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. This hub is a working record of that pattern at its origin, graded on the documentary record — not a finished verdict on how close the coup came.
It is also 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.
The Business Plot (graded FACT) — Smedley Butler testified under oath that he was recruited to lead a coup against FDR; the House McCormack–Dickstein Committee reported the attempts “were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution.” No one was prosecuted.
Trading with the Enemy and McCloy Freed the Nazis (both graded FACT) — the same blue-blood financial world wiring American capital into the regimes abroad, and the postwar establishment that let the industrialists who built them walk.
It Has a Rulebook and The Productivity Test (both graded FACT) — how the same corporate-power pattern is codified and rationalized in the present, carrying the 1934 template forward.
OPENHow close the Business Plot actually came to execution — the one genuinely contested question — and whether any financier correspondence beyond the committee record survives to sharpen it.
OPENThe full roster of firms and financiers who bankrolled the interwar capital flows into fascist regimes, beyond the names already documented.
This is a living record, and our readers make it stronger. If there is a thread here you want us to chase, or you have documents or firsthand knowledge that would sharpen a claim, send it to us. We read every lead.
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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.
The record, in order
Every dated event on this hub, assembled chronologically. The page may cover events in a different order for the narrative; this is the straight timeline.
- Nov 1932It Has a RulebookWeimar's industrialists petitioned for the strongman — in writing.
- 1933The Transfer AgreementThe agreement broke the international anti-Nazi boycott and gave the Reich export earnings — and it split Jewish opinion, with Jabotinsky opposing it.
- Jan 1933Trading With the EnemySullivan & Cromwell and John Foster Dulles were pulled in to protect the American CSSC stake.
- Jan 4, 1933The Plot to Seize the White HouseThe same Wall Street world was, in these years, financing fascism abroad.
- Feb 1933It Has a RulebookThen they funded the campaign — the Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933.
- Aug 25, 1933The Transfer AgreementThe Haavara Agreement (August 25, 1933) let ~60,000 German Jews and a share of their assets reach Palestine through a Nazi-approved transfer mechanism.
- 1934The Plot to Seize the White HouseThe New York Times dismissed the Business Plot in 1934, then conceded the committee's finding
- Mar 18, 1934Trading With the EnemyUBC's network touched a firm that used Auschwitz slave labour — but Bush's exact tie at the time is murky.
- Nov 20, 1934The Plot to Seize the White HouseSmedley Butler testified under oath to a plot to depose FDR.
- Feb 15, 1935The Plot to Seize the White HouseA congressional committee said the plan was real — and no one was charged.
- 1937The Transfer AgreementBefore the war, Zionism was a contested minority within Jewish life — opposed by Reform, the Bund, much of Orthodoxy, and the assimilationist establishment.
- 1942Trading With the EnemyThe US government seized UBC and affiliates as enemy assets in 1942.
- May 1942The Transfer AgreementThe 1942 Biltmore Program made the open demand for a 'Jewish Commonwealth' over all of Palestine, with Ben-Gurion eclipsing Weizmann.
- Jan 31, 1951The Man Who Freed the NazisAs High Commissioner, McCloy gutted the Nuremberg tribunal sentences.
- Feb 1951The Man Who Freed the NazisHe freed Alfried Krupp and gave him back his fortune.
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 Productivity Test
On April 16, 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of autistic children: 'These are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.' He said it; it is verified verbatim (Snopes; NPR; Washington Post) and it drew backlash across parties, from autism advocates, and from his own relatives. Separately and factually, the American eugenics movement — which justified forced sterilization by ranking human worth in terms of economic productivity and 'burden' — was bankrolled by the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman fortune, funded the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, and helped bridge to Nazi race science (the thread that runs into 'Wall Street and the Third Reich'). THE ENTIRE PAYLOAD IS A POSED QUESTION: does the rhetoric of judging people by what they'll 'never' produce echo that historical logic, and is vigilance about it warranted? We answer honestly — yes, the parallel in logic is real and fair to name; but there is NO evidence RFK Jr. advocates sterilization or any eugenic policy, and drawing that line would be unfair and unsupported. We do not draw it. This is the most conservative piece on the site by design: it accuses no one and models 'raise the reasonable question, refuse the unreasonable leap.'
The Transfer Agreement
The 1933–45 bridge spoke of the Israel & Zionism hub. The Haavara ('transfer') Agreement, signed 25 August 1933 between Nazi economic authorities and Zionist bodies (the Zionist Federation of Germany and the Anglo-Palestine Bank), let roughly 60,000 German Jews and a portion of their assets reach Mandatory Palestine between 1933 and 1939 — and in the same motion broke the international anti-Nazi boycott and handed the Reich hard-currency exports (FACT). It bitterly split Jewish opinion; the Revisionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky opposed it (FACT). The dollar valuation (~ M) originates with the journalist Edwin Black and is attributed, not asserted; the sums are estimated on the order of 100 million reichsmarks. Two more documented facts frame it: before the war Zionism was a contested minority within Jewish life, opposed by Reform (anti-Zionist until the 1937 Columbus Platform), the Bund, much of Orthodoxy (Agudath Israel), and assimilationist bodies like the AJC (FACT); and the 1942 Biltmore Program made the open demand for a 'Jewish Commonwealth' over all of Palestine, with Ben-Gurion eclipsing Weizmann (FACT). Held down and refused: the anachronistic charge that Zionism 'funded the annihilation' (the Haavara window predates the extermination program); and the strong 'sabotaged rescue' thesis (Beit-Zvi), which is contested (Gelber) and posed as an open question, not asserted, alongside the movement's real rescue work (Haavara itself, later Aliyah Bet). Sits between Dear Lord Rothschild (1917) and Palestine or Nothing (1945). Mainstream/academic/primary sources only (Britannica, Jewish Virtual Library, Edwin Black attributed); no trope-adjacent sourcing.
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.
It Has a Rulebook
Historical-anchor flagship of The Corporate State hub. Thesis: today's gov-corp/network-state project is not unprecedented; big business has repeatedly bankrolled the authoritarian turn, and that history gives the contemporary echo a rulebook. FACT spine: the Industrielleneingabe (Nov 1932) — ~19-20 industrialists and financiers incl. Gustav Krupp and an IG Farben representative petitioned Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor, organized via the Keppler Circle (Wilhelm Keppler, Hjalmar Schacht); the Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 — industrialists tied to IG Farben, Krupp, Telefunken, Osram pledged ~2-3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi election campaign; the credibility flex that Mussolini's actual corporatism was vertical estate organization and that the famous 'fascism is the merger of state and corporate power' quote is APOCRYPHAL (no primary source, first surfaced in a 2004 book) — debunked, not deployed; the American chapters cross-linked not rebuilt (the Business Plot, Trading with the Enemy, McCloy freeing Nazi industrialists, Operation Paperclip); the Gilded-Age wealth echo (top 0.00001% ~12% of national income vs ~4% in 1910, ~triple the Gilded Age peak per Zucman; ~905 US billionaires ~.8T, Forbes 2025); and the ideology anchor via the canon this tech-right openly cites (Curtis Yarvin's writings calling slavery 'a natural human relationship' and scorning 'natural human equality' — his denial carried; Nick Land's advocacy of 'hyper-racism'). GUARDRAIL: documents the pattern and the canon's own words; the parallel to today is analysis/attributed, never a flat claim that named living people are Nazis, fascists, or racists; distinguishes 'big business repeatedly enabled authoritarianism' (documented) from 'X is literally a fascist' (not our claim).
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.