THE SCENE

The Great Depression was at full force in 1933, spreading mass unemployment, waves of bankruptcies, and abject poverty. The people’s boiling political anger was scaring the aloof denizens of Wall Street silly, as more and more people joined in open rebellion against things the plutocrats considered sacrosanct: Unfettered capitalism and–scariest of all–against rich people themselves!

THE CAST

The President By promising a New Deal for millions of Americans impoverished by the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt had scored a landslide victory in 1932 over Wall Street’s man, Herbert Hoover. Then, in 1933, to the bankers’ horror, the new president launched myriad new government policies and programs to help people get back on their feet–including new taxes on wealth to fund the recovery.

The conspirators Such Wall Street multimillionaires as Grayson M.P. Murphy (banker and Anaconda Copper Mining head), Thomas Lamont (J.P. Morgan partner), and Robert Sterling Clark (heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune) were enraged by FDR’s moves. Class war, they wailed, claiming that their “liberty” to grab as much profit as they could was being shackled–and for no better reason than to fund “socialism!” Calling Roosevelt a traitor to his class, these men would later be named as instigators of the putsch to replace FDR with a military-backed government of capitalists–i.e., themselves.

The hero Smedley Darlington Butler–a name made for a Hollywood thriller! A retired Marine general, he became a well-known, influential advocate for veterans. The conspirators considered Butler the perfect choice to lead their takeover of Washington, and they spent a year wooing him, gradually laying out their plan.

THE PLOT

Apparently, being super-rich doesn’t make you super-smart, for the scheme these millionaires devised was hapless and cockamamie: They planned to oust Roosevelt by enlisting and arming a private military force made up of thousands of destitute World War I vets who were protesting their failure to receive federal bonus payments they had been promised. But how to engage them in the plot?

Gerald MacGuire, Grayson Murphy’s bond salesman, was an ex-soldier and an active member of the American Legion veterans’ organization, so he was the one who first contacted the soldiers’ champion, Smedley Butler. After several meetings spent discussing veterans issues, MacGuire finally got down to business, explaining that the financial powers he represented wanted Butler to create a paramilitary corps of 500,000 vets and march on Washington to force FDR from the White House.

As Butler later related, MacGuire told him that the Wall Street cohort, plus a new group called American Liberty League (made up of the right-wing bosses of such corporate giants as DuPont, Colgate, General Foods, and GM), would fund the cause to the tune of $300 million–that’s $5.6 billion in today’s money! MacGuire also claimed that the Remington Arms Company would supply the weapons. As investigative journalist Sally Denton wrote in her 2011 book, The Plots Against the President, the conspirators were so out of touch with reality that they actually expected Roosevelt to accept the takeover without a fight. They figured that (1) he knew he was in over his head as president, so he’d welcome these stronger people taking control, and (2) as a member of the patrician class himself, FDR would happily agree to become a ceremonial figurehead, while the financiers and militarists installed a “secretary of general affairs” to run the country. Who was their choice to become this authoritarian SGA? General Smedley D. Butler.

A HERO

…to the rescue! They chose the wrong general.

Butler, a patriot and lifelong soldier for democracy, was astounded and repulsed by the hubris and treachery of these American would-be aristocrats. He felt a duty to stop them.

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The general enlisted Paul Comly French, an investigative reporter he knew and trusted, to help gather proof of the bankers’ intent. French even got an interview with MacGuire, who was surprisingly unguarded: “We need a Fascist government in this country,” he blurted to French, “to save the Nation from the communists who want to tear it down. The only men who have the patriotism [!!] to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader.”

Evidence in hand, Butler got a US House “Special Committee on Un-American Activities” to conduct a two-month investigation, which convinced its members that, as Time magazine later reported, “General Butler’s story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true.” The committee opened public hearings on November 20, 1934, with Butler giving detailed testimony. The next morning, French’s expose ran in both the Philadelphia Record and New York Post. The story was out and Butler’s gutsy stand had halted the putsch.

THE COVER-UP

The establishment responded immediately by launching a coordinated counterattack assailing Butler and dismiss-ing the very idea of a coup as preposterous. J.P. Morgan’s spokesman, Lamont, ridiculed the claim that he was in on the plot as “perfect moonshine.” The media powers instantly piled on, led by a November 21 New York Times editorial calling Butler’s claim a “bald and unconvincing narrative … [that] sounds like a gigantic hoax … [and] does not merit serious discussion.”

And it didn’t get much, despite the damning conclusion of the House Committee’s final report in February 1935, that it “was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler,” adding that, “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

Nonetheless, officials failed to punish the perpetrators of this outrageous assault on our democracy, and with the help of media, the coup attempt was sealed off from our history books and future generations. Once again, the we-don’t-do-coups myth prevailed.