Challenge: A Long 1920's

This is a take off on the idea of the "Long 1950s", whereby that decade is said to have really begun in the post-war period in the late 40s, and to have ended with the assassination of Kennedy in 1963. It encompasses the idea of a way of life and world, social, nation (etc) situation similar enough from year to year to be considered a distinct era.

The 1920s was an era of Republican political dominance, American isolationism, laissez faire economics, looser morals and more social liberation becoming commonly accepted and commonly expressed, and a new and invigorated spirit in America in the post World War years. The 1920s as an era ended with the Stock Market Crash, and the 1930's as an era began pretty much on 1930. After that, it was a Depression economy, the politics became more Liberal, the social mores more conservative, the Democrats would retake Congress and FDR would take the Presidency for four terms, ending 12 years of Republican dominance of the White House.

The challenge here is to create a "Long 20s", whereby that era continues on for longer. For one, as economic collapse was the reason for the end of the 20s as an era, that would need to be lessened if not averted.
 
Averting the Great Depression is complex and requires knowledge of economics, the Dismal Science. People would much rather argue about Sealion. :)

Bruce
 
Because I'm on vacation, bored, and don't want to work on my own TL...:D

First of all, let's not change the immediate fall-out of the end of WWI, because that makes this a "Different Versailles" TL, which I think has been done before.

Let's start with doing away with the 1920-21 recession, allowed us to gain a couple years that way. And let's see if we can do it in a way that isn't just building on swampland, preparing ourselves for an eventually bubble pop. I don't think we can stop the post-WWI recession, but that was pretty small, anyway. And let's say that the US, for example, decides to handle it by converting military industry to civilian (armored cars to regular cars, for example; warships to merchant marine). We still have too many workers, though, as over a million young men return from the war. If we can figure out a way to make more of them stay in Europe, we solve two birds with one stone, preventing the glut in the American labor market while shoring up Europe's.

I actually really like that idea. Any ideas how we can do it?
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I'd argue that there was a "long 1920s" in that you basically had all of the hallmarks of the '20s (rising racism, xenophobia/nativism, elitism, anti-labor panic, Prohibition) from 1917 through 1932. Granted, the Depression hit in '29, but most people thought that things would turn around throughout the first half of 1930; after all it was only supposed to be a "market correction." The War is what really started the '20s, and it was Roosevelt and the New Deal Coalition that ended them.
 
Lessen the severity of the Great Depression and it becomes another forgettable (but bad) recession and the "roaring '20s" continues until an analogy of our world war breaks out and that puts it to bed.
 
We still have too many workers, though, as over a million young men return from the war. If we can figure out a way to make more of them stay in Europe, we solve two birds with one stone, preventing the glut in the American labor market while shoring up Europe's.

I actually really like that idea. Any ideas how we can do it?

This is an outright flight of fancy, but bear with me.

What if Anatolia fell into total disarray in the war's aftermath (perhaps through the Young Turks' leadership being decimated or purged for some reason or another). At Versailles, Anatolia is made a League of Nations mandate just like the more peripheral components of the Ottoman Empire, and American forces are required to police it due to the rest of the Allies' manpower commitments preventing them from doing the job.

Or maybe just step up the scale and scope of the Allies' role in the Russian intervention.
 
My timeline is an extension of political disarray noted as a trademark of the 1920's, but America is very different.
 
Averting the Great Depression is complex and requires knowledge of economics, the Dismal Science. People would much rather argue about Sealion. :)

Bruce

After I started the thread, I immediately thought maybe I should have just called it "Challenge: Prevent the Great Depression" but then again, that would have changed the context because then everyone would be talking about that and not the aftermath and culture and everything else really interesting about the world, and even if I brought the culture up, everyone would have mostly ignored it as a topic.

Plus, I'm tired of WW2 and how even a thread like "What if Hitler Farted After Lunch on D-Day" can get a bajillion replies while anything else will have to work harder to get discussion going. I'm a rebel.

My timeline is an extension of political disarray noted as a trademark of the 1920's, but America is very different.

What timeline is that?
 
This is a take off on the idea of the "Long 1950s", whereby that decade is said to have really begun in the post-war period in the late 40s, and to have ended with the assassination of Kennedy in 1963. It encompasses the idea of a way of life and world, social, nation (etc) situation similar enough from year to year to be considered a distinct era.

The 1920s was an era of Republican political dominance, American isolationism, laissez faire economics, looser morals and more social liberation becoming commonly accepted and commonly expressed, and a new and invigorated spirit in America in the post World War years. The 1920s as an era ended with the Stock Market Crash, and the 1930's as an era began pretty much on 1930. After that, it was a Depression economy, the politics became more Liberal, the social mores more conservative, the Democrats would retake Congress and FDR would take the Presidency for four terms, ending 12 years of Republican dominance of the White House.

The challenge here is to create a "Long 20s", whereby that era continues on for longer. For one, as economic collapse was the reason for the end of the 20s as an era, that would need to be lessened if not averted.

Well, in some respects the 1920s didn't end right in 1930. Prohibition, bootlegging, and associated gangsterism continued right into 1933.

See the movie Night Nurse, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable (as the villain). A friendly bootlegger is a major character.

As for morals - it's not clear how much people's moral ideas changed in the 1930s. There was certainly no reversion to Victorian attitudes. In mass media the Hays Office made film more... demure. (Pre-Code movies like Night Nurse, or Cleopatra (starring Claudette Colbert) can be quite startling.) If prosperity continued... ??

Another point was that Hollywood in 1930s glory had a near-infinite supply of cheap labor. A thousand extras for a crowd scene was nothing. That was because of the Depression, of course.

Another big change was the collapse of new private construction, which was key in the takeover of American architecture by the Bauhaus-dominated Modernists.

A change that was averted by the Depression was the breakdown of the Solid South. By the 1920s, the conditioned-reflex Democrat voting of white Southerners was starting to crack. Republicans won the governorship of Tennessee in 1910, 1912, and 1920; and held a House seat in Texas from 1920 to 1932. OTL Roosevelt's anti-Depression measures re-consolidated white support for Democrats in the South for another generation. It started cracking again in the 1950s. When it crumbled in the 1960s and later, the white supremacy system was broken and not a factor.

No Depression, and perhaps the Republican party develops a Southern white supremacist wing like the Democrats. (OTL there was a vestigial wing of that sort - the Lily-White Republicans, who never won much of anything, but had votes in the national convention which they traded for GOP lay-downs on race issues.)
 

BlondieBC

Banned
To avoid bust (depression), you must avoid the boom (roaring 1920's).

WW1 resulted in a rapid expansion of USA money supply, especially the broader measures of money. To avoid this expansion of money (greenbacks/liberty bonds/etc), the USA either has to avoid entering WW1 or finance the war much differently. If the USA does not enter and cuts off the Entente once the run out of secureable assets, you get a vastly different world with a CP win or draw. But you can get a long economic boom in the USA, it would just be a lot less exhuberant. Or we can get to financing options. The USA could have spent less money per month, but this has large risks of causing a longer war. Hard to see this type of scenario working for you. Or you could have the USA begin to payoff the notes immediately after the war. The continual shrinking of the money supply will give you a big drag on the economy, but if done right, it can give you 20 years of the same.

The 1920's were a debt fuel (larger money supply) boom that lead to an inevitable bust. Much like the 1994-2008 time frame lead to a bust. Same cause, same result.
 
I'm tired of WW2 and how even a thread like "What if Hitler Farted After Lunch on D-Day" can get a bajillion replies

Alright, I actually don't have anything to contribute, but I'm sigging that.

Edit: ...or I would, if I didn't need those characters to plug my Retrospective Elections thing.
 
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