War Is a Racket

Butler's arithmetic: who died, who paid, who profited. The margins never changed.

Marine Major General Smedley Butler — twice Medal of Honor — published 'War Is a Racket' in 1935: an insider's ledger of who profits from intervention, naming the corporate beneficiaries of his own campaigns. In 1934 he testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that financiers had approached him to lead a coup against Roosevelt (the 'Business Plot'); the committee's report found his core claims credible, and no one was prosecuted. The most decorated Marine of his era as primary source: documented, in print, and permanently inconvenient.