All copied and pasted from propaganda sources
When World War I began, JP Morgan had Extensive Loans to Europe which would be lost if the allies were Defeated. Du Pont and other US weapons manufacturers stood to make astronomical profits if the United States entered the war. Historian Alan Brugar wrote that for every soldier who died in battle, the international bankers made a profit of $10,000. As J.P. Morgan wrote to Wilson in 1914, “The war should be a tremendous opportunity for America.”
When the war concluded and the dead and wounded were counted, suspicions grew in the United States that nefarious business interests had propelled US involvement into the great slaughter. Investigative reporting and congressional hearings were initiated.
In 1934 a book written by Helmuth Engelbrecht called The Merchants Of Death became a bestseller. The book exposed the unethical business practices of weapons manufacturers and analyzed their enormous profits during World War I
For two decades after the sensational profiteering scandals of the First World War, we were frequently assured in the capitalist press that all the necessary legislation had been worked out to keep the next war financially respectable – strictly a non-profit enterprise. The slogan to “take the profits out of war” became a national shibboleth. But this all-national slogan was soon manipulated by the monopolists to help sell the bloodier and more profitable Second World War. Roosevelt, it will be recalled, employed the slogan in his “Equality of Sacrifice” program. “No war millionaires,” he promised the American people.
Within only four years the number of billion-dollar concerns in America had risen from 32 to 44. Assets of the 44 had risen to $103 billions, more than a third the entire national wealth. Wall Street has become the “world’s banker.”
Whereas the First World War produced $28.5 billions of net profits and created 22,000 millionaires, the Second practically doubled the “take:’ enriching the monopolists by $56 billions – so far. Never before in history has any venture proven so profitable.
When has our sending arms into a war zone ever stopped the fighting?”
Ní Bhriain points to the peace process in Ireland, her native country, stating that “at some point, you also have to realize that you have to compromise.”
She also questions what she sees as a strategy of sending Ukraine weapons gradually, “prolonging [the conflict] without exacerbating it,” as exemplified by the recent delivery of tanks despite calls to provide them when the conflict began.
. “If they really believed tanks were the solution, why not send them in a year ago and end the whole thing?” she asks. “Why this kind of escalation bit by bit? With so much money being made, you just have to wonder what is actually going on.”
Companies like Lockheed Martin, Airbus and Rheinmetall, who will profit from increased military spending, collectively spent some €12 million ($13 million) lobbying politicians in Germany.
NATO and EU member states “have simultaneously used the war as a smokescreen to justify replenishing, expanding and modernizing their own stockpiles of armament and to bend and reshape existing arms trade regulations … driving unbridled militarism and a new arms race,” the report argues.
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