ASB? U.S. withdrawing soldiers from Western Europe after WW2?

IOTL it is just rhetoric hurling back and fort, but is there a plausible, if ASB, somewhere theat could make the U.S. follow through the threat rather than just bluffing?

The TL won't have to come to the actual withdrawal, just have the bill on the President' desk is enough.

The topics of discussions would be...

  1. When the idea would start? Would it have to go back as far as Yalta that America had been looking for an excuse from day one? Would post Cold War more plausible?
  2. What gave the movement momentum and ammunition to get the bill as far as the President's desk?
  3. What and how many attempts to prevent this were missed or fumbled away?
 
A viable European free market economy has been essential to US prosperity and growth for over two centuries. OTL keeping the US military there was a part of recreating conditions favorable to the US economy. It would require blindly committed isolationists to overlook this economic factor.

The most obvious risk here is a Communist takeover of wester Europe. Absent that a unegaged Europe could recreate similar conditions that aggravated the Depression.
 

DougM

Donor
The Cold War/fighting /preventing communism and the defense of Europe cost the US huge amounts of money. And frankly Europe never paid anything close to its share of said cost for various reasons both good and bad. So it is FAR from ASB that the US would pull its troops out of Europe.
It is much less likely however that the US would pull out of Europe and put the troops elsewhere. The most likely location for that would have to be a real threat closer to home. Something to do with Canada or Mexico or Central/South America. As the USSR/Communism getting a real foothold in any of those locations poses a much bigger direct threat to the safety of the US then Russians eating crapes under the Eiffel Tower.
And yes ultimately the US economy is linked to Western Europe but in 1946 through at least 1960 it was not that import to the US and the US could have easily survived without it. And if the US had spent as much building up Japan and the parts of Asia that it had influence over and or helping/building ties to Australia or Central and South America the US probably could have gotten much the same effect now.

It is not like Germany and Italy was doing anything to help the US Economically in 1950 they were still a mess. So the effort time and resources that went into rebuilding that and building the economic ties COULD have went elsewhere. It just didn’t. Because of traditional beliefs and frankly more then a bit of racism.
I sometimes wonder if the US would not have been better off ultimately helping build up Central and South America. As it was closer could be more easily connected via trains and roads and such.

So no it is NOT ASB that the US that (from its point of view) has just been dragged into the two deadliest wars in history as a result of Europe not being able to play nice with each other or to take care of its own mess decides. “NEVER AGAIN”. We did it twice and we will not get involved a third time, take care of your own mess. And turns around and takes its toys and leaves.
 
The Cold War/fighting /preventing communism and the defense of Europe cost the US huge amounts of money. And frankly Europe never paid anything close to its share of said cost for various reasons both good and bad. So it is FAR from ASB that the US would pull its troops out of Europe.
It is much less likely however that the US would pull out of Europe and put the troops elsewhere. The most likely location for that would have to be a real threat closer to home. Something to do with Canada or Mexico or Central/South America. As the USSR/Communism getting a real foothold in any of those locations poses a much bigger direct threat to the safety of the US then Russians eating crapes under the Eiffel Tower.
And yes ultimately the US economy is linked to Western Europe but in 1946 through at least 1960 it was not that import to the US and the US could have easily survived without it. And if the US had spent as much building up Japan and the parts of Asia that it had influence over and or helping/building ties to Australia or Central and South America the US probably could have gotten much the same effect now.

It is not like Germany and Italy was doing anything to help the US Economically in 1950 they were still a mess. So the effort time and resources that went into rebuilding that and building the economic ties COULD have went elsewhere. It just didn’t. Because of traditional beliefs and frankly more then a bit of racism.
I sometimes wonder if the US would not have been better off ultimately helping build up Central and South America. As it was closer could be more easily connected via trains and roads and such.

So no it is NOT ASB that the US that (from its point of view) has just been dragged into the two deadliest wars in history as a result of Europe not being able to play nice with each other or to take care of its own mess decides. “NEVER AGAIN”. We did it twice and we will not get involved a third time, take care of your own mess. And turns around and takes its toys and leaves.
Maybe...

But in my view a full US withdrawal from Europe post ww2 would have eventually resulted in many more nations posesing their own nuclear weapons. I don't see this as a good thing for the U.S.

IMHO the current state of affairs where certain countries that can make their own nuclear weapons have chosen not to do so rests on a foundation of certain nations such as the U.S. being prepared to defend some or all of the countries in question. I see this state of affairs of being of value to the U.S.
 
Maybe...

But in my view a full US withdrawal from Europe post ww2 would have eventually resulted in many more nations posesing their own nuclear weapons. I don't see this as a good thing for the U.S.

That, or full Soviet dominance of Europe. Which also wouldn’t be a good thing for the US in the long-run.
 
However it might actually turn out, the Soviet Union doesn't get to swarm all over Western Europe just because the US leaves unless the UK and France suddenly cease to exist - or at the very least, give up their nuclear arsenals. I suppose it's possible albeit unlikely for the UK, but it's much more improbable for France.
 
The Cold War/fighting /preventing communism and the defense of Europe cost the US huge amounts of money. And frankly Europe never paid anything close to its share of said cost for various reasons both good and bad. So it is FAR from ASB that the US would pull its troops out of Europe.
It is much less likely however that the US would pull out of Europe and put the troops elsewhere. The most likely location for that would have to be a real threat closer to home. Something to do with Canada or Mexico or Central/South America. As the USSR/Communism getting a real foothold in any of those locations poses a much bigger direct threat to the safety of the US then Russians eating crapes under the Eiffel Tower.
And yes ultimately the US economy is linked to Western Europe but in 1946 through at least 1960 it was not that import to the US and the US could have easily survived without it. And if the US had spent as much building up Japan and the parts of Asia that it had influence over and or helping/building ties to Australia or Central and South America the US probably could have gotten much the same effect now.

It is not like Germany and Italy was doing anything to help the US Economically in 1950 they were still a mess. So the effort time and resources that went into rebuilding that and building the economic ties COULD have went elsewhere. It just didn’t. Because of traditional beliefs and frankly more then a bit of racism.
I sometimes wonder if the US would not have been better off ultimately helping build up Central and South America. As it was closer could be more easily connected via trains and roads and such.

So no it is NOT ASB that the US that (from its point of view) has just been dragged into the two deadliest wars in history as a result of Europe not being able to play nice with each other or to take care of its own mess decides. “NEVER AGAIN”. We did it twice and we will not get involved a third time, take care of your own mess. And turns around and takes its toys and leaves.

Possible? Yes, but not too far from ASB. If the aftermath of WWI showed the US anything it was total withdrawal from Europe right after a total war cost us more in the long run. The US was already anti-Communist and didn't want the world to turn Communist and Russia was aggressive after the war. Both WW1 and WW2 taught the US it needed to keep track of the balance of power in Europe. There were many reasons the US stuck around. It wasn't even that unpopular.
 
However it might actually turn out, the Soviet Union doesn't get to swarm all over Western Europe just because the US leaves unless the UK and France suddenly cease to exist - or at the very least, give up their nuclear arsenals. I suppose it's possible albeit unlikely for the UK, but it's much more improbable for France.
Perhaps but without substantial numbers of US forces based in Western Europe the balance of power between the Soviets and Western Europe is going to be fundamentally different. I am doubtful that the UK and French nuclear deterrent forces will be seen as an adequate replacement for the missing US forces by many other nations.

I suspect it also more likely that non European nations such as Australia and Canada might acquire their own nuclear weapons in such a setting. To recap I don't see how this would be to the advantage of the U.S.
 
However it might actually turn out, the Soviet Union doesn't get to swarm all over Western Europe just because the US leaves unless the UK and France suddenly cease to exist - or at the very least, give up their nuclear arsenals. I suppose it's possible albeit unlikely for the UK, but it's much more improbable for France.

France and Britain are in no shape to stand up to the Soviet Union by themselves. The economic recovery that allowed them to obtain nuclear weapons when they did was heavily financed by the Marshall Aid. Even if we assume that they manage to maintain their OTL schedule, Britain only gets their bomb three years after the USSR does and France a whopping 11 years. Meaning prior to that, their effectively helpless because post-demobilization their armed forces weren’t up to the snuff of taking on the Red Army. As it was, even with the American garrison forces hanging around, the late-40s and early-50s saw the Red Army maintained a overwhelming superiority in conventional forces and the only effective military deterrence against an invasion was the prospect of what forces (particularly the nuclear ones) the US could build-up in a long war.

But then between the drained and shattered West European economies and a isolationist US not undertaking the massive efforts to support anti-communism, the communist movements in Western Europe would be far stronger and the Soviets probably don't need to invade anywhere. At best, the Soviets would just isolate and ignore them. At worst, they'd undergo strong domestic shifts - maybe even full-scale revolutions - and be just another bunch of satellites. That all seems to be what Stalin anticipated happening in ‘45-‘46 when he was under the impression the US would be leaving by early-1947.

The real conflict of the late-20th century would probably be between the USSR and China, when the Sino-Soviet split occurs.
 
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Puzzle

Donor
That, or full Soviet dominance of Europe. Which also wouldn’t be a good thing for the US in the long-run.
Maybe not, the post-Soviet states aren't fans of Russia at all and with the Atlantic in the way perhaps there'd just be fifty years of awkward staring before the Soviet systems falls under its own weight. It's not like the US will be at a greater risk of nuclear destruction than it already was.
 
Maybe if we have someone in place of Reagan who doesn’t care much about the Cold War. The US keeps its military budget at around 3% of the GDP and makes little effort to restore American strength overseas, but gets the economy going and is consequently fairly popular. Let’s say the Soviet Union still collapses more or less on schedule.

This is used to justify further cuts to the US military and the budget is eventually down to around 1.5% of the GDP by the late nineties. No Gulf War, no Grenada, no Panama. As America’s military shrinks, so does its overseas bases.

With no Gulf War, 9/11 doesn’t happen. America finds little reason to raise their military budget. America rejects several Eastern European states attempts to to join NATO as to not upset Russia, or have to waste money building bases there. The EU however expands into Eastern Europe again. Tension between America and Russia is relatively low, while the EU finds Putin or some equivalent troublesome. Europe can not rely on America to defend Eastern Europe, which causes Europe to begin to view it as obsolete, and the EU creates its own military around 2009 in response to various Russian moves.

Some in America view the new European military as a competitor, but most view it with indifference. But with Western Europe moving to protect Eastern Europe without American permission, many Americans come to believe that NATO is obsolete and has nothing to do with American interests, resulting in America withdrawing from the alliance in the early 2010s. By 2019 America has withdrawn from Europe for the better part of a decade.


Thoughts?
 
France and Britain are in no shape to stand up to the Soviet Union by themselves. The economic recovery that allowed them to obtain nuclear weapons when they did was heavily financed by the Marshall Aid. Even if we assume that they manage to maintain their OTL schedule, Britain only gets their bomb three years after the USSR does and France a whopping 11 years. Meaning prior to that, their effectively helpless because post-demobilization their armed forces weren’t up to the snuff of taking on the Red Army. As it was, even with the American garrison forces hanging around, the late-40s and early-50s saw the Red Army maintained a overwhelming superiority in conventional forces and the only effective military deterrence against an invasion the prospect of what forces (particularly the nuclear ones) the US could build-up in a long war.

But then between the drained and shattered West European economies and a isolationist US not undertaking the massive efforts to support anti-communism, the communist movements in Western Europe would be far stronger and the Soviets probably don't need to invade anywhere. At best, the Soviets would just isolate and ignore them. At worst, they'd undergo strong domestic shifts - maybe even full-scale revolutions - and be just another bunch of satellites. That all seems to be what Stalin anticipated happening in ‘45-‘46 when he was under the impression the US would be leaving by early-1947.

The real conflict of the late-20th century would probably be between the USSR and China, when the Sino-Soviet split occurs.
That makes a lot of sense.

Depending on the time frame, I also wouldn't entirely rule out a UK govt in exile re locating to Canada and a crash commonwealth nuclear program based in Canada eventually producing useable nuclear weapons and delivery systems for some form of re match in the future.

I don't see this as being in the best interests of an issolationist US.
 
Maybe if we have someone in place of Reagan who doesn’t care much about the Cold War. The US keeps its military budget at around 3% of the GDP and makes little effort to restore American strength overseas, but gets the economy going and is consequently fairly popular. Let’s say the Soviet Union still collapses more or less on schedule.

This is used to justify further cuts to the US military and the budget is eventually down to around 1.5% of the GDP by the late nineties. No Gulf War, no Grenada, no Panama. As America’s military shrinks, so does its overseas bases.

With no Gulf War, 9/11 doesn’t happen. America finds little reason to raise their military budget. America rejects several Eastern European states attempts to to join NATO as to not upset Russia, or have to waste money building bases there. The EU however expands into Eastern Europe again. Tension between America and Russia is relatively low, while the EU finds Putin or some equivalent troublesome. Europe can not rely on America to defend Eastern Europe, which causes Europe to begin to view it as obsolete, and the EU creates its own military around 2009 in response to various Russian moves.

Some in America view the new European military as a competitor, but most view it with indifference. But with Western Europe moving to protect Eastern Europe without American permission, many Americans come to believe that NATO is obsolete and has nothing to do with American interests, resulting in America withdrawing from the alliance in the early 2010s. By 2019 America has withdrawn from Europe for the better part of a decade.


Thoughts?

At that late date it could work.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
With a PoD after VE-Day and before the end of the Cold War, there are only three scenarios I can imagine this happening.
1. Stalin gets his stroke several years early in 1945 or 1946, and his successor decides to Finlandize Eastern and Central Europe instead of imposing Communist regimes. US troops leave Europe in exchange for Soviet forced returning to their borders. Chances are that the Morgenthau Plan or something similar is imposed.
2. MASSIVE domestic unrest occurs, forcing the US to bring the army home to restore order.
3. The United States somehow ends up in a total hot war with China. The Soviets are eager to see the capitalists and the Maoist revisionists fight each other so they pinky promise not to invade Western Europe so America can redeploy to Asia.

As for scenarios after the Cold War, that might be a topic for Chat.
 
Maybe if we have someone in place of Reagan who doesn’t care much about the Cold War. The US keeps its military budget at around 3% of the GDP and makes little effort to restore American strength overseas, but gets the economy going and is consequently fairly popular. Let’s say the Soviet Union still collapses more or less on schedule.

This is used to justify further cuts to the US military and the budget is eventually down to around 1.5% of the GDP by the late nineties. No Gulf War, no Grenada, no Panama. As America’s military shrinks, so does its overseas bases.

With no Gulf War, 9/11 doesn’t happen. America finds little reason to raise their military budget. America rejects several Eastern European states attempts to to join NATO as to not upset Russia, or have to waste money building bases there. The EU however expands into Eastern Europe again. Tension between America and Russia is relatively low, while the EU finds Putin or some equivalent troublesome. Europe can not rely on America to defend Eastern Europe, which causes Europe to begin to view it as obsolete, and the EU creates its own military around 2009 in response to various Russian moves.

Some in America view the new European military as a competitor, but most view it with indifference. But with Western Europe moving to protect Eastern Europe without American permission, many Americans come to believe that NATO is obsolete and has nothing to do with American interests, resulting in America withdrawing from the alliance in the early 2010s. By 2019 America has withdrawn from Europe for the better part of a decade.


Thoughts?
The NPT effectively ceases to function ? A number of new nuclear weapon states emerge who can individually credibly deter Russia (and coincidentally in theory have a significant capability to damage the U.S. ?) Acting in concert several of the new nuclear powers along with France and or the UK can credibly threaten the Russians with a Cold War era escalation dominance scenario.


The U.S. looses their global super power status unless they spend trillions of dollars playing catch up in a strange new nuclear arms race when the U.S. doesn't officially have any real enemies ? Former U.S. allies tell the U.S. to pound sand when the U.S. wants bases for new early warning systems, forward bases for bombers etc.. ?
 
How much money did the USA really spend in military expenditures and Marshall Plan aid in Western Europe in the 1940s and 1950s? I had the impression that the USA seriously reduced its conventional forces, or at least the army, because the Americans were going to rely on nukes and conventional bombers.

I don't think its ASB. But the USA was already an occupying power of Germany, requiring a minimal commitment. And the US Navy was not going to give up its bases in the Med, and given that the USN had operated there as early as the war with the Barbary pirates, its presence there was not far fetched. That really leaves the Marshall Plan, which I don't think was that controversial, and the formal NATO alliance, which was aimed originally at Germany as much as it was aimed at the Soviet Union. The commitment to Turkey made strategic sense and the Turks repaid it in Korea.

Now either forgoing the 1980s build up and/ or using the collapse of the Soviet Union to wind up NATO and getting the US military out of Europe are different matters.
 
VALKYRIE succeeds; Germany surrenders.

With the threat of the Nazi Bomb removed, many of the scientists in the Manhattan Project refuse to continue work on the atomic bomb. The MP abandons the bomb and works only on atomic power at a castly reduced budget.

With no atomic bomb to break Japanese resistance, the US goes ahead with OLYMPIC and CORONET. During repeated bombing of Tokyo, Hirohito is killed. It ultimately requires five years to stamp out resistance in Japan, and clean out all the fanatical holdouts overseas. By the end of the war, US dead number over 1M, and Americans are thoroughly sick of war.

Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) is elected President in 1948 on a neo-isolationist platform. All the boys come home by 1950 with occupation duties handed off to various Allies.
 
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BigBlueBox

Banned
With the threat of the Nazi Bomb removed, many of the scientists in the Manhattan Project refuse to continue work on the atomic bomb. The MP abandons the bomb and works only on atomic power at a castly reduced budget.
This is pure nonsense. There are many scenarios that could derail the Manhattan Project and prevent an atomic bomb being ready by 1945. Atomic scientists being bleeding heart pacifists who only worked on a bomb because of scary Germans isn’t one of them.
 
The easiest way to have an isolationist president who might withdraw troops from Europe after the war ended, I once thought, was to have Dewey-Bricker elected in 1944 (in a scenario in which FDR's bad health becomes undeniable), then have Dewey die in (say) a helicopter crash, and have Bricker become president. The problem is that it turns out Bricker was less isolationist than his reputation: "Unlike Taft, William Langer (R-N.D.), Kenneth Wherry (R-Neb.), and a few others, Bricker voted for both the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty. On the other hand, he did support Taft's unsuccessful efforts to cut funding for the Marshall Plan and attach a reservation to the North Atlantic Pact disavowing any American obligation to supply its treaty partners with military equipment or atomic bombs. Moreover, in later years he often tried to cut or eliminate many foreign aid programs, denouncing them as confusing and wasteful of American taxpayers' money." Duane Tananbaum, The Bricker Amendment Controversy: A Test of Eisenhower's Political Leadership, p. 23

What about Henry Wallace, you may ask? What if he was retained on the ticket and the ticket still won and he became POTUS? (Of course if the retention of Wallace led to Dewey-Bricker winning, that would be another way to get a President Bricker...) By 1948, Wallace was proposing the withdrawal of all US troops from Europe. But IMO there is a big difference between the policies Wallace would have pursued as president in 1945 and the positions he took as Progressive Party candidate in 1948. (By that time he was embittered at having first been dumped from the ticket and then fired as Secretary of Commerce, had become convinced that there was a conspiracy of "warmongers" against him, and found his support increasingly limited to people in the orbit of the Communist Party and the left wing of the CIO.)

So I rather doubt that either President Wallace or President Bricker would withdraw all troops from Europe.
 

DougM

Donor
Do try to remember that while the politicians tend to do what they want in the US the US is STIL a Republic. And if you get the vast majority of citizens to be isolationist after the war then ultimately the population will gets its way.
If the vast majority want out of the war business and especially out of Europe after watching the massive death toll on two generations the ultimately the US WILL pull out of Europe.
The President can not sustain the military if the people refuse.

If you really look st it the US lost Vietnam as much because the people were against it as because of anything that North Vietnam did. Basically the US military could inflict its will anyplace it really wanted to but a large percentage of the population was against the war. This made support in the form of troops and materials harder to get and ultimately eroded political support. Now picture this on an even larger scale with the majority of WW2 vets and their families turning isolationist and anti European Defense.

“We did the twice and those damn Europeans just can’t get along peacefully, so let them kill each other”.

Frankly it is a pretty easy view to have take over the US. And if the Germans put up a nasty fight it could have happened. Picture the insane Nazis using every trick in the book during the war.
Gas, Bio. Maybe get enough of a nuclear program to play with a dirty bomb or two. Maybe have some if that dropped on the US via submarine. Add in sending prisoners of warts the death camps. I mean if you think about how sick and evil much of the leadership of Germany was (as proved by the death camps) they were actually pretty civil in fighting the war itself. Now picture the Nazi ingenuity and all that evil sick thinking being used to find ways to make the war a true hell on earth.

Add in retaliation and such from England and France. Maybe the French butchering every German they catch and a lot of collaborationist. Not unreasonable as they were treated pretty bad in OTL in a world were Germany was harsher and say burnt cities and killed civilians in a scorched earth policy you could easily see a lot of retaliation. And ultimately the US says “a pox on both your houses”

The war could have seen a LOT more injured or killed and done a lot more damage,
In this case the Americans come home sick and disgusted with the way those crazy Europeans fight each other.
They develop the Bomb and long range delivery systems and dare anyone to try and attack. Frankly it is pretty easy to see happening.
 
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