FDR Persists

codger said:
I think that FDR's foreign policy was very much based on "realpolitik" and not pollyanna-ish idealism. Even so, I don't think it was sustainable. But I'm trying to imagine a world wherein both Truman and Stalin, cognisant of the dangers of world war, attempt to cooperate in the interest of world peace.
Stalin least of all is a man concerned with world peace. He was a brutal dictator and "playing nice" would only lead to him taking advantage of it. To put it in simple terms Stalin is playing to win the game not create utopia.

In answer to the threads question, FDR living to the end of WWII, unlikely any major changes to the war. I see him dropping the bomb like Truman did and the situation in regards to the Soviets is more or less already set in place. Vietnam might be butterflied away but I doubt it, Comunism is an addictive elixure and unless the French have yielded it, doubtful, it'l go like the OTL.
 
This idea of a less chilly US-USSR relationship reminds me of some reading I just did about Finland. Is there a situation in which Stalin would have settled for the Finlandization of eastern and central Europe (perhaps including Austria and a united Germany)?
 

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How does lack of Marshal Plan affect US economy, considering European economies are going to be a lot weaker without it
 
Stalin least of all is a man concerned with world peace. He was a brutal dictator and "playing nice" would only lead to him taking advantage of it. To put it in simple terms Stalin is playing to win the game not create utopia.

Neither Stalin or FDR were trying to create a utopia. Thats why I called it "real-politick."

I pretty much agree wit George Kennan's take on Soviet ambitions in The Long Telegram.

My point all along has been based on the facts that the USSR was very weak at the end of WWII and that they very much wanted continued friendship with the USA to try to rebuild their economy.

Stalin kept his promises to Churchill in Greece and he attempted to force Mao to play nice with the Nationalists in China.

Had Roosevelt lived long enough to explain things to Truman we would not have had the Truman Doctrine in 1947. Truman would have understood FDR's view that Great Power cooperation was necessary to avoid a Third World War even more devastating than the one they had just finished.
 
How does lack of Marshal Plan affect US economy, considering European economies are going to be a lot weaker without it

From my reading the worry was that surplus production in the USA needed an outlet and European reconstruction was a handy one. It could also be sold to the US public and tax-payers as an insurance policy to keep Western Europe from going communist. After that, Cold War military Keynesianism served to soak-up US productivity.

But other writers have argued that US productive capacity could have been absorbed by higher wages for US-American workers and that Europe could have rebuilt itself without Marshall Plan dollars, albeit more slowly.

So, in this timeline, without the need to save Europe from Communism, there is less US-financed reconstruction and this smaller amount is spread across Europe into the Soviet Union, resulting in slower economic development there and in Japan.

Higher wages for North American workers is delivered in such a fashion to make conservative trade unions see the benefits of US capitalism (Europe has far more socialism).

The absence of high-levels of Cold War tensions (until the 1960s) reduces the call for massive military spending, which likewise gets directed into higher wages.
 
Ah, the space race!

One of the reasons that the Russians were the first to put a dude into orbit was their need for much more powerful rockets to send nuclear bombs all the way to the continental United States (whereas the USA only needed to launch missiles from Europe).

With the Cold War in this timeline not really heating-up until the 1960s, there wouldn't be any "Sputnik" until the mid-1960s at least (when more people were aware of the uses of satellites for spying/commercial programs).

Seems it would still be the Soviets to come up with the bigger rockets, but there's a much closer space race, with the US taking a clear lead by the late-1970s.
 
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