| December 20 |  |
Editor says, What if socialist America lives to regret the overthrow of the Wall Street elite who seized power from FDR. This story was published in the January 2009 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1936, on this day Socialist President-elect Alfred Emanuel Smith, Jr. confirmed the abolition of the Office of Secretary of General Affairs.The Business Plot Unravels
Because in 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been reduced to a figurehead by the so-called Business Plotters, Wall Street elites who had manoerved Major General Smedley D. Butler into the all powerful position of super-secretary.
The most decorated US marine in history, Butler had been elevated to national political stature by his appearance alongside former Army sergeant Walter W. Waters at the Anacostia flats (pictured) on July 17, 1932. Water's so-called Bonus Army were the thousands of World War I veterans who had converged on Washington, D.C. to set up tent camps, demanding immediate payment of bonuses due them according to the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. President Herbert Hoover ordered the marchers removed, and their camps were destroyed by US Army cavalry troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.
But it was not just veterans that questioned whether the foundations of liberal democracy were being shaken by the Great Depression.
The cocktail elite's opposition to the New Deal program led the White House to leak the silent government take-over to the press. Yet the newspapers were controlled by the elite, who down-played Roosevelt's evidence to protect the interests of advertisers and their owners.
In the absence of New Deal Projects to employ the general population, the public soon turned against the popular General Butler. And two years later, the defeated Democratic candidate from the 1928 Presidential race Al Smith ran on a Socialist ticket, promising to seize the government back for the people. Perhaps the iconic image of the era would be Smith's grandchildren cutting the ribbon when the world's tallest skyscraper, the Socialist State Building opened on May 1, 1941.
Of course less than twelve months later the Building was destroyed by RAF bombers flying from the last outpost of British power in North America, St. Johns in Newfoundland. And as imperial British and Germans troops prepared to invade, Socialist America would sorely miss the commanding leadership of 'the Flying Quaker', former Secretary of General Affairs Major General Smedley D. Butler.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Today in Alternate History, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beasts Source: Wikipedia Labels: Al Smith, Socialist, America, Roosevelt, Business Plot. Editor says, The idea that the Business Plot would unravel quickly was Mr Zach Timmons with some input from Chris Oakley and Eric Oppen. We delayed the opening of the Empire State Building by a decade to fit the new landscape. Mr Oppen suggested the final coda.
~ So far, so good. Now, how would this tie into WWII? If you have a socialistic system with private ownership of business, you have small-f fascism...maybe an Italo-American alliance against the Nazis and Soviets?
~ I've always been pretty skeptical about that whole story; Smedley Butler strikes me as a person with a few tiles loose in his roof. For decades, he served well and loyally with the Marine Corps, and then he suddenly turned against the whole thing---kind of late in the day to have an attack of conscience, I'd think, not to mention that the people he'd been fighting (Banana Wars, they were called) weren't exactly the second coming of George Washington themselves.
One idea might be to have it come out that the whole thing was cooked up by someone else to get FDR and the business community at each other's throats. I don't remember if Huey Long was a big deal then, but he'd have loved to see something like that.
~ If anything, Eric, I imagine Al Smith would be even more isolationist than FDR (not that FDR was a true isolationist). He'd certainly keep us out of a European conflict, and would likely grant the Japanese concessions in order to placate them, so he could focus on domestic issues. And I think Huey Long would be a large part of any populist/socialist uprising, he was indeed a major political player during this time period; I think he would've mounted a populist challenge to FDR in OTL 1936 election, much less a semi-coup as presented here.
~ Huey Long was a big deal then, so feel free to explore that...
~ Great execution, if I do say so myself...
~ I would like to see/hear what the Japanese are doing throughout the Asia-Pacific region. If the US is about to be invaded, & fall to the British & Germans, I would dare say that the Japanese would get into the act as well.
~ I’ve wondered about that for years, since reading a book about the plot.
From what I understand, though, Butler’s politics had undergone a substantial change from what they had once been in the days when he served as, in his own later words, a “racketeer for capitalism.” You’d have to go back quite a way to change that.
An easier way to achieve a similar result is to have Douglas MacArthur refuse to fire on the so-called “bonus marchers” in 1932. MacArthur was the plotters’ preference for the military head of their planned coup, but his actions against the World War I vets of the “bonus army” permanently damaged him politically with veterans. If, however, he had refrained from ordering his men to fire in that incident, he might have been approached by the plotters instead of Butler, with perhaps very different results.
Depending on the timing, a successful coup in the U.S. in might even have had an effect on a different political crisis, this one in England. If it had happened before Edward VIII’s abdication in December 1936, it’s conceivable that he could have pressed Parliament into accepting his marrying Wallis
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
