David Breland is the managing editor of The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected]. “The winners write history,” is an old quote I have heard countless times and the attribution has been lost to me. Recently though it has been brought to the forefront of my attention as I have been doing some historical reading.
I stumbled one day upon the biography of a man named General Smedley Butler. Butler was a Marine Corps general and was awarded the Medal of Honor twice in addition to the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (which when it was awarded was the highest honor the Corps could bestow upon a marine). Butler served as one of the highest-ranking officers in the Marine Corps and was beloved by his troops. At the time of his death in 1940 Butler was the most highly decorated marine in U.S. history.
Butler’s story piqued my interest, and soon I was on Amazon ordering a book about him and one he authored.
It wasn’t until I delved into Butler’s biography that I discovered a very scary and very little known footnote to history. In 1933 Butler was approached by some men who wanted his help with a project. Butler, being the well-respected Marine he was, was asked to lead a military coup-de-tat to overthrow then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The men, bankrolled by the who’s who of corporate elite such as the DuPont family, Remington Arms, U.S. Steel, General Motors and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, were planning to overthrow the President and install something tantamount to a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. The plot has since been known as the “Business Plot.”
The supposition of these individuals was that not only would a regime change like theirs bring the country out of the Great Depression, it would also benefit these companies’ profits, as they would control country. The plan was in place to use 500,000 men led by Butler to unseat the President and install whomever they pleased as leader. The ringleaders had the men, the money and the muscle, or so they thought.
When choosing a leader for their military coup, the planners of the plot made a big mistake when picking Butler. Butler was a Quaker, opposed to unnecessary violence, a vehement anti-fascist and was fiercely loyal to Roosevelt. Butler also wrote a book entitled “War is a Racket,” indicting the military-industrial complex in using war for profit. Butler was adamantly against corporate greed. The plotters thought they had an ally in Butler, but all they really had was a fierce patriot on the inside of their plot.
Butler played along with the plot and garnered as much information as he could about the men behind it.
He also used a journalist friend to independently verify this was a real threat, and then he took it all to a Congressional committee.
The committee brought before it many different people aligned with the plot, and despite fierce denial by the key players, most notably the supposed head of the plot Gerald McGuire, recently unclassified and unedited records of the hearing show that these people were deeply implicated. Butler also testified at the hearing telling everything he knew about the plot, revealing the massive financial backing of the aforementioned corporations for the coup.
Well, things being as they were and the people implicated being who they were the whole thing never went beyond Congressional inquiry. As we’ve all seen in the media, if you’re rich/powerful/famous it’s pretty damn hard to get put in jail for something. I’m also sure that some very generous donations were made to political campaign funds to make sure that all this was very neatly swept under the rug.
Recently, the BBC aired a documentary about the “Business Plot” and uncovered some new information, most notably that a man named Prescott Bush was a part of the plot. Who’s Prescott Bush, you may ask? Prescott Bush is none other than the father of the 41st President of the United States and the grandfather of the 43rd. Even more interesting is Bush’s involvement in the Union Banking Corporation scandal. Union Banking Corporation had its assets seized during World War II for making loans to the Nazi war machine. Not only was Bush involved in Union Banking, he was its vice president and director.
Back to what I said at the beginning of the article, “the winners write history.” How convenient is it that we’ve never heard of the father and grandfather of U.S. Presidents’ involvement in not only outright collaboration with an enemy while at war, but a plan to overthrow the government? Even more so, as much as we celebrate such “war heroes” of Butler’s time such as Teddy Roosevelt, Alvin York and others that we’ve never heard about one of the most highly decorated Marine of his time, why don’t we know who Butler is?
Perhaps it’s because you cannot mention Butler without mentioning the “Business Plot,” which in turn shows the outright treason of one the patriarchs of an American political dynasty.
Also, it kind of makes you wonder about whom really controls media and the court of public opinion, which makes me think of another quote. The quote is the “other” golden rule “He who has the gold, makes the rules.