General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR?
Donald Trumps elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt the 1933 Wall Street putsch against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare.
Economic despair gave rise to panic and unrest, and political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country. Populists Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin attacked FDR, spewing vitriolic anti-Jewish, pro-fascist refrains and brandishing the America first slogan coined by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.
On 4 March 1933, more than 100,000 people had gathered on the east side of the US Capitol for Roosevelts inauguration. The atmosphere was slate gray and ominous, the sky suggesting a calm before the storm. That morning, rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting predictions of a violent revolution. Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the civil war had Washington been so fortified, with armed police guarding federal buildings.
Snip
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s?utm_source=digg
JustAnotherGen
(31,810 posts)Just my opinion -
America can't even fully address the first attempted 'overthrow' by their foreign enemy the CSA.
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)If you are referring to the Confederate States of America
JustAnotherGen
(31,810 posts)Not up for discussion or debate with me.
The bullshit of brother against brother is over . . . they fired on Fort Sumter. They were our enemies and every single political leader and general should have been hung. There should be no military bases named after them - and I'm sick of the adulation and the free pass they get. If we want to bring their descendants to heel now - we best start treating them like the evil cancer they were.
There is no difference between Prime Minister Hideki and Davis.
SunSeeker
(51,550 posts)left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)But they were not foreign.
They were American states in rebellion.
Have a good day
Gore1FL
(21,127 posts)The Union disagreed mightily; that's why they took up arms to preserve the Union.
gopiscrap
(23,756 posts)brush
(53,764 posts)enemy category though from a clause in oaths taken by elected officials and the military, "...enemies both foreign and domestic."
The rebels were undeniably of domestic origin but one can argue that they became foreign enemies on secession, but the secession was unsuccessful and the rebellion was put down in 4 years and a few days. So were they ever really foreign enemies, or just more successful versions of our present-day Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and Three Percenters?
I have shoes that have lasted much longer than 4 years and a few days.
soldierant
(6,846 posts)Domestic in that they were American states. Foreign in that the set up their own government,, compltet with Constitution, Presidnt, Vice President, Cabinet, and armed forces. And espionage.
brush
(53,764 posts)who were beaten and surrendered.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)They were not a foreign enemy. They were traitors.
brush
(53,764 posts)direct and to the point.
Zen Democrat
(5,901 posts)were behind it. They selected two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps General Smedley Butler to be the new head of state. They wanted him to turn the Bonus Army into a real army to fight for the coup. General Butler was a true hero and turned them in to the FBI. Congressional hearings were held, but no report was ever issued.
There are books about the attempted coup against FDR. General Butler wrote a book entitled "War is a Racket" in which he lamented that all the warfare he had experienced had been to line the pockets of millionaires and billionaires. So much of our "inconvenient" history has been excised from the record, if ever put in the record!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/01/13/fdr-roosevelt-coup-business-plot/
JustAnotherGen
(31,810 posts)in grade school in the early 80's. Reinforced in High School.
dchill
(38,471 posts)I learned about it much later.
JanMichael
(24,881 posts)and not reinforced in high school in the 80s.
I think because education is so very local in America it's probably the biggest difference. Also I went to school west of the Mississippi River that may have had something to do too with this. For instance when we talked about the Civil War a lot of it was spent on Kansas which was called Bleeding Kansas because it was contested between town and town.
From Wikipedia:
"The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and murders carried out in the Kansas Territory and neighboring Missouri by pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" and anti-slavery "Free-Staters". According to Kansapedia of the Kansas Historical Society, there were 56 documented political killings during the period,[2] and the total may be as high as 200.[3] It has been called a Tragic Prelude, an overture, to the American Civil War which immediately followed it."
Frankly this is what it's probably going to happen in the United States over the next few years.
Low grade Civil War and terrorism. We've already seen it simmering with the assassination of abortion doctors and of course January 6th 2021.
brush
(53,764 posts)3Hotdogs
(12,372 posts)The hero was General Smedley Butler.
soldierant
(6,846 posts)The rich and powerful are very good at covering up.
The military needs to promote more generals like Smedley Butler (and fewer like the Flynn brothers.)
mitch96
(13,891 posts)Thanks to Smedley Butler
Emile
(22,668 posts)dwayneb
(768 posts)Whatever happened to him? Too many death threats? Malloy was a little crazy but he always spoke the truth.
DeeNice
(575 posts)He had a late night show as I recall, definitely progressive, but I thought his name was Jay something. He loved the Smashing Pumpkins & talked about Nelson Algren a lot. If anyone could help I'd appreciate it.
Man I miss that guy, Jay was great. The guy that followed him in the graveyard hours was great too, Nate Clay.
Jay is 69 now I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Marvin
Here's a link for Nate Clay:
https://nateclayspeaks.webs.com/
DeeNice
(575 posts)Emile
(22,668 posts)It was a smart decision to fire him and Malloy. I was a daily listener to both shows and I gave WLS the middle finger and never listened to that radio station ever again.
Solly Mack
(90,762 posts)deminks
(11,014 posts)Another big reason you don't hear much about it. IMHO.
whathehell
(29,067 posts)some perceived lack of "exceptionalism".
Kaleva
(36,294 posts)"War seizures controversy
Harriman's banking business was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who was a financial backer of the Nazi Party until 1938. The Trading With the Enemy Act (enacted on October 6, 1917)[4] classified any business transactions for profit with enemy nations as illegal, and any funds or assets involved were subject to seizure by the U.S. government. The declaration of war on the U.S. by Hitler led to a U.S. government order on October 20, 1942, to seize German interests in the U.S., which included Harriman's operations in New York City.
The Harriman business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:[citation needed]
Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (from Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman)
Holland-American Trading Corporation (from Harriman)
Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (from Harriman)
Silesian-American Corporation (this company was partially owned by a German entity; during the war, the Germans tried to take full control of Silesian-American. In response to that, the American government seized German-owned minority shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the portion of the business in the United States.)
The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC was dissolved in 1951.
Compensation for wartime losses in Poland was based on prewar assets. Harriman, who owned vast coal reserves in Poland, was handsomely compensated for them through an agreement between the American and Polish governments. Poles who had owned little but their homes received negligible sums."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Averell_Harriman#War_seizures_controversy
erronis
(15,238 posts)Wish the parties were still at the dining room table debating capitalism, communism, socialism, hippies, etc. Lively discussions....
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,988 posts)Is there a point to dragging him into it here?
Harriman is certainly an interesting historical figure.
Kaleva
(36,294 posts)" After the war, he worked for several companies, becoming a minor partner of the A. Harriman & Co. investment bank in 1931."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,988 posts)Are they tainted by association? Of course not.
Undoubtedly Harriman was not pure and clean, but it is conection-to-the-coup your post seemed to want to make where there is none I can find.
That Harriman was associated with a coup plotter at some point, maybe even in 1933, is not a connection to the
... wait for it ...
COUP
Kaleva
(36,294 posts)As far as I know, Prescott Bush did not.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,988 posts)Kaleva
(36,294 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,988 posts)Still no involvement by Harriman in the plot.
BComplex
(8,035 posts)someday, America is going to have to deal with the fascists among us head on. Calling it out and hunting it down as an enemy within. "Foreign AND Domestic".
whathehell
(29,067 posts)Fascism certainly didn't follow this event -- FDR won three more terms, giving us the The New Deal, anpresiding over one of the most progressive eras in our history.
BComplex
(8,035 posts)That was what I was referring to. We need to make laws that make it impossible for fascists to take over the government in any fashion. But in order to do that, we need to make sure republicans don't get elected. That way we can protect this country from the fascists in the republican party.
whathehell
(29,067 posts)triggered Hitler and WWII.
It may never go away entirely, it may just just pop up sporadically and have to be continuously "nipped in the bud".
Mr.Bill
(24,280 posts)Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch rolled into one.
bucolic_frolic
(43,128 posts)Society is a pyramid. Those at the top write the laws, and wrote the Constitution. Men of property. It's set up to support them.
Big people can commit crimes, and if not too overt, get away with them. Many wealthy people, known at the time as international businessmen, invested in Nazi Germany. Today they'd be called oligarchs. Few knew about it, and many did not have evil intentions, it was just an investment. But it was the 1960s before a few books here or there documented corporations who sold essential petroleum products, trucks, tires to Hitler's war machine, or that many German companies had Nazi pasts. Society had to move on from the war. Products were needed to grow, there was money to be made. Over the ensuing decades, other war secrets leaked out. But important people who had something to trade - products, expertise, information - got off pretty well. Equality under the law is a loose myth.
BComplex
(8,035 posts)It runs in the authoritarian genes.
TheProle
(2,165 posts)and no he wasn't.
BComplex
(8,035 posts)But I believe it was researched here on DU during the Dubya years, and they said he was censured for his work, along with Harriman (?) for construction of some of the prison camps in Germany.
none of which is to say his hands are clean, just that facts are facts and misinformation is misinformation.
BComplex
(8,035 posts)Here's what I found at one site:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Prescott-Bush
In 1926 he joined his father-in-laws investment firm, W.A. Harriman & Company, which in 1930 merged with the British-American banking firm Brown Brothers. Bush became a managing partner in the new company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH).
BBHs association with the German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, which continued even after the start of World War II, would taint its reputation. Similarly infamous was the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), a BBH asset managed by Bush that transferred funds, bonds, gold, coal, oil, and steel to Nazi Germany during its military buildup. In 1942 the U.S. government, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, seized UBC and other German-affiliated BBH assets, but Bush was never found guilty of a crime, and the affair would neither prevent Averell Harriman from becoming the Democratic governor of New York nor have lasting political ramifications for Bush or his progeny.
Money has always had its privileges! Trade with the enemy and don't get censured for it.
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)Seems he was also our ambassador to the United Kingdom
dwayneb
(768 posts)It wasn't only Joe Kennedy that was fascinated by Hitler.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/joseph-p-kennedy-sr
JFK also apparently had an admiration for him, calling him the "stuff of legends".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39371715
Kid Berwyn
(14,876 posts)The reason: Lt. Cdr. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., USN, gave his life fighting them.
Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
The Presidents big brother was the one being groomed for a life in politics by family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. The younger Joe had served as a delegate from Massachusetts at the 1940 Democratic convention. Like JFK, a brave and conscientious young man, Joe volunteered for service in the US Navy before World War II.
After completing his tour as pilot of a US Navy B-24 Liberator on anti-submarine warfare patrol from 1943-44 over the North Atlantic, flying out of an airbase in England, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. volunteered for a top-secret mission, Project APHRODITE. The objective was to knock out the NAZI V-1 buzz bombs that were killing civilians in London and other English towns.
The Navy, in cooperation (and in competition) with the Army Air Corps, worked to develop a secret weapon a remotely piloted flying bomb. They would convert four-engine bombers into flying bombs that would be flown by remote control into the V-1 sites along the coast of France.
Joe and other pilots were needed to get the experimental versions of the 4-engine B-24 and B-17 bombers airborne. The planes had been converted from being a 10-man bomber, capable of carrying sixteen 500 pound bombs, into one giant flying bomb with a crew of two the pilot and the bombardier-engineer.
For the time, it was state-of-the-art science, engineering, and warfare. Joe Kennedys plane was among a few Liberators and Flying Fortresses modified for a very early version of remote control. The ship, basically, was historys first guided missile. The entire fuselage was filled with Torpex and gelignite, IIRC, and was to be armed by a rather elaborate, and untested, electronic arming panel.
Like something out of Buck Rogers, the Navy equipped the airplane with a primitive 2-channel remote-control pilot. One radio signal could make the plane dive and climb and another signal could make it turn left and right. A prototype video camera would also send information to the Mother Ship, where the remote pilot sat before a tiny TV monitor.
The scientists and engineers in the Mother Ship would take over and signal on two radio frequencies: One to turn the stick RIGHT or LEFT; or push the stick FORWARD or pull the stick BACK. Primitive today, they were the first remote-controlled weapon of mass destruction. The Mother Ship would follow two miles or so back and then fly it over the English Channel and guide it down into the rocket launch sites.
The technology was so primitive, human pilots were needed to get the flying bombs aloft. Once aloft, they were to turn on the radio-guidance controls and arm the flying bomb. Then, somewhere over the English countryside, they were to bail out. Sounds simple, but it was anything but.
The pilot and bombardier were to bail out at an altitude of about one thousand feet. Bailing out from the modified aircraft was extremely dangerous work. One B-17 pilot was killed and another lost an arm in the process. By the time it was Joes turn in the first APHRODITE B-24, there was reason for concern about a plan that looked like a suicide mission.
For the Kennedys and the future of American politics, the tragedy was that the Navy ship used a rather primitive arming panel. The regular engineer/co-pilot refused to fly and instead the Navy sent aloft the engineer who designed and installed the system.
Over the English countryside, the ship exploded, killing the two flyers and changing American political history. Joe's younger brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy then became the heir to the family's political ambitions.
John F. Kennedy made an outstanding President, living up to his brothers promise of greatness. JFK, it should be remembered, saved the world from nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While he never lived to see the dream realized, JFK also stretched mankinds imagination and reach to the moon. Ironically, he even used the NAZI rocket scientist who developed the V-1 to do so. The same von Braun who the allied air command sent his lost brother, Joseph, to destroy.
One of Hitler's superweapons, the V-2 was developed by Werner von Braun and his team at Peenemünde. History's first ballistic missiles were used to rain death, destruction and terror upon London. The allies were worried that if the Nazis continued developing their super-weapons, the V-2s descendants would be delivering bombs possibly atomic to New York City.
# # #
Two outstanding books on the subject of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. and his service in World War II:
Aphrodite: Desperate Mission by Jack Olsen
and
The Lost Prince: Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy by Hank Searls.
Kid Berwyn
(14,876 posts)It was simpler in 1933: newspapers, magazines and radio. They bragged about controlling the major dailies, which set the days news focus.
BBC broadcast a good summary of the Coup Against FDR...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tbs0
Muckrock also rocks
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/aug/29/smedley-butler-fbi/
More data
THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT
In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.
The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America's richest and most famous names of the time:
Irenee Du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.
Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.
William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.
John Davis - Former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.
Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York and a codirector of the American Liberty League.
John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.
Robert Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers.
Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.
The plotters attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who was popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good reputation was important to make the troops feel confident that they were doing the right thing by overthrowing a democratically elected president. However, this was a mistake: Butler was popular with the troops because he identified with them. That is, he was a man of the people, not the elite. When the plotters approached General Butler with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along with the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to Congress at the right moment.
What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work:
"You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second "
The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half.
Continues
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm
The rich think they own the planet and all that is on, in, around, and near it and to them that includes the news, history and governments.
Whiskeytide
(4,461 posts)Celerity
(43,304 posts)BobTheSubgenius
(11,563 posts)Thinking he could easily rally disaffected men without jobs and former military - and maybe some veterans - to rally to the cause. They were expecting half a million men, and he gave them zero. Was NOT about to commit treason.
There was a Congressional investigation, but when their chief witness died, the finding was "Probably something to this, but now we'll never find out. Oh, well."
Hieronymus Phact
(369 posts)Someone needs to make a movie about it. I'm sure it would be a blockbuster!
brush
(53,764 posts)prominent, rich families whose grands and great grands were involved continue to make sure no movie is made.
Hieronymus Phact
(369 posts)Hopefully there are some screen writers reading this and getting big ideas...
brush
(53,764 posts)political pressure and perhaps payoffs made, considering the Bushes and other still prominent families don't want their names revealed. FDR used that threat to get his New Deal programs passed.
mitch96
(13,891 posts)Rumor had it that when this was found out, FDR told these guys if they did not back his
"NEW DEAL" he would put them up against the wall and shot for treason.... And the rich and powerful have been trying to undo the New Deal ever since...YMMV
Never let a good crisis go to waste and all that noise...
m
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
https://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/145472726/when-the-bankers-plotted-to-overthrow-fdr
brush
(53,764 posts)for decades. Absolutely. And thank God FDR knew how to use the crisis and threaten the to reveal the traitor if they didn't play ball with him on the New Deal. It all worked out for the good of the Nation.
And thank God also that Gen. Butler was a real patriot.
Volaris
(10,270 posts)Robert E Lee should have been hanged on the steps of appomattox court house, and we wouldnt fuckin be here.
Cucker Carlson has free reign to brainwash MILLIONS, because the lesson wasnt learned.
dwayneb
(768 posts)We've become a nation that is addicted to superficial meaningless mind-trash. Just go anywhere and observe people with their noses in their electronic toys - do you really think any of them are learning about American History or political science?
We want to be entertained, to get that next fix of serotonin inducing excitement from some mindless game or "news" story.
Can you imagine CNN or MSNBC devoting a segment to the Business Plot? Their viewers would be yawning and changing channels in 5 minutes. There is still a possibility you might see it on PBS, but only the "intellectuals" watch PBS.
Hotler
(11,415 posts)...
ecstatic
(32,681 posts)line is BS.
While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBCs Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges and possible execution if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. The presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said that Roosevelt should have pushed it all through, then reneged on his agreement and prosecuted them.
...
If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.