President Kennedy and the Second World War

He was a huge proponent of apeasement, so if the Axis played their cards (NO Pearl Harbour) right they could conceivably have kept the US neutral longer. He didn't even suppport the US backing Britain. He didn't care about Jews, and sstill tried appeasement with The Reich when Britain was already being bommed.

I'm not sure if congress can order the president to go to war, but if they could that would be the end for him. You wouldn't want your commander-in-chief to not support the war.

From what I know He was a bit of bastard, he lobotomised his daughter because she was a bit different. But he fealt she was a stain on what could be a family dynasty.
 
it'd be like Karl Rove being the President today. yay i could happen, but the POD would change the person so much they'd not be any where near the same
 
With some "controversial" remarks in the German Embassy in Fatherland I think that’s a good example of a JPK presidency. I that novel he sat back with smug satisfaction saying the Nazi Policy on the Jews are none of the US's concern. In the book they found records of Kennedy's comments, which were very damming.
 
I think Kennedy as president in 1940-41 would be very bad for the allies.For the most part i think the first year and a half of the war would go the same.We would still see the fall of Poland,Norway,Denmark and the German victory in the west.The battle of britain might even play out the same way,but after that things would probaly be considerably different.

Lend Lease-With Kennedy in office there is no doubt this would ever happen.Yes England would still be able to get war materials from America,but they would have to pay cold hard cash for it.Consider that even with Lend lease that world war two almost bankrupt england then it stands to reason that without it england is going to be in worse financial shape much sooner.

The Destroyer agreement-This too could fall under lend lease.I don`t remember the exact terms of the deal,but Roosevelt gave the british 50 destroyers in exchange i believe for 99 year leases on several british bases.
With Kennedy in office this deal dosen`t happen.Also very unlikely that the American military takes over occupation of countries such as iceland and Greenland in order to free up British soldiers who might have had to be stationed there.

Pearl Habor-With kennedy in office would he even care what japan was doing in China or the Dutch East Indies.Would the same sanctions that Roosevelt threatened to apply against japan even be a factor here.Without them Japan would have no reason to attack America and would be free to throw more of their forces against the british.A very good chance that without having to have troops tied down in fighting the americans that Japan is in a much better postion to threaten and to attack india.

Second Front-Without America in the war just how realistic is it for any kind of second front to take place in europe.Even the torch landings would be very hard for the British to pull off.With no American airforce in england the luftwaffe wouldn`t be having to battle against the huge daylight bombing raids by the americans.Yes the british would still be doing night raids and we might even see a few of the 1000 bomber raids but that would be about the only offensive threat to mainland europe England could pose.Maybe given enough losses on the russian front the germans might be weak enough for England to launch it`s version of d-day.The only question there though is with the prospect of a second front looking all but impossible would Stalin be willing to take the huge amount of casulties needed in order to weaken the German army?Or would he sign a seperate peace?
 
It's pretty widely held that FDR had Joseph Kennedy in mind as a likely successor to be nominated in 1940. In OTL, Kennedy shot himself in the foot with his various pronouncements: various things he said didn't sit too well with the British government nor with FDR and the interventionist/internationalist segment of the Democrats.

How could Kennedy have gotten the nomination nonetheless? I suggest it would have taken a stronger America First / isolationist lobby: perhaps a public rapprochement involving Kennedy, Lindbergh, and Henry Ford might have done it. Had that happened, there could have been a double mass migration: hard-core isolationists like Republican senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota, or congressman Thorkelson of Montana would have crossed the aisle to support Kennedy, while interventionists might well have closed ranks behind Wendell Willkie.

In short: the personas of the two parties might well have reversed completely, or some of the more partisan types would have had to grit their teeth to support the standard-bearer (Herbert Hoover, for example, was of the isolationist ilk and was not completely comfortable supporting Willkie in OTL; I can't see him supporting Kennedy at all). That might well mean Wendell Willkie in the Oval Office on 7 December 1941, and a not very different course of action at all. But I digress.

Suppose the isolationists and America First types had carried the day, nominating Kennedy for president and Burton Wheeler of Montana for vice-president. Now you have a Fortress America believer in power, while Congress may be more up for grabs. Still, tensions with Germany might have decreased to the point where U-boats assiduously avoided American vessels. I can see where Hitler would have told Tojo to mind his manners with respect to the US; if the Japanese went ahead with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the reaction from Berlin to Tokyo might well have been "you're on your own". I don't think Kennedy would have had much of a problem with a largely-naval war against Japan; that had been part of the American psyche, especially on the west coast, for about 45 years already.

So what comes out of the separate conflicts?

I'm guessing a European continent under the grip of Nazi Germany with Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden at least nominally independent (although behind-the-scenes Swiss collaboration with Hitler isn't out of the question, and we all know where Franco stood). Great Britain would probably have had to come to terms somehow, likely with Churchill's departure from office. Relations between the US and Great Britain would surely have been cooler than they were in OTL for at least a generation.

In the Pacific, I suggest the war would have lasted until at least 1947 if not into 1948: the intellectual firepower needed to produce nuclear weapons would have been spread out in both Great Britain and the US, with no collaboration. It would have taken either conventional weapons and a messy invasion of the home islands or a strangling blockade unto starvation to get the Japanese to surrender-or perhaps a combination of both. Sixty years later, Japan might still be recovering from the aftereffects of the endgame of this war.

The US today would probably be more xenophobic than in OTL, with tough immigration restrictions. I wonder whether Israel would exist as a nation: at least in the beginning there would have been little/no US support, which might have led to a mindset that would last for at least a generation or more. I suspect the US would have developed nuclear weapons on its own by the late 1940s/early 1950s; Great Britain would have probably developed them about the same time; Germany...guessing that nation might be close by now but not yet there.
 
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