WI It Can't Happen Here did?

[Major Major]

The header may need a little explaining.

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis is a 1935 political thriller about the coming of fascism to the United States. Lewis has Roosevelt losing the 1936 Democratic nomination to a populist senator-boss who he names Berzelius Windrip (since Huey Long had conveniently got himself assassinated). Windrip proceeds to win the election, thanks in part to Roosevelt’s running as an independent.

Once sworn in, President Windrip proceeds to expunge the Constitution, thanks to (among other things), his private army. Having done so, he and his men set up concentration camps, arrest their political opponents, and cartelize the economy.

Before long, Windrip is ousted by his chief assistant, a Roehm-clone, who in turn is murdered and replaced. The new president proceeds to mobilize the US for a war against Mexico, only to be forestalled by an uprising in the Middle West.

What would be the effect of this?

First off, the POD needs to be settled. In OTL, Roosevelt faced no opposition for the Democratic nomination in 1936; he was nominated by acclimation. So how would this standing decline to the point where he would face opponents at the convention and then lose? If the New Deal somehow failed to work there might be such a problem. (Lewis was writing, I believe, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s nullification of some of the initial New Deal legislation; before the so-called “Second New Deal” and the court-packing plan.)

The problem then arises of how the Minute Men, Windrip’s SA, were funded. In Sax Rohmer's President Fu Manchu, about a similar attempt, the League of Good Americans there had access to the coffers of the Si-Fan, but they also were dumb enough to nominate a defrocked priest with a secret marriage. Windrip does not have the sinister Chinese doctor’s bags of gold. This is a consideration that Lewis never quite addresses, though presumably it would be something on the order of “sinister businessmen.” (Like the alleged Smedley Butler plot.)

But, resolving these, what does this do to the world situation?

Not having a crystal ball at hand, Lewis mentions nothing of a Spanish Civil War, though the characters are more concerned with internal affairs. There is nothing in the POD to change this, though, so for the moment we can let this stand.

The problem comes with the central European crisis. Will France be willing to take a stand without “the vast industries of the United States” to draw upon for munitions?

Will we see a “Second Abraham Lincoln Brigade” of communists fighting the fascists in America? (In the book the CPUSA is decidedly sectarian, condemning the rebels as adherents of the fascist US government.)

Will there be a “Second Condor Legion” of German advisors, or a second Blackshirt Corps sent to America in support of the government? (Lewis mentions nothing other than friendly diplomatic relations with the Nazis and Fascists.)

What will the attitude of the British be? Will this buildup provoke mobilization in Canada and Britain? (Lewis has his New Underground operating out of Canada. How they deal with the governments involved is not mentioned.)

Again, as I said, Lewis did not have a crystal ball, and never quite considered the problem of Soviet agents in the US government. (A common failing; it seems grossly impossible that the “Drakaefficient Draka Secret Police” could prevent the formation of a CPD, for example, though presumably SMS has some handwaving explanation.)

Moreover, his rebels are ideologically odd; the leaders seem to want the corporate state that has been organized, just without the current crop of leaders. This seems highly unlikely. The presence of a spectrum of factions ranging from a “Second Abraham Lincoln Brigade” to a “New American Legion” seems far more likely. This diversity would, well, cause problems both during the fighting and after.