This is my first post here.
I am interested in US pop culture of the 50s and 60s. Considering how much of it was influenced by the cold war, I have often wondered what would have happened if the US ended up as the sole superpower by 1950. This could come about in several ways:
-The Soviet Union does worse during the war and ends up as second-rate power, barely extending beyond Russian borders. The US conquers all of Germany and liberates eastern Europe on its own
OTL, the USSR did not really expand its power much beyond its own borders... especially compared with the existing scope of British imperial power (though that was about to implode) or the vast expansion of U.S. influence and power. So this doesn't really change things, unless the USSR is really crippled.
(including some former soviet republics)...
This is not plausible. Which SSRs? The Baltic states and Moldova barely count as Soviet territory, having been annexed in 1940. Central Asia and the Transcaucasus would never be occupied by the Axis. Ukraine and Belarus were fairly integral parts of "Russia" and the U.S. would not be likely to support any separatism there. (One doesn't chop off hunks of an ally's territory.)
The scenario I am envisioning entails the US being seen as the good guys liberating Europe from the twin horrors of Nazism and Communism.
Nazism, yes. Communism, no. Communism managed to get included among the Good Guys, and thus was not a target for "liberation".
One needs a scenario in which the USSR basically implodes in the course of the war; perhaps undergoing some convulsion in which Communism collapses.
Suppose that the Pacific War is delayed several months. The knock-ons are:
The British follow up the CRUSADER victory and finish the Africa campaign in early 1942.
By the time Japan goes to war (April 1942), the British have reinforced Malaya and Burma with veterans from the Middle East and additional aircraft. Singapore falls eventually, but Burma holds. The U.S. supplies China by land, and the Chinese army drives the Japanese back in places. Japan eventually falls in 1945, after being nuked. However, China has performed much better and is position to put down Mao for good.
Meanwhile... There is no North African campaign diverting resources from the Eastern Front. With the Axis driven away, French North Africa joins the Allies in September. The U.S. is somewhat behind OTL in ramping up its forces; the US/UK finally respond to Second Front demands by invading Crete in December 1942.
However, the reserves that OTL went to Tunisia have been sent east. With this added force, and a lot of extra airlift to supply the Axis pocket, the Germans beat back the Soviet counterattack at Stalingrad. Stalin goes apeshit and orders a new Great Purge of the Red Army. This leads to a coup attempt which kills Stalin, but Beria leads a counter-coup and purge which paralyzes the Red Army for a month before he too is killed. Eventually the Army beats the Chekists. With Moscow in chaos and communications cut off, Marshal X, the Soviet theater commander in the Transcaucasus takes it on himself to invite US/UK forces from Iran into Soviet territory.
This becomes a full scale Army Group. The presence of so many US/UK personnel in Soviet territory, and the resulting contact with the Soviet army and people, undermines the Communist grip, already shaken by the defeats under Stalin and the coup/counter-coup. Marshal X (who is the favorite of the aid-providing US/UK) becomes commander-in-chief. US/UK illusions about Stalin and Communism are dispelled.
(Details of the rest of the war elided.)
The USSR disgorges its 1939-1940 annexations.
After the war, there is a widespread popular movement in the USSR against the Communists. Peasants revolt en masse against collective farming, factory workers reject the orders of GOSPLAN. These dissidents form independent political groups. The remnants of the Party order a crackdown. Marshal X instead leads a coup which turns out the Party.
Russia becomes a moderate state, still heavily socialist, authoritarian (Marshal X is President and will serve to the end of his life), but vastly more open and democratic - and completely uninterested in World Revolution.
China is consolidated under the KMT. With no external military threats, it becomes a rising entrepreneurial state, and a major influence on Russia.
Japan and Germany have been crushed.
The U.S. is the Biggest Dog in the world, and there aren't really any others to worry about.
The US has it all in terms of both soft power and hard power, and the rest of the western world is highly dependent upon it. It might also help to have side effects that will discredit ideologies like Gaullism and High Toryism, giving US-style liberalism monopoly on world politics and
Absent the threat of Soviet Communism, Western Europe would be
less dependent on the U.S. I think one would still see Gaullism and High Toryism. Gaullism might be less acute because the U.S. would be less domineering, and thus less irritating to French sensibilities
US pop culture a similar monopoly on world culture.
The absence of Communism also means the absence of the wet blanket of Communist rule on Russian and Chinese and other cultures; the U.S. will have more competition very soon.
My question to the board is: What happens to the US itself in terms of politics and culture? What are some of the more interesting (but plausible) possibilities?
That's a wide-open subject.
To start with, permanent demobilization of the WW II mass military, and much lower military budgets. In the OTL 1950s, defense was about half of Federal spending, and the deficits were very small. From 1951 through 1960, the aggregate deficit was only $29B, while defense spending was $374B. If defense spending had been left at $12B/year (the 1949 level), there could have been a $245B surplus, reducing the national debt by over 90%.
That's got to have immense economic effects. Or more likely, income tax rates are substantially reduced - which has other massive effects.
Another effect is that the armed forces remain small and probably revert to all-volunteer. That changes the culture of the armed forces. Historically the Army especially was dominated by Southerners who enforced segregation. OTL that changed when Truman decreed otherwise, and the armed forces became in a way a social laboratory - the first racially inclusive major American institution. That change was necessary in part because of the draft. It would have been impossible to continue to draft blacks and still treat them unfairly.
If the armed forces become all-volunteer, they don't have to reform. Blacks will just not enlist, and the armed forces will remain all white and a citadel of bigotry.
There's a further knock-on - with the armed forces about 70% smaller, the number of people qualifying for "GI Bill" benefits is much smaller, which has knock-ons for colleges and universities, and the real estate market. This effect will be magnified by decreasing political support for these benefits - when the recipients are not the heroes of a great war, but peacetime barracks occupants.
American culture will also be directly influenced by much larger imports from China - and from ongoing contact with Cuba.
The Bomb will probably be internationalized. No looming threat of Doomsday. No
Fail-Safe,
On The Beach,
Dr. Strangelove.
