Development of World War II under different presidents

Given the variety of possible presidents at the time how might the American approach to World War II have varied under different or alternate Presidents?
 
Given the variety of possible presidents at the time how might the American approach to World War II have varied under different or alternate Presidents?

I wonder what would have happened if Huey Long was in power, much probably there would be no cooperation with soviet union.
 
Considering that Winston Churchill was willing to cooperate with the Soviets, if we had a scenario where Huey Long was president with the USA entering the war at all, de facto Long will cooperate with the USSR. He might be less enthusiastic and quite willing to back up Churchill every time he wants to balk, but once Hitler attacks Russia it is pretty stupid not to enter into some degree of cooperative alliance with the USSR.

The bigger question is, without FDR how likely is the USA to wind up actively belligerent against Hitler at all?

Given the extreme circumstances of the 1930s, it will take some serious spadework to first establish who would be President if not Roosevelt. Are we talking about a TL where FDR is dead? Where he has committed some political misstep so he is not the standard-bearer of the Democrats in 1932? Is the POD well before '32 so a different Republican, or even a Democrat, is President in 1929? Vice versa do we have one where FDR is reelected in '36 but drops dead before 1940, or either is persuaded not to run for a third term or is somehow primaryed out or is simply defeated by some Republican? Presumably no matter what butterflying shenanigans are got up to west of the Atlantic, in Europe, Hitler's agenda rolls along on greased rails?

The circumstances governing how and why someone other than FDR is President in 1941 will have as much bearing on the "development of WWII" as the fact it is a different man in the Oval Office. FDR put a heavy stamp on just about everything happening in the USA in the '30s and depending on how and when a different person is there on Pearl Harbor day, the position of many actors in America will be different. For minimal deviation from OTL, I would have Roosevelt get reelected, with Henry Wallace as VP, in 1940, with POD in the form of his sudden and unexpected death not too long before PHD. The Japanese were motivated in part by response to Roosevelt's own actions after all, and even if Wallace decides he is obliged to follow through on Roosevelt's policies and priorities, FDR kicking the bucket will surely seem like a possible opportunity for a different deal to Japanese authorities--the question being whether the gung ho militarists would be amenable to a brief pause to sample the waters or not.

I like to hope that the US resolve to end Nazi rule in Europe was not just FDR's personal bee in his anti-Prussian bonnet, but sometimes I wonder--certainly many specific alternative Presidents might have been far more willing to take a live and let attitude. I think Wallace would have had a strongly anti-Nazi bent of his own, but would he have been as adept at manipulating the powers that be in America to the perception that breaking the Reich is in the national interest of the USA, and indeed standing up to it is an existential necessity? Given the timing Wallace succeeding and Pearl Harbor falling in his lap largely forces events along OTL lines--but how badly will American morale be shaken by an accidental far-left President? In the dire circumstances might right wing forces attempt a coup? Objectively there is no reason the USA should not enter the war and win handily within 4 years just as OTL, and if Wallace does not screw the pooch massively somehow he ought to be a shoo-in for reelection in 1944. I don't think the war would be conducted very differently, assuming Wallace is not going to stumble into such a trap as seeming vulnerable to a coup while provoking one. I wonder if Wallace might even pick Truman as his running mate in 1944? (We'd never see Harry Truman show his mettle as President of course; by the time Wallace is ready to retire and not run for another term the sheer pressure to have anybody but a Democrat as President would be too high, whereas Eisenhower, barring being killed in wartime, would be standing right there to take the Republican mantle).

What might happen differently than OTL with such a last minute substitution depends a lot on world views. An optimist about the workability of New Dealism segueing into social democracy in America could figure a Wallace series of terms, very plausibly going to 1952, could accomplish great things both domestically and internationally, and who knows maybe Truman or whomever else Wallace chooses to anoint in 1944 could keep the New Deal banner running the Oval office to 1960! Vice versa people who believe welfare state liberalism is doomed for deep reasons would no doubt expect Wallace to stumble even during the war years--surely not enough to prevent reelection but enough to sow seeds of discontent, notably about his probable pro-Soviet stances, that turn the postwar term into a political nightmare and make 1948 the decisive end of the New Deal. Most probably things muddle along as OTL, with Wallace taking Truman's place and perhaps deciding not to run in '48 at all. Maybe Truman steps up (conservative in some ways as he was, Truman was a passionate advocate of New Dealism and was motivated to run in '48 OTL largely out of a sense of obligation that someone had to fight hard for FDR's legacy) and the world converges even more closely to OTL flows as he wins only to suffer unpopularity and opposition the next 4 years?

Somehow I doubt the OP had any intention of discussing such minimal PODs however. The idea is, FDR is totally out of the picture long before the election of 1940 I guess.

And to the OP then I say, it is your responsibility to propose the degree and nature of the not-FDR situation. Making Huey Long President is a, um, long shot! It might be interesting, indeed I am following such a TL with interest, but the author there did some spadework to show us how we got there. Thomas Dewey is a favorite of many, though I think lots of Dewey fans suffer a serious case of ATL Grass is Greener on the Other Side of the Fence syndrome. (They make much of his party's and personal credibility on civil rights issues for instance, but overlook that there were reasons why Democratic leaders, compromised as they were by political marriage to Jim Crow Dixiecrats, often did achieve concrete advances while allegedly cleaner Republicans dithered and accomplished nothing, when others in their party aided obstruction too--Democrats had traction in Dixie that Republicans lacked for one thing--in the series of Presidents from FDR to Ronald Reagan, is it not clear that the strongest help Civil Rights got from the White House came from Southern Democrats Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter, while northern Democrats and Republicans alike had a much more ambiguous legacy--Eisenhower deserves credit for his actions in Little Rock, for instance, but did little otherwise to put some structure in the Supreme Court's "with all deliberate speed" desegregation order. There is a bit of tendency to read the label and party paper platforms, and not look at the nitty gritty actions that actually led to concrete progress. I would not trust any Republican of the 1930's-'50s to lead the way on any dimension of social progress, though I grant they were not all adamantly opposed to it either. So, not personally a Dewey fan, though I think I can face a TL that features his Presidency with some stoicism, particularly if the author is not a dewey-eyed fanboy!)

The farther we back the POD away from 1940, the more variables we have to deal with. Assuming a more conservative President than FDR would not automatically cast the nation into a put of reaction and civil war, would the US policy even be hostile to Hitler, even under a reasonably humane moderate? The war in the Pacific seems in the cards, and American conservatives would not seem likely to head it off to say the least--the war on Japan was the Republican War that helped reconcile American conservatives to also fighting the Nazis, is my impression. The USN had been spoiling for that fight since the 1920s. But there is no reason it is written in stone the Japanese would have been in Hitler's Axis at all. Would a radically leftist US government such as under Huey Long be interested in making war on any scale, with any foe? One likes to think the USA would help save the world from Hitler, but perhaps we were not really necessary and perhaps we and the world might be better off if the USA stayed isolationist?

The scope of the question is a wide open door on totally different ATLs and if the OP wants a focused answer they had best specify just what alternative President they are thinking of, and how they they think they got there, and what policy decisions did the post-POD years entail that leaves the USA in what sort of position globally. Are we talking Huey Long? Thomas Dewey? Roosevelt's two term VP John Nance Garner of Texas? Some OTL big shot Congressional New Dealer? A second term for Hoover leading to a continuation of conservative Republican hegemony, with whatever degree of elitist suppression of populist "disorder" that might entail in the context of the Depression? A radical right wing coup under Douglas MacArthur? Wendell Willikie, whatever he stood for? Langdon? Charles Lindbergh perhaps? (say no kidnapping of his boy, or they get the kid back safe and sound?) The range of possibilities is just too tremendous to make a generic case--or rather, if we assume any reasonable alternate would necessarily join the British and Soviets in fighting both Japan and the European Axis, the generic case is that the war is fought and won in essentially the same fashion as OTL I would think. Barring decisions not to engage one enemy or the other at all, I think the technical factors all point to one pattern of waging and winning the war--Europe First, Manhattan Project, grinding down Japan with a hand tied behind our backs, lend lease under one name or another to the Soviets, Yalta (maybe not at Yalta), Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, victory in western Europe via Normandy landings--all of it.

How else would you do it?
 
How else would you do it?

I intentionally left the means of succesfully obtaining the presidency vague as the question more relates to how they might prosecute the war itself. Dewey would have very different administrations in 1940, 1944, and 1948 respectively, even if most other things were equal. Long could be a very different candidate in 1940 than in 1936, etc.
 
Charles Lindbergh for most divergent to IOTL, in that you'd have a Pro-Axis leaning President; it's also not entirely impossible to imagine, with the right circumstances, an open Fascist getting into power with the ongoing chaos of the Depression prior to the War.
 
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