'War is a Racket', by Gen. Smedley Butler, succinctly lays out exactly why war is such a profitable way to sell stuff, and get rich.

If you haven't read it, I recommend it.  It's short, and the math is easy.  Butler wasn't a mathematician, he was a war hero, from WWI, and he lamented later in life that his specialty was in preventing captive labor markets from avoiding being conscripted to generate profits for corporations selling stuff, like bananas, and pineapples, in various tin pot dictatorships.

War is <i>critical</i> to profiteers, as it allows them to multiply their ROI's by orders of magnitude.

Butler lays this out quite clearly, from personal experience, in a book short enough to be called a pamplet.

I think you'd like him.

Also this:

>"Churchill had been appointed to the Admiralty in October 1911, and had continued the policy established by his predecessor of keeping Britain ahead of the Germans and strengthening the navy by expanding the number of Dreadnoughts, the most powerful battleship of the time."

WWI wasn't so long ago that considerable records have been lost, and a cursory search will show many corroborating points with the above, taken from <a href="http://www.historyinanhour.com/2013/01/24/winston-churchill-world-war-one/">Historyinanhour.com</a>