Nye Committee

Identification U.S. Senate committee formed to investigate the reasons for U.S. involvement in World War I

Also known as Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry

Dates Formed on April 12, 1934; submitted final report on June 19, 1936

The Nye Committee investigated the origins of American involvement in World War I, and helped popularize the conviction that the United States had intervened in that conflict at the behest of powerful bankers and arms manufacturers, the so-called merchants of death. The committee’s operations represented one of the high points of American isolationism during the 1930’s.

The failure of the United States to ratify the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and enter the League of Nations challenged the idealism that had sanctioned American participation in World War I. Greater knowledge about the human toll of the war, and the disorder that it had left across the world, led many to question whether American victory had been worth the cost. In the postwar years, revisionist historians raised doubts about the moral and political premises that had guided American policy makers as they made the decision for intervention. One of the most politically corrosive lines of revisionist criticism asserted that the American decision for war had been driven by the interests of big American businesses hoping to profit from the war. Implicated groups included Wall Street banks that had made loans to the Allies and companies producing munitions and weapons. The Great Depression created an antibusiness mood that made such claims both more believable and politically attractive. In 1934, H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen’s muckraking tract The Merchants of Death found a wide audience.

Peace activists had long wanted a congressional investigation into the munitions industry. In December, 1933, Dorothy Detzer, executive secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, approached Senator George W. Norris. He sympathized but considered himself too old for such investigative work. Norris suggested that Senator Gerald Prentice Nye take the lead. Nye was a progressive Republican from North Dakota. As an heir to the tradition of midwestern agrarian radicalism, he distrusted big business and had supported much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. With Norris’s support, Nye agreed to submit a resolution for a munitions investigation. On April 12, 1934, Senate Resolution 206 was adopted without dissent.

The Senate Munitions Committee consisted of four Democrats and three Republicans. The Democrats were James P. Pope of Idaho, Homer T. Bone of Washington, Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri, and Walter F. George of Georgia. The Republicans were Nye, Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg of Michigan, and W. Warren Barbour of New Jersey. The members of the committee promptly elected Nye as chairman. Stephen Raushenbush was appointed secretary and chief investigator. John T. Flynn, a writer from the New Republic, served as an adviser. Alger Hiss, on loan from the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, acted as the committee’s general counsel.

Between 1934 and 1936, the Senate Munitions Committee held ninety-three hearings and questioned more than two hundred witnesses. Among the witnesses called before the committee were J. P. Morgan and members of the Du Pont family. The testimony at these hearings filled thirty-nine volumes. The committee explored the munitions industry, the shipbuilding industry, war profits, and the American entry into War World I. It submitted seven reports, making recommendations on such topics as taking the profits out of war, the government manufacture of munitions, and neutrality legislation. Nye took advantage of the visibility provided by his investigations to speak frequently on the radio and undertake lecture tours around the country. Though the committee never found hard evidence of a business conspiracy to embroil the United States in World War I, Nye firmly believed that the desire for profits on the part of bankers and arms manufacturers had pushed the nation into war. He argued that unless Congress took action, greed might lead to another war. The Senate cut funding for the committee after Nye asserted that President Woodrow Wilson had falsely denied knowledge of secret treaties among the Allies during the war. He had documentary evidence for this in an unreleased British memorandum. Nevertheless, his unflattering statement about a former president led to an uproar that ended support for the committee.

Impact

The Nye Committee proved nothing about the “merchants of death,” but by shining an unflattering light on the actions of American businessmen and statesmen, its highly publicized hearings did persuade many that American belligerence in 1917 had been a mistake. The Nye Committee played a major role in justifying American isolationism during the 1930’s. Its investigations encouraged the passage of the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937.

Bibliography

Black, Conrad. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. New York: PublicAffairs, 2003.

Cole, Wayne S. Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962.

Rhodes, Benjamin D. United States Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918-1941: The Golden Age of American Diplomatic and Military Complacency. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001.

Wiltz, John E. In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934-1936. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963.