astro
November 20, 2012, 7:49am
1
In a comment on Daily Beast website re an article about the new Oliver Stone film this claim is made . Pure nonsense or not?
I once heard that Oliver Stone was going to make a movie about Gen. MacArthur and the abortive coup plot against FDR in 1934, which I thought would have been a good one.
This event is also well-known to historians if not the general public, but it involved the DuPont family and other leading lights of American industry trying to induce MacArthur to take over the government and install himself as dictator.
This was how MacArthur actually ended up being eased out of the army for a while and ending up out in the Philippines. The wily FDR was too much for him.
As for the DuPont family, their connections with Nazi Germany and sympathies for that regime were known at the time, as was their long connection to the IG Farben company, which also continued into the war years.
Senator Harry Truman investigated a lot of these connections during the war and called them “treason”. That was some very plain and honest speaking from the man from Missouri, but it’s not often found in the high school history books either.
astro
November 20, 2012, 7:56am
2
I’ll be damned, it’s real!
The Business Plot (also called the Wall Street Putsch and The White House Putsch) was a political conspiracy in 1933, in the United States, to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler asserted that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified unde Early ...
I gather the leader was meant to be Major General Smedley Butler as outlined in The Plot To Seize The White House by Jules Archer.
Well, except for the parts about the DuPonts, MacArthur, and a plot.
Seriously, this just looks like a publicity-hound old general met with a couple of armchair militia types to BS about changing the world. “We could get millionaire businessmen to finance an army of veterans, if we had some millionaire businessmen. And an army of veterans.”
Should’ve talked to MacArthur. Butler played along, but if flattered heavily enough, Mac would have followed through.
gaffa
November 20, 2012, 7:19pm
6
Trying to imagine just how different the US would be if FDR had prosecuted and imprisoned some of these plotters.
Apparently, this has been discussed here before. In the External Links at the bottom of the Wikipedia story, there’s a link to a column by one “Adams, Cecil” .
Butler thought it was real, and took it to a Congressional investigating committee.
(Or, at any rate, I’ve read the same book everyone else has cited, and find it convincing.)
3 brothers Du Pont
One of Pete Seeger’s old memories. (yeah, the lefties didn’t much care for the Du Ponts)
