What is the merchant of death theory?

Merchants of death was a term coined in the 1930s in the United States to describe corporations and banks that supplied and supported World War I.

“Zaharoff, Merchant of Death” was the title of a 1932 story about an arms dealer named Basil Zaharoff. It was then used as the title of H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen’s 1934 exposé Merchants of Death.

The word was popular in antiwar circles on both the left and the right, and it was frequently used during the Nye Committee’s Senate hearings in 1936. The Senate committee looked at how much impact armament manufacturers had on America’s decision to enter World War I.

There were 93 sessions, over 200 witnesses were called, and little hard evidence of a conspiracy was discovered. When Chairman Nye accused President Woodrow Wilson of concealing information from Congress when he opted to engage in World War I, the Nye Committee came to an end.

The committee’s failure to uncover a conspiracy did not affect public opinion against armament manufacturers, earning them the moniker “merchants of death.”