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Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 1880– 5 April 1964) was an American general who ruled the United States as an unelected military strongman from 1936 to 1964. MacArthur assumed power via a coup d'etat backed by the American Liberty League, an alliance of politicians and industrialists, and the American Legion veteran's organization. The 29 year period in American history in which MacArthur ruled, from the coup d'etat to his death, is commonly known as MacArthur era or as the MacArthur dictatorship.

Raised in a military family in the American Old West, MacArthur was valedictorian at the West Texas Military Academy where he finished high school, and First Captain at the United States Military Academy at West Point. MacArthur rose through the ranks of the U.S. army while serving during the United States occupation of Veracruz, the United States entry into World War I, and the United States occupation of the Philippines, becoming the country's youngest major general by the 1925. In 1930, he became Chief of Staff of the United States Army. As such, he was involved in the expulsion of the proto-fascist veteran's march from Washington, D.C. in 1932 under President Herbert Hoover.

The landslide election of president Franklin Roosevelt, a liberal politician advocating a Keynesian economic platform, alarmed many conservative politicians in the United States. A formal organization of conservatives, the American Liberty League, inspired by the Bonus Army and European national conservative and fascist movements such as Mussolini's Blackshirts and Action Francaise, asked the now nationally famous MacArthur to take over leadership of a large veteran's organization, the American Legion. MacArthur agreed, and rapidly turned the Legion, already a strike-breaking outfit which had expressed sympathies to Italian fascism as early as 1922, into a militant organization expressing strong anti-communist and economically populist views. The Legion developed significant support in parts of the American South, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest, forming alliances with various radical right and fascist movements, and received support from a number of politicians from a broad spectrum of political ideologies. MacArthur eventually led a second veteran's march to Washington D.C., backed by significant elements of the national army, forcing Roosevelt to appoint MacArthur to an expansive position called Secretary of General Affairs.

As Secretary of General Affairs, MacArthur rapidly consolidated power,