38 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
38 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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tags:
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- Event
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- Fascism
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- United_States
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- 1930s
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- Coup
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- DuPont
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category: "Historical Phenomenon"
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summary: "1933 alleged conspiracy by Wall Street financiers including the DuPont family to overthrow President Roosevelt and install a fascist dictatorship."
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start: 1933
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end: 1934
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location: "United States"
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---
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In 1933 members of the DuPont family became involved in what has since been euphemistically termed the Business Plot, a conspiracy to replace the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt with a fascist dictatorship. The scheme represented an overt attempt by segments of American industrial and financial elites to impose an authoritarian regime upon the United States, drawing on the same reactionary currents then ascendant across Europe. [[Francis Shelden|Shelden]] and his [[North Fox Island]] operation intersected with this same nexus of old money and impunity.
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### Origins and Recruitment
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In November 1934 Major General Smedley Butler informed a congressional committee that he had been approached by Grayson Murphy, a director at the [[Guaranty Trust Company]], to lead a paramilitary force composed of American military veterans. The purpose of this force was to provide the muscle for a coup that would install [[Hugh S. Johnson]], then head of the National Recovery Administration, as dictator of the United States. Butler, a decorated Marine who would later denounce war as a racket, testified that the conspirators envisioned relegating the presidency to a ceremonial role while real power rested with a military-industrial cabal.
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The committee's public statement of November 1934, released by [[John W. McCormack]] and [[Samuel Dickstein]] as a subcommittee, describes [[Gerald P. MacGuire|Gerald MacGuire]] as a bond salesman with [[Grayson M.-P. Murphy & Co.]] It states that MacGuire testified that he had bought and sold bonds worth about nine million dollars for [[Robert Sterling Clark]] through the Murphy firm, and it records that Paul Conley French, a reporter who had been told of the plan by Butler, testified that he went to the Murphy firm's offices at 52 Broadway on September 13, 1934, where MacGuire received him.[^1]
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### Financial and Industrial Backing
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The plot was financed through the Guaranty Trust Company, a J.P. Morgan financial institution with ties to City of London financiers. Armaments for the prospective paramilitary units were to be supplied by Remington Arms Co., a firearms subsidiary controlled by the DuPont family. The DuPonts were not merely passive investors; they were literally fascists in the author's assessment, having maintained cartel arrangements with the Nazi chemicals conglomerate I.G. Farben throughout the 1920s and 1930s. S. Dovey wrote in 2023 that [[Alfred P. Sloan]], who managed [[General Motors]] on behalf of the DuPonts from 1923 to 1966, personally authorized the transfer of Ethyl lead to the [[Luftwaffe]] as late as 1938.[^2] Dovey also wrote that the largest tank manufacturer in Nazi Germany was Opel, a wholly owned GM subsidiary that continued operating under the American corporate umbrella throughout the Second World War.[^2] General Motors' 1974 correspondence to the Senate states that the Nazi government took over the Opel works in November 1939, before the United States entered the war.[^3] The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission recorded that the Russelsheim plant was placed under the control of the German Enemy Property Custodian on November 25, 1942, and that it "sustained severe war damage as a result of allied bombing raids in 1942 and 1944."[^4] The 1974 Senate hearing described Russelsheim as a war plane factory and the Brandenburg works as a truck plant.[^5]
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### Legacy and Connections
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The DuPont family's political influence did not end with the exposure of the Business Plot. Decades later, Joe Biden's first senatorial campaign was fully funded and staffed by DuPont employees in Delaware, and his family moved into an old DuPont mansion following his victory. The corporate culture instilled at General Motors during the DuPont-Sloan era persisted into the 1970s, when executives at the company were accused of participation in organized child abuse rings in Michigan. Francis Shelden and his North Fox Island operation intersected with this same nexus of old money and impunity.
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-third Congress, second session, "Public Statement" released by John W. McCormack and Samuel Dickstein as a subcommittee, November 1934, in *Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities*. https://archive.org/details/CommitteeOnUnamericanActivitiesReport
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[^2]: Dovey, S. (2023). *Eye of the Chickenhawk*. United States: Thehotstar.
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[^3]: Copelin, Philip W., letter to Richard C. Gerstenberg, April 5, 1974, Exhibit 2, pp. 2385-2387; Mooney, Michael M., letter to Senator Philip A. Hart, Exhibit 3, pp. 2387-2389; *The Industrial Reorganization Act: Hearings on S. 1167, Part 4, Ground Transportation Industries* (1974), https://archive.org/details/industrialreorga04unit.
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[^4]: Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States, *Annual Report to the Congress for the Period January 1-December 31, 1967*, excerpt re General Motors Corporation and General Motors Overseas Corporation, Exhibit 9, *Hearings on S. 1167, Part 4*, pp. 2396-2397, https://archive.org/details/industrialreorga04unit.
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[^5]: Stradella, C. G., letter to Richard C. Gerstenberg, April 10, 1974, Exhibit 4, *Hearings on S. 1167, Part 4*, pp. 2390-2392, quoting the Snell report, https://archive.org/details/industrialreorga04unit.
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