BBC: Bush's Grandfather Planned White House Coup

A BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.

In 1933, Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush the current President's grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Footnotes

1. See Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973) Archer's book is "the first effort to tell the whole story of the plot in sequence and full detail." Also see George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1962), which has extensive material on the plot. The interested reader should also take a look at George Seldes, One Thousand Americans (New York: Honi & Gaer, 1947). Unfortunately, while these books have kept the event alive—a valiant effort that should by no means be underrated—they do reflect an amteurish confusion of fascism with moderation. Supporters of the Constitution would, of course, absolutely reject the dictatorial efforts described. Some groups, such as the American Conservative Union for instance, have for a decade aimed their attacks at the targets identified by Archer and Seldes. The misinterpretation by the latter authors is accentuated because confusion over the meaning of conservatism also prevented these authors from exploring the possibility that Wall Street had none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt in mind as "the man on the white horse."