Why is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR?
By: Sally Denton (the Guardian)
Joe Biden is definitely not another Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And the all too obvious conflict of interest by the press raises doubts over the veracity of purported lessons from history. So, it's wise to view journalist's opinion with a healthy amount of skepticism. The press tends to rewrite history to fit whatever political narrative best serves to foment controversy and division for the present moment. The bread and butter business of the press is to attract readers in keeping with the established business model of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.
FDR's policy proposals were about revitalizing sustaining American values and traditions and sustaining the American way of life in the midst of a Great Depression caused by financial interests unfairly manipulating the economy for their own benefit. FDR's policies and opposition to those policies should be viewed within that context. FDR was America centric in keeping with Americans' desire to avoid foreign entanglements. The North-South divide of the American Civil War was of greater influence in American politics than a fledgling Fascism in Europe.
Louisiana Governor Huey Long was a populist Southern Democrat steeped in Democrat's political rhetoric of racial division utilized by the party since its founding. Father Charles Coughlin was a Roman Catholic Priest based in Detroit who opposed the influence of finance and utilized the trope of Jewish bankers to attack FDR for not doing enough to control financial interests. Neither Long or Coughlin were Fascists but they appropriated some ideas associated with Fascism to promote their political narrative. William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer did the same to sell newspapers in an attempt to become the largest news publishers in the United States.
Fascism never gained political influence in the United States. The American electorate rejected Fascism. As is typical with fringe political movements who cannot achieve popular support, revolution and obtaining power through violence was the only viable method of achieving political influence. The United States was never in any danger of having a Fascist government. Obtaining control of the government of the United States through revolutionary violence is impossible. A coup can never succeed in the United States. Our elected Federal government cannot control state governments now. The threat of secession is ever present and persistent. The way the United States is governed precludes the possibility of a dictator.
The press is only pushing a phony narrative that foments fear, controversy, and division to sell advertising. That's the business model of news magnates like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer attempting to control newspaper publishing in New York. Hearst bragged of making the news with his penny daily. Whenever a journalist claims to be applying the lessons of history to current events with their opinions then it's wise to read that opinion with healthy skepticism.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump's elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt - the 1933 "Wall Street putsch" against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets - no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare.
Economic despair gave rise to panic and unrest, and political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country. Populists Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin attacked FDR, spewing vitriolic anti-Jewish, pro-fascist refrains and brandishing the "America first" slogan coined by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.
On 4 March 1933, more than 100,000 people had gathered on the east side of the US Capitol for Roosevelt's inauguration. The atmosphere was slate gray and ominous, the sky suggesting a calm before the storm. That morning, rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting predictions of a violent revolution. Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the civil war had Washington been so fortified, with armed police guarding federal buildings.
FDR thought government in a civilized society had an obligation to abolish poverty, reduce unemployment, and redistribute wealth. Roosevelt's bold New Deal experiments inflamed the upper class, provoking a backlash from the nation's most powerful bankers, industrialists and Wall Street brokers, who thought the policy was not only radical but revolutionary. Worried about losing their personal fortunes to runaway government spending, this fertile field of loathing led to the "traitor to his class" epithet for FDR. "What that fellow Roosevelt needs is a 38-caliber revolver right at the back of his head," a respectable citizen said at a Washington dinner party.
In a climate of conspiracies and intrigues, and against the backdrop of charismatic dictators in the world such as Hitler and Mussolini, the sparks of anti-Rooseveltism ignited into full-fledged hatred. Many American intellectuals and business leaders saw nazism and fascism as viable models for the US. The rise of Hitler and the explosion of the Nazi revolution, which frightened many European nations, struck a chord with prominent American elites and antisemites such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Hitler's elite Brownshirts - a mass body of party storm troopers separate from the 100,000-man German army - was a stark symbol to the powerless American masses. Mussolini's Blackshirts - the military arm of his organization made up of 200,000 soldiers - were a potent image of strength to a nation that felt emasculated.
A divided country and FDR's emboldened powerful enemies made the plot to overthrow him seem plausible. With restless uncertainty, volatile protests and ominous threats, America's right wing was inspired to form its own paramilitary organizations. Militias sprung up throughout the land, their self-described "patriots" chanting: "This is despotism! This is tyranny!"
Today's Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have nothing on their extremist forbears. In 1933, a diehard core of conservative veterans formed the Khaki Shirts in Philadelphia and recruited pro-Mussolini immigrants. The Silver Shirts was an apocalyptic Christian militia patterned on the notoriously racist Texas Rangers that operated in 46 states and stockpiled weapons.
The Gray Shirts of New York organized to remove "Communist college professors" from the nation's education system, and the Tennessee-based White Shirts wore a Crusader cross and agitated for the takeover of Washington. JP Morgan Jr, one of the nation's richest men, had secured a $100m loan to Mussolini's government. He defiantly refused to pay income tax and implored his peers to join him in undermining FDR.
So, when retired US Marine Corps Maj Gen Smedley Darlington Butler claimed he was recruited by a group of Wall Street financiers to lead a fascist coupagainst FDR and the US government in the summer of 1933, Washington took him seriously. Butler, a Quaker, and first world war hero dubbed the Maverick Marine, was a soldier's soldier who was idolized by veterans - which represented a huge and powerful voting bloc in America. Famous for his daring exploits in China and Central America, Butler's reputation was impeccable. He got rousing ovations when he claimed that during his 33 years in the marines: "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."
Butler later testified before Congress that a bond-broker and American Legion member named Gerald MacGuire approached him with the plan. MacGuire told him the coup was backed by a group called the American Liberty League, a group of business leaders which formed in response to FDR's victory, and whose mission it was to teach government "the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property". Members included JP Morgan, Jr, Irenee du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark of the Singer sewing machine fortune, and the chief executives of General Motors, Birds Eye and General Foods.
The putsch called for him to lead a massive army of veterans - funded by $30m from Wall Street titans and with weapons supplied by Remington Arms - to march on Washington, oust Roosevelt and the entire line of succession, and establish a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers.
As MacGuire laid it out to Butler, the coup was instigated after FDR eliminated the gold standard in April 1933, which threatened the country's wealthiest men who thought if American currency wasn't backed by gold, rising inflation would diminish their fortunes. He claimed the coup was sponsored by a group who controlled $40bn in assets - about $800bn today - and who had $300m available to support the coup and pay the veterans. The plotters had men, guns and money - the three elements that make for successful wars and revolutions. Butler referred to them as "the royal family of financiers" that had controlled the American Legion since its formation in 1919. He felt the Legion was a militaristic political force, notorious for its antisemitism and reactionary policies against labor unions and civil rights, that manipulated veterans.
The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the "Wall Street putsch" endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a "gigantic hoax" and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising "the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable" and that democracy was not in real danger. Still, there is much evidence that the nation's wealthiest men - Republicans and Democrats alike - were so threatened by FDR's policies that they conspired with antigovernment paramilitarism to stage a coup.
The final report by the congressional committee tasked with investigating the allegations, delivered in February 1935, concluded: "[The committee] received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country", adding "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."
As Congressman John McCormack who headed the congressional investigation put it: "If General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded … When times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything could happen."
There is still much that is not known about the coup attempt. Butler demanded to know why the names of the country's richest men were removed from the final version of the committee's report. "Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape," Butler said in a Philadelphia radio interview in 1935. "The big shots weren't even called to testify. They were all mentioned in the testimony. Why was all mention of these names suppressed from this testimony?"
While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBC's Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges - and possible execution - if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. The presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said that Roosevelt should have pushed it all through, then reneged on his agreement and prosecuted them.
What might all of this portend for Americans today, as President Biden follows in FDR's New Deal footsteps while democratic socialist Bernie Sanders also rises in popularity and influence? In 1933, rather than inflame a quavering nation, FDR calmly urged Americans to unite to overcome fear, banish apathy and restore their confidence in the country's future. Now, 90 years later, a year on from Trump's own coup attempt, Biden's tone was more alarming, sounding a clarion call for Americans to save democracy itself, to make sure such an attack "never, never happens again".
If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.
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A coup can never succeed in the United States. The way the United States is governed precludes the possibility of a dictator. That's the lesson of history for the United States.
Don't fall for the phony narrative being pushed by the press to sell advertising.
The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the "Wall Street putsch" endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a "gigantic hoax" and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising "the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable" and that democracy was not in real danger.
Yup, that would be the similarity to the Oath Takers. Or maybe the similarity is to Marc Elias & Mark Zuckerberg? As for the writer's explanation of the Great Depression, he is very wrong on that. No safeguards?
I refer our readers to this:
No there weren't safeguards. Falling back on the trope of blaming Keynesian economics ignores the root cause of the Great Depression. The United States was still on the gold standard and the money supply had outpaced the available gold reserve. The banking system was collapsing because they had issued too much debt and had extended the money supply well beyond the available gold reserve. The Fed could not provide liquidity without more gold in the reserve. The Fed could not buy government debt without more gold in the reserve.
The root cause of the Great Depression was banks and debt; much like the 2008 Great Recession. The Great Depression wasn't caused by a collapse of the industrial economy which is the focus of Keynesian economics. The banking and financial system collapsed which is the focus of Friedman economics. Infusing fiat money (not backed by gold) into the banking system threatened devaluing the currency with runaway inflation. That would have saved the banks but would have devastated depositors and killed the industrial economy.
The economics of Milton Friedman depends upon devaluing the currency in an inflationary manner. Friedman's economics is based upon financial middlemen taking a skim off the economy. And the history of adopting Friedman economics has demonstrated, without doubt, that financial manipulation of the money supply and currency value kills the industrial economy. The root cause of the Great Depression were the banks creating fiat currency. Now that government policy has completely adopted the economics of fiat currency the United States has become locked into a permanent depression.
gen butler was up until"Chesty" Puller , the most decorated marine in US history at that time , a look at his fruit salad of ribbons , says a lot . just as Puller USMC legend , so to is Butler . he even wrote a book about the coup , war is a racket , pretty good ready i thought . he pretty much gave the same warning ike did in the late 50s about the military /industrial complex .
i would say that point in history , 33-34 , was a point where this country could have taken a very different shift on its path , it would almost had assuredly if this plot had taken place and was successful , changed how WW2 was fought, and likely would have changed which side the US eventually joined the war on.
I say that because of how many people of german decent lived in this country at the time , how many had sympathies for whatever reason be it business or ethic , to be more open to german than british allegiance , , if the germans could have reached some sort of agreement with the US , they wouldnt have had to make one with the japanese , and it would have been an entirely different war with likely a very different outcome , but this is all "what ifs ". it never materialized and history is what it is ..... for now , only thing now is to decide what was learned from it so it doesnt happen again.
Nazi Rally, Madison Square Garden:
Related Seed:
When 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City
Related Video:
The time Walter Winchell condemned an American Nazi rally
In 1939, 20,000 Nazi sympathizers staged a rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City with Nazi imagery displayed next to a portrait of George Washington. Walter Winchell couldn’t allow the event to go unnoticed by the American people and condemned it on his national radio program. Later, he criticized aviator Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee for it's blatant anti-Semitism.
Yes, the Nazi Bund was quite active in New York and the northeastern United States. And Fascism did appeal to academic institutions in the northeastern United States who, even then, claimed to be the centers for enlightened liberal thinkers. But, then, New York is unlike the rest of the country.
gen butler was up until"Chesty" Puller , the most decorated marine in US history at that time , a look at his fruit salad of ribbons , says a lot . just as Puller USMC legend , so to is Butler . he even wrote a book about the coup , war is a racket ", pretty good ready i thought . he pretty much gave the same warning ike did in the late 50s about the military /industrial complex . And likely why the US citizenry was hesitant to get into the war until after pearl.
i would say that point in history , 33-34 , was a point where this country could have taken a very different shift on its path , it would almost had assuredly if this plot had taken place and was successful , changed how WW2 was fought, and likely would have changed which side the US eventually joined the war on.
I say that because of how many people of german decent lived in this country at the time , how many had sympathies for whatever reason be it business or ethic , to be more open to german than british allegiance , , if the germans could have reached some sort of agreement with the US , they wouldnt have had to make one with the japanese , and it would have been an entirely different war with likely a very different outcome , but this is all "what ifs ". it never materialized and history is what it is ..... for now , only thing now is to decide what was learned from it so it doesnt happen again.
I've read a lot about that. Most Americans wanted to avoid war and not to get involved in "overseas matters" that didn't effect us. And I can't help but wonder how long we would've stayed out of it....(but ofcoursethe Japanese attacked Pearl harbour so then we no longer had a choice...).
But what if that never happened? How long would we have stayed out of WWII?
Most military historians figure it would have taken another year or so before Germany declared war on us... He was getting more and more aggravated with our assistance to Britain, and the U-boats already had permission to fire on our ships, Several notable torpedo hits on several of our warships and one sinking with attacks that were escalating...
Does anyone really understand how close we came to not having to have fought the Japanese?
i dont know about that .
i feel that because of both governments at the times policies , it was almost predetermined it was going to happen , there was even a book written about it a good 10 years or so before the pacific war based on it happening and what the eventual outcome of who would win or lose , it came off as the 2 biggest kids on the block finally having a throw down to see who was the toughest
the block being the pacific sphere of influence and who could project their interests and military might to best suit themselves
Change who was making US policy at the time , and a different outcome likely would have come about , cant say because of how history unfolded and what actually happened , but i think if the US had a change of leadership , that changed whom they made agreements with , would have that "butterfly affect" on everything else . and removing FDR and cabinet would have changed things .
the time frame was like i said one of those points in history the country could have gone in a totally different direction than it did . it just didnt .
Nazi Summer Camps In 1930s America?
To the unsuspecting observer, the 25-minute silent, grainy black and white video from the vaults of the U.S. National Archives seems to showcase a quaint, carefree summer camp for boys in 1937.
Healthy, happy, high-energy guys — against the bucolic backdrop of the Catskill Mountains in eastern New York — pitch tents, get muddy, play checkers, shoot rifles, box and wrestle one another, raise a Nazi swastika flag ...
Wait, what?
V olks-Deutsche/Jungen in USA , video of a Bund-sponsored camp near Windham, N.Y. from the National Archives — filmed in the summer of 1937.
National Archives YouTubeThe Bund
In the 1930s , while Adolf Hitler was inciting the German people toward bellicosity and Nazis were establishing horrific concentration camps around Germany, Nazi summer camps for youngsters — like the one near Windham, N.Y., featured in the clip — popped up around this country. The pro-Hitler retreats were sponsored by German loyalists, such as the German-American Bund led by Fritz Kuhn.