AHC: Worst Possible Great Depression?
- Thread starter Gog (♀)
- Start date
A second, stronger Republic of the Rio Grande (or just a militant Mexico) that brings hell down on the on the lower Mississippi?
I think it's thought that having President Coolidge would have resulted in this. He was even more laissez-faire than Hoover.
More seriously: Assassinate FDR before his election. No New Deal. I'm not sure how you get from there to civil war but I assume there's a way to get to a civil war with a worse great depression.
- Have John Maynard Keynes and Gunnar Myrdall never pursue careers in economics.
- Keep the Gold Standard.
- Roosevelt assassinated, so no New Deal in the US. Give Calvin Coolidge better health, so he can run in 1928 (and yes, he'd be far worse than Hoover).
- Hitler dies in World War One, so the world economy is never rescued via increased military spending.
- In terms of pre-1900 PODs, find a way of eliminating Bernstein-style Revisionist Marxism. If you keep Social Democracy overtly "revolutionary", you're much more likely to keep Classical Liberals in office until the entire political edifice goes under.
- Keep the Gold Standard.
- Roosevelt assassinated, so no New Deal in the US. Give Calvin Coolidge better health, so he can run in 1928 (and yes, he'd be far worse than Hoover).
- Hitler dies in World War One, so the world economy is never rescued via increased military spending.
- In terms of pre-1900 PODs, find a way of eliminating Bernstein-style Revisionist Marxism. If you keep Social Democracy overtly "revolutionary", you're much more likely to keep Classical Liberals in office until the entire political edifice goes under.
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That's actually pretty close to OTL. Going off the Gold Standard was literary considered the end of civilisation by certain people. Philip Snowden (UK Labour) was asked what would happen if the Gold Standard ended - he threw his hands up and said "the deluge!" And his colleague Sidney Webb famously heard on the radio about the Tories going off the GS - Webb's reaction was "no-one told us we could do that!"
-economic collapse in the usa
-communist uprising and second civil war
-USA unable to be the "arsenal of democracy" in ww2
-japan on a rampage in east asia
-great britain unable to do anything in europe
-europe going red after the soviets crush germany under even more horrible losses
-communist uprising and second civil war
-USA unable to be the "arsenal of democracy" in ww2
-japan on a rampage in east asia
-great britain unable to do anything in europe
-europe going red after the soviets crush germany under even more horrible losses
Who said it had to be human-made? It may be considered ASB, but any (probably not all together) of these could happen.
•A worse dust bowl wrecks the lower Mississippi
•The river dries up and river travel virtually gone in the US
•In the upper plains, bison somehow (somehow?) recover to the population they had in 1850
•Some highly infectious bison-brain-affecting-virus goes rampant in the herds and they go out to destroy homes and rip up railroad tracks (not sure that's anatomically possible for bison)
•Speaking of viruses, something akin to Ebola wrecks the big cities
•A fire breaks out in NYC that burns through the residential districts and and completely destroys the financial district
•In winter, something like what we are seeing now but several times worse affects the whole northeast and people starve and freeze to death in their homes
And that is the worse I can make up.
•A worse dust bowl wrecks the lower Mississippi
•The river dries up and river travel virtually gone in the US
•In the upper plains, bison somehow (somehow?) recover to the population they had in 1850
•Some highly infectious bison-brain-affecting-virus goes rampant in the herds and they go out to destroy homes and rip up railroad tracks (not sure that's anatomically possible for bison)
•Speaking of viruses, something akin to Ebola wrecks the big cities
•A fire breaks out in NYC that burns through the residential districts and and completely destroys the financial district
•In winter, something like what we are seeing now but several times worse affects the whole northeast and people starve and freeze to death in their homes
And that is the worse I can make up.