Second of a two-part series exploring the secret world of the international arms trade.
Money and Gunpowder
Once-menacing arsenals in eastern Europe are being abandoned and left to rust. As peace comes into political fashion, is the need for jobs still keeping the arms factories in business? Anthony Sampson discovers that converting factories from armaments to consumer goods is a far from painless process.
Alfred Nobel made his millions through manufacturing dynamite, yet he was powerfully drawn to pacifism; and the new idealistic government of Czechoslovakia has announced that its factories will stop making weapons and make tractors instead. So are peace and prosperity mutually exclusive? Japan's example challenges this conventional wisdom: it is constitutionally forbidden to export arms, yet is the world's most successful industrialised nation.
Producer David Wallace
Executive producer Peter Armstrong A Word Pictures production for BBCtv