Amsterdam (2022 film)
video
***** 5 Stars I LOVED THE MOVIE
The story is based on the Business Plot, a 1933 political conspiracy in the US, and follows three friends—a doctor, a nurse, and a lawyer—who are caught in the mysterious murder of a retired US general.
MUST KNOW BACKGROUND!!
WWI
These wronged WWI vets camped in DC in protest until the president had the Army throw them out
In 1932, over 15,000 veterans and their family members who were camped out near Washington D.C. were forcefully evicted by the Army from the capital grounds and saw their camps burned and children attacked by orders from President Herbert Hoover and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
It was commonly known as the “Bonus Bill” and called for every U.S. veteran of World War I to receive a bonus based on their duration and type of service in World War I.
In the largest protest of the Depression, World War I veterans converged on Washington, DC seeking justice. They were met with tanks, bayonets, and tear gas.
The real-life Marine Corps Gen. Smedley Butler, who inspired the character played by Robert De Niro in the movie Amsterdam.
Smedley Butler
He has a base named after him, he hated fascism. He fought against it home and abroad.
The Marine Corps
The Marine Corps was created on November 10, 1775, in Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by a resolution of the Continental Congress.
In 1834 the Marines became part of the Department of the Navy. ”
Smedely Butler the only Marine Officer to win the Medal of Honor twice. Keep in mind, this was when WWI was just the World War.
Reading “War is a Racket” is frighteningly similar to what is happening today, except the monetary figures are bigger. He foresaw WWII and all his points are verifiable class material.
Smedley Butler was one of the most beloved military leaders in American history. Teddy Roosevelt called him, “The finest fighting man in America.” Butler was known as “the fighting Quaker.” Butler was only one of four Americans ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. He tried returning one of them because he did not feel it was earned, but was instead ordered to wear it. Rank-and-file American soldiers loved him. Butler helped run the Marines for a generation, carried a pack and was in the trenches with his troops. Butler was known for his honesty and appreciation for the common man. In Butler’s case, it was genuine.
BACKGROUND MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
The Business of War (an excerpt about Smedley Butler) [1]
Near the end of his career, he began questioning the issue of foreign wars. He began calling war a racket, and became adamant about the imperialist aspect of the U.S.’ foreign interventions. He was not a pacifist, and came from a long line of republicans. When he had an opinion, however, he made it known. In 1935, after he retired, he published a slim book titled War is a Racket. Butler campaigned on that theme for the rest of his life.
Butler believed that all U.S. foreign interventions were self-serving acts, which lined the pockets of the rich at the expense of the nations it victimized, sending young boys to do the dirty work, wearing American uniforms. People such as Franklin Roosevelt sidled up to the trough, to “invest” in Haiti after it had been secured for American interests. Roosevelt drafted the Haitian constitution that overturned more than a century of Haitian strategy of not allowing foreign land ownership to gain a foothold in Haiti, which would begin undermining its sovereignty. FDR was an integral part of the neocolonial strategy of pillaging Haiti. Butler provided the muscle to pull it off. Read “War is a Racket” by Smedely Butler
AMSTERDAM
The primary historical event on which “Amsterdam” centers on is the Business Plot political conspiracy from 1933. News of the plot arose when retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler claimed that a group of wealthy businessmen had approached him with a plan to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The following year, Butler testified in front of the the House Committee on Un-American Activities, claiming the group was planning the coup. The committee’s final report asserted, “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”
Smedley Butler pretended to go along with the plot and met other members of the conspiracy. In November 1934 Butler began testifying in secret to the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities (the McCormack-Dickstein Committee). Butler claimed that the American Liberty League was the main organization behind the plot. He added the main backers were the Du Pont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
Butler also named Prescott Bush as one of the conspirators. At the time Bush was along with W. Averell Harriman, E. Roland Harriman and George Herbert Walker, managing partners in Brown Brothers Harriman. Bush was also director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation. This in turn controlled the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, that owned one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland. Friedrich Flick owned the other two-thirds of the operation. Flick was a leading financial supporter of the Nazi Party and in the 1930s donated over seven million marks to the party. A close friend of Heinrich Himmler, Flick also gave the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) 10,000 marks a year.
https://richashell.com/financial-literacy/skull-and-bones
The American Liberty League Bankrolled a speakers’ bureau, hosted nation-wide radio shows and launched lawsuits targeting the New Deal’s 1935 Wagner Act because it allowed collective bargaining. Created in August 1934, this association of wealthiest corporate leaders said its goals were “to combat radicalism, to teach…respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.” It attacked government funding for poverty relief and social services and opposed all “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.” League news releases were often used verbatim by corporate media that shared the League’s anti-democratic values. Between Aug. 1934 and Nov. 1936, the League got 35 favourable, front-page stories in the New York Times. An exception to the anti-FDR media were the Scripps-Howard papers. In Jan. 1936, they ran a story headlined “Liberty League Controlled by Owners of $37,000,000,000.” It exposed that League backers directed U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, Goodyear Tire and the Mutual Life Insurance Co. ~ Skull and Bones
Sources:
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/all-both.html
Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, 1976.
Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 1983.
Gerard Colby, DuPont Dynasty, 1984.
During Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi Germany received major financial help from members of Skull and Bones, including Prescott Bush. Through Brown Brothers Harriman &Co., the Union Banking Corporation, and Hamburg America Shipping Lines, Bush and other Bonesmen helped German industrialist Fritz Thyssen build the Nazi War Machine. Of all the war materials which the German military used, the percentage which came from Thyssen is astounding: 50.8% of pig iron, 41.4% of universal plate, 36% of heavy plate, 38.5% of galvanized steel, 45.5% of pipes and tubes, 22.1% of wire, 35% of explosives.
THUGGEE FRATERNITY FAMILY MEMBERS PRESCOTT, GEORGE H.W. AND GEORGE W. BUSH