AHC: Republicans win in 1940

Wolfpaw

Banned
Your AH challenge--should you choose to accept it--is to have a Republican president in the White House in 1940. No ASB. POD can be any time after March 5, 1937.

Best of luck.
 
FDR doesn't run, so things in Europe have to change.

The election was closer than people think. Without LBJ, the Republicans would have won the House in 1940, even with FDR's victory.
 
Your AH challenge--should you choose to accept it--is to have a Republican president in the White House in 1940. No ASB. POD can be any time after March 5, 1937.

Best of luck.

Anyway - a European war in 1938, leading to a quick victory over Nazi Germany and Hitler's overthrow.

Without a war in Europe, FDR sticks to his original plan of retiring. The GOP probably wins with either Robert Taft or Tom Dewey, defeating whoever the Democrats run, who could be anyone from James Farley to James Byrnes to - most likely IMO - Cordell Hull or a compromise nominee like Alben Barkley or Scott Lucas.
 
I'm with SlideAway. European war in 1938, Hitler overthrown, no reason for FDR to run again.

GOP has a much better chance with a moderate than Taft IMO, even in this ATL. Taft can easily be painted as someone whose economic policies will restart the Depression at worst, at best upset what was still a fragile recovery.

House: In 1940 LBJ was de facto DCCC chair, and yes, that story's true. GOP wins the House, Democrats keep the Senate and new Republican President works with the Southerners to keep things moving in Congress.
 
Boy, it's a thin field when you think about who could have run then, most are too old or plumb dead or haven't really come to the prominence they would later on (although Presidents who really had done a lot before rising to the office are maybe half of the winners so a first term Senator without a record (JFK, Obama) or a Governor little known outside their own state (McKinley, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, FDR, Carter, Clinton, Bush II) so a Republican Governor from a major state in 1940 would have the best shot. Wilkie never made much sense to me.

Head of the Reconstruction Finance efforts since 1931 (Hoover appointee, Republican banker/businessman from Houston) Jesse Jones would be interesting. Jones would be Secretary of Commerce 1940-1944 in FDR's cabinet but is a poor fit with just about everyone in the cabinet since he's actually accomplishing things (FDIC, farm credit, bank regulations, restructuring a third of the country's banks and it's railroads, etc.). He's got tremendous credibility in fighting the Great Depression effectively without alienating the Republicans or other folks who can do math and national contacts now in many industries with Texas oil money donors to draw on as well like John Nance Garner, LBJ, Sam Rayburn already were to protect the Oil Deplition Allowance Tax Credit. He'd never been elected to any office but then neither had Eisenhower. He's not a speechmaker like FDR (but could go out an hire a gifted playwright for that just as FDR was using Robert Sherwood) and Wilkie's campaign manager Albert Lasker, also a Texas native, would have worked with him for a very effective campaign. Putting up someone who'd could truly take credit for the good parts of the New Deal and had an insider's knowledge of bad parts (and smoke & mirrors) would be a tough competitor for FDR, and with his own gray hair and wrinkles so more grandfatherly looking than Wilkie.

Since the 1937 drop back into Depression didn't sink FDR in 1940, you'd either use a sex scandal (his affairs, perhaps Eleanor divorces him, although this is all stuff Warren Harding survived-unless his wife did poison him.)

Or you have a Whittaker Chambers turn detailed evidence of Communist spying in the late 1930's instead of later on as that would have been probably fatal for the Democrats. Moscow's payroll has got Lauchlin Curry, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Sumner Welles, probably Harry Hopkins/Agent 19, the Congressman chairing/founding the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and 300 more (Army Signal Corps' Venona Transcripts of Russian coded messages) so there's all sorts of loose ends, shifty careless characters, and multiple houses of cards.) That would also discredit quite a bit of the New Deal and perhaps cost the Democrats the House and Senate. That could have happened then and it would make the long unfolding Watergate or Teapot Dome scandals that brought down other administrations look comparatively mild (and change U.S.-Soviet relationships to a Cold War where not just Russia was working at it. This'd make a Soviet alliance even after Barbarossa far less likely and no American Lend-Lease Aid that was so critical to Stalin (which'd make 1943-1944 Russian offensives far harder to mount without the many thousands of U.S. made trucks, jeeps, cargo planes, tanks, food, gasoline etc.)

With Jones as President in 1940 and a new cabinet chosen by a cabinet insider (so in theory they'd be more appropriate and effective than the usual miscellaneous appointments), the country would be doing better economically while still having the early war stimulus of English/Australian orders and decreasing world competition.

Jones was a realist and that would have greatly changed what was done, like pretending vast numbers of aircraft would be the best defense investment in 1940-41 regardless of production capacity, pilot supply, airfields/airbases in existence, or the distances involved to patrol.

Let's pretend he'd put General Robert E. Wood, currently CEO of Sears, in as Secretary of War (Wood handled all of the AEF's logistics as well as the Panama Canal's before being the best CEO Sear ever had) in 1940 (Sears top execs handled big war production jobs so not much of a jump here.)
Herbert Hoover as Secretary of State given he'd been an international mining engineer working a lot in Australia and based in London he'd have been our most cosmopolitan one and practical one since John Quincy Adams, and his organization of Belgian food relief in World War I would be a different degree of world credibility. It'd be interesting.
 
House: In 1940 LBJ was de facto DCCC chair, and yes, that story's true. GOP wins the House, Democrats keep the Senate and new Republican President works with the Southerners to keep things moving in Congress.
Yep. I should've explained, but the responses were quite amusing. :D

For what it's worth, Dewey almost became Governor in '38.
 
Top