When Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee about the Business Plot – an alleged coup d’état to remove President FDR from office, backed by America’s business leaders – no one took him seriously.
Indeed, most assumed it was a hoax as it seemed like such a far-fetched idea for someone to suggest, not to mention that Butler had no hard evidence to back up his allegations.
Despite this, Congress felt it had to investigate Butler’s claims and eventually came to the conclusion that whilst they couldn’t prove if the plot was anywhere near execution, they concluded that it had at least been talked about – if even in jest.
Over the ensuing eight decades, the Business Plot, otherwise known as the Wall Street Putsch or the White House Putsch, has been relegated to the footnotes of 1930’s American history, partially due to more important events such as the New Deal and the start of WWII.
Background
Smedley Darlington Butler was born on July 30 1881 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, as the eldest of three sons born to politician Thomas Butler and his wife Maud Darlington.
When he was 16 years old, the Spanish-American War erupted and Butler felt it was his duty to serve his country. Lying about his age, Butler enlisted in the Marine Corps and received a direct commission as a second lieutenant.
After his training was complete, he was deployed to Guantanamo Bay where he was promoted to first lieutenant.
Serving with distinction in the Marine Corps until 1931, Butler rose to the rank of Major General and received dozens of medals, including two Medals of Honor, for his service in the Philippine-American War, Boxer Rebellion, Banana Wars, Mexican Revolution and WWI.
A bona fide war hero who’d always treated the men under him with the utmost respect and never got involved with the political side of his job, Butler was hugely popular with veterans groups, who loved nothing more than a visit from the general.
As such, when 43,000 mostly out of work veterans (17,000 of whom had served in WWI) traveled to Washington, DC in July 1932, to lobby Congress to pay them a large bonus they’d been promised in 1924 under the Bonus Act, Butler went to talk with them.
Even as Douglas MacArthur was preparing to sweep them out of Washington under President Hoover’s orders, Smedley Butler was talking with the veterans and dining with them, ending the evening by delivering a speech telling the veterans to stay strong.
Despite his best efforts, the “Bonus Army” as they came to be known, were unsuccessful in getting what they want and when General MacArthur dispersed the protesters, several were injured and killed in the ensuing stampede.
Safe to say, veteran resentment for the establishment was at an all-time high.
Roosevelt & Big Business
Though Smedley Butler had been a lifelong Republican, when the 1932 Presidential Election came around, Herbert Hoover found himself going up against Democratic Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Angered at how Hoover had treated veterans only months before, Butler declared himself a “Hoover-For-Ex-President-Republican” and threw his support behind Roosevelt, causing many veterans to vote in Roosevelt’s favor.
There was only one problem however: Big business.
On his campaign trail, Roosevelt, a billionaire by modern metrics, based his entire campaign on starting government programs to get Americans back to work – and the wealthy Wall Street bankers who’d caused the Great Depression would pay for it.
As the election drew closer and closer, FDR looked more and more likely to win the election, which he later did. In a landslide.
Worried that Roosevelt would pave the way for socialism (and later communism) in the US, lead to reckless government spending and take America off the gold standard they relied on for their wealth, business leaders were worried when Roosevelt assumed the White House.
The Plot
As there isn’t much in the way of physical evidence supporting the existence of the plot, most of what we know about the plot is based on Smedley Butler’s testimony, which may or may not be reliable.