No World Wars - is the world richer?

[Viriato]

I was able to find some interesting statistics by economist Angus Maddison pointing out how long it took for European countries to recover from the effects of the World Wars. World War I was particularly devastating as one can see from the table below. Even the neutrals were effected, but for most of the continent, an entire decade or more of economic growth was wiped away. Recovery from World War II was much faster, in no small part due to the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods system established after that war. Nevertheless, even in major economies like Germany and Italy, over a decade of potential economic growth was once again squandered.

It is little wonder that the convergence of lifestyles between North America and Western Europe really did not happen until the early 1960s. The automobile for instance was a thing of the rich in Europe until the late 1950s, whereas in the United States it had been common since the early 1920s. Refrigerators, Washing Machines, Telephones which had also been common since the late 1920s in the US, only became prevalent among European families in the 1960s. It is interesting to note that once Europe was free from war, industrial production was able to focus on consumer durables and with the rise of disposable incomes, Europeans were able to become consumers. By the 1970s and 1980s, consumer goods were actually penetrating Western European households faster than there American counterparts (VCRs for instance).

Post-War GDP Recovery to 1913 Levels
1919 Greece, Netherlands, Norway
1920 Spain, Switzerland
1921 Portugal
1922 Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Yugoslavia
1923 Czechoslovakia, Finland
1924 Sweden, United Kingdom
1925 Hungary
1926 Germany, Poland
1927 Austria
1928 Ireland
1933 USSR
1937 Bulgaria
1959 Romania

Post-War GDP Recovery to 1938 Levels
1945 Finland
1946 Denmark, Norway
1947 Netherlands
1948 Belgium
1949 France
1950 Italy
1951 Austria, Germany

 

[Dorozhand]

The middle east would be better off if the Ottoman Empire survived. Especially if it had evolved into a constitutional monarchy. Perhaps it could have stabilized enough to be able to hold its own when the oil is discovered, and everybody involved would benefit from that. Even if it retains some absolutism and becomes super-Saudi Arabia instead of super-Kuwait, it would still be better than OTL.

OTL decolonization was poorly handled to a horrifying degree. I don't know enough to suggest what may have otherwise occurred, but if the nations of Africa had gained independence gradually and had been given time to develop stable native economic and political apparatuses, things could have gone much better.

Even if technology is behind what it is today (which I doubt), avoiding millions of deaths is a good thing in any case.

 

[Rstone4]

But wars also kill people, who go would have gone on to invent things. I got a Ph.D. in the branch of math called complex analysis, and two of the greatest minds my field ever saw died as a direct result of WW2 -- Teichmuller was sent to the Russian front and died there, while Hartogs committed suicide to avoid being sent to a concentration camp. Grothendieck, considered by many, including me, to be the single most important mathematician of the 20th century, in any field, was sent to a concentration camp and only barely survived.

WW2 killed millions of people, I've seen estimates from 60 to 100 million, decades before their time. How many of those minds would have gone on to become physicists, biologists, engineers, inventors? I am firm in my belief that the loss of talent -- a negative effect on technology -- far outweighed any positive effect that increased funding for reseach the war generated may have had.

Also, there are the social effects. How many of those millions would have been artists, statesmen, or reformers?

Would those minds have done what was done without them? I argue that maybe, but not nearly as quickly.

 

[Brady Kj]

You know, a lot of talented people did die in the world wars. Some of those talented people would have invented great things. Some of those talented people might have instigated world wars. If the stagnation of the empires was as bad as people say it was, and the technological innovations and increased alliances were there, one would have to question how a massive war would have been avoided.

 

[Dorozhand]

You know, a lot of talented people did die in the world wars. Some of those talented people would have invented great things. Some of those talented people might have instigated world wars. If the stagnation of the empires was as bad as people say it was, and the technological innovations and increased alliances were there, one would have to question how a massive war would have been avoided.

Europe didn't need to build up like a pressure vessel until a gigantic continent-spanning war exploded out of it. One could easily find a way to relieve such tensions with several smaller regional wars.

Picture, for example, a world in which Bismarck's German Unification fails. Perhaps Napoleon III dies a few years beforehand and France, under different and less rash leadership, defeats Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. Germany is divided between the North German Confederation led by truncated Prussia and a French sponsored South German Confederation led by Bavaria.

Italy becomes a Republic led by Garibaldi.

Around 1900-1910, tensions boil over in the Balkans between Austria and Russia over an incident in Serbia or Bulgaria. An Austro-Russian War erupts. The North German Confederation dares not join for fear of a two front war with France and the SGC. Greece joins on Russia's side, and Russia defeats Austria, which collapses into Austrian, Magyar, Czech, Croatian, and Bosnian states.

Italy and France go to war when Italy annexes the Papal States in 1895, his Catholic supporters pressuring Napoleon IV to do so. Italy defeats the French Empire, which collapses into revolution. Communism gains traction in France around this time. The South German Confederation collapses, Baden-Wurttemburg joins with the NGC while Bavaria remains independent.

In Qing China, Emperor Dezong's reforms succeed due to Cixi's coup attempt being discovered. She and several conservative leaders are executed. China begins to build up its Army and Navy, and enacts gradualistic land and economic reform which allows Qing to stand up against the worst excesses of European Imperialism and prevent de facto colonization if not allow complete security. China defeats Japan in a naval war over Korea.

Later on in the Balkans, Bulgaria and Greece go to war. The Ottomans join on Greece's side against the Bulgarians, who are allied with Russia. Prussia attacks Russia, no longer fearing France, while Magyaria does the same. Serbia attacks Magyaria.

Russia is utterly defeated after China joins the war on the Ottoman-Greek-Magyar-Prussian side. Qing China regains the Russian Far East.

Russia undergoes a Communist Revolution. The Ottomans gain the Russian Caucasus, most of southern Bulgaria, and Iranian Kurdistan.



A bunch of smaller wars in place of a gigantic one

 

[RousseauX]

Yep just a year or two.

It did take Europe decades to repair the damage, decades in which they enjoyed fantastic growth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Capitalism

I'm pretty sure Europe hit their pre-war level of GDP/capita sometime in the early 1950s and way before the Golden Age of Capitalism ended in the early-mid 1970s.

 

[RousseauX]

On one hand, the resources needed for rebuilding entire cities would probably pay for a decent number of gradual infrastructure updates. On the other, given a choice instead of having the absolute need to build new infrastructure, many governments might use the money for other things than improving their basic systems - like IOTL, where one could argue that even most Western nations have for several decades been underfunding their infra in ways that is soon becoming apparant through systemic problems. Again, having more resources does not mean you use them more wisely.

The problem is that the lack of political will for this sort of upgrade.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

After all the infrastructure was destroyed, the infrastructure that replaced it was more modern and efficient. Supposedly the reason the European railway system is better than the US one is that the US hasn't had the motivation to rebuild its railroads. So a slight two year setback in the long run sounds right to me.

Actually the US did. At the start of industrial run up or mobilization in 1940 it was determinted the US railway capacity had declined by approx a third since traffic peaked fifteen years earlier. Obsolete routes, neglected repair, reduced load design, worn out rolling stock... From 1941 through 1945 there was a massive reconstruction project affecting some 40% of the US railroads. Either rebuilding the infrastructure or doing large scale catchup maintinance. Several hundred thousand kilometers of track that led to played out mines, obsolete or useless factory districts, & unproductive agricultural regions were removed and new tracks/service facilities built to new industrial developments. Routes that had not been upgraded since 1910 or 1920 were improved to current high capacity standards.

Kleins 'Call to Arms' has a chapter describing the bad news US government and industry got for railroad capacity in 1940 and the subsequent reconstruction effort.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

It creates wealth for the arms industry.

When peace broke out at the end of 1918 US industry found it had been burned when its contracts were canceled. it was stuck with a large investment in factory floor, machine tools, raw materials, ect... and nothing to pay off the investment with. Conversion to civilian production required more invenstment. Further, Congress ordered the US Army to sell off most of its equipment. Thousands of cargo rucks, Liberty engines, & railroad equipment, and raw materials like lumber and steel were dumped on the civilian economy, usually at sweetheart prices. US industry suffered as much from the 1917-18 experience as ti gained.

 

[Rstone4]

When peace broke out at the end of 1918 US industry found it had been burned when its contracts were canceled. it was stuck with a large investment in factory floor, machine tools, raw materials, ect... and nothing to pay off the investment with. Conversion to civilian production required more invenstment. Further, Congress ordered the US Army to sell off most of its equipment. Thousands of cargo rucks, Liberty engines, & railroad equipment, and raw materials like lumber and steel were dumped on the civilian economy, usually at sweetheart prices. US industry suffered as much from the 1917-18 experience as ti gained.

Then the 20s happened after the 1919-1923 downturn.

 

[Emote Control]

Then the 20s happened after the 1919-1923 downturn.

You're confusing correlation with causation, I think.

 

[Viriato]

Another factor that has to be remembered is the relatively free movement of goods and people around the world before 1914 that made economic downturns generally much shorter in the 1893-1913 period.

With few restrictions on the movement of people, you had migrants who would venture between countries and often settle in places only temporarily. Men from Southern Italy and Sicily were the most significant example. When there would be a downturn in the Brazil, they would often head to Argentina, back to Italy or to the United States. For instance when the US had an economic downturn in 1907-08, there was a net loss of 79,966 Italians, but in 1909 a net gain of 94,806. This helped ease the problem of unemployment.

Even in Europe, Italian men were moving to the industrial regions France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg in large numbers before WWI. Without the closing of borders that ensued, you'd have a much more elastic global labour supply.

Finally, with the majority of the world on the gold standard and the lack of currency export restrictions meant funds could be moved relatively quickly between countries. This made short-term migration much more attractive to people in poorer regions (Southern and Eastern Europe and the Southern US), but remittances also helped the economies of these regions before 1913.

Without the wars, you would see a lot more people moving around the world since between 1910-1913 migration kept on growing everywhere around the world with 1913 having been a peak year in many countries (Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, United States to name a few).

 

[Rich Rostrom]

Grothendieck, considered by many, including me, to be the single most important mathematician of the 20th century, in any field, was sent to a concentration camp and only barely survived.

Not according to his Wiki article; he spent the war in France with his mother in an unofficlal DP camp (a French village that sheltered many DP children). His father died in Auschwitz.

 

[Brady Kj]

I always learn so much on this site.

 

[Fairdowner]

Given the mobilisation of human resources into wartime production during the World Wars Woman's rights would have been held back for a period of time. Assuming that woman would not be entering the workforce in such numbers I wonder how workers rights especially in the west would have unfolded and how this would have effected the wealth of the workforce.

I'm sort of thinking that wages may have had to be held higher as any working man had a wife and family to support and the traditional view of a woman's domain remaining the "hearth, children and home" being unchallenged for a longer period.

 

[Brady Kj]

Why especially in the west? The west where women were given the right to vote earlier, and where there were a lot of farms and ranches that required both husband and wife to do a lot of labor on the land they own, as opposed to the east where the husband worked somewhere away from the home and the wife's work was regarded as unimportant?

 

[Danth]

Colonialism would have continued.
If the so called "white" african states recieve the 70's white immigration the Portuguese had then bad things/good things could happen but it tends to be bad for local africans

 

[wietze]

and another big change has not been mentioned, without no world wars the spanish flu would not have happened as it was a result of war conditions, and the rapid spread was stimulated by the large amounts of military shipping going to lots of places. so no spanish flu means that 100-150M people mostly in the 18-45 age bracket will survive, which is going to cause a lot of differences.

 

[King Thomas]

Good things with no WW1 and WW2

-A heck of a lot more living people, a minority of those could invent very good things.
-No Nazism, or if it does exist it will just be a few cranks. No Communism in power.
-Most likely no nukes, at least for a while.
-No destruction caused by the wars.
-No Holocaust and for those of you who hate/dislike Israel no Israel.
-No rationing.

But it's not all good news.

Bad things with no WW1 and WW2

-Without the racism that the Nazis did against white people, racism against non-white people remains acceptable for much longer. Up to at least WW2 in Europe and up to the 1960s in the American South in OTL racism was normal. Without the crimes of the Nazis it might stay normal for decades longer.
-The UK never gets a National Health Service.
-Without the chance to prove themselves in WW1, taking over jobs from men who were fighting in the trenches, women don't get the vote. In the best case, they have to wait an extra 10 to 20 years later then in OTL. In the worst case, some of the suffragettes turn to terrorism, and as governments can't be seen to give in, we have women not having the vote even now.
-If the Great Depression still happens as in OTL, how will the USA get out of it without a war to reenergize the economy?
-The Empires carry on ruling until at least the 1980s (bad if you don't like imperialism.) Although if they ultimately decolonise and educate the people first, most of Africa does not become a basket case which ultimately makes it a Good Thing.
-Without the wars, the left wing is locked out of politics in most places.

 

[Brady Kj]

You say that women won't be allowed to vote, but women had full voting rights in quite a few states before World War I, and had some voting rights in almost all states. I imagine the trend would continue.