The Merchants of Death

CHAPTER XVII STATUS QUO

When I rest, I rust.—Motto of Thyssen’s shops.

DOZENS of volumes have already appeared describing “the next war.” The Inferno depicted by these prophets makes Dante’s Hell a rather pleasant place. From the point of view of this study the most significant thing about all of these prognostications is the increasing importance of various kinds of arms and the decreasing need of man-power. “Rationalization” has overtaken Mars and there will probably never again be the enormous aggregation of armed men as in the World War. Machines are steadily displacing men, also in warfare.

But foreign trade is less than one-fifth of the French arms business. The best customer of the French arms industry is its own government. Since the close of the war France has been rearming frantically. All arms have been modernized and kept strictly up-to-date. Huge airplane fleets have been assembled, tanks multiplied, and chemical warfare highly developed. Still somehow France did not achieve a sense of security. More must be done, it was felt. There was that long frontier line and every inch of it was a danger point. Belgium was a friend, but in 1914 it had served as the back door into France; Germany could never be trusted; Switzerland was being spoken of as another back door; and Mussolini’s Italy was too ambitious and jealous to be a safe neighbor.

France could think of but one thing to do in this situation: fortify the entire frontier. A huge program of frontier defense was evolved, existing forts were strengthened, others were added, many of them underground. Over a billion francs were spent in drawing a steel and cement chain along the eastern boundaries.

Even that has not brought the feeling of safety. There are 2,700 kilometers of undefended seaboard, not to mention Corsica and the North African colonies. All of these are danger spots and a few hundred million spent in fortifying them would merely be an “insurance premium” on which the country could collect later. So the campaign is on to “defend” the coasts of France—which incidentally remained unscathed in the World War—and to fortify the colonies.

Finally it may be noted that the League of Nations figures on the French armament industry are curiously unreliable, as they are in most other cases. For 1932, for instance, no exports to Japan are listed, while reports persist that large orders were filled in France for that country.

Skoda’s home market in Czechoslovakia is comparatively small. More than any other arms-producing country, except Sweden, Czechoslovakia depends on exports. At least 40 per cent of Skoda’s manufactures go to foreign countries, which include, next to the Little Entente and Poland, China and Japan, Spain and Switzerland, the South American republics, and even France, England and Italy. The export of arms constitutes 10 per cent of the total exports of Czechoslovakia.

Great Britain’s arms industry is a close second to that of France. It is centered in the great Vickers-Armstrong firm and in other powerful combines. Vickers-Armstrong is probably the largest single armament company in the world. It produces all manner of arms, but it appears to be taking the lead in the manufacture of certain types of military and naval airplanes, tanks, and machine guns.

The man behind Hitler is Thyssen, the steel magnate of the Ruhr. Thyssen supplied more than 3,000,000 marks in campaign funds to the Nazis in the critical years 1930 to 1933; he brought about the shortlived Hitler-Von Papen-Hugenberg alliance and the fall of von Schleicher, and thus paved the way for Hitler’s rise to power. For this aid Thyssen demanded and received the control of the German Steel Trust, which is the heart of the arms industry.

Hitler at once set to work to rearm Germany. His first budget contains about 800,000,000 marks which are not allotted. It is assumed that this sum is to be used chiefly for armaments. As if confirming this assumption, iron imports into Germany are mounting with every month; similarly those of copper and scrap iron. Spanish and Swedish ore used for military purposes are arriving in increasing quantities at Emden and Luebeck. And what is happening to these imports?

Krupp is again producing cannon. The artillery range at Meppen is again alive with the testing of huge new guns. Armor plate of a new and special kind is also being made. The German chemical industry, always a world leader, is ready at a moment’s notice, to produce deadly poisonous gases. Indications are that they are already being manufactured and stored for immediate use. Commercial airplanes, readily converted into military weapons, are at hand in great numbers. Subsidiary or friendly factories in Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, and Turkey are also ready to furnish arms without the least delay.

The note caused a sensation, but Austria finally decided to send back the arms to Italy. Attempts are said to have been made to bribe the Austrian Socialist Railway Union to unload the freight cars secretly in Hungary and to send the empty cars to Italy. The Railway Union was to receive 150,000 schillings for its party funds. A great ado was made in the Austrian National Assembly over this attempted bribery.

Other attempts of Italy to arm Hungary were apparently more successful. The French Chamber of Deputies listened to a story on March 9, 1933, telling how the Italians had sent 60 airplanes and 195,000 kilos of gas by railway direct into Hungary. The shipment crossed Austria without attracting attention. Mussolini’s reply to these various charges in regard to Hungary was a counter-charge, supplied with detailed statistics, concerning the war materials which France and Czechoslovakia had sent into Yugoslavia and Rumania, partly by way of Austria.

Bethlehem Steel with its subsidiaries generally receives government contracts for armor plate and for battleships. Its subsidiaries today number 50, which manufacture nearly a hundred peace-time products besides arms.

In training these Chinese fliers, a new invention of the Fairchild Aviation Corporation is being used, aerial camera guns. Camera guns “shoot down” a make-believe enemy photographically and bring back the record to prove it. Incidentally, the Italians also have sold to the Chinese 20 bombing planes and are sending Lieutenant Colonel Mario de Bernardi, one of Italy’s most famous fliers, to supervise the instruction of China’s fliers. Naturally, the Japanese are disturbed about these activities.

Total Value of Arms Exports from All Countries

1921	$42,811,275
1922	42,452,413
1923	39,419,100
1924	45,702,200
1925	48,102,200
1926	51,105,400
1927	48,060,400
1928	59,239,000
1929	64,091,000
1930	55,201,500
Total	$496,184,488

Per cent of Total Exports by Country (1930)

Great Britain	30.8
France	12.9
United States	11.7
Czechoslovakia	9.6
Sweden	7.8
Italy	6.8
The Netherlands	5.4
Belgium	4.4
Denmark	1.9
Japan	1.9

In 1930, then, 55 per cent of the world exports in arms came from three countries, Great Britain, France, and the United States, while these same three countries account for about 75 per cent of world exports—more than $459,000,000—from 1920 to 1932.

As has been pointed out frequently, the League of Nations statistics on arms are not reliable. Even officially there are huge discrepancies between export and import figures. The difference in the ten year period, 1920–1930 amounts to $138,000,000. More important than that is the fact that the really expensive armaments—battleships, airplanes, etc.—are not included at all in the League statistics, nor is any account taken of the huge smuggling of contraband arms.

Even with the coöperation of all governments, the control or elimination of poison gas preparedness is indeed a knotty problem. A simple gas like chlorine, which has a dozen peacetime industrial uses, was the first poison gas used in the World War. To prohibit the manufacture of chlorine would be absurd. The famous “mustard gas” was merely a combination of three very common and very useful gases. Wherever there is a chemical or dye-stuff industry, the possibilities are given for rapid production of poison gases for war.

It is not surprising, then, that the great chemical factories of the world are to be found within the borders of the great powers. The largest companies or combines are I. G. Farben Industrie in Germany, the Imperial Chemical Industries in England, Kuhlmann in France, Du Pont de Nemours, the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation, and the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation in the United States.

The French Etablissements Kuhlmann owes its origin to the Germans. Right after the war the German industrialists agreed to establish a chemical industry in France. In 1923, during the Ruhr invasion, negotiations were completed and in the next year German experts came to France to train French chemists in the use of German chemical patents. Naturally they were well paid. Kuhlmann maintains close industrial relations with the German chemical trust and with the Spanish dynamite companies. Financially it is tied to Dillon, Read of New York, the Crédit Suisse of Zurich, and Mendelsohn of Berlin.

In England the Imperial Chemical Industries (I.C.I.) monopolizes the chemical industry. It, too, owes its real importance to German patents which it secured after the war. It is very closely tied to the government and frankly acknowledges its readiness for war. It was this company in which Sir John Simon held 1,512 shares which he sold during the Far Eastern disturbances. Sir Austen Chamberlain was at the same time shown in possession of 666 shares and Neville Chamberlain the holder of 11,747 shares. In order to guarantee its national character, it is provided that non-Britons may never hold more than 25 per cent of the total shares.

The United States boasts of a flourishing chemical industry which also owes its present status to German patents. A number of giants with many international ramifications are dominant, above all Du Pont de Nemours and the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation.

Fifteen years have elapsed since the “war to end all wars.” Yet the arms industry has moved forward with growing momentum as if the pacific resolutions of the various peoples and governments had never existed. All these technical improvements, all the international mergers, the cooperation between governments and the industry bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the situation during the epoch preceding 1914. Is this present situation necessarily a preparation for another world struggle and what, if any, are the solutions to these problems?