On Sept. 1, 1933, a bagman for some of America’s biggest bankers and business executives met with retired Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler in a Newark, New Jersey, hotel room. The subject of the meeting: an ongoing plot to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt by force and replace him with a regime modeled on the new fascist governments in Spain, Italy and Germany.
Representatives of corporations like General Motors, Dupont, Bethlehem Steel and Alcoa had been visiting Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and company for some time, gathering ideas and inspiration. They wanted to inaugurate a system like theirs here in America, by force; they had already ordered 100,000 rifles from the Springfield Armory, to help arm what they envisioned as a force of up to half a million disillusioned World War I veterans and unemployed victims of the Depression.
Butler was to give the keynote speech at the annual veterans convention, denouncing the FDR Administration as un-American and illegitimate; that would be the signal for the plotters’ makeshift army to converge on Washington. The president would be declared insane and locked up, and replaced by a conservative Southern Democrat.
Butler had been negotiating with the coup-makers’ point man for months. Now, he asked for proof that the plot was genuine, not some amateurish makeshift effort; the other man showed him bank records of the coup’s substantial war chest to satisfy him. What the plotters didn’t realize was the kind of man they were dealing with.
Butler had served in the Marine Corps virtually his entire life, in China, Haiti, Mexico, the Philippines and Central America; he was one of only 18 men to win not one but two Congressional Medals of Honor for courage on the battlefield. He was probably the most admired figure, active duty or retired, in the U.S. military. But he had also been raised as a pacifistic Quaker, and he had a Midwesterner’s ornery instinct for honesty and decency. From the very first time the plotters approached him, Butler had been collecting information about the coup attempt in order to sabotage it.
Butler took his information about the plot to Congress, and the rest of the story is a classic case of a Pyrrhic victory. In classified hearings, the traitors promised to call off their budding insurrection in return for immunity from prosecution.
They planted stories in the press disparaging Butler’s evidence, and the story of high treason by our country’s richest and greatest business powers gradually disappeared from the public’s consciousness. Today, Butler’s heroic one-man stand against American fascism is all but forgotten; few people today have read about it or know it ever happened.
FDR’s presidency, and the New Deal that came after, was saved: a short-term victory, to be sure, but one that saved us from the spectacle of Brown Shirts goose-stepping down Pennsylvania Avenue and der Fuhrer being embraced on the White House lawn.
Looking at the long-term picture, though, it’s a pity that the 1933 treason plot isn’t remembered today, with evidence of a similar coup attempt coming to light all around us. Perhaps it would inspire some 21st century Smedley Arlington Butler to raise his voice and blow away the smoke surrounding the fire.
Not only does the plot need to be undone, but this time, the rascals behind it need to be brought to justice.
Enough is enough.
Rob Schultheis has covered Afghanistan and the Middle East for Time, CBS, NPR and The New York Times. He also writes about climbing, the arts and environment from his home in Telluride, where he has lived since 1973. Reach him at robschultheis1@gmail.com.
