The McCormack-Dickstein Committee, a precursor to the House Un-American Activities Committee, was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933.
Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government’s treatment of them. Prescott Bush’s group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee’s records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street’s opposition to the New Deal.
General Smedley Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. In addition to his military career, Smedley Butler was noted for his outspoken anti-interventionist views, and his book War is a Racket. His book was one of the first works describing the workings of the military-industrial complex and after retiring from service, he became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.
Many of the plotters exposed by Butler, had been boosting their fortunes by investing in the fascist experiments of Mussolini and Hitler. Some of them even amassed great profits by arming the Nazis, both before and during WWII. Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush’s businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America.
Although all of the top U.S. fascists behind this plot are now dead, their corporations carry on. These companies, with their roots firmly planted in the fascist milieu of the 1930s, are now among the world’s wealthiest corporations. They continue to exert enormous influence over U.S. government policies, and – by extension – over global matters of war, peace and human rights.
Although those within the highest echelons of U.S. corporate power were willing to instigate a coup to take control of the White House, their plot against FDR was called off. As it turned out, an overt fascist coup was not actually necessary to attain their goals. The fascists behind the plot did eventually succeed in regaining their long-standing influence over the White House and American politics.
