What if History had 'ended' by 1939?

Envision a world where by 1939, both the Weimar Republic and the Russian Republic (a.k.a. the Provisional Government) have survived, and not only that, Taisho Democracy is preserved in Japan while a succession of progressive presidents in the U.S. manages to head off the Depression before it can happen - instead, there's a contained recession in the mid-to-late 1920's. The only major rogue state anyone can remember is Fascist Italy, which was recently overthrown by an international coalition after it invaded Abyssinia.

By 1939, Mussolini is awaiting trial at the Hague, negotiations for a 'European Economic & Industrial Association' are being held in Vienna and in the States, presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie is running on a pledge to bring the United States into the League of Nations. The biggest sore spot in this burgeoning liberal democratic world order is an increasingly instable China that acts as a temptation for the radical militarists in Japan. There is also a growing nationalist consciousness spreading in the colonized parts of the world, split between those that follow the non-violent ways of the Indian independence movement and the revolutionary guerilla tactics of the Vietminh - however, these have not yet grown into global crises of the first order. Squabbling between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land is another sticking point but the British seem to be doing a good job of keeping a modicum of stability.

Overall, the world seems to be enjoying a period of durable peace and the first pangs of an economic boom managed by a concord of friendly, democratic great powers, so much so that American journalist Walter Lippmann writes a piece entitled 'The End of History and the Coming of the World Citizen.'

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the vicious, imperialist rivalries that fueled the fires of the Great War or the suppression of the insurrectionary ideologies - Bolshevism, Fascism, Anarchism - that sought to remake the world in their own terrifying image, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government [...]

"As we look upon the globe, countries are turning to freedom, economic and political, and are leaving behind the collectivist-jingoist instincts of the past. For them, the great discovery of the 1930's has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.

"To the great mass of people in the world today, there is no alternative."



Snapshots of World Leaders

The United States - President Charles G. Dawes - nearing the end of his two terms; respected statesman celebrated for maintaining peace & stability at home and abroad; fiscally conservative Republican but surrounded by progressive Keynesian advisers, managed a budget surplus in his last two years; sent the American Expeditionary Force to aid in the League of Nation's Italian intervention

Great Britain - Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain - immensely popular reformist Prime Minister overseeing the finishing touches of his radical programme, the Great Housing Bill of 1939; his most immediate political challenge is not so much the weakened Labour opposition as it is the hard right faction of his own Conservative Party led by the flamboyant reactionary Winston Churchill

France - President Albert Lebrun & Prime Minister Edouard Daladier - in charge of a centre-left coalition government implementing social and economic reforms; trying to out-compete the Germans in a friendly contest of 'who can build the best welfare state?'

Germany - President Otto Braun & Chancellor Kurt Schumacher - overseeing German economic recovery and integration into the emerging global and European multilateral orders

Russia - President Pyotr Krasnov & Prime Minister Alexandr Antonov - the partnership between a right-wing monarchist ex-warlord as head of state and a crusading socialist revolutionary premier as head of government has turned out to be surprisingly productive, managing to stabilize the rapidly industrializing Russian economy while also finishing off the last remnants of the Bolshevik insurgency in the Urals

Japan - Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijiro - aged, long-serving liberal Prime Minister whose most urgent task is the placation of the vocal militarist faction within Japan's leadership; interested in cementing both the electoral supremacy of his Minseito party and the constitutional parliamentary system in which it operates; has articulated a vision of a peaceful, pan-Asian future built on colonial emancipation, cooperation and democracy as an alternative to the militarist's plans for regional domination

China - President & Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek - the troubled strongman leader of the only major country that does not seem to be doing well, where the central government is fracturing under the weight of rampant political corruption and economic mismanagement, rival warlords and red guerillas, starvation in the country and unrest in the cities, the re-penetration of foreign imperial influences - most particularly, Japan


In terms of filling in the rest of this world on a more detailed level and projecting its future, I guess the question would be, what could go wrong?
 
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There is also a growing nationalist consciousness spreading in the colonized parts of the world, split between those that follow the non-violent ways of the Indian independence movement and the revolutionary guerilla tactics of the Vietminh - however, these have not yet grown into global crises of the first order.

Is your "yet" there meant to imply that the global crisis emerging from anti-colonialism could be a factor in the future? If so, then I guess this would be a temporary "end of history"?
 
As well as, you know, imperialism, which would not be let go of so easily.

Yes, if these countries are still administering large-scale colonies, than they are not really going to be liberal democracies for the purpose of this time-line.

For example, if France is running Algeria the way it did during OTL, it's only a matter of time before the US(let's say) gets the idea to reach out to disenfranchied Algerians and maybe sponsor and arm a few resistance groups there, with the intention of undermining France and eventually getting the territory for itself.
 
No matter what, there will be a major recession in the coming future and colonialism will still be a thing and would cause tensions with the US if they decide to go full anti-colonialist.
 
Soon this would all end in a very big way. There will be a Great Depression, there be a Globe War, only a matter of time before Japan, China, or Russia set everything on fire.
 
As well as, you know, imperialism, which would not be let go of so easily.
Is your "yet" there meant to imply that the global crisis emerging from anti-colonialism could be a factor in the future? If so, then I guess this would be a temporary "end of history"?

Well in the same way that the first stirrings of the postwar, anti-colonial nationalisms could be sensed at this time in OTL 1940's, the prescient observers of world affairs ITL can read into the future, but given how terribly good everything has been since the end of the Great War, others believe that that issue can be resolved easily as well and without too much bloodshed. Already, the British Parliament is discussing Home Rule for India, which is the only reason anybody in London talks about Churchill anymore, to poke fun at his colorful, blowhard tirades against the idea.

No matter what, there will be a major recession in the coming future and colonialism will still be a thing and would cause tensions with the US if they decide to go full anti-colonialist.
Soon this would all end in a very big way. There will be a Great Depression, there be a Globe War, only a matter of time before Japan, China, or Russia set everything on fire.

Yes, a Cold War between the colonial empires of Europe and a progressive United States seems likely. It would be interesting to see America as the leftist torch bearer of colonial liberation, playing up its own revolutionary heritage for consumption in the huts and villages of Asia and Africa. Perhaps it allies with Japan to stanch the Chinese collapse through a peacekeeping mission, binding the two 'Pacific' powers closer together and eventually pitting them against the imperial 'Atlantic' powers of the Old World.
 
Envision a world where by 1939, both the Weimar Republic and the Russian Republic (a.k.a. the Provisional Government) have survived, and not only that, Taisho Democracy is preserved in Japan while a succession of progressive presidents in the U.S. manages to head off the Depression before it can happen - instead, there's a contained recession in the mid-to-late 1920's. The only major rogue state anyone can remember is Fascist Italy, which was recently overthrown by an international coalition after it invaded Abyssinia.

By 1939, Mussolini is awaiting trial at the Hague, negotiations for a 'European Economic & Industrial Association' are being held in Vienna and in the States, presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie is running on a pledge to bring the United States into the League of Nations. The biggest sore spot in this burgeoning liberal democratic world order is an increasingly instable China that acts as a temptation for the radical militarists in Japan. There is also a growing nationalist consciousness spreading in the colonized parts of the world, split between those that follow the non-violent ways of the Indian independence movement and the revolutionary guerilla tactics of the Vietminh - however, these have not yet grown into global crises of the first order. Squabbling between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land is another sticking point but the British seem to be doing a good job of keeping a modicum of stability.

Overall, the world seems to be enjoying a period of durable peace and the first pangs of an economic boom managed by a concord of friendly, democratic great powers, so much so that American journalist Walter Lippmann writes a piece entitled 'The End of History and the Coming of the World Citizen.'

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the vicious, imperialist rivalries that fueled the fires of the Great War or the suppression of the insurrectionary ideologies - Bolshevism, Fascism, Anarchism - that sought to remake the world in their own terrifying image, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government [...]

"As we look upon the globe, countries are turning to freedom, economic and political, and are leaving behind the collectivist-jingoist instincts of the past. For them, the great discovery of the 1930's has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.

"To the great mass of people in the world today, there is no alternative."



Snapshots of World Leaders

The United States - President Charles G. Dawes - nearing the end of his two terms; respected statesman celebrated for maintaining peace & stability at home and abroad; fiscally conservative Republican but surrounded by progressive Keynesian advisers, managed a budget surplus in his last two years; sent the American Expeditionary Force to aid in the League of Nation's Italian intervention

Great Britain - Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain - immensely popular reformist Prime Minister overseeing the finishing touches of his radical programme, the Great Housing Bill of 1939; his most immediate political challenge is not so much the weakened Labour opposition as it is the hard right faction of his own Conservative Party led by the flamboyant reactionary Winston Churchill

France - President Albert Lebrun & Prime Minister Edouard Daladier - in charge of a centre-left coalition government implementing social and economic reforms; trying to out-compete the Germans in a friendly contest of 'who can build the best welfare state?'

Germany - President Otto Braun & Chancellor Kurt Schumacher - overseeing German economic recovery and integration into the emerging global and European multilateral orders

Russia - President Pyotr Krasnov & Prime Minister Alexandr Antonov - the partnership between a right-wing monarchist ex-warlord as head of state and a crusading socialist revolutionary premier as head of government has turned out to be surprisingly productive, managing to stabilize the rapidly industrializing Russian economy while also finishing off the last remnants of the Bolshevik insurgency in the Urals

Japan - Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijiro - aged, long-serving liberal Prime Minister whose most urgent task is the placation of the vocal militarist faction within Japan's leadership; interested in cementing both the electoral supremacy of his Minseito party and the constitutional parliamentary system in which it operates; has articulated a vision of a peaceful, pan-Asian future built on colonial emancipation, cooperation and democracy as an alternative to the militarist's plans for regional domination

China - President & Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek - the troubled strongman leader of the only major country that does not seem to be doing well, where the central government is fracturing under the weight of rampant political corruption and economic mismanagement, rival warlords and red guerillas, starvation in the country and unrest in the cities, the re-penetration of foreign imperial influences - most particularly, Japan


In terms of filling in the rest of this world on a more detailed level and projecting its future, I guess the question would be, what could go wrong?
I think the Provisional Government wouldn't be called like that 20 years after the war has ended.
 
I think the Provisional Government wouldn't be called like that 20 years after the war has ended.
Yes, I just wrote that name so that people would recognize what regime I'm talking about i.e. the short-lived government that ruled Russia in between the overthrow of the monarchy in the February Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent rise of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution; usually, it's associated in the history books with Kerensky. So, this regime survives and establishes itself as a fairly stable liberal constitutional democracy with a raucous Duma and a proliferation of cultural expression and civil society.
 
Yes, I just wrote that name so that people would recognize what regime I'm talking about i.e. the short-lived government that ruled Russia in between the overthrow of the monarchy in the February Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent rise of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution;
Ok, but I think most of the people here have heard of the Kerensky Government, so it's unnecessary. Anyways great post! :)
 
The United States - President Charles G. Dawes - nearing the end of his two terms; respected statesman celebrated for maintaining peace & stability at home and abroad; fiscally conservative Republican but surrounded by progressive Keynesian advisers, managed a budget surplus in his last two years; sent the American Expeditionary Force to aid in the League of Nation's Italian intervention

What US interests are served by intervening in Italy? The US in the OTL 1920s and 1930s was extremely isolationist. Political consensus blamed "merchants of death" in industry for US involvement in World War One (Source: https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2014-1-page-120.htm). The United States never joined the League because of these sentiments against intervention in WW1. The nation would basically be content with hegemony and security in the Americas.
 
What US interests are served by intervening in Italy? The US in the OTL 1920s and 1930s was extremely isolationist. Political consensus blamed "merchants of death" in industry for US involvement in World War One (Source: https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2014-1-page-120.htm). The United States never joined the League because of these sentiments against intervention in WW1. The nation would basically be content with hegemony and security in the Americas.

Well, the internationalist wing of the Republican party would have prevailed upon President Dawes to send in a token force a) because of the prevailing ideological climate of liberal humanitarianism increasingly prevalent in this world and b) the Americans realized that while they don't necessarily want any colonial territories from the carve-up of the Italian realms, they would benefit from favourable trading arrangements with the victorious powers, who are after all also engaged in the making of an embryonic European economic union, which the United States would not want to be barred from. Better to show solidarity and goodwill with a largely symbolic contribution of a few thousand men to the overthrow of the Fascist regime and win favour with the ascendant powers on the continent.
 
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