Effects of a worst world war on the USA.

Vault-Scope

Banned
Imagine a world war where the USA lost +5 millions soldiers to take north africa, middle-east, western and central europe.
Trice that many US soldiers where left crippled/wounded, be it by chemical, radiological or conventional warfare.
+7 years of total war, +1 millions civilian casualties to nuclear attacks(Hirosima-sized bombes) on major east-coast cities(New York 5, Philadelphia 3, Boston 3, Chicago 2, Washington 1, Buffalo 1), attacks no defences at the time could hope to intercept.
Despite that, roosevelt decided that the liberation of europe would go on, it left endless devastation very much similar or worst than OTL´s east front.
Paris and London looks pretty like OTL Warsaw & Berlin.

Germany itself has been left by the war in a near pre-industrial state, the Rhineland has beenm left a vaste field of rubbles and metal scrapes. Occupation of it is mostly upp to the USA as England and France have been bled white and their governement structures have been mostly destroyed, soviet-union occupies everything left east of Berlin/Prague/Vienna (which are reduced to bombed-out shells).


How would all of this affect mentalities, atitudes in the USA?
 
Last edited:
I think Americans would start wondering if winning the war was worth it. Goes back to the old phrase of "Does the end really justify the means?"
 

Vault-Scope

Banned
How does all of this happen? as it is this seems ASB.


Either Hitler have different views starting in the 1920s or someone else might have taken his place, someone worst...

German nuclear project starts in 1938, German war footing is far higher than in OTL.

England was invaded after the Fall of France (which ITTL resulted in the whole of France being occupied), that might well quickstart the US declaration of war.
Following year soviet-union faces devastating defeats and is left weakened for years by the loss of the Caucasian oilfields and the siege of Moscow.
That same year, initial axis triumph in the mediterraneam results in the joining of Spain Portugal & Turkey.
Total war footing comes much earlier, along with numerous "wonder weapon" projects, these projects being more usefull than in OTL(Anti-bomber missiles instead of V2 etc).
 
For Germany to have close to the power you describe they'd have to win WW1. That said, the Atlantic is much smaller than the Pacific, making the East coast that much more vulnerable to the sort of long range weapons that exist in 1940.
 
For Germany to have close to the power you describe they'd have to win WW1. That said, the Atlantic is much smaller than the Pacific, making the East coast that much more vulnerable to the sort of long range weapons that exist in 1940.

It's still a rather long shot, however, since the USN could beat the Kriegsmarine in battle (not to mention outproduce it in ships, aircraft, and other weapons) and even given a straight shot from Brittany to New England, a oneway journey is over 3500 miles.

Imagine a world war where the USA lost +5 millions soldiers to take north africa, middle-east, western and central europe.
Trice that many US soldiers where left crippled/wounded, be it by chemical, radiological or conventional warfare.
+7 years of total war, +1 millions civilian casualties to nuclear attacks(Hirosima-sized bombes) on major east-coast cities(New York 5, Philadelphia 3, Boston 3, Chicago 2, Washington 1, Buffalo 1), attacks no defences at the time could hope to intercept.
Despite that, roosevelt decided that the liberation of europe would go on, it left endless devastation very much similar or worst than OTL´s east front.
Paris and London looks pretty like OTL Warsaw & Berlin.

This raises a number of questions. 1) how does america get this many troops to the theatres? 2) How can the germans reasonably expect to inflict this many casualties without being ground down by attrition? 3) Why exactly is America doing this? 4) How do the germans manage to get 15 bombs to detonate in the US (production was very slow in WWII, se the worldwar series, or note how the US only had 3 at the time of the trinity test, in 1945, with a much better economy then TTL Germany or America, and wouldn;t it be better to use the weapons to, say, stop the americans)? 5) why this constant nuking of cities which are already rubble? 6) Why do the Americans not call it quits (remember, Saddam predicated most of his Gulf War 1 strategy on the "fact" that western CUltures will not be able to stomach large casualties, be they military or civilian,and he was predicting killing 10s of thousands of Americans, not millions)? 7) How doe sthis timeline even begin to approach OTL? and 8) Shall I continue?


How would all of this affect mentalities, atitudes in the USA?

Well, it would be far more pacifistic, for a start.
 
How would the USN beat the 1940 evolution of the navy of the Germany that won WW1? Apart from late WW1 German shipbuilding programmes and the evolution trends of other major navies of the era we have no idea what it would look like. However I think it would be comparable in size, sophistication and combat to the USN, RN and IJN in 1940.

It's also a bit too easy to dismiss such a Germany by saying that the US will outproduce it. The Germany that lost WW1, and considerable territory and wealth, had an economy 1/3 as large as the US, and still took 2 great powers and 1 superpower 6 years to defeat. A Germany in charge of the territory ceeded to them and AH at Brest-Litovsk would have an economy about 2/3 the size of the US. A nice margin, but certainly not one which would give an easy victory to the US.
 
Top