The Merchants of Death

CHAPTER XII THE WORLD WAR—THE WAR IN EUROPE

Great armament firms have no national or political prejudices; they are concerned not with the ulterior objects of war, but with the immediate means by which victory may be secured; and the value of such abstract ideas as justice and liberty they leave to the discussion of idle and metaphysical minds, or employ the terms as convenient euphemisms by which the real objects of statesmen may be cloaked and the energies of a people directed.—Biographer of Sir William White.

Not only were the number of combatants and the financial costs of the war without precedent, but the number and variety of death machines had never been equaled. All the sinister engines of war invented and perfected in the previous half century were used in the fighting, and, naturally enough, there was a further development of these during the war itself. The machine gun was improved, artillery was motorized and its range became longer, sights and fire-control apparatus became more scientific and more accurate.

Many new implements of war were also invented. The tank, a combined American and French invention, was first used by the British. Hand grenades were supplied to the trenches, and rifle grenades increased the range of these deadly missiles. The airplane gave its first prophetic demonstration as a war machine, and aviators learned to drop bombs and to fire machine guns from their lofty perches. Poison gas made its first appearance, spreading the gruesome “silent death.”

In the trenches soldiers wore helmets to protect them from flying fragments and gas masks to guard them against the 63 different kinds of death-dealing chemicals. Trench periscopes enabled them to see without exposing themselves to the rifles of sharpshooters.

In naval warfare the submarine created a radically new situation, involving changes in naval policy, battleship construction, sea fighting, and international law which even now remain unplumbed. The first ships had a very limited cruising radius, but constant improvement made them extremely dangerous. Many new devices were evolved to fight this menace, including sub-chasers, depth-bombs, antisubmarine walls, specially constructed mines, and various highly ingenious scientific instruments to reveal or dispose of the sub-sea enemy.

The prevailing pre-war international traffic in armaments made it inevitable that many of the armies and navies were met by guns and armaments which had been manufactured and sold to the enemy by their own countrymen. Germany and Great Britain, in particular, had sold arms to virtually all countries, while France and Austria lagged only a little behind.

Great Britain had sold as widely as Germany, but it was her good fortune that she was faced by no more than four hostile nations, two of which supplied most of their own armaments. Maxim and British arms companies had introduced the modern machine gun to all of Europe, and though Maxim patents were run out, the Maxim principle underlay all the new developments in machine gun construction. The British had established a torpedo factory at Fiume in Austria-Hungary; if the Austrian navy had been more formidable, these British-made torpedoes might have done considerable harm to the Allies. The British had built the Italian fleet in two great yards, Vickers-Terni and Armstrong-Pozzuoli; only Italy’s defection from the Triple Alliance prevented the use of this British-built fleet against the Allies. The British, finally, had helped to build and train the Turkish navy, and the disastrous Dardanelles campaign found British ships foundering on British-made mines and crippled by British cannons.

France had also helped to arm her enemies. Italy and Bulgaria were both equipped with the best mobile artillery, the French 75mm gun. The fortune of war placed Italy on the side of France and Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers. French troops in Bulgaria were later repulsed by the French ’75’s. France’s arms traffic worked out still another way. Both Bulgaria and Rumania had bought French armaments. When these two countries met as enemies in the war, both of them fought with French guns.

Austria-Hungary, finally, with its well-known Skoda factory, had helped to rearm Russia, and the Russians turned these Austrian-made guns against the Austrian armies. Other countries in the Balkans and Belgium also had received some of their arms from the Austrians.

All these complications arose through pre-war sales of arms. After war was declared, the great armament companies were kept busy day and night supplying their own governments and its allies. With millions of men engaged and battle-fronts running for hundreds of miles, the demand for arms and munitions was staggering. Every available man and woman was put to work in war activities, all resources of the various countries were strained to the limit.

It is impossible here even to outline the colossal activity of the armament industry during the war. The subject has been studied in a series of monographs published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It is feasible, however, to include some figures on the profits of the great armament makers. The following tables throw a vivid light on this subject. Great as the net gains of most of these companies appear, in reality they were even greater, for increasingly heavy taxation cut into these profits and in every country there have been charges of rigging reports by various tricks of bookkeeping with the express purpose of making net gains appear smaller. Even these doctored figures show how profitable war is for the arms merchants.

Germany (Marks)	Average last 3 Peace Years	Average first 3 War Years
Krupp	31,625	66,676
Rhein. M. & M. F.	1,448	9,568
Deutsche W. & M. F.	5,467	10,778
Koeln. Pulverf.	4,329	11,921
Austria-Hungary (Kronen)
Skodawerke	5,607	11,325
Poldihuette	1,360	3,615
Waffenfabrik Steyr	2,749	14,269
Hirtenberger Patronenfabrik	1,709	6,967
France (francs)
Schneider-Creusot	6,900	10,405
Hotchkiss	_____	8,026
Commentry Fourchambault	4,792	6,663
Usines a Gaz	8,776	11,536
Usines Metallurgiques de la Basse Loire	2,836	6,777
Trefiloires du Havre	4,321	8,475

Little as the arms merchants and the war contractors attracted public attention, they were nonetheless busy as usual. Numerous incidents have become known which show the vast power of these groups and their “trafficking with the enemy” in the midst of the war.

One would suppose now that the French would bend all their efforts to destroying the advantage the Germans had gained in the Briey basin. No such thing. The region was never effectively bombarded, either by cannons or by airplanes, though sham attacks took place. And practically all through the war the Germans were extracting valuable ores here for the prosecution of the war.

This fact became known to several people and they tried persistently to bring the matter to the attention of the proper authorities. They approached the French GHQ and told their story, but their documentary evidence was returned to them and no action was taken against the Briey mines. Curiously enough, the officer at GHQ with whom they dealt happened to be an official of the Comité des Forges. Finally the matter was taken up by various journals, including the Correspondant, the Echo de Paris, l’Œuvre, and Paris Midi. The government replied that it dared not bombard the Briey basin and stop the German exploitation of its mines, because if it did the Germans would certainly bombard the mines operated by the French at Dombasle (Meurthe-et-Moselle), now virtually the chief source of iron ore of the French war forces.

Here then was the situation. By a kind of supernational power the arms makers of France and Germany had brought it about that their sources of supply—and profit—were not disturbed. Had both Briey and Dombasle been destroyed, the war would have ended much sooner; but the hand of destruction which dealt so ruthlessly with human life, with famous cathedrals, libraries, and art treasures, was stayed when it approached the iron mines of the arms merchants.

This situation alarmed the French armament press. It immediately branded the entire movement for peace as inspired by the Germans and paid for by German money. On the face of it this was ridiculous, because the Germans were far more concerned with decisive victory than with a negotiated peace. But the armament press scored and the desire for peace was henceforth outlawed as treason and pro-Germanism.

Then the armament press took another step to prolong the war. In both Germany and France there was suddenly an outbreak of almost fantastic plans for annexation. The German plans, fostered by the Pan-Germans, among others, included a great expansion of German territory, the crippling of France, and the creation of various protectorates in Europe to insure German hegemony in Europe and German dominance in world affairs. These German “peace plans” were immediately paralleled by French ones, which demanded, among other things, the left bank of the Rhine, German colonies, and the destruction of the “German menace.”

A most significant and important phase of the World War was the widespread and continuous international trade in war materials, even among enemy powers. Consider the situation concretely. Germany was effectively cut off from the rest of the world by the British fleet. Theoretically, according to international law, Germany could buy from all neutrals whatever she wished, but contraband goods were subject to confiscation and had to run the blockade. France and Great Britain, on the other hand, needed certain materials for which they had hitherto depended on Germany. Would it not be possible in some way to supply to both groups what they needed? The solution of the problem lay with the neutrals round about Germany, especially Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries.

At this point a very troublesome feature of modern war entered into the situation, the problem as to what really constitutes war material. Many raw materials invaluable in carrying on war are also very useful in ordinary industrial processes. Many chemicals, for instance, are basic in the production of fertilizers; they are also used to make poison gas. Aluminum may be made into cooking utensils and also into submarines. Electrical power has a thousand peace-time uses; it is likewise necessary in a hundred processes in the arms industry, among others, in extracting nitrates from the air. Cotton is used in textiles and also in gunpowder. This situation paved the way for an extensive and highly important commerce in war materials almost straight through the war. The details of this trade are very interesting.

Rear Admiral M.W.W.P. Consett was British naval attaché in the Scandinavian countries during the war. After the war he published a highly sensational volume, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, on the events which he had witnessed. Among the matters discussed by Consett are the following:

The various nations in the war soon learned the importance of fat, because glycerine, so vital in the manufacture of explosives, was derived from it. In the British army, for instance, all scraps of meat were carefully collected, and whatever fat remained was used for glycerine. The need for fat produced one of the most astonishing stories of German atrocities—since disproved—that the Germans derived some of their glycerine from the dead bodies of their soldiers. It was relatively easy for the Allies to secure all the fats they needed, because their vessels sailed the seven seas with little interference. But what was Germany to do when her borders were almost hermetically sealed? Germany’s situation was so serious that Consett declares that a really air-tight blockade in 1915 and 1916 would have compelled her to sue for peace before the breakdown of Russia and the entry of Rumania into the war.

That this blockade was not enforced was due to the British merchants. When they received orders for vegetable oils, fats, and oil-cake from Denmark, they did not inquire into the ultimate destination of these products, even though the orders far exceeded the normal demand of Denmark. They forwarded similar orders to the British possessions in the Far East where they were filled with the aid of British shipping. For almost three years this trade went on undisturbed and all through this period the Germans had no difficulty in making their explosives.

Consett tells further of the shipment of copper to Germany from the United States, via Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland. The Germans were badly in need of this metal, as may be seen from the fact that they appealed to their own people to turn in all their copper cooking utensils and from their confiscation of almost everything made of copper in Belgium. Now the British merchants came to their aid. They delivered copper to these various neutrals, whence it was immediately trans-shipped to Germany. The statistics for Sweden and Norway alone show an export of copper to Germany (in metric tons) as follows: 1913–1,900; 1914–4,366; 1915–3,877; 1916–2,563; 1917–202. The vigorous protests of Consett finally put an end to this traffic.

A similar story concerns the supply of nickel to Germany before and during the war. The chief sources of nickel in 1914 were Norway, Canada, and New Caledonia, a French colony. The British rigorously controlled the Canadian nickel supply, refusing to permit sales even to the United States, unless its use in this country was proved. They also made an agreement with the Norwegians contracting for most of their output. Still there was some traffic in nickel between Norway and Germany which barely exceeded 1,000 tons a year.

Now nickel is extremely valuable in the manufacture of various armaments. In Great Britain it was immediately placed on the list of contraband materials, and a steamer flying the Russian flag loaded with nickel destined for Krupp was confiscated. The story was significantly different in France. On October 1, 1914, a Norwegian steamer loaded with 2,500 tons of nickel from New Caledonia, consigned to Krupp, was stopped by the French navy, taken into Brest harbor, and claimed as a prize of war because it carried nickel. Immediately an order came from Paris to release the ship. The local authorities and the prize court were surprised and questioned the decision, but it was at once reaffirmed and the shipment of nickel proceeded to Hamburg. It was not till May, 1915 that nickel was declared contraband by the French and that the export from New Caledonia was controlled. By that time, Le Nickel and the Rothschilds had adjusted their affairs—and Germany was well supplied with nickel for several years.

A similar story concerns the lead of Spanish Penarroya. The Société Minière de Penarroya controls the most important lead mines of the world. The annual production of these Spanish mines is about 150,000 tons, that is, one-eighth of the world total. Since 1883 the French bankers, the Rothschilds, have controlled these mines, but in 1909 the Rothschild Bank entered into an alliance with the Metallgesellschaft of Frankfurt, the company in which both the Kaiser and Krupp were heavily interested.

This international partnership was to continue until December 31, 1916. It was very profitable to both sides. The Rothschilds did not reveal that they were allied with the Germans in this company until the fact was about to be disclosed by hostile informers. Thus this company remained under German and French control for about two years of the war. At the outbreak of hostilities, 150,000 tons of lead were shipped from these mines to Germany, via Switzerland. Meanwhile France had to wait for its lead. When shipments into France were resumed, the price of lead was raised to such an extent that it more than doubled the figure which the English paid for their lead.

The rôle of Switzerland during the World War as an intermediary for enemy trade was very important. Switzerland found itself hemmed in by warring nations, all of which were desperately in need of valuable war materials, and ready to pay handsomely for them. The temptation was too great, and before long the little mountain country was the center of a very profitable international trade. In fairness to the Swiss it must be added that they were threatened with reprisals of various kinds if they failed to comply with the demands of their warring neighbors. Officially there was an embargo on war materials, but smuggling and a loose interpretation of terms encouraged an active traffic.

When this story became known in 1917, there was great excitement in some quarters. A trial was ordered for the great industrialists who were charged with treason. Immediately a great “hush” fell over the entire affair. Hardly a word concerning it appeared in the press. Only the radical papers knew that a scandal had broken. The accused protested that they had merely paid a commercial debt and that they had believed the chemicals were to be used for—fertilizer. Of course, this was possible. At that point mysterious influences began to make themselves felt in the trial, supposedly set in motion by Poincaré, a close friend of the great industrialists. The entire prosecution had been carried on reluctantly and half-heartedly and the final acquittal surprised nobody.

French bauxite also entered Switzerland freely during the war, was there manufactured into aluminum, and then shipped into Germany for the construction of submarines. The Swiss delivered about 20,000 tons of aluminum annually to Germany and 200 tons to the Allies. As to saltpeter, it is reported that the Swiss supplied annually to Germany enough for 56 billion rifle shots or 147,000,000 grenades. In 1917 alone Germany produced with the help of the Swiss 300,000 tons of saltpeter. Before the war, the world production had been 214,000 tons a year.

The Swiss were not only intermediaries between the warring nations; they also supplied to both sides vast amounts of electrical power, useful especially in the new process of extracting nitrates from the air. The lack of coal during the war compelled the Swiss to develop their hydroelectric resources. All along their frontier, facing Germany, France, and Italy, great power houses sprang into being, using the vast water power of the country. It was an easy matter to transmit this current to the three neighboring countries. The export of electrical power reached enormous proportions: 382,000 HP to Germany and 76,500 HP to the Allies.

The most important matter relating to the World War was the colossal demand for arms and munitions and the vastly profitable business of the arms makers. This fact will stand out in even sharper relief when the rôle of the United States in the war is considered.