Forget it. TR was a long-standing friend of British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice and had long-established friendships in the UK by the time he was assistant secretary of the navy. To get a quasi-anglophobe president you'd need that ragtime era equivalent of Jimmy Carter, a/k/a William Jennings Bryan.
What could've swung America into joining the Central Powers in WWI?
- Thread starter Solomaxwell6
- Start date
Forget it. TR was a long-standing friend of British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice and had long-established friendships in the UK by the time he was assistant secretary of the navy. To get a quasi-anglophobe president you'd need that ragtime era equivalent of Jimmy Carter, a/k/a William Jennings Bryan.
British foreign service
One important thing to remember: British diplomacy was excellent, and would do whatever it took to keep the USA out of the war. In addition, if tensions started building towards that point, and the USA started gearing up, the British and French would both know that an American entry would be catastrophic. Just the loss of Canadian food and troops would be crippling.
I can't see any practical way for the USA to project power into Europe in the face of British naval superiority and a lack of bases. (The USN has modern battleships, but minimal cruiser resources for commerce interdiction and protection in distant oceans.)
The British can count factories and troops very well--and unlike Germany, are subject to direct attack on vital resources--Canada, Bermuda, and many others.
Short form: Britain would do almost whatever it took to avoid American entry--and deal with any national humiliation after the war with Germany. However, such concesions could result in enough supplies getting to Germany to seriously change the war in Europe.
One important thing to remember: British diplomacy was excellent, and would do whatever it took to keep the USA out of the war. In addition, if tensions started building towards that point, and the USA started gearing up, the British and French would both know that an American entry would be catastrophic. Just the loss of Canadian food and troops would be crippling.
I can't see any practical way for the USA to project power into Europe in the face of British naval superiority and a lack of bases. (The USN has modern battleships, but minimal cruiser resources for commerce interdiction and protection in distant oceans.)
The British can count factories and troops very well--and unlike Germany, are subject to direct attack on vital resources--Canada, Bermuda, and many others.
Short form: Britain would do almost whatever it took to avoid American entry--and deal with any national humiliation after the war with Germany. However, such concesions could result in enough supplies getting to Germany to seriously change the war in Europe.
The only plausable causes are either
A) A majority of Americans want to enter a war to annex Canada and the Caribbean.
B) British stupidity. Something along the lines of attacking an American vessel and then killing the crew in the water or something similar. Even this probably wouldn't drag them into the war immediately, but if it occured quite a bit it could.
Since A is basically ASB without a total reworking of the 19th century lets discount it. B however is equally unlikely. After all its not as if the US entered the war after one submarine attack so you cannot pull the *deranged captain, nervous gunner* excuse with much plausability.
So ultimately the situation is impossible. If the situation in NA is altered in the 19th century it will certainly effect the course of events throughout the world.
A) A majority of Americans want to enter a war to annex Canada and the Caribbean.
B) British stupidity. Something along the lines of attacking an American vessel and then killing the crew in the water or something similar. Even this probably wouldn't drag them into the war immediately, but if it occured quite a bit it could.
Since A is basically ASB without a total reworking of the 19th century lets discount it. B however is equally unlikely. After all its not as if the US entered the war after one submarine attack so you cannot pull the *deranged captain, nervous gunner* excuse with much plausability.
So ultimately the situation is impossible. If the situation in NA is altered in the 19th century it will certainly effect the course of events throughout the world.
You'd have to change the president, but here are some other ideas.
1. Have the German trans-atlantic cable not be cut. When only the British trans-atlantic cable was their to give the news, it was loaded with Ally Propoganda.
2. Have the US really want Canada for some strange reason. Maybe a new border dispute.
3. Have German Intelligence reveal to the United States of a "British Plot" to "frame" Germany with some kind of "Zimmerman telegram."
4. Most of all, let the buisness leaders be pro-German.
These might not work, but then again they might help.
1. Have the German trans-atlantic cable not be cut. When only the British trans-atlantic cable was their to give the news, it was loaded with Ally Propoganda.
2. Have the US really want Canada for some strange reason. Maybe a new border dispute.
3. Have German Intelligence reveal to the United States of a "British Plot" to "frame" Germany with some kind of "Zimmerman telegram."
4. Most of all, let the buisness leaders be pro-German.
These might not work, but then again they might help.
Have the entire British civilian and military leadership go insane, a week later the British Grand Fleet begins bombarding NYC and Boston.
Have the entire British civilian and military leadership go insane, a week later the British Grand Fleet begins bombarding NYC and Boston.
Commanded by an American expatriot who also sank the invasion flet.
Have the entire British civilian and military leadership go insane, a week later the British Grand Fleet begins bombarding NYC and Boston.
Hmmmmmmmm. This might just work.
Really a total change in public and political perception is required.
This would require a recent war between the two that left alot of bad blood.
British involvement in the Spanish America war or the civil war might do it but I cant see why GB would become involved in either of these.
What about however that a major war in the Pacific over hawaii, with the British hanging all the Americans who tried to annex the islands.
Glen
Moderator
Hard one....
Have France launch through the lowlands including Netherlands before the Germans in a preemptive strike (which will also bog down). Britain stays Neutral due to that. Then some French colonial yahoos sieze some Dutch territories in the Western Hemisphere. The US demands the French vacate ala Monroe Doctrine. The French hem and haw about it, reluctant to give up one of their few successes of late. Wilson sends in the Marines to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Fighting between French and US forces angers the US, and a declaration of War is made. Very little US involvement in Europe, but they buy out the Dutch New World and they annex as protectorates the remaining French possessions in the New World, except those two little islands near Canada that the Canadians buy from the French, which the US accepts as the Canadians are technically a 'New World' country.
There you go.
As 1940LaSalle said in the following post, TR in OTL was indeed an anglophile of long standing, but that merely means that the POD would have to be pretty early in his life - though the resulting butterflies would not be visible beyond his immediate personal circle for many years.
My biographical knowledge of TR is only casual, and I can't say under what specific circumstances he might have acquired anti-British sentiments in youth instead of pro-British ones, or how that might have affected his rise in public life. But I can't see anything inherently ASB-ish about a POD that begins with TR having different attitudes.
As to your second and broader point - from at least the 1890s on there were plenty of potential sources of conflict. The US, like Germany, was a rising industrial power, implicitly challenging British exports in world markets. The US, like Germany, was also a rising Great Power, seeking a place in the global sun, also an implicit challenge to British hegemony. The US, like Germany, was specifically building a very large navy, far larger than it needed for direct self-defense against any force other than the RN. If the US had been anti-British, it would have posed as serious a problem as Germany did in OTL - in some ways worse, because the US would be harder to blockade and had a potential hostage in Canada.
Look at it in terms of an alternate-alternate history: How stupid was it for Germany to antagonize Britain?
Germany's strategic threats in the late 19th and early 20th century were France and Russia - the same as Britain's strategic threats. By all logic, Germany and Britain should have been if not allies at least friendly neutrals toward each other. Suppose that the buildup of the German navy had not been accompanied by pervasive anti-British rhetoric - would the tensions that led to British entry into the war ever have developed?I'm simply postulating that rhetoric and psychology matter, and that in the right (or wrong) conditions the Anglo-American well could have been poisoned just as the Anglo-German one was in OTL.
Remember that Anglo-American relations even in the later 19th century were correct but by no means warm. The Revolution and 1812 were closer to living memory, Britain was still widely perceived as a squirearchy rather than an emerging democracy - and one very large segment of American public opinion, Irish-Americans, was deeply anti-British.
The first point is true, but in an age of nationalism, diplomacy could only go so far if anti-British sentiment in the US was being whipped up.
On the second point, the US wouldn't have to project power directly into Europe - as you point out, it could inflict crippling damage on Britain without a single doughboy setting foot in Europe.
In the pre-dreadnought years the US had a formidable cruiser force, including the "Big Ten" armored cruisers - individually at least comparable to Spee's cruisers, and with a far better operating situation. In OTL the US never completed any battlecruisers till the Alaskas, but in an ATL where anti-British attitudes are in the ascendent, it could easily have built some.
-- Rick
As I recall, Britain made quite a few concessions to the US in 1890's and 1900's, specifically because they did not want to risk a hostile US during any European War. If Britain doesn't make this diplomatic push, and maybe even does more to oppose US expansion into Hawai'i and other areas in the Pacific, and the Alaska Boundary Dispute is not settled so amicably and in US favor, we could see some points of Anglo-American tension. Of course, in that case the British would probably have tried to woo some other country instead of the US, as the British Foreign office was trying to Britain's worldwide commitments so that they could focus more on events in Europe.
Hapsburg
Banned
*spine shivers in disgust*
Here's an idea:
During the Spanish-American War, Britain & US fight spain in order to 'free' Cuba. They both try to form a protectorate, and go to war in 1899 over it. Either way, bad shit happens, and the US is angry at Britain. It sharply turns TR's feelings for Britain. Germany then tries to cement relations with the US.
When he comes to power, he runs for president many more times, and doesn't get sick and die. He gets the US involved in 1916 after a rumor suggests that there is a secret British plan in the works to invade the northern US via Canada.
Who knows what happens after that...
Last edited: