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.
Character study of the Marine hero who became a radical critic of the system he’d fought to uphold.
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