The 1934 Business Plot To Overthrow The U.S. Government
Big Money Plotted to Bring Down FDR

Should a certain former president attempt a coup following the November 2024 elections, it wouldn’t be the first time an actual conspiracy attempted to end democracy in the United States.

Ninety years ago, in 1934, a group of conservative businessmen conceived the Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch or the White House Putsch. They planned to overthrow the government and the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and create a fascist dictatorship.

The idea was to install retired Marine Corps major general Smedley Darlington Butler, nicknamed the Maverick Marine, as dictator, America’s Hitler or Mussolini.

Butler was a popular military figure at the time. Butler became involved with the Bonus Marchers, also known as the Bonus Army, a group of about 47,000 demonstrators, 17,000 WW I veterans and their families who had converged on Washington seeking a promised bonus for having served.

In the midst of the Great Depression, on 17 July 1932, thousands of WW I veterans converged on Washington, D.C., set up tent camps, which became known as Hoovervilles, named after then-president Herbert Hoover. What the protesting veterans — most of them unemployed — wanted was immediate payment of bonuses due to them according to the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924.

Butler made an appearance at the D.C. Hooverville, encouraging the marchers and rattling the Hoover administration.

Hoover ordered U.S. Army troops under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur to remove the marchers and destroy their camps in Washington. A force of 500 cavalry, 500 infantry, 800 police officers and six tanks attacked the marchers. Future general George S. Patton, on horseback, threatened Joseph T. Angelo, who was Patton’s trusted orderly in WW I and had received Distinguished Service Cross for saving Patton’s life. The marchers were driven out by the troops, their hovels and belongings burned.

The extra ugly incident saw heavily armed federal troops brutalizing former soldiers who had fought in the war to end all wars.

At least 2 people were killed, 65 injured, although the exact total is unknown. At least 65 police were injured.

Needless to say, the marchers did not get their promised bonuses.

Although he identified as a Republican, Butler supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 US presidential election as a result of the attack on the Bonus Marchers.

Butler went off the conservative reservation and denounced capitalism and bankers. He said that for 33 years he had been a “high-class muscle man” for Wall Street, the bankers and big business, labeling himself as a “racketeer for Capitalism”.

These were quite amazing statements from Butler considering his history. He was one of the most decorated Marines of the day, winning the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. His Marine Corps career spanned the Spanish-American War, the Philippines, two invasions of China, seizing the land for the Panama Canal, overthrowing governments in Nicaragua and Haiti, invading the Dominican Republic, and serving as a general during WW I.

Roosevelt’s election upset many conservative businessmen.

Then, as now, big money evoked the fear of socialism as a response to Roosevelt’s promise to create jobs for the poor. They were also fearful of Roosevelt’s plan to take the United States off the gold standard.

In his book, “The Plot to Seize the White House”, author Jules Archer wrote that with the end of the gold standard, “conservative financiers were horrified. They viewed a currency not solidly backed by gold as inflationary, undermining both private and business fortunes and leading to national bankruptcy.”

In 1933, Butler got a visit at his home from prominent members the American Legion, allegedly to discuss upcoming Legion elections.

But that wasn’t the real reason for their visit.

Among Butler’s visitors was Gerald MacGuire, the American Legion’s Connecticut commander. MacGuire, himself a WW I veteran, worked at prominent Wall Street brokerage Grayson Murphy & Company as a bond salesman paid $100 per week, worth $2,244,59 per week today.

But the American Legion may have been partially a front for an organization of conservative businessmen, the Liberty League, who hated Roosevelt. Butler would later testify before congress that MacGuire told him he had large sums of money to bankroll a campaign to elect Butler for the American Legion’s national commander post.

But what MacGuire really wanted was for Butler to take part in a coup ousting Roosevelt from power.

MacGuire went right to the source to study ways to end American democracy. He traveled to Italy and Germany, spending seven months studying how WW I veterans’ groups in those nations helped the fascists come to power. Hitler was a WW I veteran, after all.

Returning from his fascist study session, MacGuire met with Butler several times, telling him that wealthy men had $50 million (worth just more than $1.17 billion in 2024) to finance a coup. The American Legion’s 500,000 members would be the muscle. Butler would be their leader.

Bridgeport, Conn.-based Remington Arms company, or Remington UMC, which had recently been bought by the DuPont, would supply the guns and ammo.

Other wealthy businessmen involved in the plot included Robert Clark, art collector, horse breeder and heir to the Singer Sewing Machine Company fortune.

Clark reportedly told Butler that some of those who supported the Business plot and would bankroll the coup were executives from the DuPont Corp. (including Irenee du Pont); and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates in 1924 and 1928, John Davis and Al Smith. Several people associated with the J. P. Morgan banking interests (including Thomas Lamont, great-grandfather of current Connecticut governor Edward Miner “Ned” Lamont Jr.); and Grayson Murphy, a director of Goodyear Tire, Anaconda Copper, and Bethlehem Steel.

“I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I might have given Al Capone a few hints.” — Marine Corps major general Smedley Darlington Butler

A BBC investigation In July 2007 reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a “key liaison” between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tbs0

Journalist Jonathan Katz, in an interview published in Democracy Now!, about his book “Gangsters of Capitalism”, disputed this account as a misconception caused by a research error. Prescott Bush’s Wall Street firm was actually under investigation by congress for its own dealings with Nazi Germany and the records of that investigation may have been misfiled with Business Plot documents.

“Prescott Bush was actually too much involved with the actual Nazi Party in Germany to be involved with the business plot,” Katz said. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/26/jonathan_katz_book_gangsters_of_capitalism

Butler would later testify to congress that the pretext for the Business Plot coup would be that the president’s health was failing.

Butler quickly grew suspicious of the plan and told the sordid tale of planned treason to a reporter for the Philadelphia Record newspaper, Paul Comly French. French had once been Butler’s personal secretary. Despite the fact that Butler openly denounced capitalism and Wall Street bankers, the wealthy coup plotters still believed the general was the best man to be the face of the plot because he was so popular with veterans.

When interviewed by French, MacGuire talked openly about the coup plot and of his desire for a fascist America. Amazingly, MacGuire directed French to some of his associates. French’s expose ran in both the Record and the New York Post. The New York Times, not being much different than it is today, later dismissed the plot in its reporting as a “gigantic hoax.”

Meanwhile, Butler told MacGuire how he really felt about the violent coup plan: “If you get 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home,” Butler reportedly said.

Butler began telling government officials about the plan and those involved.

A congressional committee, the McCormack–Dickstein Committee began hearing evidence of the alleged plot on 20 November, 1934. Pretty darn quickly, 24 November, the committee released a statement detailing the testimony and its preliminary findings. On 15 February, 1935, a final report was submitted to the House of Representatives.

During the committee hearings, Butler testified that MacGuire attempted to recruit him to lead a coup, promising him an army of 500,000 men for a march on Washington, D.C., and financial backing. Had the Business Plot coup succeeded, Butler said that the plan was for him to have held near-absolute power in the newly created position of “Secretary of General Affairs.” Roosevelt would have assumed a figurehead role.

One day into the committee’s Business Plot hearings, 21 November 1934, The New York Times ran an article with the headline: “Gen. Butler Bares ‘Fascist Plot’ To Seize Government by Force; Says Bond Salesman, as Representative of Wall St. Group, Asked Him to Lead Army of 500,000 in March on Capital – Those Named Make Angry Denials – Dickstein Gets Charge”.

Just a day later, a New York Times editorial dismissed Butler’s story as “a gigantic hoax” and a “bald and unconvincing narrative,” despite the fact that hearings had not been completed.

Perhaps under pressure from business interests and Roosevelt himself, the McCormack–Dickstein Committee, headed by John W. McCormack, who would become longtime speaker of the House, Samuel Dickstein, a New York Democrat, cut short the investigation. The committee heard from just three witnesses, Butler, French and MacGuire.

Roosevelt reportedly suppressed the Business Plot hearing transcript records of some of Butler’s most damning testimony in an effort to prevent publicity about the plot from further polarizing a nation struggling with the Great Depression.

Butler was ridiculed by the New York Times and Time magazine, for his Business Plot allegations damaging his credibility. MacGuire was portrayed as a fool. No one allegedly involved in the plot was charged with a crime.

However, MacGuire would die an untimely death at age 37 under somewhat murky circumstances. He died suddenly in Connecticut of pneumonia on 25 March 1935, four months after the hearings and shortly after the committee released its findings.

French would go on to head the Pennsylvania unit of the Works Product Administration’s Federal Writers Project. A Quaker, French served from 1940 to 1947 as executive director of The National Service Board for Religious Objectors, a voluntary association of religious organizations which acted as a voice for the churches and conscientious objectors to the Selective Service System in the United regarding the draft of conscientious objectors. He also helped oversee CARE, which was founded in 1945 to secure financial backing for overseas food relief packages for a devastated post-war Europe.

Butler, who was raised as a Quaker, was involved in numerous military actions, wrote an expose called “War Is A Racket,” published in 1935.

Link to War Is A Racket. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000014248506&view=1up&seq=1

“I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism,” wrote Butler, who was the son and grandson of U.S. congressmen.

“I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.”

Butler died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, of a gastrointestinal condition that may have been cancer on 21 June 1940. He was buried at Oaklands Cemetery in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania.

Coups in the United States:

Prior to independence

21 December 1719: Local military officers in colonial South Carolina overthrew the Lords Proprietors.

Federal level

March 1783: The Continental Army may have planned to overthrow the Confederation Congress, but the conspiracy failed after General George Washington refused to join.
29 August 1786: Daniel Shays led a march on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The federal government found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion, and it was put down by the Massachusetts state militia and a privately funded local militia.
The widely held view was that the Articles of Confederation needed to be reformed as the country’s governing document. The rebellion served as a catalyst for the Constitutional Convention and the creation of the new government.
1933–1934: A group of businessmen were said to be conspiring to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a fascist dictatorship. It allegedly failed when Smedley Butler refused to participate and instead testified before Congress.
3 November 2020 to 7 January 2021: After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, President Donald Trump pursued an effort to overturn the election, with support and assistance from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and general public supporters.
These efforts culminated in the 6 January United States Capitol attack, during which Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed attempt to stop the Congressional certification of the election. In 2023, the Department of Justice indicted Trump for this.

State level

1841–1842: Failed gubernatorial candidate Thomas Wilson Dorr attempted to install a new government of Rhode Island under a different constitution.
16 March 1861: The Texas Legislature deposed governor Sam Houston after he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederate States of America following the secession of Texas from the United States and replaced him with Edward Clark.
15 April 1874: Failed gubernatorial candidate Joseph Brooks launched a coup against Arkansas governor Elisha Baxter, setting off a violent struggle between the state’s two Republican Party leaders.
14 September 1874: The White League overthrew the government of Louisiana in New Orleans, holding statehouse, armory, and downtown for three days until the coup was suppressed by the 22nd Infantry Regiment under the Insurrection Act of 1807.
14 October 1931: Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana Paul N. Cyr had himself sworn in as Governor while Governor Huey Long was out of state. Long had been elected to the Senate in 1930 but intended to remain Governor until the end of his term in 1932. Long sent the National Guard to the Governor’s mansion and the state Capitol and returned to Baton Rouge to secure his position as governor. Long had Cyr removed as Lieutenant Governor by successfully arguing to the Louisiana Supreme Court that Cyr had vacated the position by swearing himself in as governor.
8 October 2020: The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the arrests of 13 men suspected of orchestrating a domestic terror plot to kidnap American politician Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, and otherwise using violence to overthrow the state government.

Counties and municipalities

16 August 1889: After months of retaliatory violence between rival factions of Southern Democrats, a gun battle in Richmond, Texas, killed the incumbent Sheriff of Fort Bend County, triggering martial law in the county and the collapse of its government.
10 November 1898: White supremacist Southern Democrats overthrew the biracial Fusionist ruling coalition of Wilmington, North Carolina.
2 August 1946: Citizens led by returning World War II veterans overthrew the allegedly corrupt government of McMinn County, Tennessee.

Sources:

Allen, Thomas; Dickson, Paul (2006), The Bonus Army: An American Epic, London: Walker & Company, ISBN 978-0-8027-7738-6

Archer, Jules (2007) [1973]. The Plot to Seize the White House. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1602390362.

Butler, Smedley. War Is A Racket: The Profit Motive Behind Warfare. Originally Published in 1935. World Library Classics, 2010.

Denton, Sally (2012). The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1608190898. Interview of the author and an excerpt are available at NPR’s “When The Bankers Plotted To Overthrow FDR”. https://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/145472726/when-the-bankers-plotted-to-overthrow-fdr

Feran, Tim (12 February 1999). “History Channel Looks At Plot to Oust FDR”. Columbus Dispatch (Ohio): 1H.

Piascik, Andy. (1 October 2020) “The Connecticut Man Who Led a Plot to Overthrow Franklin Roosevelt” Between the Lines, https://btlonline.org/the-connecticut-man-who-led-a-plot-to-overthrow-franklin-roosevelt/

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. (1958). The Politics of Upheaval: 1935–1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III (The Age of Roosevelt). Mariner Books. ISBN 0618340874.

Schmidt, Hans (1998). Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813109574.

Seldes, George (1947). 1000 Americans: The Real Rulers of the U.S.A. Boni & Gaer. pp. 292–98. ASIN B000ANE968.

Spivak, John L. (1967). A Man in His Time. Horizon Press. pp. 294–98. ASIN B0007DMOCW.

Spivak, John. “Wall Street’s Fascist Conspiracy: Testimony That the Dickstein Committee Suppressed.” New Masses, January 29, 1935. Link http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-NewMasses.pdf

The History Channel. The Plot to Overthrow FDR, 2000. https://youtu.be/Cc6kw6N1_kw?si=swU5JWlEySea0sFK