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War is a racket

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War Is a Racket is a speech and 1935 short book by Smedley D. Butler, a retired US Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler discusses how business interests commercially benefit, such as war profiteering from warfare.[1]

After Butler retired from the US Marine Corps in October 1931, he made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a short book published in 1935. His work was condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement, which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".[2]

See also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=35004638&searchType=1&permalink=y
  2. Thomas, Lowell (1933). Old Gimlet Eye: Adventures of Smedley D. Butler. Farrar & Rinehart.