War is a Racket

Welcome to my War is a Racket book summary!

One-Sentence-Summary: Published after WWI and four years before WWII, War is a Racket, written by one of America’s most decorated service members and an isolationist (not antiwar), provides insight into the profits of war.

I’ve finished reading War is a Racket by General Smedley Butler. Page: 81

booboo real-time book rating: ★★★★★ (percentage of books with this rating: 34%)

Butler says during WWI, the US Government paid for 35,000,000 boots for 4,000,000 soldiers, or nearly nine pairs per soldier. He claims each soldier ever only used one pair. Even at three pairs per soldier (one for combat, one for training, and a spare), that leaves a 20M surplus. The point? Contracts are inflated during war tremendously, and profits soar hundreds, sometimes thousands of percent annually.

Butler claims 21,000 millionaires were minted during WWI.

The author goes on to describe an enormous amount of mosquito netting bought, over $1B of airplane equpiment that never made the battlefireld and paying 2x the price of the cost of a shirt…it’s hard to distinguishe here between fraud and corruption (surely it exists) and simply inefficientsy when the goverment does anything (which may re closely related to fraud and corruption).

This blog will contain both my summary and review of the book War is a Racket.

A short history of military awards

Before the Civil War (1861) – No medals.

The Congressional Medal of Honor was created for the Civil War.

The next medals were created for the Spanish-American War (1898).

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Thanks for visiting and thanks to General Smedley Butler for writing War is a Racket!

Date Started: Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Date Finished: Saturday, April 18, 2026 (4 days)