The Coup You Never Knew- Most of us weren’t taught about the one planned in 1933

feature-smedley-coupRemember learning about the “Wall Street Putsch” in high school history class?  C’mon, you know… the time in the 1930’s when industrialists and bankers tried to create a 500,000-member army of WWI vets to overthrow FDR, but then were outed by their hand-picked general before the coup went through?  And remember when the House Un-American Activities Committee held hearings but no one was held responsible?  Still don’t remember?  Well, you weren’t just asleep in class.  “The Business Plot” is one of the most direct threats our democracy has ever faced, but it’s also one of the least-known events in our history.  As an administration of billionaires, generals, propagandists, paranoiacs, xenophobes, and bigots prepares to taRestOfNewsletterke office, now may be the ideal time to look back at the time they tried it before.  Join us now to see how one man was tempted with the offer of being the first dictator of the United States but chose instead to stand up for its ideals.  Settle back, get comfortable, and let us tell you all about General Smedley Butler and the Wall Street Putsch…

Mark Twain reputedly said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes”.  Depression-era America was a very different place from today’s America, but they faced the same choice between authoritarian fascism and socialized democracy we do today.  No one yet understood the evil Hitler represented so business leaders watched with interest as he rebuilt Germany from the ashes of WWI.  People around the world were looking to fascists like Hitler and Mussolini for strong, simple solutions to deep-rooted and complex problems.  Here at home those same business leaders were furious about the “traitor to his class” FDR and his notion of a social safety net to protect all Americans, an idea diametrically opposed to fascism.  If you think those 1-percenters-of-their-day were content to let politics play out and see where things settled, you’re wrong.  They went much further than opposing FDR at the next election or even obstructing his plans throughout his administration.  According to General Smedley Darlington Butler, they planned a coup.

Here’s one of the better accounts of the coup plot itself, along with several other avenues to explore if you want to dig deeper.  We’ve also included many links on General Smedley Butler to give you a glimpse into the thoughts and writings of the singular man whose integrity preserved our democracy… at least until today.  It’s our job from here on out.

The Business Plot To Overthrow Roosevelt

Reprinted from Huppi.com

In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt’s “First 100 Days,” America’s richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.

9781608190898_custom-b7ba08f0ef2cd2685b5c20bfc64822a13e5e91f9-s300-c85

When The Bankers Plotted To Overthrow FDR Interview with Sally Denton, author of “The Plots Against The President”, NPR Books, Feb 2012

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America’s richest and most famous names of the time:

Irenee Du Pont – Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.

Grayson Murphy – Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.

William Doyle – Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.

John Davis – Former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.

Al Smith – Roosevelt’s bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York and a codirector of the American Liberty League.

John J. Raskob – A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob would become a “Knight of Malta,” a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.

Robert Clark – One of Wall Street’s richest bankers and stockbrokers.

Gerald MacGuire – Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion.  MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.

The plotters attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who was popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good reputation was important to make the troops feel confident that they were doing the right thing by overthrowing a democratically elected president. However, this was a mistake: Butler was popular with the troops because he identified with them. That is, he was a man of the people, not the elite. When the plotters approached General Butler with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along with the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to Congress at the right moment.

What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a “Secretary of General Affairs,” to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work:

“You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President’s health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…”

The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half.

And what type of government would replace Roosevelt’s New Deal? MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend of General Butler’s:

smed-1

Vintage video of the real General Butler addressing the marchers of the Bonus Army

“We need a fascist government in this country… to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader.  He could organize a million men overnight.”

Indeed, it turns out that MacGuire travelled to Italy to study Mussolini’s fascist state, and came away mightily impressed. He wrote glowing reports back to his boss, Robert Clark, suggesting that they implement the same thing.

If this sounds too fantastic to believe, we should remember that by 1933, the crimes of fascism were still mostly in the future, and its dangers were largely unknown, even to its supporters. But in the early days, many businessmen openly admired Mussolini because he had used a strong hand to deal with labor unions, put out social unrest, and get the economy working again, if only at the point of a gun. Americans today would be appalled to learn of the many famous millionaires back then who initially admired Hitler and Mussolini: Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, John and Allen Dulles (who, besides being millionaires, would later become Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively), and, of course, everyone on the above list. They disavowed Hitler and Mussolini only after their atrocities grew to indefensible levels.

warisaracketbook

War Is A Racket”- This short work by General Butler has become an anti-war classic

The plot fell apart when Butler went public. The general revealed the details of the coup before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, which would later become the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. (In the 50s, this committee would destroy the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans with its communist witch hunts.) The Committee heard the testimony of Butler and French, but failed to call in any of the coup plotters for questioning, other than MacGuire. In fact, the Committee whitewashed the public version of its final report, deleting the names of powerful businessmen whose reputations they sought to protect. The most likely reason for this response is that Wall Street had undue influence in Congress also. Even more alarming, the elite-controlled media failed to pick up on the story, and even today the incident remains little known. The elite managed to spin the story as nothing more than the rumors and hearsay of Butler and French, even though Butler was a Quaker of unimpeachable honesty and integrity. Butler, appalled by the cover-up, went on national radio to denounce it, but with little success.

Butler was not vindicated until 1967, when journalist John Spivak uncovered the Committee’s internal, secret report. It clearly confirmed Butler’s story.

In the last few weeks of the committee’s life it received evidence showing that certain persons had attempted to establish a fascist organization in this country…

There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution if the financial backers deemed it expedient…

smed-2

General Butler’s full “War Is A Racket” speech delivered by a re-enactor

MacGuire denied [Butler’s] allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made to General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principle, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various form of veterans’ organizations of Fascist character.

Needless to say, the survival of America’s democracy is not an automatic or sure thing. Americans need to remain vigilant against all enemies… both foreign and domestic.

Transcript of Testimony of General Butler, Gerald MacGuire, and others to the HUAC, Dec 29, 1934

Digging Deeper…

Major General Smedley D. Butler Expose Fascist Coup in US Video by Occult Agenda, Apr 2012

1934: The Plot Against America by Scott Horton in Harpers Magazine, Jul 2007

Smedley Butler And The Business Plot, by Melissa Blevins on Today I Found Out, Jan 2014

Wall Street’s Failed 1934 Coup by Michael Donnelly on CounterPunch, Dec 2011

FDR- Man on the White Horse  from Reformation.org

The Whitehouse Coup; BBC Radio 4 documentary, Jul 2007. 3-part video version on YouTube begins here.

Oh, Smedley: Was there really a fascist plot to overthrow the United States government? By Cecil Adams in The Straight Dope, Nov 2005

Outrage Over Obamacare Is Nothing Compared With FDR’s New Deal by Joshua Holland on Moyers & Company, Apr 2014

This entry was posted in 2016 December, Feature Articles, Newsletter Columns, Newsletters and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.