Nye Committee
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The Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, was a committee in the United States Senate which studied the causes of United States' involvement in World War I. There were seven members of the committee, which met between 1934 and 1936. Led by Senator Gerald Nye, the committee also included Senators Homer T. Bone, James P. Pope, Bennett Champ Clark, and Arthur H. Vandenberg. Alger Hiss served as the committee's general counsel. In total, the Nye Committee conducted 93 hearings and questioned more than 200 witnesses.
The committee reported that between 1915 and April 1917, the United States loaned Germany 27 million dollars. In the same period, the US loaned the United Kingdom and its allies 2.3 billion dollars, or about 85 times as much. From this data, some have concluded that the US entered the war because it was in American commercial interest for the United Kingdom not to lose.
During the 1920s and 1930s, dozens of books and articles appeared which argued that arms manufacturers had tricked the United States into entering World War I. In 1934, Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota held hearings to investigate the country's involvement in WWI. The Nye Committee documented the huge profits that arms factories had made during the war. The investigated created the impression that these businesses influenced the United States' decision to go to war.
