Abstract EN:

Between 1914 and 1918, in order to face with the huge requirements of a 52 months-long total war, a mixed system is improvised to manage supplies of raw materials, transport or even workers. The state put in orders to industrialists or go-betweens. As a result, working for the national defence is basically an opportunity of profits for many industrialists in different sectors. Both felt imagined, war profits quickly become unacceptable. After only a few months of conflict, vehement indignation in opposition of them can be found among large parts of the public opinion, even moderate. Denouncement is of course widespread among soldiers. A specific taxation can be seen as an answer to the imperious requests of the public opinion: it is implemented in july 1916, and it provides the unreleased archives for studying the topic considered here. Trying to recognize the part played both by fantasies and concrete realities lead to an objectified typology of the persons or firms actually enriched, more or less, because of the war.