Though Butler won two Medals of Honor and is exalted among Marines, Katz makes clear that it’s his heroism and not his politics that are remembered-and then dimly-even as he raised questions about American society and foreign policy that go unanswered today. Katz, naturally, links this plot to the Jan. He then took evidence of the plot to Congress, which did precisely nothing. Butler replied to his interlocutor, “my interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy,” promising that he would raise an army to fight these homegrown fascists. Butler was asked to head a column of World War I veterans in a march on Washington as Mussolini had marched on Rome, installing the president as a powerless figurehead fronting a fascist government. In his nearly 35 years in uniform, Butler later said, “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers….In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.” Foreign correspondent Katz bookends Butler’s service with a “Business Plot” that, filtered through the American Legion in the 1930s, was intended to mirror the rise of Mussolini in Italy. He was determined to excel, and nowhere else did he do so more than as an officer in the Marines, patrolling places such as the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico-islands that formed the basis of an American empire. Smedley Butler (1881-1940), whose father was a member of Congress, came from a prosperous, influential family. I first came across the name Smedley Butler in Haiti, shortly after I’d moved there to be the correspondent for the Associated Press in 2007.Character study of the Marine hero who became a radical critic of the system he’d fought to uphold. Read on for an excerpt.… Read the article Discovering Smedley Butler Posted on Janu11:37 am Published by hradmin Leave your thoughts Katz tells the story of America’s forgotten path to global power through the incredible life of Smedley Butler. From Buddy Levy’s epic account of the last great voyage of The … Read the article Smedley Butler: A Gangster of Capitalism Posted on Febru12:00 pm Published by danielle prielipp Leave your thoughts Katz 9 Books for the History Buff in Your Life Posted on Novem10:39 am Published by hradmin Leave your thoughtsĪnother year has come and gone and with it, more books on some of the most fascinating battles, leaders, and adventures in human history.

Smedley butler katz