8. The Business Plot Against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933
Imagine a cabal of Wall Street billionaires organizing a fascist military coup to overthrow the President of the United States. It sounds like the plot of a thriller novel, but in 1933, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient swore under oath that this exact scenario was unfolding behind closed doors.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office at the height of the Great Depression, he abandoned the gold standard and initiated The New Deal—a massive federal program designed to provide economic relief, recovery, and reform. These policies terrified America’s wealthiest industrial elites, who believed Roosevelt was steering the country toward communism. According to the sworn testimony of retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, several wealthy financiers approached him with an incredibly dangerous proposition.
The conspirators allegedly wanted Butler to lead a private army of 500,000 disgruntled World War I veterans in a march on Washington D.C. Their goal was to force Roosevelt into a figurehead role while a “Secretary of General Affairs”—a fascist dictator acting on behalf of corporate interests—took actual control of the government. Butler, a fierce patriot and defender of democracy, played along long enough to identify the key players before blowing the whistle to the House Un-American Activities Committee (specifically the MacCormack-Dickstein Committee).
The committee investigated and released a final report confirming that credible overtures for a fascist coup had indeed been made to Butler. Inexplicably, no criminal charges were ever filed against the wealthy businessmen implicated. This astonishingly bold attempt to subvert democracy reveals the extreme political volatility of the 1930s and stands as one of the most chilling forgotten historical stories.
