Wendell Willkie is elected president in 1940

What would’ve it been like had Wendell Willkie been elected president in 1940?

He was anti war according to the World war II channel on youtube, the republican plataform was also very anti war so you might see a delayed US enter in WWII.

The one that suffers the most with that are the chinese, the japanese might not get embargoed and advance even further into China.
 
If Willkie manages to win... That would almost certainly mean improved Republican performance in 1940 elections to Congress. Very likely there would be a narrow Republican majority in the House. That would make GOP control, and any legislative program of Willkie, dependent on support from the handful of "Progressive" Representatives, all or nearly all from Wisconsin IIRC. The Progresssives would caucus with the Republicans.

The Progressives were fierce isolationists, as were most Midwestern and Western Republicans. (The only OTL vote against declaring war on Japan was by Rep. Jeannette Rankin (R-MT), a former suffragette and progressive activist, who as the first woman in Congress had voted against war in 1917.)

Willkie is going to be fighting major battles over domestic policy as he seeks to roll back the New Deal. He won't have the political capital for interventionist policies such as Lend-Lease or the Atlantic Charter. Such measures would deeply offend a large part of his base.

I will further note that Willkie would face a majority-Democrat Senate. The OTL Senate was 66-30 Democrat; no conceivable landslide could have flipped 18 seats.
 
I think most things are like otl. (My guess is the best chance of that happening would be a VISIBLY ill FDR

Might there be more progress on Civil Rights from a guy who did not so depend on the Southern white vote?
 
He was anti war according to the World war II channel on youtube, the republican plataform was also very anti war so you might see a delayed US enter in WWII.

The one that suffers the most with that are the chinese, the japanese might not get embargoed and advance even further into China.

Sorry for the late reply, but, Willkie wanted to give the UK all support possible except joining the war. I'm pretty sure that his foreign policy decisions wouldn't be very different from those of Franklin Roosevelt. Regardless, the USA, under any President, would have joined World War II after Pearl Harbour.
 
Sorry for the late reply, but, Willkie wanted to give the UK all support possible except joining the war. I'm pretty sure that his foreign policy decisions wouldn't be very different from those of Franklin Roosevelt. Regardless, the USA, under any President, would have joined World War II after Pearl Harbour.

I could see Willkie's conduct of the war being more business friendly. But otherwise his foreign policy wouldn't be much different.

If butterflies keep Willkie alive past 1944 (maybe White House doctors change his diet and force him to exercise) then perhaps he'd have made different decisions at the Yalta Conference - which could impact the end of the Pacific War and the beginning of the Cold War.
 
OTL 1940 was 54.7 to 44.8 so getting a 5 point swing isn't that crazy a thing to do.

If FDR opts not to go for the third term, his desired successor was Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Hull wasn't the most dynamic figure and he was from Tennessee, meaning the Democrats can kiss their black support goodbye. Wilkie, meanwhile, was a dynamic campaigner.

Wilkie's edge as a campaigner + the black vote swinging hard for Wilkie makes me think the GOP could take it.
 
Wilkie, meanwhile, was a dynamic campaigner.

Wilkie's edge as a campaigner...

The great SF writer Robert A. Heinlein was very active in politics in the 1930s and 1940s. He and his first wife were seriously involved in the California Democratic Party. He distilled his experience into a handbook of practical politics, written in 1946 but not published till 1992.

Part of the book was about what makes a good candidate. Heinlein warned very strongly against running a first-time candidate in any race it is important to win, and particularly cited as evidence Willkie's performance in 1940. According to Heinlein, it was the consensus of the political press that on his big campaign tour around the country, Willkie repeatedly hurt himself with careless statements.
 
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He was anti war according to the World war II channel on youtube, the republican plataform was also very anti war so you might see a delayed US enter in WWII.

Guess what? In 1940, everyone said they were against America entering the war--including FDR! Yes, toward the end of the campaign Willkie, seeing he was behind, did desperately try to make himself the "peace" candidate and warn that FDR's re-election would bring the US into the war. FDR's reply was the famous radio address where he reassured Americans that their boys would not be sent to fight in any foreign wars--even omitting his usual qualification "unless we are attacked." (He later justified that by saying if that we were attacked it wouldn't be a foreign war...) "Willkie, listening on the radio, exclaimed to his brother, “That hypocritical son of a bitch! This is going to beat me.”" https://books.google.com/books?id=fRN2zUV5zNEC&pg=PT304 But in truth FDR was no more hypocritical than Willkie. Willkie had been nominated as the candidate of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party which favored aid to the British; his nomination was a defeat for the so-called isolationists or non-interventionists represented at the time by Taft, Vandenberg, and Dewey. (Later Vandenberg and Dewey would become internationalists, which Taft never really did.) He backed aid for Britain and supported conscription. And after his defeat he outraged Republican isolationists by coming out for lend-lease. IMO his record before the autumn of 1940 and after his defeat offer a better indication of what he would do as president than his last-minute "peace" campaign.

One weird aspect of his brief use of the "peace" issue: it led to what AFAIK is the only instance of the Republicans (or a front group of theirs in any event) buying advertising space in the Daily Worker! (The Communists of course vehemently opposed the war as an "imperialist war" until June 22, 1941.) "Curiously enough, four days before [John L.] Lewis made his speech [endorsing Willkie], the Daily Worker carried an advertisement from the Republican-sponsored 'National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government' opposing the third term. When the Democrats began making political capital out of this apparent collaboration between Republicans and Communists, Browder publicly denied that the CP was calling for votes for Willkie. The advertisement, he insisted, was simply a question of business policy: 'Since the [Daily Worker] is no longer the official organ of the Communist Party, it was clearly within the province of the management to accept advertising if it saw fit.' Whatever one thinks of Browder's assertions about the autonomy of the Daily Worker, it is true that the paper was strapped for funds, and may well have accepted the advertisement for financial reasons. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine the paper accepting a pro-Roosevelt advertisement in 1940. The incident raises the question of whether the Communists might not have welcomed a Willkie victory in the election..." Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party in the Second World War, p. 269. https://books.google.com/books?id=iWMprgS8q0AC&pg=PA269
 
Sorry for the late reply, but, Willkie wanted to give the UK all support possible except joining the war. I'm pretty sure that his foreign policy decisions wouldn't be very different from those of Franklin Roosevelt. Regardless, the USA, under any President, would have joined World War II after Pearl Harbour.

IOW, it was the same as FDR's official position in 1940. He also voted in favor of Lend-Lease so he wouldn't have ended that. PH itself might be butterflied but that would only delay the war a few months IMO when the Japanese attack elsewhere.

PH definitely changed everything as regards to war. I read somewhere an isolationist legislator was working on a scrapbook of all the times he tried to stop "The march to war" when he heard about PH over the radio. He promptly called FDR asking what he could do to support the war effort.
 
Who would be his Sec of State. Assuming he and his vp die as they did in otl that will be the legal successor under the then law

Wilkie’s VP candidate, Charles McNary (Senate Majority leader from Oregon) was found to have a malignant brain tumor in November 1943 after having complained about severe headaches since February. They removed it the same week then found it in 11/43, but by then the cancer had spread throughout his body. If they had discovered it sooner, like in 2/43, he might have recovered and lasted longer but I think that’s still too late to save him from cancer.

He was nearly 70 years old in the 1940s. Best case scenario, with the prospect of potentially fatal brain surgery, McNary resigns, seeks treatment, and gets a few years with his family.

Wilkie’s death in 1944 was caused by a mix of preventable health issues, heavy smoking, poor diet, and no exercise, and Wilkie’s own choices. He had a heart attack and refused to be hospitalized. He was even resistant to medical treatment in general and was really just hellbent on ignoring the heart attack. The next month, he had another one and, again, refused treatment. He was traveling when it happened and when he arrived in NYC an unspecified amount of time later and was in great pain so his press secretary called an ambulance. He died in the first week of October, after suffering four more heart attacks.

If Wilkie had begun to take care of himself better in 1940, I don’t think you would have seen the string of heart attacks in ‘44. With a better diet, less smoking, and some exercise, Wilkie could live well past 59. The likely outcome would be, with Wilkie elected POTUS in 1940, his VP would resign in ‘43 and he would run for, and probably win, re-election in ‘44 and serve either two full terms or most of two.

I don’t think anybody would let the president be so reckless with his health and I think with just a few steps in the right direction, Wilkie could have lived a long life.
 
Wilkie’s VP candidate, Charles McNary (Senate Majority leader from Oregon) was found to have a malignant brain tumor in November 1943 after having complained about severe headaches since February. They removed it the same week then found it in 11/43, but by then the cancer had spread throughout his body. If they had discovered it sooner, like in 2/43, he might have recovered and lasted longer but I think that’s still too late to save him from cancer.

He was nearly 70 years old in the 1940s. Best case scenario, with the prospect of potentially fatal brain surgery, McNary resigns, seeks treatment, and gets a few years with his family.

Wilkie’s death in 1944 was caused by a mix of preventable health issues, heavy smoking, poor diet, and no exercise, and Wilkie’s own choices. He had a heart attack and refused to be hospitalized. He was even resistant to medical treatment in general and was really just hellbent on ignoring the heart attack. The next month, he had another one and, again, refused treatment. He was traveling when it happened and when he arrived in NYC an unspecified amount of time later and was in great pain so his press secretary called an ambulance. He died in the first week of October, after suffering four more heart attacks.

If Wilkie had begun to take care of himself better in 1940, I don’t think you would have seen the string of heart attacks in ‘44. With a better diet, less smoking, and some exercise, Wilkie could live well past 59. The likely outcome would be, with Wilkie elected POTUS in 1940, his VP would resign in ‘43 and he would run for, and probably win, re-election in ‘44 and serve either two full terms or most of two.

I don’t think anybody would let the president be so reckless with his health and I think with just a few steps in the right direction, Wilkie could have lived a long life.
In the 1940s the risk of smoking was not so well known. And of course FDR's lifestyle was less than totally healthy
 
Maybe more interesting relations with China as later in his life in OTL he had an affairs with Madame Chiang Kai-shek
 
John L. Lewis's gamble in endorsing Willkie would pay off, and he would easily be the most important man in organized labor. (He had promised to quit as the head of the CIO if FDR won, and to the surprise of many, he kept his word.) He would no doubt be closely consulted by Willkie on labor matters. But I doubt that their alliance would last once Lewis realized that Willkie was not really an isolationist and that Willkie would like FDR insist that labor had to make some sacrifices in view of the war emergency.
 
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PH definitely changed everything as regards to war. I read somewhere an isolationist legislator was working on a scrapbook of all the times he tried to stop "The march to war" when he heard about PH over the radio. He promptly called FDR asking what he could do to support the war effort.

Not uncommon, tho it went deeper. The isolationists & America First organization had been losing major supporters and leaders for months. The invasion of the USSR had lost most of the left to the isolationist movement at the end of June 1941. Businessmen with connections to Europe, and there were a lot of them, were coming to accept that the faster the war ended in the US favor the faster they would see their business with Europe restored.

The economics of WWII for the US were fairly simple. Traditionally Europe has been critical to US economic prosperity. Approximately 60% of the US economy as been tied up in trade with Europe. Exportation of raw materials, finished and semi finished goods, ect... & imports. One peak period were the decades leading to 1914. Relatively free trade lent itself to long term growth and prosperity. The Great War was a warning & example of how a long term European war could disrupt long term prospects in the US. The attempts of the USSR to create a autarky and its general economic dysfunction in the 1920s and 1930s were a warning of how badly things were likely to go with a nazi or Facist pulled Europe. Roosevelt understood this & like a growing number of US business leaders saw the best prospects for the US were returning to to something akin to the conditions of pre 1914. In 1939 the US had not yet recovered from the Depression or the false prosperity of the 1920s. Industrial use or output was still fluctuating between 70 & 80 percent of the 1910 levels. This was causing a general decay of us industrial plant and infrastructure. ie: 80% or more of the 1920 railroad capacity had effectively been abandoned by 1940.

This stagnation of the US industrial strength included labor. Underemployed labors skills had athropied. A generation and emerged possessing a base of school taught skills, but declined practical experience in the workforce. A influx of war money from Europe 1939-41 offset some of these problems, but as Britains financial reserves ran out and German mismanagement of Europe economy grew a very negative trend for the US threatened. Getting the war over, and ended in the US favor was the clearest & fastest route to returning the US to the prosperity it knew circa 1910 or 1920.
 
Assuming Willkie winning results in him taking better care of himself, who would his running mate be in 1944?
 

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Sorry for the late reply, but, Willkie wanted to give the UK all support possible except joining the war. I'm pretty sure that his foreign policy decisions wouldn't be very different from those of Franklin Roosevelt. Regardless, the USA, under any President, would have joined World War II after Pearl Harbour.
IIRC Wilkie was in line with the rest of the GOP to only provide the British a single $5 Billion credit to buy whatever they needed so they didn't lose, but was against an open ended commitment or repealing Cash and Carry that would come with FDR's Lend-Lease program.

There is a question as to whether Pearl Harbor would even happen without FDR's embargo policies toward Japan that hit in 1941. He might even be less hard line in negotiating with the Japanese so that they feel satisfied that they won't lose face for cutting a deal to back off somewhat on China in return for a loosening of sanctions.
 
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