In the 19th and 20th centuries, Basil Zaharoff made a fortune by selling weapons to anyone willing to buy them, yet his personal life remained largely in the shadows.
Basil Zaharoff went by many names. Some knew him as Count Zacharoff, others as Prince Zacharias Basileus Zacharoff, and his closest friends called him Zedzed. But Zaharoff was perhaps best known as Europe’s “mystery man,” or, simply, the “merchant of death.”
Bibliothèque nationale de France/Wikimedia CommonsBasil Zaharoff, the “merchant of death.”
Zaharoff was one of the foremost arms dealers of the 20th century. His machinations shaped world wars and fueled geopolitical arms races, and Zaharoff’s reputation is such that some believe he inspired Ian Fleming to create Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the James Bond supervillain.
But chances are, you’ve never heard of him. And that’s exactly what Zaharoff intended.
The Humble Origins Of Zacharias Basileios Zacharoff
Because Basil Zaharoff spent two days burning all his papers before his death, many details of his life remain in shadow. However, we have a vague idea of how he spent his early life.
He was born Zacharias Basileios Zacharoff on October 6, 1849. While some report that Zaharoff was born in Muğla, Turkey, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, Zaharoff himself claimed that he was born in Constantinople. Zahroff’s father worked as an importer of attar of roses, largely used to make perfume, but the family was quite poor. Despite his humble origins, however, Zahroff was both bright and ambitious.
He could allegedly speak 10 language from a young age, and quickly found work, first as a tour guide, and then with the Constantinople Fire Brigade. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Zaharoff’s job was to set fires, which the fire brigade could then extinguish for money.
After this time, Zaharoff’s trail goes cold. But by the 1870s, he’d wound up in London, married, and facing charges of embezzlement. Shortly thereafter, Basil Zaharoff left England and made his way to Greece or Cyprus.
Public DomainBasil Zaharoff came from humble origins but nevertheless became one of the most powerful men in Europe.
And this is where his story really begin.
Basil Zaharoff, The ‘Merchant Of Death’
During this time, Basil Zaharoff was fatefully introduced to arms dealer Thorsten Nordenfelt. In the late 1870s, Nordenfelt hired Zaharoff as an arms salesman, a decision that would change European history.
Selling arms would soon became Zaharoff’s main focus. But in the 1870s, he pursued several other unscrupulous schemes as well. Posing as a count, Zaharoff made his way to Ireland, where he was driven out of the country for pressuring Irish girls to work in American factories. He then made his way to the United States, where he styled himself as “Count Zaharoff,” and in 1884 allegedly boasted that he possessed “four black diamonds that played a celebrated part in the Turko-Russian War.” The next year, he introduced himself as Prince Zacharias Basileus Zacharoff, married a New York City heiress, and fled the country when he was accused of bigamy.
Back in Greece, Basil Zaharoff then began to focus more intently on selling arms. That year, 1885, he sold submarines to the Greeks, then convinced the Turkish government to buy submarines by telling them that the Greek submarines posed a threat. The Turkish agreed to buy their own submarines, and Zaharoff then turned around and made the same argument to the Russians, who also agreed to buy submarines.
The scheme was all the more devious, because the Nordenfelt submarines Zaharoff was selling were full of flaws. They were unwieldy and prone to overheating, and one submarine even sank after firing a torpedo.
Wikimedia CommonsThe Nordenfelt submarine were notoriously faulty.
Shortly afterward, in the late 1880s, Basil Zaharoff purportedly had a hand in another unscrupulous scheme. While trying to sell guns for Nordenfelt, Zaharoff found he had a new competitor: Hiram Maxim, who had developed the revolutionary automatic machine gun.
Maxim’s gun was a cutting-edge, efficient weapon, but Maxim ran into a number of problems while trying to demonstrate it to potential buyers. At one demonstration, Maxim’s representatives showed up late — someone had taken them out the night before and gotten them drunk. At another, the gun unexpectedly jammed. And at a third, someone in the audience spread rumors that the Maxim guns could not be mass produced.
Ultimately, Nordenfelt and Maxim decided to join forces — after which, the orders for Maxim’s guns came pouring in. It’s suspected that Zaharoff had a hand in sabotaging Maxim’s demonstrations until that point.
Indeed, the new arms company — which became Vickers, Sons & Maxim after 1897 — would become extremely successful, especially as Europe veered toward World War I. During the conflict, Vickers would produce submarines, cannons, torpedos, airplanes, and, of course, machine guns.
The Final Years Of The ‘Mystery Man Of Europe’
Basil Zaharoff was deeply involved in World War I. Not only was he an arms dealer, but he’d also bought a French bank, and a French newspaper, which gave him power in the worlds of finance and media. According to declassified documents from the war, he also worked behind the scenes to drag Greece onto the side of the Allies, and to convince the Ottoman Empire to abandon their ally, the Germans. Zaharoff was even given $10 million to try and convince Turkey to stay out of the war, and although his endeavor failed, it was enough to earn him a Knight Grand Cross from the British.
Indeed, “Ser Basil,” as he subsequently went by, was also awarded with the Legion of Honor from the French.
Bibliothèque nationale de France/Wikimedia CommonsBasil Zaharoff in formal regalia.
By the time the war ended, Basil Zaharoff was wealthy and powerful. Yet he remained a mystery to most. And Zaharoff ensured that his affairs would stay secret in 1927, when he burned 58 years worth of his diaries. He died roughly a decade later, in 1936, at the age of 87.
Even in death, the truth of Basil Zaharoff’s life remained unclear. He had been known for his wealth — indeed, some believed that he was one of the wealthiest men in Europe, and Zaharoff purportedly had made more than $1 billion from World War I alone. But by the time he died, he had just £193,103 to his name, or less than $1 million.
In the end, perhaps the full story of Basil Zaharoff will never fully be known. But the “merchant of death” proved time and time again that he would do whatever it took to climb the rungs of power.
After reading about Basil Zaharoff, the arms dealer known as the “merchant of death,” look through these grim photos from inside the trenches of World War I. Or, discover the harrowing story of the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest battle of World War I.
