Impact of FDR dying in 1943

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The largest question is who wins the party nominations and Presidency in 1944? Its unlikely Wallace will second guess King or Marshal on major decisions, unless he wins the 1944 election. Not sure how he would react to MacAurthurs behavior, or with Churchill & Stalin.
 

Deleted member 1487

The largest question is who wins the party nominations and Presidency in 1944? Its unlikely Wallace will second guess King or Marshal on major decisions, unless he wins the 1944 election. Not sure how he would react to MacAurthurs behavior, or with Churchill & Stalin.
Major decisions were made in 1943 in terms of the USSR, where Wallace might be predisposed to being more favorable to them.
I'm going to guess that a lot of the hopefuls from 1940 will show up on the Democratic side, but Wallace might find the party rank and fight on his side vs. that of the choice of the elite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farley
Farley might run.
Would Dewey have a shot without FDR on the ticket?
 
Honestly I can't recall. I think it dealt with his dealings with the Soviets. I don't want to get too political though, I was just pointing out that I recall a decent TL a while back.
 
. . . Its unlikely Wallace will second guess King or Marshal on major decisions, . . .
Please don't be too sure of this. Wallace might try to "do a good job," as new chief executives tend to do.

And this might be all it takes for him to flounder for a good 6 months or so before he finds a happy medium on delegation. Furthermore, generals might second-guess themselves or become more tedious knowing they're likely to be criticized if things go poorly.
 
What if FDR died of ill health in mid-1943, early June, leaving Henry Wallace as the US president?

He was known to be pretty far left even by the standards of the times and had gotten into a number of feuds with other government officials, while not being popular with the party.

Wallace was not actually particularly leftist. He was a businessman who had been a Republican until FDR appointed him Secretary of Agriculture. A "Progressive" Republican, to be sure, but no Red. But like nearly everyone in the West, he had no real comprehension of what the USSR really was. In 1945-1948 he was taken in by Soviet "peace" propaganda (as echoed through agents of influence and useful idiots in the West), and was maneuvered into the "Progressive" Presidential run. Within a few years he realized he'd been played, and became hard-line anti-Communist.

However, in 1948, like most Westerners, he was bemused by the Soviet pose of being just a little more liberal, and of course valiant foes of Nazi Germany - even more than FDR and his staff.

But the real problem with Wallace was his loose lips. Wallace's sister Mary was married to the Swiss ambassador to the United States. Wallace told his brother-in-law a lot of things that he should not have. The ambassador was a good guy, strongly pro-American, but he reported what he learned to his government, as was his duty. The information went to Switzerland in diplomatic pouches, enciphered, and the Swiss officials who read it did not leak. But the Germans had an agent in the mail room of the Swiss Foreign Ministry, who got them copies of the cipher messages, and their cryptanalysts had broken the Swiss diplomatic cipher.

So Wallace was a leak of highly confidential information to German intelligence. IIRC, the Swiss operation was run by the Sicherheitsdienst (SS intelligence), controlled by Walter Schellenberg.

Fortunately, two factors prevented this leak from causing any great harm. First, FDR did not keep Wallace posted on the Big Secrets of the war, such as ULTRA and the Manhattan Project. This prevented any really hot material reaching the Germans this way. Second, when Schellenberg presented his results, his rivals in the Nazi state talked down the significance of what he had gotten, and he failed to impress Hitler.

But ITTL... Wallace would necessarily be briefed on everything. He might now limit his blabbing - or might not.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
I was just about to suggest a timeline where FDR dies in the November 1943 incident when the destroyer William D Porter fired torpedoes at his ship on the way to Tehran.

http://www.ussiowa.org/general/html/willie_d.htm
WHOAH ! What a ... story, only that it seems true.
Nice POD for someone interested.

However, I somehow doubt, that a single torpedo would have down the U.S.S. Iowa or caused enough damage to get Roosevelt killed. ... Only if the crew of the IOWA would have been as ... competent as the crew of the O.S.S. Willian D.Porter.

But ... well ... "shit happens" and had happened on several occasions in history (like Sarajevo 1914 ;)).
 
Wallace wasn't the Stalinist agent that he has often been accused of and he wasn't really all that far to the left while he was Vice-president( he was a former Republican after all). He was rather naive with regards to the Soviets and his 1948 run swung far to the left. But that wasn't the case in 1943. His 1948 positions were influenced by his bitterness over being dropped by FDR and fired by Truman and by the need to appeal to communist support. By the time the Korean War starts, he became an anti-communist.
His biggest problem as president will be that he isn't terribly well liked. A lot of Southern Democrats didn't like his support of civil rights and northern machine politicians didn't much care for his positions on workers rights. In OTL they succeeded in effectively forcing him off the ticket-some southerners even contemplated pulling a Thurmond if he wasn't dropped, although there wasn't much support for it. Regardless Wallace isn't going to have the support of a lot of his party. There's also the issue that his unabashed anti-colonialism is going to make relations with the European allies, especially Britain difficult.
 
WHOAH ! What a ... story, only that it seems true.
Nice POD for someone interested.

However, I somehow doubt, that a single torpedo would have down the U.S.S. Iowa or caused enough damage to get Roosevelt killed. ... Only if the crew of the IOWA would have been as ... competent as the crew of the O.S.S. Willian D.Porter.

But ... well ... "shit happens" and had happened on several occasions in history (like Sarajevo 1914 ;)).

Anything could happen, he could catch pneumonia in the excitement.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
... "pneumonia" ... how prosaic.

... the article says he went outside on the reeling to have a look at the torpedo ... maybe at the aft deck ... ? right or at least near where the torpedo might hit ?

His wheelchair gets "rocked" by the impact, he goes over the reeling, comes into the wash of Iowas screws ... some red water's all to be found.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
WHOAH ! What a ... story, only that it seems true.
Nice POD for someone interested.

However, I somehow doubt, that a single torpedo would have down the U.S.S. Iowa or caused enough damage to get Roosevelt killed. ... Only if the crew of the IOWA would have been as ... competent as the crew of the O.S.S. Willian D.Porter.

But ... well ... "shit happens" and had happened on several occasions in history (like Sarajevo 1914 ;)).

Well, when OTL almost torpedoing happened, FDR was on deck on the side that would have been hit. He moved towards the torpedo when the alarm was given.
 
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