How Industrialists Plotted to Overthrow FDR Over The New Deal in 1934

FDR launched the New Deal immediately after his 1933 inauguration, but it was not universally popular. Some hated it bitterly. Critics from the right thought it was part of a long-term plan to push America into Soviet-style socialism. Critics from the left like Louisiana Governor Huey Long thought it didn't go far enough. Long pushed the “Share Our Wealth” plan, demanding that Congress confiscate individual earnings over $1 million, using those funds for health care and college tuition. He called anyone who refused to endorse his plan “damned scoundrels” that were fit for hanging.

Perhaps the strangest episode in opposition to the New Deal came from a group of financiers and industrialists, who in 1934 allegedly plotted a coup d’état to prevent FDR from establishing what they feared would be a socialist state. Though the media regarded it as a tall tale, retired Marine Corps major general Smedley Butler testified before a congressional committee that the conspirators had wanted Butler to deliver an ultimatum to FDR to create a new cabinet officer, a “Secretary of General Affairs,” who would run things while the president recuperated from feigned ill health. If Roosevelt refused, the conspirators had promised General Butler an army of five hundred thousand war veterans who would help drive Roosevelt from office.

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