Nye Committee

The Senate Munitions Committee included
Arthur H. Vandenberg, Bennett Champ Clark, Gerald Nye, counsel Alger Hiss, and Homer T. Bone

The Nye Committee more formally known as the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry or sometimes the Senate Munitions Committee was established on April 12, 1934 because of continuing public disillusionment over the final outcome of World War I and distrust of those who had profited from the war. These weapons’ suppliers had reaped enormous profits at the cost of more than 53,000 American battle deaths. As local conflicts reignited in Europe through the early 1930s, suggesting the possibility of a second world war, concern spread that these “merchants of death” would again drag the United States into a struggle that was none of its business. Although World War I had been over for 16 years, the inquiry promised to reopen an intense debate about whether the nation should ever have gotten involved in that costly conflict.

The so-called “Senate Munitions Committee” came into being because of widespread reports that manufacturers of armaments had unduly influenced the American decision to enter the war in 1917. The committee, chaired by Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, had broad authority to examine the structure and activities of the munitions industry, to investigate and report on controlling the traffic in munitions, to recommend legislation to "take the profit out of war," and to consider establishing a Government monopoly of arms manufacture.

Alger Hiss, an agent of Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU), served as legal assistant to the committee. Lee Pressman, another Soviet agent who at that time was the General Counsel for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, got Hiss the appointment.

The committee held its first hearings in September 1934 and its final hearings in February 1936. There were 93 hearings in all, covering four topics: The munitions industry, bidding on Government contracts in the shipbuilding industry, war profits, and the background leading up to U.S. entry into World War I.