America returns to isolationism after World War II

[cex]

Henry Wallace is retained on the platform in 1944 and becomes POTUS in 1945 after FDR dies. He promptly withdraws all American troops from Europe and Asia in 1945 (if you still believe this is implausible, read his 1948 Progressive Party platform), cuts spending and numbers of the US Armed Forces down to pre-World War II levels and then submits the US' nuclear weapons to UN control in the interests of world peace under the 1946 Baruch Plan, see https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ces-us-that-un-needs-to-control-nukes.420424/.

Inevitably, there's no Marshall Plan to reconstruct either Europe or Asia here.

At the 1948 RNC, a Taft-Stassen combination successfully defeats Dewey for the nomination. Unlike Dewey, Taft really defeats the unpopular Wallace in a landslide (with the Dixiecratic endorsement) and then proceeds to implement a second 'return to normalcy', withdrawing from the United Nations altogether, and systematically dismantling the New Deal.

 

[DougM]

To be clear.. he pulls the troops after the war itself is over?
And he does it within a few months so no occupation at all? Yeah that would get him tossed out on his but after a very short impeachment trial. You can pull the troops from everywhere but Japan and Germany very fast but you will need at least a couple years in both to rebuild the German and Japanese Governments as the US had a stated goal yo not leave the existing Germannand Japanese governments after the war ended, Having seen how badly that turned out ip after WW1. So a fast withdraw is basically pulling Defeat from Jaws of Victory and pretty much negating the war itself. That would be a fast way for Congress to overrule him and if they must kick him out. If they can’t find another reason they will accuse him of treason for letting the Japanese and Germans off the hook. And letting Russia basically take over Europe.

Now if you want yo limit the troops to just Japan and Western Germany and then pull then in a few years after new governments are created and keep the US out of the Korean War, thrn you can do that easy enough, but just Turing around and leaving the two countries you spent 4 years fighting uo keep on going pretty much as they where…? Yeah that is not going to fly.

 

[Beatriz]

“For All Time” had the US only have troops in West Germany, Japan, Philippines in the 1950s

 

[cex]

To be clear.. he pulls the troops after the war itself is over?
And he does it within a few months so no occupation at all? Yeah that would get him tossed out on his but after a very short impeachment trial. You can pull the troops from everywhere but Japan and Germany very fast but you will need at least a couple years in both to rebuild the German and Japanese Governments as the US had a stated goal yo not leave the existing Germannand Japanese governments after the war ended, Having seen how badly that turned out ip after WW1. So a fast withdraw is basically pulling Defeat from Jaws of Victory and pretty much negating the war itself. That would be a fast way for Congress to overrule him and if they must kick him out. If they can’t find another reason they will accuse him of treason for letting the Japanese and Germans off the hook. And letting Russia basically take over Europe.

Now if you want yo limit the troops to just Japan and Western Germany and then pull then in a few years after new governments are created and keep the US out of the Korean War, thrn you can do that easy enough, but just Turing around and leaving the two countries you spent 4 years fighting uo keep on going pretty much as they where…? Yeah that is not going to fly.

“For All Time” had the US only have troops in West Germany, Japan, Philippines in the 1950s

It would have been politically feasible in 1945 to turn the American occupation zones in Europe over to the USSR, due to the general war exhaustion and the popular perception of Stalin as a 'wartime ally'.

 

[DougM]

No it wouldn’t have. Pretty much everyone knew the USSR was not so much an Allie as the enemy of my enemy.
And the war was over so any supposed war fatigue is not a factor. Yes the trips didn’t want to fight anymore as they viewed it as they had fought and won their war. But that is not even closing yo be willing yo walk away and hand over everything they had caught and bread and died over to others.
I have NO idea why you would think these people that had fought so hard and suffered so much were not willing to put up with relatively minor inconvenience it took to make sure that Germany and Japan did not either continue their old ways or that the USSR and its communist dictatorship didn’t just take over.
The whole point of WW2 was so that the US would not have to be right back there in another 20 years and the idea of pulling out within weeks of winning is not in anyway going to prevent another war in a coupl decades.

In essence the whole idea is like saying that an NFL team that got to the superbowl and is up with a minute on the clock decides that it is to much bother to stay on the field and see the game out and secure its victory, so they just walk off and forfeit the game,

We have had some odd PODs on this forum but this has to perhaps be the oddest yet. The US wins, the fighting is over but we are to lazy to see it through and toss away 4 years of effort suffering and death to get home a bit sooner and not have yo keep troops in Germany and Japan a few years to make sure.
This is truly impossible. Congress would kick the President out so fast it isn’t even funny, the only real question is do the declar him mentally unfit for the job or just declare him a trait or and toss him in jail? I would guess the latter.

Yes you can get the US to ultimately pull back and go isolationist but not that soon. And even that would be a bit hard as by the time Germany and Japan as stable enough for the US to completely withdraw the USSR is very obviously the new enemy so no one would want to hand half the world to them.

 

[cex]

No it wouldn’t have. Pretty much everyone knew the USSR was not so much an Allie as the enemy of my enemy.
And the war was over so any supposed war fatigue is not a factor. Yes the trips didn’t want to fight anymore as they viewed it as they had fought and won their war. But that is not even closing yo be willing yo walk away and hand over everything they had caught and bread and died over to others.
I have NO idea why you would think these people that had fought so hard and suffered so much were not willing to put up with relatively minor inconvenience it took to make sure that Germany and Japan did not either continue their old ways or that the USSR and its communist dictatorship didn’t just take over.
The whole point of WW2 was so that the US would not have to be right back there in another 20 years and the idea of pulling out within weeks of winning is not in anyway going to prevent another war in a coupl decades.

In essence the whole idea is like saying that an NFL team that got to the superbowl and is up with a minute on the clock decides that it is to much bother to stay on the field and see the game out and secure its victory, so they just walk off and forfeit the game,

We have had some odd PODs on this forum but this has to perhaps be the oddest yet. The US wins, the fighting is over but we are to lazy to see it through and toss away 4 years of effort suffering and death to get home a bit sooner and not have yo keep troops in Germany and Japan a few years to make sure.
This is truly impossible. Congress would kick the President out so fast it isn’t even funny, the only real question is do the declar him mentally unfit for the job or just declare him a trait or and toss him in jail? I would guess the latter.

Yes you can get the US to ultimately pull back and go isolationist but not that soon. And even that would be a bit hard as by the time Germany and Japan as stable enough for the US to completely withdraw the USSR is very obviously the new enemy so no one would want to hand half the world to them.

Remember that when Harding took over from Wilson, the US withdrew from the Rhineland a full decade ahead ot its obligations.

 

[Citycat]

Remember that when Harding took over from Wilson, the US withdrew from the Rhineland a full decadeahead ot its obligations.

The public sentiment during that era was vastly different, and let's be brutally honest here – Harding and Wilson were an absolute disgrace, arguably two of the most abysmal Presidents the 20th century had to endure. The people unfortunate enough to live through that crucial period had to suffer the consequences of having these two incompetents consecutively in office.

 

[Garrison]

It would have been politically feasible in 1945 to turn the American occupation zones in Europe over to the USSR, due to the general war exhaustion and the popular perception of Stalin as a 'wartime ally'.

No, there is zero chance of that, it would be political suicide and few in the west had any illusions about Stalin. The Western Allies were willing to co-exist while the war was on but they weren't going to just hand Europe over to Stalin.

Remember that when Harding took over from Wilson, the US withdrew from the Rhineland a full decadeahead ot its obligations.

Which is why no one in the US government is going to repeat that mistake. The only way the US would withdraw is if they carried out a full Morgenthau Plan first.

 

[Gillan1220]

Just no.

Operation Magic Carpet took until 1946 to complete. You can't just order millions of American military personnel to go home right away.

Abandoning the ruins of Europe to the Soviets would be free real estate to spread communism. Same for Japan. The U.S. and the Western Allies could not afford it.

 

[cex]

No, there is zero chance of that, it would be political suicide and few in the west had any illusions about Stalin. The Western Allies were willing to co-exist while the war was on but they weren't going to just hand Europe over to Stalin.

Political suicide? The West was absolutely chock-full of wishful thinking about Stalin in 1945, sans Churchill, who in any event had been voted out in July. The real shift in perception came in 1946-47.

Which is why no one in the US government is going to repeat that mistake. The only way the US would withdraw is if they carried out a full Morgenthau Plan first.

Which is why no one in *Truman*'s government was going to repeat that mistake. A Wallace Adminstration's foreign policy would have been heaven-and-earth different from Truman's. In actual fact, Taft and FDR agreed on more things than Wallace and Truman.

 

[cex]

Just no.

Operation Magic Carpet took until 1946 to complete. You can't just order millions of American military personnel to go home right away.

Abandoning the ruins of Europe to the Soviets would be free real estate to spread communism. Same for Japan. The U.S. and the Western Allies could not afford it.

It's logistically feasible to entirely withdraw from Europe and Asia by 1946. And also remember that Wallace spoke out against the 'imperialist' Marshall Plan in 1948, let alone entirely withdrawing from Europe and Asia altogether. Had Wallace been POTUS, the Western Alliance would have been terminated.

The public sentiment during that era was vastly different, and let's be brutally honest here – Harding and Wilson were an absolute disgrace, arguably two of the most abysmal Presidents the 20th century had to endure. The people unfortunate enough to live through that crucial period had to suffer the consequences of having these two incompetents consecutively in office.

The full extent of Teapot Dome was not apparent until well after Harding's death.

 

[Garrison]

Political suicide? The West was absolutely chock-full of wishful thinking about Stalin in 1945, sans Churchill, who in any event had been voted out in July. The real shift in perception came in 1946-47.

Which is why no one in *Truman*'s government was going to repeat that mistake. A Wallace Adminstration's foreign policy would have been heaven-and-earth different from Truman's. In actual fact, Taft and FDR agreed on more things than Wallace and Truman.

Sorry but you are just ignoring the political realities of 1945, there's a reason why they pushed Wallace off the ticket in 1944. The USA is not going to up and abandon Europe in 1945, there is no plausible scenario for your idea.

 

[cex]

Sorry but you are just ignoring the political realities of 1945, there's a reason why they pushed Wallace off the ticket in 1944. The USA is not going to up and abandon Europe in 1945, there is no plausible scenario for your idea.

You are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the political realities of 1945, or both. Wallace was pushed off the ticket due to his open opposition to Jim Crow, as well as the bizarre Guru Letters. Apologia for Joseph Stalin was rampant among American leftists in 1944-45.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

then submits the US' nuclear weapons to UN control in the interests of world peace under the 1946 Baruch Plan, see https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ces-us-that-un-needs-to-control-nukes.420424/.

Haha no. The Baruch Plan requires setting up a U.N. agency with unrestricted freedom to inspect and shut down atomic facilies anywhere on Earth. Stalin is not going to agree to this, because he wants to continue building his own weapon.

 

[Garrison]

You are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the political realities of 1945, or both. Wallace was pushed off the ticket due to his open opposition to Jim Crow, as well as the bizarre Guru Letters. Apologia for Joseph Stalin was rampant among American leftists in 1944-45.

It was not rampant and I'm sorry but your idea is both implausible and just plain daft.

 

[cex]

It was not rampant and I'm sorry but your idea is both implausible and just plain daft.

Rather than throw around meaningless conjecture such as "plain daft", why not take a look at how much American *right-wingers* incessantly apologized for the Stalin regime during the war?

LIFE shows why a tougher line on Stalin would have been unpopular during World War II

Since so many people here think the US should have taken a harder line on Stalin during World War II--some even supporting a preventive war with it in 1945--I suggest they examine US public opinion toward the USSR during World War II to determine if that would really be feasible. IMO LIFE...

www.alternatehistory.com

If this is how conservatives perceived Stalin, somehow admiration of him is somehow supposed to be less rampant in the American Left, which had actively collaborated with "People's Front" Communists and Socialists during the 1930s New Deal?

 

[cex]

Haha no. The Baruch Plan requires setting up a U.N. agency with unrestricted freedom to inspect and shut down atomic facilies anywhere on Earth. Stalin is not going to agree to this, because he wants to continue building his own weapon.

Let's just say that sober and clear-headed foreign policy analysis was not something Wallace was exactly famed for.

 

[Garrison]

Let's just say that sober and clear-headed foreign policy analysis was not something Wallace was exactly famed for.

So basically you are taking the myth of Wallace as some sort of Soviet patsy at face value? And also ignoring the fact that in the US the President can't just do what he wants. There is no way in hell this is happening in anything outside of an ASB scenario.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Let's just say that sober and clear-headed foreign policy analysis was not something Wallace was exactly famed for.

Ok, but even if Wallace is eating lead paint chips all day, Congress is not, and they're not going to allow such an agency; nor are Russia, Britain and France at the U.N.

 

[cex]

So basically you are taking the myth of Wallace as some sort of Soviet patsy at face value? And also ignoring the fact that in the US the President can't just do what he wants. There is no way in hell this is happening in anything outside of an ASB scenario.

Let's take a look at scholarly judgement on Wallace:

Adding insult to injury, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s moronic vice president, Henry A. Wallace, visited the Kolyma Gulag camp in August 1944 and was completely hoodwinked by NKVD efforts to conceal the true nature of the facility. Wallace not only returned with an admiring report about the Occupation 343 Gulag camps, in which he believed all the workers were paid volunteers, but assisted in the production of a film about Kolyma which helped to deceive the American public about the true nature of Stalin’s regime.18 The ZWZ attempted to form cells in eastern Poland but this effort was defeated by the NKVD’s arrest of virtually anyone sympathetic to the Second Republic. In March 1940, Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski attempted to enter the Soviet zone, but was arrested by the NKVD and sent to the Lubyanka prison. On March 5, 1940, the Soviet Politburo decided that the Polish officers were ‘sworn enemies of the Soviet regime’ and ordered the NKVD to eliminate them. In April, the NKVD began executing the Polish prisoners in groups of 300 in secret, gradually emptying the Kozel’sk, Ostashkov and Starobel’sk camps. According to Soviet records, 4,421 Polish officers were murdered by the NKVD in the Katyń Forest near Smolensk in April 1940 and another 17,436 Poles in Kiev, Kharkov and other locations in the Ukraine. Thus, the Soviet regime murdered a total of 21,857 Allied military personnel.19 The Soviet government then disavowed all knowledge of Polish officer prisoners. Although these murders were suspected by the Polish government-in-exile because all contact with the prisoners ceased in spring 1940, they were not confirmed until the Germans found the mass graves in Katyń in 1943.

Case White: The Invasion of Poland 1939, Robert Forczyk.

So yes, overall judgement of him isn't very kind even in the centre-left American academia today.

Also, you are misusing the term ASB here. ASB refers to the *physically impossible*. Henry Wallace becoming POTUS is very much physically possible, and appeasement of Joseph Stalin was popular in 1945, when Stalin was seen as a wartime ally. Remember that Japan did not even surrender until September.