[[Image:00811h.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The Senate Munitions Committee included<br> [[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.