Everyone knows how things worked IOTL - FDR picked Truman as his running mate for his fourth term, and we dropped atomic bombs on Heroshima and Nagasaki.
What if FDR had retained Wallace and for unrelated reasons, the Bomb is deployed to Japan without prior testing in New Mexico? No one really understands the magnitude of the burst and resulting fallout. In fact, the conventional war continues for a few weeks longer than IOTL, when President Wallace decides he wants a ringside seat on a US Navy carrier to "watch the show" when we use this new weapon that could "end the war".
Needless to say, the bombs go off and Japan ends up surrendering pretty much as IOTL. Wallace sees his "show", then returns to Washington, but radiation poisioning kicks in during the return trip. After a brief hospitalization, Wallace dies, bringing his VP, Harry Truman, into office to face what we knew as the Cold War.
In this timeline, however, America's response to Wallace's death is to become extremely "no Nuke" (against atomic weapons) and partially retreats to its pre-war isolationism, leaving the rest of the world generally unchecked against Cold War Soviet expansionism.
Comments?
What if FDR had retained Wallace and for unrelated reasons, the Bomb is deployed to Japan without prior testing in New Mexico? No one really understands the magnitude of the burst and resulting fallout. In fact, the conventional war continues for a few weeks longer than IOTL, when President Wallace decides he wants a ringside seat on a US Navy carrier to "watch the show" when we use this new weapon that could "end the war".
Needless to say, the bombs go off and Japan ends up surrendering pretty much as IOTL. Wallace sees his "show", then returns to Washington, but radiation poisioning kicks in during the return trip. After a brief hospitalization, Wallace dies, bringing his VP, Harry Truman, into office to face what we knew as the Cold War.
In this timeline, however, America's response to Wallace's death is to become extremely "no Nuke" (against atomic weapons) and partially retreats to its pre-war isolationism, leaving the rest of the world generally unchecked against Cold War Soviet expansionism.
Comments?