Large US Defense/R&D Budget 1920s

Post Versailles Treaty there was a strong sense of disillusionment & anti war sentiment from the outcome f the Great War. A large portion of the voters came to think US participation had been a mistake. While the veterans were largely honored, the politicians who led to war became tainted. This allowed a combination of fiscal conservative & anti military Congressmen to sash the US defense budget in the early 1920s. The Army & National Guard were reduced to a thin cadre & naval construction largely stopped with ratification of the Washington Naval Treaty.

WI: the global political landscape were different enough the US voters would support a more robust defense budget through the 1920s. Not necessarily a huge army & oversized navy, but one large enough for decent training & doctrinal testing, and more important expanded weapons development & industrial mobilization preparation. The plan submitted by Army Chief of Staff Peyton Marsh is a example

Regular active) Army.......................500,000

Army Reserve (trained officer/NCO)...100,000

National Guard...............................750,000

More important is the robust R & D programs identified were to be closely coordinated with a industrial mobilization plan. That is a defense budget subsidy would pay industry to keep essential machine tools on hand & have preparations for rapid conversion of factories to arms production. Critical raw materials would be stockpiled. Industrial plans would be updated frequently to reflect advances in arms development.

So heres my question; how far could US weapons & doctrine development go before the Depression intervenes?

As a starting point consider the results of the thin R & D during the Pershing years in the 1920s>

Garand Rifle, selected for potiential production circ 1926. Limited production during the 1930s.

M1 105mm Howitzer tested & selected for production. Shelved & then reselected & produced for WWII with a modified carriage as the M2 Howitzer.

3" gun project. This covered a wide variety of cannon applications from AT to AA, to field artillery. Project was mothballed in the late 1920s. For WWII the data & gun plans were used for further development of AT guns for the Tank Destroyer Corps & tank guns for the Armored Forces.

Air cooled conversion of the Browning medium MG. Development was shelved & then revived again in 1939.

I could go on, but there were dozens of weapons & supporting equipment R & D projects on the table in 1919-20 that were swiftly canceled or never funded at all.

So, had a larger portion of these been properly funded in the 1920s, along with field testing for doctrinal development, how might the US Army been equipped when the War Powers Acts of 1940 triggered US mobilization that year?

For bonus points apply this same question to anyother major industrial nation of the 1920s. All or most slashed development budgets postwar &kept a mass of aging weapons on hand through the 1930s. Identify how one or another might be equipped had there been a robust arms development program in the 1920s.
 

Driftless

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You probably first need to clarify for the Iowa farmer or the California land developer why the US needs to retain a big(ger) budget military. Stop the spread of Bolshevism across the globe maybe - or especially in the US? Or have WW1 end with the other western democracies so beat down, that the for the internationally disinterested American political constituency, that the US is the only one who appears capable of filling the role? It would take an even more muddied finish to the War-To-End-All-Wars for that to happen, I think.

You probably need Teddy Roosevelt in the White House in 1918.
 
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You probably first need to clarify for the Iowa farmer or the California land developer why the US needs to retain a big(ger) budget military. Stop the spread of Bolshevism across the globe maybe - or especially in the US? Or have WW1 end with the other western democracies so beat down, that the for the internationally disinterested American political constituency, that the US is the only one who appears capable of filling the role? It would take an even more muddied finish to the War-To-End-All-Wars for that to happen, I think.

You probably need Teddy Roosevelt in the White House in 1918.

Not sure Roosevelt could have done it on his own. One possibility I'm thinking is Japan starts a war with either China or the Bolshivks circa 1920-22. Japan was one bogeyman the US voters would react to in that era. ie: the largely baseless US/Japanese war scare circa 1906. Maybe some other pre 1914 war scare piled onto that? Other possibilities involve changes in the outcome of the Great War. Those can be complex but not ASB. A actual war & occupation of Mexico? Pre 1918 history is not set in stone. So much of what happened in that era was based on the shaky logic of medocrities, not rational realpolitik.

But all this rather dodges the question of the result.
 
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CalBear

Moderator
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There has to be some sort of enemy on the horizon.

The American taxpayer has demonstrated, almost from the moment the country was established, that there is no limit to what he will accept if there is an enemy he believes exists. The contrary is also true.

Find a way to make the Japanese seem like a real threat.

This will, of course, result in an all hands on deck arms race since the effort will sink the WNT. I would also guess that it will kick the war into high Gear by the early 1930s, when a couple of the players see the bottom of the purse approaching and reach "use it or lose it".
 
Unless the Germans win the First World War, a big defense budget is going to be really hard to pass through Congress that was controlled by the Republicans in the 1920 election.

Another possibility is a continued Mexican Civil War with continued violence spilling across the Mexican / US border

Perhaps a bigger naval budget if the Washington Naval Treaty is a non starter, although as it benefited the British and the Japanese, that requires some things happening in those two nations. US planned construction was pretty intensive, and so was British and Japanese planned construction (although likely financial reality would have reared its ugly head in those two nations pretty quickly)>

Failing any of those options, I don't see it happening. Americans were disillusioned by World War I as the US did suffer 120,000 or so war dead in our adventures in France, Italy and Russia in about a year of actual combat. Plus it was pretty expensive (not compared to World War II of course). It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and a lot of Americans bought that completely and figured no more major wars were likely

So an enemy is needed or at least a rival building a big fleet.
 
IIRC Japan was at war with the Bolsheviks then. They were involved in Siberia.

They skirmished some, but when a actual red army approched the national leaders decided to avoid a war & ordered the Army back to Korea & Japan. I have not read much on Japans policy of the era, but recall something about their intending to make a fight of it if a Bolshivik army had entered Manchuria.

We could discuss endlessly the possibilities here, but again all that neglects the OP question, either in the context of the US or any other industrial nation.
 
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