War profiteers
When war profiteers persons or organizations are called, which actually or supposedly emergencies in times of war exploited to disproportionately high profit to generate (see also usury : Offer or Sale of a performance in a significantly excessive consideration by exploiting a weakness situation of a counterparty if that contractor not Alternatives are available).
Sometimes those actors are so called who in a conflict supply both opposing sides with goods (especially weapons ) or who violate an embargo .
Corresponding actions may be legal under the laws of the respective states , but they are considered ethically reprehensible . The term has a negative connotation in common parlance. Similarly, one speaks of crisis winners .
variants
Black marketeers
If in times of war or crisis certain products such as If, for example, food or luxury goods (e.g. chocolate , coffee and cigarettes) are rationed, these are available on the black market at unregulated prices. The black marketeers and possibly their clients are called war profiteers.
Defense industry
The profits in the armaments industry are "relatively 3-4 times higher than in civil industries with the same technical performance", analyzed Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt for the First World War in his work The Bloody International of the Armaments Industry (1929) . Profit from war is now a "global problem". In addition to the industry of traditional military equipment, so-called small arms producers are also part of it today.
Arms dealer
Arms dealers who make money from a war, especially if they sell arms to customers who are actually under international arms embargoes or if both sides of a conflict are supplied.
Civil companies
War profiteers include companies that receive lucrative contracts in wartime for tasks that are usually carried out by the military, and also companies that are given preferential contracts for reconstruction or the repair of war damage; i. d. Usually because they belong to a country that is on the winning side of the military conflict.
Advanced application
People and organizations that act legally but morally controversial in wars are also referred to as war profiteers. The Switzerland remained in the Second World War neutral. She made profits that she would not have made otherwise. The western victorious powers viewed the Swiss as "war profiteers" who would have cooperated with the Nazis. With the Washington Agreement in 1946, Switzerland agreed to pay the USA 250 million francs. In return, the USA unblocked Swiss accounts and deleted the “black list” on which Swiss companies that had cooperated with Germany were listed. See main article: Switzerland in World War II .
Expropriations of war profiteers in 1946
In July 1946, a referendum was held in Saxony on the "transfer of war and Nazi criminals into the property of the people". While the democratic parties were also unanimously behind the desire to expropriate the criminals, a political conflict arose over the formulation that war profiteers and those interested in war should also be expropriated. The democratic parties countered the SED's demand that these terms were not sufficiently defined and would lead to arbitrariness .
Mention in the literature
In his drama Mother Courage and Her Children , Bertolt Brecht chose a war profiteer as the main character.
In post-war literature in particular, the war profiteer is a common stereotype , for example in works as diverse as Otto Reutter The War Profiteer from 1919, Brecht's Drums in the Night or Hans Hellmut Kirst's 08/15 . Following a suggestion from Hermann Ullstein, Theo Matejko created the figure of “Raffke”, a “nouveau riche” who made money as a war profiteer.
From 1945 the war profiteer was often used as a counter-figure to the homecomer . The homecomer who has given his life and lost years of his life is opposed to the war profiteer who has avoided military service and also benefited financially from the war.
The war profiteer also appears in the literature as a figure with positive connotations. In Schindler 's list , Oskar Schindler used the opportunities he had gained through the war to save hundreds of Jews with a lot of moral courage and considerable risk.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Wolfram Beyer : War Profiteers - Profit Rate of the Armaments Industry, in: Wolfram Beyer, Pazifismus und Antimilitarismus. An introduction to the history of ideas. Stuttgart 2012, pp. 208ff
- ↑ Duden: war profiteers
- ↑ The top 10 war profiteers
- ↑ John Paulson as Hedge Fund Star
- ↑ Dieter Felbick: Keywords of the post-war period 1945–1949. 2003, ISBN 3-11-017643-2 , p. 577.