BY Table of Contents
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history at the time of his death, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient who served in conflicts from the Spanish-American War to the Banana Wars. He then became the military’s most vocal critic of war profiteering.
In 1935 Butler published War Is a Racket, a blistering indictment of how wars are fought for corporate profit at the expense of soldiers and taxpayers. His transformation from career warrior to anti-war crusader gives his words a credibility that armchair critics can never match.
General Smedley Butler Quotes
“My interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.”
– Smedley Butler, Smedley Butler testimony to McCormack-Dickstein Committee (1934) — via Gangsters of Capitalism by Jonathan M. Katz (Google Books)
“What business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 5: To Hell With War!
“The professional soldiers and sailors don’t want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 5: To Hell With War!
“There are only two reasons why you should ever be asked to give your youngsters. One is defense of our homes. The other is the defense of our Bill of Rights and particularly the right to worship God as we see fit. Every other reason advanced for the murder of young men is a racket, pure and simple.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier (expanded edition)
“In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn’t join the army.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 3: Who Pays the Bills?
“To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. 1. We must take the profit out of war. 2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. 3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 4: How to Smash This Racket
War Is a Racket Quotes
“The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred percent – the sky is the limit.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 2: Who Makes the Profits?
“Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 2: Who Makes the Profits?
“For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 1: War Is a Racket
“I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.”
– Smedley Butler, Smedley Butler on Interventionism — Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC
“How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? … How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 1: War Is a Racket
“Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 1: War Is a Racket
“And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 1: War Is a Racket
“But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, and what does it profit the nation?”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 1: War Is a Racket
“There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell’s bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 1: War Is a Racket
“It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.”
– Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler (1935), Chapter 2: Who Makes the Profits?
Final Thoughts
Butler is one of the few people in American history who earned the right to criticize war by fighting in it. Two Medals of Honor, 34 years of service, and then a complete rejection of the system that had decorated him. That takes a kind of courage that has nothing to do with combat.
War Is a Racket is under 50 pages. Read it in an afternoon and you’ll never look at a defense budget the same way again.