Нью комитеті: Соғыс пайдасының тергелгені (1934-1936)

1930s U. S. Senate committee that investigated war profiteering

The Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, was a United States Senate committee (April 12, 1934 – February 24, 1936), chaired by U. S. Senator Gerald Nye (R ND). The committee investigated the financial and banking interests that underlay the United States' involvement in World War I and the operations and profits of the industrial and commercial firms supplying munitions to the Allies and to the United States. It was a significant factor in public and political support for American neutrality in the early stages of World War II.

During the 1920s and 1930s, dozens of books and articles appeared about the high cost of war, and some argued that financiers and arms manufacturers had maneuvered the United States into entering World War I. One of the best known was Smedley D. Butler, a retired Marine Corps general who had become a spokesman for left wing anti war elements. Historian Charles Callan Tansill's America Goes To War (1938) exploited the Nye Committee's voluminous report of testimony and evidence to develop and confirm the heavy influence exercised by Wall Street finance (notably J. P. Morgan) and the armaments industry (notably Du Pont) in the process that led to American intervention. The push for the appointment of Senator Gerald Nye (R ND) to the chairmanship of this committee came from Senator George Norris (R NE). According to peace activist Dorothy Detzer, Norris said, "Nye's young, he has inexhaustible energy, and he has courage. Those are all important boons. He may be rash in his judgments at times, but it's the rashness of enthusiasm." Norris proposed Nye as " the only one out of the 96 whom he deemed to have the competence, independence and stature for the task."

The committee was established on April 12, 1934. There were seven members: Nye, the committee chair; and Senators Homer T. Bone (D WA), James P. Pope (D ID), Bennett Champ Clark (D MO), Walter F. George (D GA), W. Warren Barbour (R NJ), and Arthur H. Vandenberg (R MI). Stephen Rauschenbusch, son of Christian Social Gospel activist Walter Rauschenbusch, was appointed lead counsel for the Committee; his assisting counsel included Robert Wolforth, Josephine Burns and Alger Hiss. John T. Flynn "played a major role in the course of the investigation" as a member of the committee's Advisory Council of experts. Burns and Rauschenbusch, who met on the committee, married soon after and co authored a book that recounts salient testimony gathered by the investigation, War Madness (Washington, D. C., National Home Library Association, 1937). Alger Hiss served as a legal assistant (counsel) to the committee from July 1934 to August 1935. Most famously, Hiss "badgered" DuPont officials and questioned and cross examined Bernard Baruch on March 29, 1935. About their testimony, Dorothy Detzer (Appointment On The Hill, p. 169) reports: "The four solemn Du Pont brothers," averred that "the corporation's profits of 400% during the First World War seemed only the good fruit of sound business."