Goosestepping in Washington, DC or The American Putsch that Failed to Launch

During the Great Depression, a coalition of millionaire bankers and industrialists conjured a scheme to grab control of the federal government and place a Fascist dictatorship in its place. It was a macabre event in US history.

John L. Spivak wrote a history, A Man in His Time. Spivak commented on the attempted putsch thusly, What was behind the plot was shrouded in a silence which has not been broken to this day. Even a generation later, those who are still alive and know all the facts have kept their silence so well that the conspiracy is not even a footnote in American histories.

A congressional committee investigated and confirmed the allegations, yet those very findings were kept on dthe down low and archived. For what reason? One good reason was that the plotters were American financiers in the JP Morgan and EI DuPont banking and industrial empires, right-wing conservatives bitterly opposed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and alliance with the labor unions.

A patriotic military leader, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler remained true and blew the whistle on the scheme. During the summer of 1933, the putsch cabal approached Gen. Butler, a retired commandant of the US Marine Corps and a popular hero of WWI who was known as the Fighting Quaker. The cabal offered Gen. Butler the job of shaping the American Legion into a 500,000-man radical militia, to be the advance in an American coup d' etat.

The ironic paradox for fascism turned out to be Gen. Butler himself. Butler was the conspiracy's Battle of the Little Big Horn. The conspirators chose Gen. Butler because of his charisma with rank and file soldiers. Yet, it was Gen. Butler's anti-elitist leanings and his reputation for honest dealing which made him popular. The conspirators selected a leader with scrupples and, therefore, most unlikely to agree to direct a fascist takeover of the US government. Shrewdly, Gen. Butler decided to play along, feigning interest in the plans in order to draw the plotters into the spotlight and expose the takeover scheme to Congress.

Gen. Butler testified before the House of Representatives' McCormack-Dickstein Committee, which was investigating Nazi and Communist activities in America. Butler was first approached by Gerald G. MacGuire, a bond salesman and former Commander of the Connecticut American Legion. News accounts described MacGuire thusly: MacGuire was a short stocky man tending toward three chins, with a bullet-shaped head which had a silver plate in it due to a wound received in battle.

Butler told the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that MacGuire described to him what was tantamount to a plot to seize the government, by force if necessary. MacGuire, Gen. Butler testified, stated that he had traveled to Europe to study the role played by veterans' groups in propping up Mussolini's fascist government in Italy; Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the French government. MacGuire heaped praise on France's Croix de Feu as an organization of super-soldiers with tremendous political influence. Then, MacGuire, the man with the silver plate in his skull stated that our idea here in America is to get up an organization of this kind because the political setup has got to be changed a bit.

Gen. Butler than fleshed out MacGuire's understanding of the proposed treason: Now, did it ever occur to you that the President is overworked? We might have an Assistant President; somebody to take the blame. MacGuire termed this new super Cabinet member to be the Secretary of General Affairs. And, MacGuire said, You know the people will swallow this. We have got newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everybody can tell that by looking at Roosevelt, and the dumb American people will fall for this in a second . . . .

Of course, MacGuire denied Gen. Butler's account under oath; however, corroborating testimony came from Paul Comly French, a Philadelphia Record reporter. Gen. Butler asked French to look into MacGuire's plot and put the spotlight on what the Hell it is all about.

MacGuire agreed to French's interview after checking with Gen. Butler. French testified before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that MacGuire told him, We need a fascist government in this country . . . to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Gen. Smedley Butler, the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight.

French's testimony continues: MacGuire said, We might go along with Roosevelt and then do with him what Benito Mussolini did with the King of Italy. If Roosevelt played ball, French summarized, Swell. If Roosevelt did not go along, the conspirators would push him out. French said that MacGuire dropped names to imply that the American Legion hierarchy was involved in the coup plot.

To impress Gen. Butler, MacGuire produced a bank book that itemized deposits that amounted to well over $100,000 available to pay expenses. Then, MacGuire flashed eighteen $1000 bills (at that time, $1000 bills were used to transfer and settle transactions between banks) and boasted of friends who could contribute more cash on short notice.

One of MacGuire's good friends was Robert Sterling Clark, a well known Wall Street banker and stockbroker. When Gen. Butler demanded that MacGuire produce his superiors, the rotund middleman gladly made introductions. Butler's testimony has Clark telling him of spending half of his $60 million fortune to save the other half. Clark sang an ominous tune about Franklin Delano Roosevelt: You know the President is weak. Roosevelt will come right along with us. He was born into our class, and he will come back. Roosevelt will run true to form. In the end he will come around. But we have to be prepared to sustain him when he does.

In stunning form, the McCormack-Dickstein Committee (this committee was similar to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee) never got around to compelling Clark's testimony. And the committee's members--who showed more enthusiasm for nailing Communists than they did rich American Fascists--failed to grill six other coup suspects named by Butler and French. The committee did suppress many of the names, even though French's newspaper articles caused controversy by naming the wealthier conspirators at the height of the Great Depression.

The following is a list of the leading co-conspirators named by MacGuire and Clark:

• Grayson Murphy, a director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, and panoply of JP Morgan banks. Murphy was the first contributor of the American Legion, which Murphy and other wealthy military officers formed after WWI to offset radicalism. Also, Murphy was MacGuire's boss at the New York brokerage firm.
• William Doyle, a former state commander of the American Legion and the architect of the coup idea.
• John W. Davis, a former Democratic candidate for President of the United States and a senior attorney for JP Morgan & Company, Inc.
• Al Smith, a former Governor of New York state, a Roosevelt foe, former Roman Catholic candidate for President of the United States, co-director of the newly founded American Liberty League which was an organization described by MacGuire as the matrix on which the coup plot would be commenced.

Other businessmen emerged from the shadows, including Smith's co-director at the American Liberty League, John J. Raskob, who was a former Chair of the Democratic Party, a high-ranking EI DuPont deNemours & Co., Inc. officer, and a bitter enemy of Franklin Roosevelt, whom he classified as a dangerous radical. And, far deeper in the shadows, was Conservative industrialist Irenee DuPont, the founder of the American Liberty League. Grayson Murphy, MacGuire's boss, was the Treasurer of the American Liberty League. Then an unwelcome surprise was the presence of heavy-hitting political types from the Democratic Party, FDR's party.

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee's public report, was a gilded lily, going against its internal summary to the House. Briefly, the Committee acknowledged Gen. Butler's veracity and MacGuire's lying. The report concluded:

In the last few weeks of the Committee's life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country . . . . There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed into execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient . . . . MacGuire denied [Butler's] allegations under oath, but this Committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made to Gen. Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principle, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veteran's organizations of Fascist character.

In the end, the coup plot's failure owes much to Gen. Butler's ethics as it does to the hubris of the wealthy. Lacking an American Mussolini , but possessing bank vaults full of cash to buy one, America's wealthy elitist -Fascists sent a man with a first-rate, silver plate in his head to obtain Gen. Butler as its own Fehurer. Of course, this scheme went South when, out of stupidity, the elite Fascists decided to buy a dictator with scruples--Gen. Butler--a true, red, white, and blueAmerican with a sense of honor and duty.

References

Archer, Jules. The Plot to Seize the White House. NY: Hawthorn Books, 1973.

Seldes, George. Even the Gods Can't Change History. Seacaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1976.

Spivak, John L. A Man in His Time. NY: Horizon Press, 1967.