I was reading a Wikipedia article about two-time Medal of Honor winners the other day, one of whom was General Smedley Butler. He claimed to have unmasked the “business plot,” also known as the “White House putsch,” a scheme to install a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. Supposedly some congressional committee confirmed Butler’s claims. Did the “business plot” really exist? If so, how come no one’s ever heard of it? –Brent, Urbana
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Butler was a much-decorated general in the U.S. Marines. Outspoken, hardworking, and unpretentious, he was beloved by his men and influential with veterans. After retiring from the military in 1931, he urged Congress to accelerate payment of a bonus for World War I vets, many of whom were then out of work due to the Depression.
In 1933 Butler was visited by two officials in the American Legion, the veterans’ organization, who tried to recruit him to give a speech at an upcoming Legion convention calling for the U.S. to return to the gold standard. (FDR had recently decoupled the country’s money supply from gold to boost the economy.) Butler demurred, but one of the men, Gerald MacGuire, kept pestering him, flashing an impressive bankbook at one meeting, offering the general 18 thousand-dollar bills at another, and arranging a visit from Singer sewing machine heir Robert Clark, who encouraged Butler to give the speech. Again rebuffed, MacGuire went off to Europe on a fact-finding trip but approached Butler with a new scheme in 1934, saying he and his wealthy backers would organize an army of 500,000 veterans to make a show of force and persuade the overworked Roosevelt to accept the “assistance” of a “secretary of general affairs,” who would run the government while the president stayed on as figurehead. The proposed SecGenAff? Smedley Butler.
A number of U.S. plutocrats really did conspire to depose the president. It’s not out of the question. Though the idea of a popular revolt financed by zillionaires seems harebrained now, it was less so in the 1930s. In Europe jobless veterans were a potent political force, and enlisting respected military leaders in right-wing schemes was a common ploy–witness Hindenburg in Germany and, a little later, Marshall Petain in France. The New Deal polarized the nation; many in the moneyed crowd really did fear FDR was opening the door to bolshevism.
