The history of iron feeds the imagination, most especially through its wartime uses. In the interwar years, arms dealers were stigmatized by an abundant pacifist-inspired discourse that contributed to darkening the economic and sociological situation of the arms industry and trade by imputing to the archetypal figure of Basil Zaharoff an unlimited thirst for power and lucre and a quasi-demoniacal capacity for nuisance, thus turning him into a fantasmagorical dark figure. The discourse on Zaharoff was analyzed through a critical reading of the most comprehensive literature of that time and thereafter: biographies, press articles, publications (often polemical) on arms dealers and arms trade, on espionage and strategic places connected with Zaharoff (Middle East, Greece, and Anatolia, Monaco), as well as novels. This research work is part of a global study of the representations and imagination of the metallurgic industry.