In
1933 Dorothy Detzer,
executive secretary of the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom,
approached Gerald
P. Nye, George
Norris and Robert
La Follette and
asked them to instigate a Senate investigation into the international
munitions industry. They agreed and on 8th February, 1934, Nye submitted
a Senate Resolution calling for an investigation of the munitions
industry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Key
Pittman of Nevada. Pittman disliked the idea and the resolution
was referred to the Military Affairs Committee. It was eventually
combined with one introduced earlier by Arthur
H. Vandenberg of Michigan, who sought to take the profits out
of war.
The Military Affairs Committee
accepted the proposal and as well as Nye and Vandenberg, the Munitions
Investigating Committee included James P.
Pope of Idaho, Homer T. Bone of Washington,
Joel B. Clark of Missouri, Walter
F. George of Georgia and W. Warren
Barbour of New Jersey. Alger
Hiss was the
committee's legal assistant. John T. Flynn,
a writer with the New
Republic magazine, was recruited and wrote most of
the reports published by the committee.
Public hearings before
the Munitions Investigating Committee began on 4th September, 1934.
In the reports published by the committee it was claimed that there
was
a strong link between the American government's decision to enter
the First World War and the lobbying of the
the munitions industry. The
committee was also highly critical of the nation's bankers. In a speech
in 1936 Gerald
P. Nye argued
that "the record of facts makes it altogether fair to say that
these bankers were in the heart and
center of a system that made our going to war inevitable".
Gerald
P. Nye remained
a staunch isolationist during the emergence of Adolf
Hitler and Benito
Mussolini
in Europe. In August
1940, Nye attacked President
Franklin
D. Roosevelt for
giving the leaders of England and France "reason to believe that
if they would declare war on Germany, help would be forthcoming."
He went on to argue that the United States had "sold
out, by deliberate falsification, the two European nations with which
we had the closest ties. We sent France to her death and have brought
England perilously close to it."
On 15th April, 1940, Gerald
P. Nye told a
meeting in Pennsylvania that the European war was not "worthy
of the sacrifice of one American mule, much less one American son."
He also argued that "Russia, Stalin and communist ideology"
would eventually win from the Second World War.
In 1941 Nye was the most
active member of the America
First Committee in
the Senate. This involved the attempt to defeat the administration
Lend Lease proposal. Although Nye persuaded
Burton
K. Wheeler,
Hugh
Johnson, Robert
LaFollette Jr., Henrik
Shipstead, Homer
T. Bone, James B. Clark, William
Langer,
and Arthur
Capper, to vote
against the measure, it was passed by 60 votes to 31.
In a speech in Des Moines,
Iowa, Charles
A. Lindbergh claimed
that the "three
most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war
are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration".
Soon afterwards Nye gave his support to Lindbergh and
argued "that the Jewish
people are a large factor in our movement toward war." These
speeches resulted in some people claiming that Nye was anti-Semitic.
The
America
First Committee influenced
public opinion through publications and speeches and within a year
the organization had 450 local chapters and over 800,000 members.
The AFC was dissolved four days after the Japanese
Air Force attacked
Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941.
(1)
In her autobiography, Appointment on the Hill, Dorothy
Detzer reported a conversation
she had with George
Norris in 1933 about Gerald
P. Nye leading the investigation
into the international munitions industry.
Nye's young, he has inexhaustible
energy, and he has courage. Those are all important assets. He may
be rash in his
judgments at times, but it's the rashness of enthusiasm. I think he
would do a first-class job with an investigation. Besides, Nye doesn't
come up for election again for another four years; by that time the
investigation would be over. If it reveals what I am certain it will,
such an investigation would help him politically, not harm him. And
that would not be the case with many senators. For you see, there
isn't a major industry in North Dakota closely allied to the munitions
business.
(2)
Gerald
P. Nye, speech in Congress (May,
1933)
Investigations serve a most healthy purpose in that they prevent many
practices and serve as a caution against practices which might be
considered proper and customary but for the development of a conscience
by the existence of an investigating committee.
With economic
and political influence coming into such concentrated control it is
of greatest importance that legislative bodies be on closest guard
against encroachment which further threatens a free government. Honest
investigations, prosecuted by legislators determined to reach and
develop the facts, and by legislators who in their work can and will
abandon partisanship, are of greatest value to the government and
its people. They afford necessary knowledge basic to helpful legislation.
They educate people to practices unfriendly to their best interests.
They throw fear into men an interests who would by any means at their
command move governments to selfish purposes.
(3)
Gerald
P. Nye,
speech reported in the New
York Times (10th February, 1936)
It would not be fair to say that the House of Morgan took us to war
to save their investment in the Allies, but the record of facts makes
it altogether fair to say that these bankers were in the heart and
center of a system that made our going to war inevitable. We started
in 1914 with a neutrality policy which permitted the sale of arms
and munitions to belligerents, but which forbad loans to belligerents.
Then, in the name
of our own business welfare. President Wilson permitted the
policy to be stretched to the extent of permitting the house of Morgan
to supply the credit needs of the Allies. After this error of neutrality,
the road to war was paved and greased for us.
(4)
Report on Activities and Sales of Munition Companies (April,
1936)
Almost without exception, the American munitions companies investigated
have at times resorted to such unusual approaches, questionable favors
and commissions, and methods of 'doing the needful' as to constitute,
in effect,
a form of bribery of foreign governmental officials or of their close
friends in order to secure business. These business methods carried
within themselves the seeds of disturbance to the peace and stability
of those nations in which they
take place.
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.
(5)
Joel
B. Clark, introduction to the Munitions
Industry: Report on Existing Legislation (5th June, 1936)
The Committee wishes to point out most definitely that its study of
events resulting from the then existing neutrality legislation, or
the lack of it, is
in no way a criticism, direct or implied, of the sincere devotion
of the then President, Woodrow Wilson, to the high causes of peace
and democracy. Like other leaders in government, business and finance,
he had watched the growth of militarism in the pre-war years. Militarism
meant the alliance of the military with powerful economic groups to
secure appropriations on the one hand for a constantly increasing
military and naval establishment, and on the other hand, the constant
threat of the use of that swollen military establishment in behalf
of the economic interests at home and abroad of the industrialists
supporting it. President Wilson was personally impelled by the highest
motives and the most profound convictions as to the justice of the
cause of our country and was devoted to peace. He was caught up in
a situation created largely by the profit-making interests in the
United States, and such interests spread to nearly everybody in the
country. It seemed necessary to the prosperity of our people that
their markets in Europe remain unimpaired. President Wilson, himself,
stated that he realized that the economic rivalries of European nations
had played their part in bringing on the war in 1914.
(6)
Gerald
P. Nye,
speech in Congress (6th June, 1936)
Loans extended to the Allies in 1915 and 1916, led to a very considerable
war boom and inflation. This boom extended beyond munitions to auxiliary
supplies and equipment as well as to agricultural products. The nature
of such a war-boom inflation is that, like all inflations, an administration
is almost powerless to check it, once the movement is well started.
Our foreign policy then is seriously affected by it, even to the extent
of making impossible the alteration of our foreign policy in such
a way as to protect our neutral rights.
(7)
Gerald
P. Nye,
speech in Congress (July, 1939)
No member of the Munitions Committee to my knowledge has ever contended
that it was munitions makers who took us to war. But that committee
and its members have said again and again, that it was war trade and
the war boom, shared in by many more than munitions makers, that played
the primary part in moving the United States into a war.
(8)
Gerald
P. Nye,
speech reported in the New
York Times on
28th August 1940.
England and France reason to believe that if they would declare war
on Germany, help would be forthcoming. Some day history will show,
as one of the blackest
marks of our time, that we sold out, by deliberate falsification,
the two European nations with which we had the closest ties. We sent
France to her death and have brought England perilously close to it.
Had they stalled Hitler for a while, while they prepared to meet him,
the story might have been different.
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