During the summer of 1940, 18 months before the United States trade sanctions provoked the Japanese into punching their way out of the trade headlock by attacking Pearl Harbor, Congress appropriated $23 billion for the War Department.

This was more than the combined total the United States had spent on the First World War budget. The Second World War offered riches far beyond any corporate mogul’s dreams. Over half of Britain’s Tory Members of Parliament had shares in armaments factories and stood to become mega-rich in the event of a war with Germany.

The Comptroller General of the Unites States, Lindsay C. Warren testified before the House of Representatives in 1943 and 1944.   He revealed that ‘more than £50 billion of slush money had already been skimmed off some war contracts, and that extensive lobbying on the part of war production firms was going on, conducted by officers after leaving the armed forces.’

Congressmen fell over themselves getting war contracts and sub-contracts to constituent entrepreneurs. In return, they received lavish campaign contributions, votes and other backhanders. Many British and American firms became international conglomerates as a direct result of World War II profiteering. Nondescript politicians emerged from the war with fortunes made from investments in the arms industry.

At Westminster in Britain: ‘Uneasiness ruled in the House of Commons. A delegate of the Labour Party met with the British Foreign Minister Halifax on September 2, 1939, in the lobby of Parliament. 

‘Do you still have hope?’ he asked.  ‘If you mean hope for war,’ answered Lord Halifax, ‘then your hope will be fulfilled tomorrow.’  ‘God be thanked!’ replied the representative of the British Labour Party.  ‘In Britain, Lord Halifax was reported as being ‘redeemed’.  …. ‘He ordered a beer. We laughed and joked.’ – Heinz Roth. Are We Being Lied To? WITNESS TO HISTORY Mike Walsh

The financial return on war investments ranged as high as 50 percent and rarely if ever fell below 20 percent. The U.S. Government spent $300 billion for war material and services and invested heavily in ammunition factories, shipyards, aluminium mills, chemical plants (phosphorous, Sarin and other internationally outlawed chemicals used in war). 

RUDYARD KIPLING

I could not dig: I dared not rob,

Therefore I lied to please the mob.

Now all my lies are proved untrue, 

And I must face the men I slew.

What tale shall serve me here among?

Mine angry and defrauded young?

HENRY KISSINGER: Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.’  Henry Kissinger as quoted in Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW in Vietnam (1990) by Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson.  ~ Michael Walsh, WITNESS TO HISTORY.