Wealthy financiers plotted a fascist coup against Roosevelt in 1933
By Colin PetersonJuly 8, 2026
Where the evidence lands →
That in 1933–34, a group of wealthy businessmen and financiers, opposed to Franklin Roosevelt's departure from the gold standard and his New Deal policies, conspired to recruit a private army of several hundred thousand veterans, install retired Major General Smedley Butler as its leader, and use the threat of a march on Washington to force Roosevelt to cede power to a new, unelected 'Secretary of General Affairs', in effect a soft fascist coup modeled on Europe's veteran leagues.
A retired Marine general testified under oath that financiers approached him about a veterans' coup, and a congressional committee said it verified his account. But no one was prosecuted, every named man denied it, and historians still argue over whether it was a real plan or a scheme that never got past talk.
Believed by: Little polling exists; awareness rose sharply after 2020s retrospectives
The full story
The general and the bond salesman
By 1933, Smedley Butler was one of the most recognizable men in America who had never held elected office. He had retired the previous year as a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps after thirty-three years of service, two Medals of Honor, and a growing second career as a barnstorming public speaker, increasingly a populist and anti-war one, scornful of the bankers and industrialists he had come to believe used the military to protect their overseas investments. Veterans, especially the destitute former soldiers of the Bonus Army that had been forcibly dispersed from Washington in 1932, loved him.
That popularity made him a natural target for recruitment, or so Butler later testified. In the summer of 1933, he told Congress, he was approached by Gerald C. MacGuire, a bond salesman for the Wall Street firm Grayson M-P. Murphy & Co., together with American Legion official William Doyle. The initial ask was mundane: would Butler run for national commander of the American Legion, with expenses covered by unnamed backers? Butler said he declined, suspicious of who was really paying and why an obscure bond salesman had that kind of money to spend.
What Butler swore under oath
Take the believers' case on its own terms, because it rests on something concrete: sworn congressional testimony from a witness whose honesty was barely questioned even by people who doubted his conclusions. Testifying in executive session before the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities (chaired by Reps. John McCormack and Samuel Dickstein, and known afterward as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) Butler laid out an escalating series of contacts through late 1933 and 1934.
According to Butler, MacGuire's proposals grew steadily bolder: first funding for a Butler speaking tour attacking the gold standard's abandonment; then, in 1934, a fully formed plan. MacGuire allegedly told him a war-chest of millions was available to organize roughly 500,000 veterans for a march on Washington, ostensibly to demand cash payment of a promised service bonus but really to pressure Roosevelt into creating a new cabinet-level post (a “Secretary of General Affairs”) who would assume the president's operational powers while Roosevelt became a ceremonial head of state, citing his health as pretext. Butler said MacGuire pointed to Europe for precedent, describing the Croix de Feu, a French nationalist veterans' league, in a letter after a research trip abroad; a letter along these lines, dated March 6, 1934 and addressed to financier Robert Sterling Clark and Clark's attorney, became part of the committee's evidence.
Butler testified that MacGuire named, as prospective backers, some of the era's best-known men of wealth: figures connected to the DuPont family, J.P. Morgan & Co. interests, and the American Liberty League, a group announced that August to oppose the New Deal's economic policies, whose treasurer, Grayson Murphy, headed the Wall Street firm that employed MacGuire. Butler said he strung MacGuire along to learn more, then reported the entire affair to the committee and, separately, to Paul Comly French, a Philadelphia Record reporter he had known since his own stint running the Philadelphia police, before any of it became public. French did more than take Butler's word for it: he met MacGuire himself that September and later testified, under oath, that MacGuire called Butler the “ideal leader” for a fascist organization who “could organize a million men overnight”: a second witness's sworn account of MacGuire's own words, independent of Butler's.
When the committee released its final report on February 15, 1935, it did not dismiss either man. It stated that it had received evidence showing that “certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country”; that “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient”; and, separately, that it “was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler.” For a body that could easily have buried an inconvenient story about the nation's financial elite, that is a striking thing to have put in writing.
What the committee could not verify
Read the committee's report past its most quotable line, and the picture gets considerably murkier. Immediately after saying it had verified Butler's pertinent statements, the same report added a crucial exception: it could not corroborate “the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization”: that is, the specific claim that anyone had formally proposed Butler himself take command of the veterans' army. That is close to the load-bearing allegation of the entire story, and the committee said, in its own words, it could not confirm it.
No one was indicted. The Justice Department never brought charges. Every individual Butler named as a participant or backer (MacGuire, financier Robert Sterling Clark, executive Grayson Murphy, and others linked to DuPont and Morgan interests) denied the allegations, several under oath. MacGuire, the one alleged recruiter who did testify, admitted to a European trip studying veterans' organizations and to contact with Butler, but called the coup plan itself an exaggeration or misunderstanding; committee members found his answers evasive rather than confirming. The committee itself, in its earlier preliminary report, cautioned it would “not take cognizance of names brought into testimony which constitute mere hearsay”: a warning that some of the most famous names attached to the story in popular retellings (a list that has grown further in decades of retelling online) were never substantiated by the committee at all.
That redaction was not merely theoretical. On the committee's final day, journalist John L. Spivak published testimony in the Communist magazine New Masses that he said had been cut from the public record as hearsay, naming additional financiers and arguing for a still-wider Wall Street conspiracy. Historians who have since weighed his account, including Hans Schmidt, credit him with a legitimate point (that some suppressed testimony deserved more scrutiny than it got) while also finding Spivak embellished his case, particularly around unsupported claims about Jewish financiers that other contemporary reviewers called guilt by association rather than evidence. The redacted material cuts both ways: real proof the committee's public report was incomplete, but no confirmation that what it withheld was more solid than what it published.
Contemporary press coverage was, at first, openly derisive: the New York Times described the story in November 1934 as a “gigantic hoax,” and Time magazine mocked it under the headline “Plot Without Plotters,” treating Butler's account as tall talk that no serious person had actually acted on. New York's Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, closer to the events than most historians who later studied them, is widely quoted as dismissing it as a “cocktail putsch”: all talk over drinks, no operational plan. Historians who have since combed the record, including Robert F. Burk, describe it as most plausibly a mix of genuine, if amateurish, influence-peddling by a small circle of financiers, filtered through Butler's own populist suspicion of Wall Street, not a coordinated, imminent coup with a real chain of command.
Why the story has such staying power
The Business Plot occupies an unusual place among conspiracy theories: unlike most entries in this encyclopedia, its central claim was tested in a legislative hearing while the alleged plotters were still alive, and the resulting record is genuinely ambiguous rather than clearly resolved either way. That ambiguity is exactly what keeps it alive. A committee said, in an official government document, that a coup “might have been placed in execution”: a sentence that is easy to quote as vindication and easy to read, in full context, as a hedge.
It also survived by being genuinely inconvenient to everyone with a stake in the story. Prosecutors had little appetite for pursuing wealthy, well-connected men on the word of a single bond salesman's contested account. The financiers named had every reason to let the story die quietly rather than sue and draw more attention. And mainstream historians, wary of both crediting an unprovable coup and dismissing sworn testimony from a decorated general, tended to give it a paragraph rather than a chapter, which left the fullest, most dramatic tellings largely to popular writers like Jules Archer, whose 1973 The Plot to Seize the White House treated Butler's account as essentially proven and became the story's main vehicle into public memory, later amplified further by internet retellings that add names and details the committee itself never confirmed.
Finally, the story sits on real historical ground that makes it feel more plausible than an ordinary conspiracy claim: 1933 truly was a year when elite discomfort with an interventionist, off-gold-standard government was intense, and fascist veterans' leagues really were reshaping European politics at that exact moment. Believing the Business Plot does not require inventing a hidden global system, only believing that some rich Americans briefly admired what was happening in Europe and made a clumsy, deniable pass at importing it. That is a far smaller leap than most conspiracy claims ask of their audience, which is precisely why historians still argue over where the true story sits between “nothing” and “a real, live threat.”
A plot that stalled
The available record supports a genuinely disputed verdict, not a debunked or confirmed one. It is established fact, not allegation, that Smedley Butler gave detailed sworn testimony describing recruitment attempts, that a congressional committee investigated it, and that the committee's final report affirmatively stated the scheme was discussed and planned and could have been executed. It is equally established fact that the committee could not verify the plan's most specific element, that every named individual denied involvement, and that no prosecution followed from either the Justice Department or any other authority.
What separates historians is not the documentary record (which is fixed and publicly available) but how much weight to put on a single, largely uncorroborated informant (MacGuire) relaying an alleged plan to a single witness (Butler) whose account the committee itself only partially confirmed. Read generously, it is evidence that American elites came closer to organized authoritarian action than textbooks generally acknowledge. Read skeptically, it is a case study in how an isolated, informal, and possibly self-aggrandizing series of conversations can calcify (through one sympathetic committee report and one popular book) into a story remembered as far more concrete than the surviving evidence actually supports. Both readings can be held by a careful person; that is what “disputed” means here.
What's still unexplained
- How organized and serious the scheme actually was is still the central dispute. Butler described an escalating, concrete proposal (a war chest, a target of roughly 500,000 veterans, a specific new cabinet post) while MacGuire, the one named organizer who testified, called the coup plan itself an exaggeration, and contemporaries from the New York Times to Mayor La Guardia dismissed the whole affair as talk that never became an operational plan. The committee's own final report split the difference: it called the scheme 'discussed' and 'planned' and something that 'might have been placed in execution,' while declining to verify the one detail (that anyone had actually proposed Butler take command) that would make it an operational conspiracy rather than exploratory talk among a small circle of men. Nothing in the ninety years since has settled which description fits.
- Who, if anyone, beyond Gerald MacGuire actually committed money or intent to the scheme has never been independently established. Butler named figures connected to the du Pont family, J.P. Morgan & Co., and the Liberty League as prospective backers, and MacGuire's own letters and travel corroborate parts of his account, but every individual named denied involvement, several under oath, and the committee's preliminary report explicitly declined to credit names raised only as hearsay. A single bond salesman's account of who was really paying was never independently confirmed by the people he said were paying.
- Why no prosecution ever followed a congressional committee's own finding that a fascist scheme had been 'discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution' has never been fully explained. Whether the Justice Department saw a genuine lack of prosecutable evidence, reluctance to indict wealthy and well-connected men on one contested account, or something else went unrecorded: the committee referred its findings nowhere, and no later administration reopened the question.
- How much the committee's public report actually left out is itself unresolved. Journalist John L. Spivak published testimony in 1935 that he said had been redacted from the official record as hearsay, expanding the list of implicated financiers, but historians who have reviewed his account, including Hans Schmidt, found it embellished in places even as they credited its core point: that some suppressed testimony deserved more scrutiny than it got. Whether the redacted material held genuine additional evidence or unverifiable rumor the committee was right to exclude cannot be settled from the surviving record alone.
Point by point
The claim: A decorated, retired general testified under oath that financiers tried to recruit him for a coup.
What the record shows: True, and undisputed. Smedley Butler (twice awarded the Medal of Honor, the most publicly trusted military figure of his era) gave detailed sworn testimony naming dates, meetings, and dollar figures. His credibility as a witness, separate from whether the plot was real, was rarely challenged even by skeptics.
The claim: A congressional committee confirmed the plot was real.
What the record shows: Partly true, with an important limit. The committee's final report said it had verified 'all the pertinent statements made by General Butler,' and that the scheme was 'discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution', but it explicitly could not corroborate the single most dramatic claim, that anyone had proposed Butler himself lead the organization, and it named no one as prosecutable.
The claim: The men Butler named were prosecuted or forced to answer for it.
What the record shows: False. Every individual Butler identified (including Gerald MacGuire, Robert Sterling Clark, and Grayson Murphy) denied involvement, and no one was indicted, subpoenaed to the same degree as Butler, or held legally accountable. The Justice Department did not pursue charges.
The claim: This was a fringe rumor with no documentary backing.
What the record shows: Overstated. The committee's investigators found bank records and correspondence (including a letter from MacGuire describing the French veterans' league Croix de Feu as a model) that corroborated parts of Butler's account of contacts and travel, even though they could not prove the coup itself was ever a firm operational plan.
Timeline
- 1933Bond salesman Gerald C. MacGuire and American Legion official William Doyle begin approaching Smedley Butler, then the country's most famous retired general, about veterans' politics.
- 1933–34Butler testifies MacGuire's proposals escalate: funding a Butler speaking tour, then a plan for him to lead 500,000 veterans to Washington and press Roosevelt to create a new cabinet post.
- 1934-07Butler reports the approaches to the U.S. House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Reps. John McCormack and Samuel Dickstein.
- 1934-11Butler and MacGuire testify before the committee in executive session; MacGuire denies the central allegations under oath.
- 1934-11Major newspapers, including the New York Times, report the story with open skepticism, calling parts of it a 'gigantic hoax.'
- 1935-02The committee issues its final report, concluding the plans were 'discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution', but no one is indicted.
From the case file
The actual records: declassified, released, or leaked. We link straight to each document in its official archive, so you never have to take our word for it. Read the originals yourself.
Investigation of Nazi and Other Propaganda Activities: Final Report of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (McCormack-Dickstein Committee), H. Rept. No. 153, 74th Cong., 1st Sess.
The committee's final report, which stated that the alleged fascist scheme was discussed and planned and might have been placed in execution, while declining to verify the claim that anyone had formally proposed Butler lead it.
Read the document: National Archives (NARA) →Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Hearings before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess.
The committee's 1934 hearings, including the executive-session testimony of Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler and bond salesman Gerald C. MacGuire, in which Butler described the recruitment approach and MacGuire denied the coup plan.
Read the document: National Archives (NARA) →Records of the Committee on Un-American Activities and its predecessors (Guide to House Records, Chapter 22)
The National Archives guide to the surviving records of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee and its successors, held by the Center for Legislative Archives, where the original testimony and evidence are preserved.
Read the document: National Archives (NARA) →A retired Marine general testified under oath that financiers approached him about a veterans' coup, and a congressional committee said it verified his account. But no one was prosecuted, every named man denied it, and historians still argue over whether it was a real plan or a scheme that never got past talk.
Reviewed by Colin Peterson · Last reviewed July 12, 2026 · How we rate
Common questions
Is The Business Plot true?
A retired Marine general testified under oath that financiers approached him about a veterans' coup, and a congressional committee said it verified his account. But no one was prosecuted, every named man denied it, and historians still argue over whether it was a real plan or a scheme that never got past talk.
What is The Business Plot?
In 1934, retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler told Congress, under oath, that a group of wealthy men had approached him to lead half a million veterans on Washington and force Franklin Roosevelt into a figurehead role. A House committee said it had verified much of his story. No one went to prison, and historians have argued…
What does the evidence show?
True, and undisputed. Smedley Butler (twice awarded the Medal of Honor, the most publicly trusted military figure of his era) gave detailed sworn testimony naming dates, meetings, and dollar figures. His credibility as a witness, separate from whether the plot was real, was rarely challenged even by skeptics.
Why do people believe it?
The witness was about as credible as a whistleblower could be: a wildly popular, twice-Medal-of-Honor Marine general with no obvious motive to invent a story that made him look either gullible or heroic depending on who believed him.
What is still unresolved?
How organized and serious the scheme actually was is still the central dispute. Butler described an escalating, concrete proposal (a war chest, a target of roughly 500,000 veterans, a specific new cabinet post) while MacGuire, the one named organizer who testified, called the coup plan itself an exaggeration, and contemporaries from the…
Sources
- 1.Investigation of Un-American Activities: Final Report of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (McCormack-Dickstein Committee), House Report No. 153, 74th Congress, 1st Session, U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities (1935)
- 2.Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Hearings Before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (including Gen. Smedley D. Butler and Gerald C. MacGuire testimony), U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session (1934)
- 3.Records of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), finding aid, National Archives and Records Administration
- 4.War Is a Racket (1935): Smedley Butler's own account of his views on militarism and business interests in the period surrounding his testimony, Smedley D. Butler (1935)
- 5.The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow F.D.R., Jules Archer (Skyhorse Publishing / Hawthorn Books) (1973)
- 6.Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History, Hans Schmidt, University Press of Kentucky (1987)
- 7.The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right, Sally Denton, Bloomsbury USA (2012)
- 8.When The Bankers Plotted To Overthrow FDR, NPR (2012)
- 9.Business Plot, Wikipedia
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