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Even that didn't fill the same role - outside of specialist groups such as paratroopers they were issued at the company level during WW2. Even post-war there were only a pair of them attached to the rifle platoon's weapons squad. They weren't an integrated part of the rifle squad, which retained...

I wouldn't be so sure - the poor British performance in the early stages of the war served as something of a wakeup call and helped spur reforms to British land forces. Without that conflict, those reforms might be significantly delayed or even nonexistent.

While I suspect that it isn't what the OP had in mind, the UN taking a structure more analogous to the "Four Policemen" concept of FDR might be an alternative. Other highlights include the division of the globe into four clearly defined spheres of influence for the "trustee power" to maintain...

I could have sworn something like this took place in the interwar era, with it getting out that the Prime Minister of a nation was a spiritualist who tried to contact his predecessor for advice. I can't remember the country though.

Might as well go all the way to the Darien Gap at that rate.

Ending the practice of slavery isn't the same thing as granting blacks the same civil rights whites possesed. Take the franchise for instance - in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Radical Republicans pushed a campaign in multiple Northern states to alter their constitutions to give blacks the...

Don't forget the protectorate on Nuku Hiva.

Without him on the table as the first executive in the nation, it seems likely the the Constitution itself will be different - the office of the presidency was in several ways made with him specifically in mind.

George Washington declines what? Presiding over the Constitutional Convention? The presidency? Running for a second term?

But unless the US is more involved than OTL with European affairs (something I'm very skeptical will change based on LoN membership), Italy is potentially more important based on serving as a check on German strength and its support of an independent Austria. The same desires in British and...

Given the ongoing events in eastern Europe, there was no good indication that the Soviets would actually abide by the territorial agreements made at Yalta.

The oil there is extremely heavy with a high sulfur content that is hell on refining equipment. The Japanese won't be able to crack that muck into anything lighter, at least not in a useful quantity. So, it could be used for fueling ships and some industrial purposes, but is otherwise sharply...

What's the source for the US Army expenditures? I've done some poking around, and most of the number's seem to indicate spending at a level around half of that in 1913-1914, though maybe I'm messing up the exchange rate with the pound.

Germany and France were also reliant upon mobilizing reserves in the event of a general European war. In theory they could focus a large portion of their standing peacetime forces against Belgium and simply roll over them without giving a chance for mobilization, but that would never happen as...

That Belgium was badly unprepared in 1914 is hardly a secret. Its field forces were ill equipped, desperately short of artillery and machine guns, and only sparsely officered. War plans were thin to the point of barely existing, and mobilization schemes existed in a half-baked state of disarray...

There aren't really any cheap SMGs on the market in this period, and small, poor nations often had significant limitations on the hard currency they had available to spend on forign imports.

Given the major manning and retention problems the Navy has, it shouldn't expect its ships to have the same sort of war complements they had in the past when designing vessels. The LCS went too far in that direction, but general trend is for smaller crew sizes. No modern warship (with the...

I think the OP's question is more along the lines of how additional experience manufacturing sizable tanks in the mid-30s would influence the 1937 military buildup, rather than asking whether these tanks would be of use in 1940.

What kind of production numbers do you have in mind, and over what period?

Baldwin, Lima, and ALCO would disagree with the assessment that locomotive manufacterers have no place building tanks. Over a third of M4 production came from locomotive and rolling stock plants that were converted to war production. They didn't build as many as the new, dedicated plants that...