Smedley Butler

Smedley Butler (1881–1940) was a U.S. Marine Corps major general who became an outspoken critic of military intervention and corporate influence. In 1934, he testified that plotters had approached him about leading a veterans’ march intended to pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: The 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 to 1945. The alleged 1934 plot targeted Roosevelt’s administration and became the subject of congressional inquiry.
Spanish–American War: An 1898 war between the United States and Spain that resulted in U.S. control over former Spanish territories. Butler enlisted in the Marine Corps during this war, beginning a career shaped by overseas deployments.
Business Plot: An alleged 1934 scheme in which business interests sought to recruit a veterans’ leader to pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Butler’s testimony supplied the central public account of the proposed coup attempt.
War Is a Racket: A 1935 pamphlet by Smedley Butler arguing that war enriches private interests while imposing costs on the public. Butler condensed his antiwar argument into this widely circulated account of military intervention and profit.
Isolationism: A foreign-policy approach that seeks to limit a country’s involvement in international affairs. Butler opposed military interventions, while isolationism more broadly seeks distance from foreign commitments.
Gerald C. MacGuire: A bond salesman accused by Smedley Butler of recruiting him for a proposed veterans’ movement. Butler named MacGuire as the intermediary who described the proposed march and its financing.
Banana Wars: A series of U.S. military interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean, chiefly from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s. Butler’s repeated deployments in the region made him a firsthand witness to interventionism.
McCormack–Dickstein Committee: A U.S. House committee that investigated allegations of a planned coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934. The committee took Butler’s testimony, corroborated parts of his account, and found no evidence of an actual coup underway.
Military–industrial complex: A network of relationships among a country’s armed forces, defense industries, and political institutions. Butler’s critique of corporate beneficiaries of war anticipates concerns associated with this concept.
Marine Corps leadership: The officers who command and administer the United States Marine Corps. Butler’s later antiwar activism diverged from the institutional role he had held as a senior Marine officer.

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