DBWI: What if Mexico never joined the Central Powers?

We all know about Mexico's alliance with Germany during the Great War, and its catastrophic defeat by the United States shortly afterward. What if Mexico had chosen to remain outside of the war? Without the damages and reparations that it was forced to pay afterward, I predict that Mexico's economy would have skyrocketed during the post-war years. The Fascists would be unable to take advantage of the weakened country, like in our timeline, so there would be no Mexican alliance with Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy, thus preventing the Second Great War. Mexico would grow into a much stronger nation, and probably help modernize the rest of Latin America. By the present day, the four largest economies in the world would be Mexico, Britain, the United States, and Japan.

(This is my first DBWI, so please offer constructive criticism)
 
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boredatwork

Banned
OOC:

The US wouldn't make Mexico pay reparations - they would've taken territory instead.

After losing a large chunk of territory to the US, again, not sure that even the looniest Mexican government could be convinced to go a third round.

But, with enough fiddling at the margins these could be worked around.

Will be interesting to see where you go with this.
 
Well considering the border insurgency that has been in place since 1921, America would have also been a different place. We may have been able to avoid the "Zoot Suit Riots" of 1942. We also wouldn't have had the Clinton White House faced with impeachment after the 1994 Zapatista Rebellion. But most of all, we wouldn't have had Pete Wilson (R-CA) as President for the past 8 years. The idea of a "Monroe Doctrine" might not have earned the racist connotation that it has received over the past 3 decades....
 
I think what set off the Mexicans most may have been us carving up the Mexican state. You have Baja California, The Rio Grande Republic and the Yucatan which were carved out and given independence after the war, and many Mexicans considered these little more than puppet regimes, and despised the US for their very existence (perhaps one of the reasons these were annexed almost immediately after the rise of the fascists and communists to power).

Mexico definitely would also be more stable since the initial invasion during the first world war did a lot of damage, followed by the debacle of the Second World War, and the ensuing Civil War between the Trotskyists and Fascists from 1944 to 1945, and the allied occupation and reconstruction would not have occurred nor have had to occur. And perhaps this whole refugee immigration problem we see today would not have happened either.

Though Mexico has been relatively stable since at least the 1970's, the massive drain on the US that a destabilized Mexico had caused for the past century (both US and Soviet occupation since 1945 and the radical factions that rose from troubles of the past and still exist even in relatively stable state) have showed their stretch marks and would not have occurred, and President-elect Clinton wouldn't have the current Central American terror situation from Zapatista to deal with when she comes to the office in a few months. And the hectic situation it faced in the 20th century retarded Mexico from becoming a stronger nation as it could have been.
 
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mowque

Banned
I think what set off the Mexicans most may have been us carving up the Mexican state. You have Baja California, The Rio Grande Republic and the Yucatan which were carved out and given independence after the war, and many Mexicans considered these little more than puppet regimes, and despised the US for their very existence (perhaps one of the reasons these were annexed almost immediately after the rise of the fascists and communists to power).

Mexico definitely would also be more stable since the Great War and initial invasion did a lot of damage, and the ensuing Civil War between the Trotskyists and Fascists from 1944 to 1950 and the allied occupation and reconstruction would not have occurred nor have had to occur. And perhaps this whole refugee immigration problem we see today would not have happened either.

Though Mexico has been relatively stable since at least the 1970's, the massive drain on the US that a destabilized Mexico had caused for the past century (both US and Soviet occupation since 1950 and the radical factions that rose from troubles of the past and still exist even in relatively stable state) have showed their stretch marks and would not have occurred, and President-elect Clinton wouldn't have the current Central American terror situation from Zapatista to deal with when she comes to the office in a few months. And the hectic situation it faced in the 20th century retarded Mexico from becoming a stronger nation as it could have been.

i really dislike when people do this on DBWIs! :mad:
 
OOC: Oh, but I love it.

If Mexico is to go the way of many of the losing countries after WW1, it is likely that it will lose territory in retribution for the war by the victor, and to lower their ability to make war again. And in such strife that may be put on said nation, the communists, socialists and fascists would be the ideologies to rise to prominence. Civil War was perhaps fanciful, though nothing impossible for a power at the losing end of what would I guess be this worlds World War 2, and Cold War-eque reconstruction to some degree is likely given what happened to the axis nations in the OTL. And Mexico would seem to hate the US by a large degree so a more hectic situation to deal with post war seems possible. Plus, its fun to discuss parallel world presidents.

If you don't like it, declare it non Canon. I don't really care.
 
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[DISCONNECT]

Then I guess you'd butterfly the whole Treaty of St. Louis and the massive territorial and financial reparations that came into play, although its possible that Wilson, with his repeated interventions across Central America, could manage to trigger a war with Mexico anyway.

Remember as well, the swing towards interventionism and the election of President Harding led to a pullout from the Philippines and China--moves that would play directly into Japan's hands and shape the scope of the Second World War.

You'd also have the war ending in 1918 or 1919 instead of 1921. There would be no harsh Treaty of Frankfurt making harsh demands on Italy and the Entente might have managed better than a peace of exhaustion in the West.

Need I mention just HOW extreme that's going to butterfly WW2? You'd have no Action Nationale rising in France or the Socialist Coup in Italy. Anything to mitigate that horrifying nuclear war is a good thing.
 
I know this is going to sound terribly ASB-ish, but the world created would certainly defy The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) by Max Weber, by creating a world wherein Roman Catholics are not universally seen as being "authoritarian lapdogs". It wasn't until 1976, that American textbooks stopped using the Catholic label to describe the atrocities in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas of the 1920s. To make matters worse, it took until 2008, for the electorate to get over its fear that V.P.-elect John Kerry (D) was beholden to a "European dictator"......
 
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