Smedley Butler

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Image:SmedleyButler.jpeg Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "the fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated marine in U.S. history. Butler was a double-winner of the Medal of Honor, one of only 19 people to be so decorated. He was noted for his outspoken left-wing views and his book War is a Racket, one of the first works describing the military-industrial complex.

An immensely popular figure in the United States at the time, Butler led the Bonus Army and came forward to the U.S. Congress in 1933 to report that a failed coup had been plotted by wealthy industrialists to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the help of General Butler. According to journalist John Spivak, Congress investigated the Business Plot (also known as the "White House Putsch") after Butler's testimony and confirmed his story [1].

Biography

Butler was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and was the Quaker son of Senator Thomas S. Butler. He attended The Haverford School, (a number of sources incorrectly indicate that he attended Haverford College). [2]. Butler was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1898. He fought in the Philippine-American War later that year. In 1900, he received a brevet promotion to Captain for his action during the Boxer Rebellion (which brevet promotion qualified him to receive the Marine Corps Brevet Medal in 1921). Then in 1903, he fought to protect the U.S. Consulate in Honduras from rebels.

Butler was married on June 30, 1905, to Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia. From 1909 to 1912, he served in Nicaragua. Then in April of 1914, Butler earned his first Medal of Honor for the capture of Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico, during the U.S. occupation of Veracruz, Mexico (1914). On November 17, 1915, he earned his second Medal of Honor for the capture of Fort Riviere, Haiti. He received a Distinguished Service Medal in 1919.

In 1924–1925, Butler was lent to the city of Philadelphia to serve as a police commissioner. His duty was to enforce Prohibition, a monumentally difficult task. Unlike many at the time, Butler insisted on enforcing the law against all violators, rich and poor, and this earned him both enmity and respect.

In 1927, Butler served a tour in China and returned to the United States in 1929 as a Major General. In 1931 he publicly recounted a story about Benito Mussolini in which Mussolini struck a child with his automobile and refused to stop. This story caused international outrage, and Butler was arrested and court-martialed at the insistence of Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson. Butler was ordered to apologize to Mussolini, since the relations between Italy and the United States were friendly at the time. Butler refused, deciding instead to retire on October 1, 1931. In 1932, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate.

However, Butler did have a large political impact in stopping the relatively unknown "White House Putsch" in the 1930s, which was an attempted coup plotted by prominent businessmen who sympathised with Nazism.

Butler was known for his outspoken views against war profiteering and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States. His book War is a Racket holds a highly critical view of the profit motive behind warfare. Between 1935 and 1937, Butler served as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism, a leftist organization, and gave speeches to the Communist Party USA in the 1930s. [3] The following, from the Socialist newspaper Common Sense in 1935, is one of his most widely quoted statements.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

The Camp Smedley Butler Marine Corps base in Okinawa, Japan is named in honor of Butler.

The Boston, Massachusetts, chapter of Veterans for Peace is called the Smedley D. Butler Brigade in his honor.

Smedley Butler died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940. His doctor had described his illness as an incurable condition of the upper abdominal tract, presumably cancer.

Sources and further reading

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Smedley Butler

Schmidt, Hans. Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History. University Press of Kentucky: 1998. ISBN 0813109574.