AH Challenge: Occupied/Partitioned U.S.A.

I was watching The Man in the High Castle earlier. Obviously the entire scenario there, in which America gets divided between Japan and Germany, is pretty ASB. But that got me thinking, what would be the most realistic/least ASB scenario in which the U.S.A. could actually get defeated, occupied, and divided by one or more foreign powers?
 

Deleted member 97083

I was watching The Man in the High Castle earlier. Obviously the entire scenario there, in which America gets divided between Japan and Germany, is pretty ASB. But that got me thinking, what would be the most realistic/least ASB scenario in which the U.S.A. could actually get defeated, occupied, and divided by one or more foreign powers?
A Second American Civil War happens in the midst of the Great Depression (see Ephraim Ben Raphael's TL up to 1938 or so), between a military junta, syndicalist rebels, fascist rebels, individual states trying to break off, and Democratic moderates trying to form a civilian government.

US military is unable to supply Hawaii. The Japanese navy takes the isles. Later, the Empire of Japan will launch an invasion of the Pacific Coast which is divided between multiple factions.

Meanwhile in Europe, some changes in the Nazi and Soviet leadership (Stalin's hate of Trotsky turns into extreme anti-Semitism, or something) lead to a lasting Berlin-Moscow Axis against the capitalist democracies of the west. The British perform Operation Pike against the Soviets, solidifying this alliance.

Occupying Europe and pooling their resources together, the Germans and the Russians have a higher industrial capacity than the British Empire, whose economy is hurting from the collapse of the United States. A German-Soviet fleet is assembled for Operation Sealion, which gets lucky and makes a landing in England. The British Empire is dismantled.

The American civil war factions declare a united front against Japan and the civil war is coming to a close, but nonetheless, the Japanese have already landed on the Pacific coast. The Germans invade the syndicalist rebel state in America (in which Trotsky has taken refuge instead of Mexico). The Nazis then ally with the fascist Dixiecrats, bringing the civil war into full conflict again. The Soviets are still busy in India, however.

Japan and Germany occupy a significant part of the US.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The US was a military pygmy until 1917-18, even in 1916 they only had 2 batteries of 4.7" field artillery and could only muster 12 divisions.

Even Britain was way more powerful that this, but a coalition of Europeans would be vastly more powerful than the US and could do some serious damage in an invasion.
 
Seriously, the closest case of a continental landmass, not to far behind Europe in tech, being occupied by a foreign power or powers was India. And in that case large chunks of India have been under the rule of outside dynasties throughout history (and not just after 1000), the British were just another, somewhat unusual, foreign policy. This has just never happened with China and Russia, and countries have tried. Even with the intervention in a civil war deal, the fragments of America would be strong enough to get out from foreign rule eventually.

Its easier to kill off all the Americans with superweapons and then bring settlers into the continent.
 
I did figure out a way you could do this, but its still pretty ASB and probably belongs in future history. You have to do this after the fall of the USSR.

The United States falls under the control of a crazy dictator who starts attacking other countries. The entire rest of the world views him as a threat, and forms an alliance to defeat him and remove him from power. This involves a war that lasts for decades and results in the occupation of the United States by, well, UN forces with guerilla warfare still raising. The invention of handwavium keeps the nukes that are going to be used in this type of war from wiping out or almost wiping out the human race anyway. At the end, Mexico gets back some of the territory it lost in 1836-53, and the rest of the United States is partitioned into UN trust territories administered by the European countries (singly or jointly), Russia, China, and maybe Brazil, with China walking off with the biggest chunk.

I really can't come up with any other way this happens.
 
warlord_america_by_sapiento-d35i3h1.jpg
 
So let's start with the standard dystopian 30s America POD of "FDR gets assassinated, president Garner"

I imagine Garner not having the commanding persona of Roosevelt to calm the nation, and pursuing a less aggressive agenda without the insane amount of policymaking Roosevelt enacted, leading to both a somewhat less robust recovery by 1934 and also way less public confidence in the president. This causes the Democrats to take significant losses in the midterms, rather than their OTL gains (at least in the House)

These losses scare Garner and the reduced Democrats, who think the high spending and debt is what's unpopular, so they do the 1937 cutback two years early and sabotage their own recovery. No 2nd New Deal obviously

The still terrible economy leads to Huey Long trying to primary Garner, he fails to get 2/3 and then runs an independent left-wing campaign that gets the support of a lot of independent groups after Floyd Olson's campaign collapses with his death

Meanwhile, the desperate times have led to millions of people flocking to the Technocracy Movement. Howard Scott's newspaper is selling like crazy, he's published books, he's gotten very famous. Prominent enough and popular enough among left-wing circles to get various advisory positions helping for example Upton Sinclair's projects in California (governor Sinclair won in 1934 due to desperation leading people to turn to radicals) while simultaneously distancing himself from the super radicals and crating an aura of intellectualism and reason that leads a bunch of right-wingers to view him as the least dangerous of the group

So Huey Long wins the 1936 election against Garner and the broken Republicans, and proceeds to govern incredibly incompetently and flagrantly ignores the Supreme Court

Long has trouble filling out his cabinet, so he gets Howard Scott, who's become incredibly powerful and influential, to be his Secretary of Commerce or something

Corporate America, desperate for a savior, turns to general George Van Horn Moseley, who attempts to lead a fascist coup against the left-wing regime. They succeed in killing Long, his VP, and most of his cabinet, but they miss Scott who they never considered that important (low level position, kooky background) or dangerous (not a committed leftist)

The coup however is not broadly supported, and after the initial attacks, there's a mass uprising and the rest of the U.S. army refuses to back Moseley and his is killed. Scott is now president of the United States

The Communists use this as an opportunity to rise up and try to stage a revolution. President Scott easily crushes the revolution.

Now seen as having saved the Republic from the left and the right, he manages to get both the people on his side as well as the elites, afraid of further chaos, to back him. He now has the backing to purge any leftist dissenters, claiming they're communists, or right-wing dissenters, claiming they're fascists

Scott proceeds to solidify his control over the U.S. government, and uses his power to seize control of the media. He has massive jobs programs which succeed in temporarily lowering unemployment, leading to great popularity. He eventually arranges a nationwide referendum on a new constitution in 1940 which passes and formally ends democracy in the US and turning the country into the North American Technate.

Meanwhile, Germany has been taken over by a more standard right-wing military dictatorship than Hitler, someone who's less aggressive and so Europe is more of a 3 way Cold War between the British/French, Germans/Italians, and Soviets. Japan's slowly gaining ground in China, but not attacking the European empires. They still have high tensions with the Technate.

By the end of the 40s, Scott both feels secure enough in total political and economic control of America, as well as weird cultural reshaping programs, to launch his invasion of Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada, and Central America.

So basically everyone declares war on the North American Technate because they're obviously insane and planning to conquer huge swathes of territory. Facing off against the British Empire, French Empire, re-armed Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, Italy, and basically all of Latin America, the Technate bankrupts itself to hold them off. Due to being on a shaky economic foundation to begin with, and tired of increasingly bizarre totalitarianism, a series of massive revolts erupt across the Technate.

The victorious anti-Technate powers each back some of these revolts, and soon the former U.S. is carved into various client states or other breakaways by the end of the war.
 
In the EDC I had the USA fall apart in the mid thirties after a worse (for them) Big Slump, a much worse dustbowl and the Okie Flu. It wasn't a civil war as such, though there was a fair bit of fighting between the states and groupings of states the USA fell not with a bang but a whimper.
There was a degree of consolidation in the following years until the EuroFed Intervention to stop the new Southern Confederacy's attempt at genocide in the '50s.
By the 1980s there were a number of blocks and talk of a North American Federation, though the fact that it would be dominated by the Californian-Canadian block worried some.
 
Top