Jack Byrne quit as the chairman of his son's company two years ago in disagreement about Byrne's war on naked short-selling.

FORBES: Naked Short-Selling

Johnson was hoping that the worst would not come true, that it would remain a short war, and he feared that that if the true economic cost of the war became visible to the naked eye, he would lose his Great Society programs.

FORBES: Conventional Wisdom, Then and Now

That was never in doubt, but the Allies hoped the stand against Germany's naked aggression would persuade Hitler to step back from the brink of all-out war, a motive that was neither base nor ridiculous.

ECONOMIST: The second world war