AH Challenge: Less Stars...

[Nicole]

The United States of America is usually seen as an indomitable power in AHes, with a powerful and mostly justified ability to avoid even a landing of foreign troops on it's soil. This becomes magnified in the twentieth century.

The challenge is thus: the United States of America must lose control of at least one entire state, state being defined as a possession that had statehood in 1900. The POD limit is January 1, 1900, as one might guess from the forum this is in.

 

[Peter Cowan]

The California winegrowers lead a secession following prohibition.

Maybe Texas exercises its right to secede (it was an independent country after all although the contretemps of 1861-65 may have superseded the treaty which allowed it to join the Union) when oil is discovered.

As Canada/UK are benevolent neighbours and Mexico incapable of invasion, I suspect only some internal problem could split the 48 states.

 

[Straha]

Remove FDR and have the US fall apart. Basically we'd have the more developed regions of the coasts/upper midwest/rust belt(remember until the post60's backlash both areas were pretty liberal) going one way and the rest of the nation going another.

 

[robertp6165]

Maybe Texas exercises its right to secede (it was an independent country after all although the contretemps of 1861-65 may have superseded the treaty which allowed it to join the Union) when oil is discovered.

Texas had and/or has no more right to secede than any other state. The original 13 States were all independent countries prior to joining the Union. By your logic, they should all have had the right to secede, yet the Federal Government disputed that right when four of the thirteen attempted to exercise it in 1861. And, in addition, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island even included specific provisions declaring that they retained the right to secede in the ordinances by which they ratified the Constitution and joined the Union. If those provisions were not valid...as the Federal Government has argued since 1861...then neither is the treaty provision which supposedly gave Texas the right to secede.

 

[stevep]

US loses a state

As Canada/UK are benevolent neighbours and Mexico incapable of invasion, I suspect only some internal problem could split the 48 states.

It would take some doing but with early 20th Century technology the US could suffer a serious defeat - and no I'm not talking about someone else getting nucs first.

Given suitable bad leadership just about anyone can get into a war and lose. An Hitler type leader would be even more disastrous for the US than he was for Germany.

Steve

 

[Wendell]

Perhaps the only real opportunity short of Axis occupation/dismemberment...

The Soviets beat the Americans in a war leading to a Soviet occupation and "restructuring" of the country. As a result, the U.S. ends up with fewer states than it had before the war.

 

[stevep]

The Soviets beat the Americans in a war leading to a Soviet occupation and "restructuring" of the country. As a result, the U.S. ends up with fewer states than it had before the war.

Wendall

Doubt if that could be done before the end of the century as it would take that long for the Soviets to build up both the industrial base and the navy to have any chance of such an operation. Since its difficult to see nuclear weapons being delayed that late, or the US not being an early developer of them I can't see this happening. [Unless the US has less states because several are radioactive dust.]

Steve

 

[Nekromans]

Easy. To cope with the Wall Street Devastation, where the entire stock market was blown up by a series of bombs, America is forced to sell Alaska to the only state relatively unaffected. Depite protests from Canada, the Soviets occupy Alaska within a few years.

 

[Nicole]

Easy. To cope with the Wall Street Devastation, where the entire stock market was blown up by a series of bombs, America is forced to sell Alaska to the only state relatively unaffected. Depite protests from Canada, the Soviets occupy Alaska within a few years.

Alaska wasn't a state in 1900, though.

 

[Wendell]

Anger after Sequoyah is refuse admission to union....

Prompts the Eastern half of OTL Oklahoma to secede from that state in 1907.