General Smedley Butler was approached to lead a coup d'etat to overthrow democracy in 1933 & 1934. (Reminding modern readers, 1933 was the year Hitler assumed power in Germany.) He declined, and exposed the plot. The plotters then employed the time honored theory of defense: "if you have enough money you can get away with murder."
The Plot To Seize The White House contains a few primary sources, and records links to many other primary sources, which is its archival value. The details of the Plot itself are told here, and can be retold endlessly by others who care about this event. The story in brief is General Smedley Butler was approached to lead a coup d'etat to overthrow democracy in 1933 & 1934. (Reminding modern readers, 1933 was the year Hitler assumed power in Germany.) He declined, and exposed the plot. The plotters then employed the time honored theory of defense: "if you have enough money you can get away with murder."
Nobody was ever prosecuted. Important men were never arrested or grilled over facts. The newspaper sensation created by an impotent congressional investigation in 1934 and 1935 died down and the story collected dust, forgotten ever since.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/plot/
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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.
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:
"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.
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…
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.
Return to Timeline
Sources:
Jonathon Vankin and John Whalen, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1997)
Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1973)
George Seldes, Even the Gods Can't Change History (Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1976)
John Spivak, A Man in His Time (New York: Horizon Press, 1967)
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The following are among the best sources of information on the plot:
Books:
Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, 1973
(This is the only book dealing entirely with this fascist coup plot.)
These books have chapters devoted to the fascist coup plot:
George Seldes, 1000 Americans, 1947, pp.292-298. "Table of donations to American fascist organizations that was originally published by Senator Black (74th Congress, 2nd Session, Digest of Data, Special Committee to Investigate Lobby Activities)."
(This is the source for the data in Press for Conversion! #53 on donations to the American Liberty League and its fascist front groups).
John Spivak, A Man in His Time, 1967.
Christopher Simpson, "Bankers, Lawyers and Linkage Groups," The Splendid Blond Beast, 1995.
Gerard Colby, Du Pont Dynasty, 1984
Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi - American Money Plot 1933-1949, 1983.
David Kyvig, Repealing National Prohibition, 1979.
Video:
In Search of History: The Plot to Overthrow FDR, History Channel
(This is the only video documentary on the coup plot.)
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=42344
MacCormack-Dickstein Committee documents:
Here are three PDF files containing some of the documents published by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC):
HUAC1.pdf: http://www.flagrancy.net/salvage/HUAC1.pdf
Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Propaganda Activities
Public Statement of the Special Commmittee on Un-American Activities
House of Representatives, 73 Congress, Second Session at Washington DC, Nov. 24, 1934 (pages 1-12)
Investigation of Un-American Activites: (part 1 of) Testimony by Gerald C. MacGuire (pages 39-47)
HUAC2.pdf: http://www.flagrancy.net/salvage/HUAC2.pdf
Investigation of Un-American Activites: (part 2 of) Testimony by Gerald C. MacGuire (pages 47-87), Testimony by Claude M. Adamson (of Central Hanover Bank) (pages 89-99) and (part 1 of) Resumed Testimony by Gerald C. MacGuire (pages 99-105)
HUAC3.pdf: http://www.flagrancy.net/salvage/HUAC3.pdf
Investigation of Un-American Activites: (part 2 of) Resumed Testimony by Gerald C. MacGuire (pages 106-125), Testimony by James Haggett (of Lawyers County Trust) (pages 127-128), Testimony by public accountant James Rempe (pages 129-136) and Testimony by Albert Christmas (Attorney for Robert Clark) (pages 136-162).
Online Articles:
John Spivak, "Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy: Testimony that the Dickstein MacCormack Committee Suppressed," New , Jan 29, 1935
John Spivak, "Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy: Morgan Pulls the Strings," New Masses, Feb. 5, 1935
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-New.pdf
Glen Yeadon, "The 1930s: Nazis Parading on Main Street," The Nazi Hydra in America, 2004.
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/noon.html
The Great Depression and the New Deal (1929-1941)
Google cache: http://mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us/~udhsweb/aphistory/file1012.htm
"One World Vision, New York City and the CFR," American Babylon - Rise and Fall
http://www.redmoonrising.com/AmericanBabylon/Part4.htm
Barbara LaMonica, "The Attempted Coup Against FDR," PROBE, March-April 1999.
http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr399-fdr.html
L. Wolfe, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. the Banks: Morgan's Fascist Plot, and How It Was Defeated," The American Almanac,
(This is divided into four installments, published: June 27, July 4, July 11, July 25, 1994.
http://www.members.tripod.com/american_almanac/morgan1.htm
http://www.members.tripod.com/american_almanac/morgan2.htm
http://www.members.tripod.com/american_almanac/morgan3.htm
http://www.members.tripod.com/american_almanac/morgan4.htm
Joseph S. Kennedy, "A plot to take over the U.S.? One military hero's story," Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 03, 2002
http://www.macon.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/chester_county/cities_and_neighborhoods/4429828.htm
Clayton Cramer, "An American Coup d'État?," History Today, November, 1995
http://www.claytoncramer.com/amcoup.html
Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins, The Nazi Hydra in America , Chapter 5: The 1930s: Nazis Parading on Main Street, Part 1: The Plot Against Roosevelt
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1930s.html
"In the Mists of American Historical Memory: Five Stories," American Idealism website
http://www.americanidealism.com/stories.php?StoryID=47
Plans Hatched & Monies gathered for a coup d'etat in the United States (1934)
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/plans_hatched.html
Steve Kangas, The Great Depression: Timelines of the Great Depression
"The Business Plot to Overthrow Roosevelt"
http://home.att.net/~resurgence/Coup.htm
Mark and Kristi Fisher, "The White House Putsch," Seize the Night website
http://www.carpenoctem.tv/cons/whitehouse.html
David West, "The Low, Dishonest Decade," Hemp Times, Fall, 1999.
http://www.gametec.com/hemp/Thirties.wd6.html
"The Plot to Seize the White House" from What Really Caused World War 2?
http://threeworldwars.com/world-war-2/ww2-background.htm
Book Excerpts online:
Excerpt from Gerard Colby, DuPont Dynasty (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc.), pp. 324-330.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/dupont-by_colby.html
Excerpt from Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History, University Press of Kentucky (1987).
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/butler03-by_schmidt.html
Excerpt (re: how Gen. Butler reacted to the House Committee's cover up of conspirators' names),
from Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, 1973
http://www.mail-archive.com/ href="mailto:ctrl@listserv.aol.com">ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg06402.html
Excerpts (re: Media Cover Up: The Plotters Deny Everything)
from Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, 1973
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/archer-denials.html
Excerpts (mostly about Gen. Butler), from Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, 1973
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/archer excerpts.html
Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi - American Money Plot 1933-1949, 1983.
"The Car Connection"
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Car_Connection_TWE.html
David Kyvig, Chapter 10, "Champagne and Sour Grapes," Repealing National Prohibition (1979)
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/rnp/RNP10.html
milfuegos.blogspot.com/2006/10/business-plot-to-overthrow-roosevelt.html
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