Bacon challenges the claim that arms manufacturers necessarily wanted war. Wartime production could increase gross profits, yet firms also faced taxation, new capital expenditure, and a damaging slump once hostilities ended. Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers wrote down much of their capital before amalgamating, while Coventry Ordnance Works closed. Peacetime agents spent years building contacts abroad, studying local politics, and keeping their firms visible until orders emerged. Their commercial work also created a persistent national presence in foreign markets. Those networks amounted to diplomacy and a kind of strategy subtle enough to be a hard sell in government.
Notable Point · 6:44-8:59
Bacon on armaments firms, wartime costs, and peacetime influence
Bacon challenges the claim that arms firms desired war. He points to wartime costs, the postwar slump, and foreign networks built over years to win peacetime orders.