These men and their allies began planning for a possible coup, supported by the military and based on the rationalization that Roosevelt’s physical infirmities made him unable to perform presidential duties. currency (which threatened their own wealth). A group of prominent American businessmen, featuring such noteworthy figures as Robert Sterling Clark and Prescott Bush, had become dissatisfied with newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt’s responses to the Great Depression, including both government programs to counter unemployment (which these figures saw as creeping socialism) and the end of the gold standard for U.S. Given the entirely justified recent attention to the history of American coups, past and present, it’s quite striking that the 1933 Business Plot isn’t yet better known ( Gangsters of Capitalism, a 2022 book by Jonathan Katz, who also wrote the Rolling Stone article “ The Plot Against American Democracy That Isn’t Taught in Schools,” is the place to begin learning a lot more).
Those histories reveal that Burt’s quote is both profoundly wrong and inspiringly right about the battle for American identity and ideals. But that sinister plan is based on very real 1933 histories: the so-called Business Plot. That will smash the war racket - that and nothing else.Amsterdam pulls together, fictionalizes, and at times troublingly misrepresents a number of threads from the 1930s and early 20 th century American history. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. Why shouldn't they? They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. “Let the workers in these plants get the same wages - all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers - yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders - everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches! Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month!Īll that they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill.and be killed” Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure". No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United State patents. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here.
No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. The was the "war to end wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. “Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.
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