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贩卖死亡：军工复合体与世界大战
两位记者通过多年实地走访，对二十世纪初的主要军火商，比如杜邦、柯尔特、雷明顿、克虏伯和斯柯达工厂，以及希拉姆·马克沁和巴希尔·扎哈罗夫等军火贩子的故事进行了讲述。通过多个视角的对比，作者发现，国际军火工业为了攫取利润，通过操纵公众舆论、行贿、煽动冲突等方式，与贪污政客、腐败政府组成“军工复合体”，以牺牲人民的生命和和平为代价，造成第一次世界大战被人为延长了数个月甚至一年以上的时间。
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 23, 2024
Incredible book. It's a bit of a dry read and a bit more "academic" than some will probably like, with the author going to great lengths trying to appear as unbiased and unemotional as possible. Ultimately, though, this just gives even more weight to the information in the book as it's essentially just a documentation of sourced facts with dates and names attached. It allows the reader to basically take the information and do with it what they will.
The book offers a peek behind the curtain of international war and those who profit off of it. It shows how, even 100 years ago, there were extremely rich and powerful men provoking war in every way possible, and then selling weapons and ammunition to both sides of the conflict they helped create. A German company, for example, would sell weapons to Germany while also secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) selling weapons to the enemies of Germany at the same time. And while that's happening, they'd post propaganda in the press and newspapers that they also owned to provoke other countries into the war so they could sell weapons to them too.
At the end of the day, war = profit and as long as that's true, the eponymous "merchants of death" will do everything in their (immense) power to prevent world peace. Morality, love of one's country, none of that matters to them as long as the war machine keeps chugging along and filling their bank accounts.
Sad to say that here in 2022 nothing has changed. Some of the exact same companies and families mentioned by name in this book are still doing the same things today, only on an even bigger scale.
This should be required reading for all kids growing up.
The book offers a peek behind the curtain of international war and those who profit off of it. It shows how, even 100 years ago, there were extremely rich and powerful men provoking war in every way possible, and then selling weapons and ammunition to both sides of the conflict they helped create. A German company, for example, would sell weapons to Germany while also secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) selling weapons to the enemies of Germany at the same time. And while that's happening, they'd post propaganda in the press and newspapers that they also owned to provoke other countries into the war so they could sell weapons to them too.
At the end of the day, war = profit and as long as that's true, the eponymous "merchants of death" will do everything in their (immense) power to prevent world peace. Morality, love of one's country, none of that matters to them as long as the war machine keeps chugging along and filling their bank accounts.
Sad to say that here in 2022 nothing has changed. Some of the exact same companies and families mentioned by name in this book are still doing the same things today, only on an even bigger scale.
This should be required reading for all kids growing up.
August 12, 2024
The book shows how these merchants of death profit from human suffering by selling weapons and military equipment to nations, often encouraging or exacerbating conflicts for their own financial gain. They highlight the connections between arms manufacturers and governments, showing how profits often take precedence over peace and humanity. Although its a 90 year old book but very much relevant to this day. The main lesson from this book is the dangerous influence of the arms industry on global politics and the devastating impact it has on peace efforts.
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March 1, 2024This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2024
The beginning was great. The pace was nice and there was a lot of easily ingestible information.
About 30% of the way through, it felt like trying to fit a square in a circle. I couldn’t bring myself to continue, stopped at 37%
About 30% of the way through, it felt like trying to fit a square in a circle. I couldn’t bring myself to continue, stopped at 37%
September 4, 2024
Dry and took a long time to read yet interesting
June 12, 2013
The book had poor timing to call for disarmment (though it fairly gave a case for both sides) because we all know now what happened next, but at the same time, WWII reinforced the views of the authors. Every time I read about 'Krupp', the German armament company, I thought of the Krampus.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews