Driftless
Donor
Total wild-card idea. The Panay incident nearly escalates into war, and the US has to back down because it has no army to speak of. This leads to a proposal for major US rearmament, in part to stimulate the economy (heading back down in 1937-1938), and to sop up some of the unemployed men (there are lots of potential volunteers); but also because with the rise of Nazi Germany, the US needs a real army. By 1939, the US has about 800,000 men in service, including a strong tank corps.
This one has been in the back of my mind for a year or two. Were I writing fiction It would be a definite story.
M2 Medium tanks vs PzII & III on the road to Soissons![]()
By 1937, the US had about 500,000 young men in, or who had passed through the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)program. The camps were supervised by reserve army officers, and while there was no military training, the men in the program were accustomed to hard physical effort in often difficult environments where teamwork was essential. (Many of the buildings and projects those folks built 75+ years ago are still in daily use...)
Many of those men would serve in the OTL military, post-Pearl Harbor. Move up the dates by four years and you still have a very large pool of already screened men to recruit from.