Where the machine starts.
Before the CIA, before the Dulles brothers ran the postwar world, a slice of American high finance kept close company with fascism: it tried to recruit a general and half a million veterans to depose Franklin Roosevelt at home, banked the industrialists who bankrolled Hitler abroad, and — when the war was won — helped set those same industrialists free. This hub tracks that record, decade by decade, claim by graded claim.
What this hub is about
The Business Plot of 1933–34 is the earliest clean instance of this site's entire thesis: concentrated private money moving against elected government, and a compliant press treating the exposure as the embarrassment rather than the plot. Major General Smedley Butler testified under oath that he'd been recruited to lead the coup; the House's McCormack–Dickstein Committee investigated and reported that the attempts “were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution.” No one was prosecuted.
This hub is the origin point of the map — and the place where the grading discipline matters most, because the real record (American blue-blood money: Morgan, du Pont) is powerful enough that the hub actively rejects the myths that cling to it (a Prescott Bush role; a Rothschild hand). From here the thread runs forward into the Dulles Blueprint — the same Wall Street world that shrugged at a coup was, in the same years, wiring American capital into the regimes abroad.
Why the discipline matters here most
- Name the real money. The documented financiers were American establishment capital — the Morgan orbit, the du Ponts, Robert Sterling Clark. That is more damning, and more defensible, than any myth.
- Reject the Rothschild version outright. There is no evidence tying the Rothschild family to the plot; that framing is a baseless antisemitic trope, and repeating it would only discredit the real story.
- Keep Prescott Bush out of the plot. His name gets attached via a disputed claim that conflates the Business Plot with a separate Nazi-finance matter. We don't place him in the coup.
- A committee finding is not a conviction. Congress credited the core; no one was charged; historians debate how far it would have gone. We grade the plan as real and its execution-odds as contested.
The story, in four beats
A general blows the whistle
Smedley Butler — twice a Medal of Honor recipient — testified in November 1934 that bond salesman Gerald MacGuire had tried to recruit him to lead a veterans' march on Washington to force FDR aside. It is the flagship of the hub.
Morgan, du Pont, and the Liberty League
MacGuire worked for a J.P. Morgan-linked banker; his travel was funded by a Singer fortune heir; the overlapping, du Pont-financed American Liberty League was the “respectable” anti-New-Deal front. American establishment capital, on the record.
“Hoax” first, correction later
The New York Times dismissed Butler's account as a “gigantic hoax” — then, after the committee reported, ran “Plan for March on Capital Is Held Proved.” The template for how uncomfortable elite stories get managed.
The same finance world, backing fascism abroad
The Wall Street law-firm milieu that shrugged at a coup at home — Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles brothers, the Schröder banking network — was in these very years the conduit for American capital into Nazi Germany. That is the bridge into the Dulles Blueprint — documented financing, not a shared plot.
Investigations in this hub
Full-length, graded pieces. More are in production as the origin thread grows.
The Plot to Seize the White House
The Business Plot (1933–34): Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler testified under oath (Nov 20 1934) to the House McCormack–Dickstein Committee that bond salesman Gerald MacGuire tried to recruit him to lead ~500,000 veterans on Washington to sideline FDR and install a business-friendly strongman, funded by wealthy backers. The committee's Feb 15 1935 report credited the core ('discussed… planned… might have been placed in execution'), corroborated by MacGuire's correspondence with backer Robert Sterling Clark; no one was prosecuted. The money orbit was American establishment capital — MacGuire worked for Morgan-linked banker Grayson M-P Murphy; the du Pont-funded American Liberty League was the respectable front. The NYT called it a 'gigantic hoax' (Nov 1934) then ran 'Plan for March on Capital Is Held Proved' (Feb 1935). Graded FACT (testimony; committee report; money orbit; media burial); PROBABLY TRUE (a serious funded scheme — how close it came is contested; Schlesinger's 'cocktail putsch'). BRIDGE (FACT, documented financing not a plot role): Sullivan & Cromwell / the Dulles brothers / Allen Dulles's J. Henry Schroder directorship / Kurt von Schröder's Nazi financing — the same finance world bankrolling fascism abroad. GUARDRAILS: Prescott Bush's Business-Plot link is disputed/conflated with the separate Union Banking–Thyssen matter (excluded); there is NO documented Rothschild tie (financiers were American) and that version is a rejected antisemitic trope; the antisemitic-sourced 'Dulleses in the room with Hitler' claim is not used. Interim home the-dulles-blueprint (prequel); intended to anchor its own origin hub.
Trading With the Enemy
The documented Prescott Bush / Union Banking Corporation Nazi-finance story (distinct from the Business Plot, which he was NOT part of). Bush was a founding director/shareholder of UBC, a NY bank set up by his father-in-law G.H. Walker and the Harriman circle to serve the Thyssens; Fritz Thyssen helped finance Hitler's rise. On Oct 20 1942 the US Alien Property Custodian seized UBC under the Trading with the Enemy Act (Vesting Order 248), plus affiliates (Holland-American Trading, Seamless Steel, Silesian-American). Sourced to the Guardian (2004), built on National Archives + Library of Congress (Harriman papers) files. Graded FACT (directorship; 1942 seizure; Thyssen link); FALSE/MISLEADING for 'Prescott Bush was a Nazi sympathizer who knowingly funded Hitler' (the Guardian itself: 'no suggestion' of sympathy; internet chatter 'inaccurate and unfair'); SOME SMOKE for the CSSC/Auschwitz slave-labour network tie (survivors' lawsuit real; Bush's timed involvement 'not clear') and for the 'built the Bush dynasty fortune' claim (suggested, not proven). Guardrail: business ties != ideological complicity; not the Business Plot. Home wall-street-and-fascism (finance-fascism thread, beside the S&C/Schröder story); cross_hub the-dulles-blueprint.
The Man Who Freed the Nazis
As US High Commissioner for Germany (1949-52), John J. McCloy used his clemency power to reduce or commute the majority of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal sentences, freed the slave-labour industrialist Alfried Krupp and restored his fortune, then returned to run Chase, the World Bank, and the Ford Foundation. The acts are documented FACT; the motive - Cold War pragmatism vs. a legal clemency-board review - is graded and stated both ways.
Questions worth taking seriously
Was it real, or a hoax like the Times said?
A congressional committee investigated and reported the attempts “were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution.” The plan was real; how close it came to launching is what's debated. The “hoax” line was the Times' first take, which the paper walked back after the committee reported.
Why is this the first hub?
Because it's the earliest clean case of the pattern the whole site tracks: private money moving against democracy, and a press that buries the exposure. Everything else reads as sequel.
If you are named in this hub
If you are named on any page in this hub, or represent someone who is, and believe we have a fact wrong, we want to hear from you. We correct the record when shown to be wrong, and we carry responses. Reach us through the contact channels on our mission page.