Gerald Nye: The Merchants of Death Senator and His Pearl Harbor Speech

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Gerald Nye was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin in 1892. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 13, and he grew up writing and editing the family newspaper while his father, a follower of Robert La Follette, introduced him to the progressive senator. In 1916 he bought a weekly paper in North Dakota and wrote editorials defending farmers against banks and railroads. After losing a 1924 House race as a Democrat, he was appointed to the Senate in 1925 when Edwin Ladd died, and conservatives challenged the governor's authority before he was seated in January 1926. As Public Lands Committee chairman he helped create Grand Teton National Park and pushed for farm price supports.

In the 1930s Nye chaired a special committee on the munitions industry and bankers, branding them merchants of death, though its final report did not find a coordinated plot to start World War I. The hearings fed the Neutrality Acts, and Nye became a leader of the America First Committee. In 1941 he accused Hollywood studios, including Warner Brothers, of war propaganda, drawing charges of antisemitism from Wendell Willkie and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. After voting to declare war on Japan, he lost in 1944 to Governor John Moses, then stayed near Washington, ran a business called Records Engineering and worked for the Federal Housing Administration on housing for the elderly. He died in 1971 at 78 after a reaction to penicillin.

• On December 7, 1941, in Pittsburgh, he pocketed a note about the Pearl Harbor attack and spoke for another hour before announcing the news.
• Harry Truman dismissed the munitions committee as demagoguery.
• He sought to lift the arms embargo to aid the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
• He helped North Dakota businessman Herman Stern bring more than 140 Jewish refugees to the United States.
• Dr. Seuss mocked his isolationism in cartoons, and his 1966 retirement party at the Capitol drew Everett Dirksen and the Kennedy brothers.