Hunt Tooley reveals how artillery, arms dealers, and bankers turned war into profitable, prolonged carnage.

[Editor’s note: Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has faced some significant opposition to his nomination in the US Senate. His nomination is by no means assured, although his opponents have offered few specifics as to why they oppose Hegseth’s nomination. Much criticism has come in the form of Hegseth’s personal habits, but it is unlikely this is the real potential deal breaker. Given that Hegseth has extensive experience working with military institutions, one might think he is to be regarded as a good fit for the position. The problem with this assumption can be found in this 2019 analysis by historian Hunt Tooley. Here, Tooley examines what makes for a politically acceptable Secretary of Defense who is likely to be quickly accepted by the entrenched interests that

The Misesian (TM): You have remarked that after 1900, all the pieces come into place for modernity in terms of the American warfare state. What are some of these pieces and how did they fall into place at that time?Hunt Tooley (HT): To some extent, the state has always used wars to maintain and increase domestic control.Shakespeare assumed as much in the famous instructions the dying Henry IV gives to his son: “Therefore, my Harry, be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.” In other words, perpetual wars can confuse the minds of those who might otherwise be likely to object to the ruthlessness and cynicism of leaders who wage wars to enhance their power at home.After the 16th century, the new European-style state adopted the war strategy with few interruptions. The growth

For a number of reasons, the French Revolution is a kind of Rorschach Test for educated people. One cause of this phenomenon, if I may pile on metaphors, is clearly the blind man/elephant problem. There are so many parts of the Revolution, so many stages, so many protagonists, so many ideas, so many policies—often quite contradictory—that we are sometimes confused not only as to how to interpret it, but as to what part to interpret as well. Ultimately historians tend to explain the Revolution according to their predilections, or even their heroes. Hence, scholars have explored the complicated situation of French farmers (we call them peasants) and assert that these problems were the foundation of the Revolution. Marx and Marxists interpret the upheaval from the viewpoint of the most

Postwar Germany was occupied, in ruins, with an economy in chaos. Germans were reduced to using cigarettes supplied by American GIs as money.

Original Article: "To Smoke or Not to Smoke: The Cigarette Economy in Postwar Germany, 1945–48"

During the three years after World War II, Germans—facing a ruined economy and wildly depreciating currency—turned to cigarettes as a medium of exchange on a massive scale. Allied occupation authorities strictly forbade this black-market currency exchange, but it literally saved the lives of many German civilians—and inadvertently made many American GIs rich.
The cigarette had already made its appearance during the war as a currency in both the Third Reich’s massive network of concentration camps as well as in POW camps. Auschwitz survivor Stefan Kosinski commented that he didn’t smoke but always kept a stock of cigarettes for exchange: “It’s like money. With it, I could buy a little margarine, some bread, some potatoes . . . and I took with me some of these foods and [for]

One hundred years ago, the combatants of World War One fought themselves to a standstill. The warring regimes then used the opportunity to clamp down on internal dissent and a host of other liberties, writes T. Hunt Tooley.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert Hale.

With 100 years having passed since the start of the First World War, the view of the war among historians and the public has evolved in many ways. Historian Hunt Tooley examines the turning points in how the world sees the Great War. This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert Hale.