The Business Plot: Wall Street's Attempted 1933 Coup Against FDR

By Cade Shadowlight 

In 1933, amid the Great Depression, retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, one of America's most decorated soldiers, was approached by a group of powerful Wall Street figures to lead a fascist coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

The plan: raise a 500,000-man veteran army, march on Washington, force FDR to step aside or become a figurehead, and install a dictatorship modeled on Italian fascism under Benito Mussolini. The goal: to protect business interests from the New Deal. Butler, a vocal critic of capitalism's war profiteering, played along to gather details before reporting it to authorities.

The key intermediary was Gerald MacGuire, a bond salesman tied to financier Grayson M.P. Murphy. MacGuire offered Butler millions in backing from unnamed tycoons (implicated by hearsay: J.P. Morgan, DuPont family, General Motors execs) and cited fascist veterans' groups in Europe as models. Butler testified that the plotters feared Roosevelt's reforms threatened their wealth, especially after abandoning the gold standard. Butler refused, calling it treason.

Initially dismissed by the press as a "gigantic hoax," Butler's revelations led to hearings by the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in 1934–1935. The committee found Butler's testimony credible, corroborated parts (like MacGuire's travels and finances), and stated evidence showed an attempt to establish a fascist organization. However, big names weren't subpoenaed, key testimony was redacted or deleted, and no prosecutions followed due to insufficient hard proof as all denied involvement.

Historians debate the plot's seriousness: most agree discussions happened and a plan was contemplated, but question if it was viable or exaggerated. No smoking-gun documents emerged, yet the committee's validation turned a "conspiracy theory" into a confirmed elite scheme, highlighting how economic panic nearly birthed American fascism.

For Further Reading

1. Jules Archer – The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR (1973) – Classic exposé reconstructing the events from testimony and sources.
2. Jonathan M. Katz – Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire (2022) – Modern take placing the plot in Butler's life and broader U.S. imperialism.
3. Sally Denton – The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right (2012) – Examines the Business Plot alongside other 1930s threats to Roosevelt.

 

Between Shadows and Light 

Cade Shadowlight 

Join the Shadow Tribe! Click here to join the free email list.

 

P.S. Some herbs feed you. Some heal you. A few remind the things that creep at midnight that this ground is already claimed. Join my herbal journey with this 36-variety medicinal seed vault. Non-GMO, heirloom, no fluff. → Amazon link. 

 

If tonight’s article cracked your reality even a little, then buy me a coffee so I can keep chasing the strange and feeding it to my Shadow Tribe → https://buymeacoffee.com/cadeshadowlight