified Merchant of Death
(Portrayed by Leo McKern in Reilly, Ace of Spies)

Although the Nye Committee failed to achieve its goal of nationalizing the arms industry, it inspired three congressional neutrality acts in the mid-1930s that signaled profound American opposition to overseas involvement.

Sources:  The U.S. Senate and State Department Websites