What did a Merchant of Death do?
Merchants of death was an epithet used in the U.S. in the 1930s to attack industries and banks that had supplied and funded World War I, The term originated in 1932 as the title of an article about an arms dealer named Basil Zaharoff: “Zaharoff, Merchant of Death”. It was then borrowed for the title…
Merchants of death was an epithet used in the U.S. in the 1930s to attack industries and banks that had supplied and funded World War I, The term originated in 1932 as the title of an article about an arms dealer named Basil Zaharoff: “Zaharoff, Merchant of Death”. It was then borrowed for the title of the book Merchants of Death (1934), an exposé by H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen.
What did a Merchant of Death do?
Merchants of death” is a reference to the bankers and arms manufacturers that supplied and funded World War I. The phrase is also used to refer to arms dealers in general. The term has also been extended to other industries.
The term was first applied to an arms dealer named Basil Zaharoff. Relatively little is known of Zaharoff’s personal life. He was born Basileios Zacharias to poor Greek parents and spent some of his early life in Russia, before moving to Istanbul and then London; he was often referred to as the “mystery man of Europe.”
