Henry Wallace has been a long time favorite of alternate history writers. Well, maybe "favorite" isn't exactly the best word since nearly everyone agrees that Wallace wouldn't have been a successful President and he would certainly have been defeated in 1948. But here is a man who came so close to being President in 1945, and might have drastically changed the outcome of U.S. history had he - not Truman - been Roosevelt's running mate in 1944. Realistically speaking, based on historical evidence, what would've been the ultimate outcome of a Henry Wallace Presidency?
Realistic Outcome of a Henry Wallace Presidency?
- Thread starter Amadeus
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I think you're on the right track here. Wallace was still a pronounced anti-Communist as late as 1946. It wasn't until Truman fired him that Wallace cozied up to the far left, certainly out of resentment towards Truman. (And also because, as @David T has pointed out in earlier threads, Wallace was shunned by the majority of liberals to the point where he depended on the far left for political support). After the 1948 election, Wallace returned to his anti-Communist views and supported the Korean War. He even supported Nixon over Kennedy in 1960, although he warmed up to JFK after his inauguration.
That said, I'm concerned about his apparent desire to share atomic secrets with the Soviets. He would run into a great deal of opposition from the military on that one. Given Wallace's inconsistent political views throughout his career and weak leadership as VP under FDR, there's a chance that someone like George Marshall would be able to talk Wallace out of it. Or the military would simply refuse, and Wallace would back down to avoid antagonizing the high brass. By 1948 however, Wallace would be just as convinced of the Soviet threat as Truman and I imagine that the Berlin Airlift and a sort of "Wallace Doctrine" would occur. Even if Wallace is more interesting in using diplomacy to counter the Soviets than Truman was.
America gets burned to the ground commie infiltrators. Washington DC is nuked and Wallace has to beg for forgiveness at Papa Stalin's feet.
Also, we get a hot president...
oh just me then
Also, we get a hot president...
oh just me then
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I don't see him making a radical difference. He'd operate with declining support for three years. Then likely lose the nomination in 1948. Or the election after.
No sitting President has been deprived of the nomination since 1884, when Arthur didn't fight for it on account of being sick. I could see Wallace getting a challenge from Justice Bill Douglas, who did challenge Truman in OTL, but I doubt he would actually be replaced. But Wallace is done for in 1948.
Wallace as a former Republican just had to little support in the Democratic Party. Any solid challenger had a fair chance of shutting Wallace out.
In 1944 he was the VP choice of 65% of Democrats according to Gallup. And he had enough support to be nominated as FDR's VP in 1940. He was distrusted by some in the party for his Republican past, but as President he would be the effective leader of the Democrats and would be strongly supported by the liberal base. Not to mention Eleanor Roosevelt, prominent labor unions, African-Americans, plenty of Congressional leaders, etc. That said he would still be a divisive leader vulnerable to a challenge in 1948, but Wallace would have too much institutional support to lose the nomination. Remember that Truman was a widely unpopular President in OTL and party leaders supported the idea of a challenge, but Douglas eventually dropped out of the primary contest and Claude Pepper (a staunch Wallace ally) didn't run. There's no reason that would be different under President Wallace.
Erm Marshal was FOR inviting Soviet scientists to the Trinity Test.
Likely the US won't unilaterally decide to rewrite the Yalta agreements and then accuse the Soviets of breaking them. NO abrupt end to lend lease then resumption. He probably continues FDRs policies rather than the complete 180 that Truman did.
Wallace would listen to his military advisors and NOT use the atom bomb on Japan.
Hell he'd even read the telegrams from Japan practically begging for peace.
S he could either modify the surrender demand as MacArthur suggested and tell them they could keep the Emperor and they surrender in MAY as MacArthur maintained till his deathbed. Or Wallace simply waits for the USSR to enter the War and the Japanese surrender for the same reason in our world.
The without the racist f*****r Jimmy Byrnes at the London conference literally threatening Molotov, again after Truman shouted at him during their first meeting, you likely get a better result, especially if the US keeps to Yalta unlike OTL.
Without the US provocations you avoid Germanies division, and you likely avoid the arms race as per Anatoly Gromyko.
Hell the bombings even changes Eisenhower's views.
If Wallace follows J Davies advice.
Maybe he follows Stimson's lead and we get some kind of international control of the atomic weapons technology without the senseless bombing of Japan feeding Soviet fears.
So in conclusion you likely avoid the Cold War, the Soviets will be less likely to impose regimes in Eastern Europe and will likely remain as Hungary was, free elections with some Soviet influence over policies, a mutually satisfactory arrangement over Germany, likely neutralised with no military, with a possible continuing set of say inspections by allied forces. With luck a more successful Operation Safe Haven, the BIS gets shut down and those Nazi Collaborators like Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles actually face their crimes, with leads to a far less dangerous and outright evil CIA. Maybe a greater awareness of said Nazi collaboration and less 'Greatest Generation crap'. He'd probably work more through the UN like UNRA rather than a unilateral plan like the Marshall OTL plan.
No US provocations in Germany means no Berlin blockade.
Hopefully Wallace unlike Truman doesn't hand Greece back to the Nazis as the British convinced him to do, maybe he tells the French to f**k out of Vietnam in return for aid so Ho gets his desired US backed independent state.
Would Wallace win in 1948, maybe, he'd certainly beat Dewey who was close to the Dulles brothers who'd actually be known as Nazi collaborators and traitors in this timeline, as would many others in the business and Wall Street elite, certainly Forestall won't get the chance to buddy up with Nazi terrorist groups like Nightingale, Gehlen gets to face his comeuppance at Nuremberg. Karl Wolf a SS high up who served as go between between Hitler and Himmler and was rescued by Allen Dulles faces his crimes and gets sent to Nuremberg.
No exaggerated and entirely nonexistent Soviet threat and no US started Cold War
Re A-bombs: Maybe Wallace wouldn't have used them against Japan (which as you point out was not necessary to win WWII w/o an invasion of the home islands), but he had been a prominent supporter of the Manhattan Project and IOTL expressed no disagreement with Truman's decision to drop them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The argument that Wallace would not have used them is based more on comments from generals and scientists who opposed the decision than the views of Wallace himself.
However, the arms race between the US and the Soviets would still have occurred regardless of whether the bombs were used. Stalin had spies in the US government who told him about the bomb and the Soviets wanted to build one of their own. Whatever Wallace does would not change this. So long as America has the bomb, the Soviets will want it too. They will build it, and they will be in competition with America to build as many as possible. Likewise, the Cold War would still occur due to the ideological and geopolitical tensions between both superpowers. The USSR, not the US, started the Cold War with its actions in Eastern Europe, refusal to commit to the Baruch Plan for nuclear disarmament, and attempting to spread communism into Western Europe. The USSR was a totalitarian state that oppressed Eastern Europe under Communism and it needed to be opposed. Indeed, Wallace himself became a supporter of the Cold War by the 1950s. Truman was right to implement the Truman Doctrine to oppose Communist expansion in Eastern Europe, as he was also justified in supporting the Berlin Airlift.
And Wallace would definitely not win in 1948. Truman barely won as it was, while Wallace (who was known as aloof and eccentric) wasn't popular enough with leaders of his own party - including FDR - to be re-nominated for VP in 1944.
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I specifically mentioned listening to his advisors, re the bomb.
Two the US DID start the Cold War, Stalin was prepared to accept the Yalta agreements and liked and trusted Roosevelt, it was Truman who reinterpreted those agreements and tried to bully the Soviets into changing course. The Baruch plan would never been accepted as it wasn't a real proposal that would ever have been accepted, even Truman realized appointing Baruch was in his words; “the worst blunder I ever made.” If a more realistic proposal had been made, i.e. US dismantles its arsenals under supervision
with an international Atomic Development Authority overseeing the mining, refining, and utilization of all the world’s atomic raw materials, denaturing all fissionable material and making it available for peaceful uses and national activity in these “dangerous” areas outlawed intentionally minimizing the need for on-site inspections to increase the chances that the Soviet Union would accept it as per Oppenheimer's initial report, than they might have accepted.
In addition Stalin was opposed to revolutionary global communism akin to Trotsky and initially favored merely friendly governments in Eastern Europe, as exemplified by the Hungarian elections. I'd add that as per Gromyko the decision to maintain Eastern Europe as direct satellites was a combination of no satisfactory conclusion vis a vis Germany that satisfied USSR security needs, the US use of the atom bomb combined with the threatening posture the US instigated. Again the Berlin blockade, notably the Soviets DIDN'T attempt to starve Berlin, they provided food and fuel from their zones was started due to an escalating series of US lead provocations, from cutting off reparations that were promised in Potsdam, currency reform and the introduction of the "Basic Law" to form an independent West German state.
As I made it clear a 1948 election in a Wallace timeline would be very different, prominent Republicans who collaborated with the Nazis like the Dulles were close to Dewey which leaves him in a rather weak position, you'd likely have generated a Brown Scare of fascists if a proper investigation looked into links with Nazi Germany, probably some antibusiness and Wall Street sentiment given their tendency to act as both the Arsenal of Democracy and the Arsenal of Fascism. Taft's conservative leanings would be too soon after Hoover and Wallace would be the incumbent for the Presidency and was far more popular than Truman before assuming the post.
And frankly just to add, the only reason FDR didn't fight to keep Wallace on the ticked in '44 like he did in '40 was because he was simply too weak and too close to death to fight a World War, a new election and the corrupt party bosses who had problems with Wallace and the New Deal itself.
I think you are overestimating this Dewey / Dulles/Nazis connection and underestimating Dewey. Dewey gave FDR, a popular 3 term President the closest election he had gone through and this was while at WAR. Dewey post war against Wallace? Very possible victory for Dewey, he almost beat Truman, so no reason he could not beat Wallace, especially with the drag Wallace would have in the South due to his civil rights stances.
Hi, as Internet alternate history's great Wallace libeler, I feel I owe a few things said in his defense/clarification:
Wallace almost certainly would have used the Bomb (note that he was decidedly _not_ among the critics of the use of nuclear weapons named above):
"'I just don't remember how I felt at the time,' Wallace later commented. 'Perhaps these massive events maybe numbed me — I just don't know what it is.' He was 'terrifically interested' in the atomic bomb project, he said, but his primary concern, was 'that the darn thing went off.'
"To his credit, Wallace did not criticize — either then or later, publicly or privately — Truman's decision. Present at the inception of the project, Wallace had helped persuade Roosevelt 'it was something to put money into.' To have second-guessed Truman when the weapon was actually used would have been intellectually dishonest..." John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace, pp. 396-7.
Remember, Wallace had helped encourage the development of nuclear weapons, and certainly had never expressed any reservations about the use of strategic bombing during WW2.
POTUS Wallace would be more anti-Communist than 1948 candidate Wallace, though not as much as Truman was:
Wallace in FDR's Cabinet was much more of a conventional New Dealer than he became after leaving Washington. Much (though not all) of his left turn leading up to 1948 has to do with his anger about being pushed out of FDR's inner circle and the Vice-Presidency by conservatives combined with left-wingers eager to tell him what he wanted to hear. Remember he came in for the same sort of attacks as a warmonger by Communists pre-Barbarossa that FDR did, and he did go along with purging the Department of Agriculture of left-wingers like Jerome Frank in 1935.
In general I would say that Wallace wasn't stupid or inept, but he was definitely out of touch with the conservative turn US politics were taking postwar and the rising fear of Soviet power. He will use nuclear weapons on Japan, try to reconcile with Moscow, run in 1948 despite a Dixiecrat third party, lose to a Republican who will call him soft on the Communist menace, and then go back to Iowa.
My biggest worry about a Wallace administration would be that post-Wallace, Democrats might flinch away from open support of things like civil rights for African-Americans and left-wing labor unions, because Wallace's failure in 1948 will be seeming proof that those things are vote-killers in the postwar world.
Wallace almost certainly would have used the Bomb (note that he was decidedly _not_ among the critics of the use of nuclear weapons named above):
"'I just don't remember how I felt at the time,' Wallace later commented. 'Perhaps these massive events maybe numbed me — I just don't know what it is.' He was 'terrifically interested' in the atomic bomb project, he said, but his primary concern, was 'that the darn thing went off.'
"To his credit, Wallace did not criticize — either then or later, publicly or privately — Truman's decision. Present at the inception of the project, Wallace had helped persuade Roosevelt 'it was something to put money into.' To have second-guessed Truman when the weapon was actually used would have been intellectually dishonest..." John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace, pp. 396-7.
Remember, Wallace had helped encourage the development of nuclear weapons, and certainly had never expressed any reservations about the use of strategic bombing during WW2.
POTUS Wallace would be more anti-Communist than 1948 candidate Wallace, though not as much as Truman was:
Wallace in FDR's Cabinet was much more of a conventional New Dealer than he became after leaving Washington. Much (though not all) of his left turn leading up to 1948 has to do with his anger about being pushed out of FDR's inner circle and the Vice-Presidency by conservatives combined with left-wingers eager to tell him what he wanted to hear. Remember he came in for the same sort of attacks as a warmonger by Communists pre-Barbarossa that FDR did, and he did go along with purging the Department of Agriculture of left-wingers like Jerome Frank in 1935.
In general I would say that Wallace wasn't stupid or inept, but he was definitely out of touch with the conservative turn US politics were taking postwar and the rising fear of Soviet power. He will use nuclear weapons on Japan, try to reconcile with Moscow, run in 1948 despite a Dixiecrat third party, lose to a Republican who will call him soft on the Communist menace, and then go back to Iowa.
My biggest worry about a Wallace administration would be that post-Wallace, Democrats might flinch away from open support of things like civil rights for African-Americans and left-wing labor unions, because Wallace's failure in 1948 will be seeming proof that those things are vote-killers in the postwar world.
Maybe in the 1990s, David McCullough will publish a best-selling pop biography of Wallace that will help restore his reputation as a decent man trying his best in difficult times, and then Gary Sinese will go on to play him in a TV movie adaptation of the book as a cornfed farmer trying his best to do what's right in Washington.
Wallace did not have Truman's charisma, and he was hated by Democratic Party bosses. While Wallace would probably be nominated for President in 1948, I just don't see him pulling off the upset that Truman achieved.
Yep, you pretty much add to the points I made about why he would lose in '44. And if he losses in '44, he isnt getting the nomination in '48, he most like does like OTL and recreates the Progressive Party.
Can I ask your source for this?
And while I agree that the US did its part to make the Cold War happen (the USSR was hardly the only revolutionary republic interested in spreading the ideas it was founded on) Stalin was also working on the basis of some extremely unrealistic expectations (his theory, as "confirmed" by WW1 and WW2 was that the Capitalist world was in the process of destroying itself in a series of world wars, and that he needed to prepare for the "inevitable" US-UK great war), also I am not sure we can blame Truman for all of the American moves towards the Cold War. I have a hard time seeing Congress ever passing the laws needed to make Stalin or his successors feel they didn't need their own nuclear stockpile (I don't blame the Soviets for finding US behavior after WW2 threatening, but on the other hand, had I been in Congress in the late 40s and early 50s, I sure wouldn't have trusted Stalin very much), not to mention there was a very strong anti-Communist thread in US politics, there's going to be a backlash against the New Deal and the US is gonna find out about the spies the Soviets have eventually.
A Wallace presidency might slow or soften the slide to Cold War (leading to a later onset or to a more low-key rivalry), but I suspect he'd still be the US president to be seen as "starting" the Cold War. After all, in OTL he did follow a normal arc in his thoughts on the Soviet Union (positive during the war years, and increasingly negative as things went on, like many other US politicians, especially those politicians who needed to help make the wartime alliance work), the Wallace we see so often in AH who sells out to be Stalin's boot-licker was entirely a construction by his political enemies. Wallace himself would not be as keen to spend political capital to help Stalin and any realistic political coalition that could support his presidency would develop a lengthening list of issues with the Soviets as the world recovered from war.
fasquardon
It's worth noting that by 1950 Wallace repudiated many of his earlier views and supported the Korean War.