What if the US focuses more on conventional military power post WW2

After the 2nd world war, the US began a major downsizing of its conventional military while at the same time focusing more of its resources on nuclear weapons. What Happens if the US decides not to rely entirely on the bomb for defense and instead throws a lot more funding at the regular military. What are the effects of the cold war Korea? Berlin? Nam?
 
Bump

I was thinking of making my own thread on this, but I'm no expert.

I belive that the US will have significantly more troops, with the tanks they used in Korea being significantly better. This could eventually lead to the US winning the Korean War.
 
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If its just a decision?

The party responsible gets thrown out and replaced with one who will go with the cheaper option, nukes, until it gets proven wrong.

If on the other hand you have nukes shown to be not the be all and end all in WWII, well then you could see the US spending more on conventional forces. Of course the butterflies on that are significant. Does this mean the Manhattan project and B-29 went much faster? Does it mean that the Nazis lasted into Fall '45? Does it mean Downfall went ahead?

Nazi's lasting longer means the Soviets are in worse shape and Cold War might be butterflied. Downfall going ahead likely means the Soviets get all Korea and part of Japan, plus the US being more gun shy
Bump

I was thinking of making my own thread on this, but I'm no expert.

I belive that the US will have significantly more troops, with the tanks they used in Korea being significantly better. This could eventually lead to the US winning the Korean War.
OTL the Sherman actually had a better kill ratio in Korea than the Pershing, they don't need better tanks, in fact they withdrew the more modern tanks in favor of the Sherman which handled the terrain better. What they need is heavy forces more prepared to move, as it was they had to get something there fast and threw lightly armed occupation forces against the KPA. Admittedly faster deployment of the M20 Super Bazooka would be highly useful, but just having more ready amphibious shipping and heavy forces in the Pacific would help, of course that would probably mean Stalin is likely to not give Kim permission to go South

Really the US winning the Korean war was merely a matter of will
 
The maintenance of robust conventional forces after the end of the Second World War would have had a profound effect on the Korean War. In our time line, the biggest limitation on American (and thus United Nations) operations was the availability of conventional ground forces. For example, if the United States had possessed three complete infantry divisions that were ready to deploy as soon as the Communist invasion took place, then the Inchon landing could have been conducted with a complete army corps rather than two understrength divisions. This army corps, in turn, would have been able to conduct a more rapid pursuit, thereby making a greater contribution to the defeat of North Korean forces. Indeed, it is reasonable to imagine a scenario in which more robust American forces completed the defeat of the North Korean forces before the recently-installed Communist regime in Beijing was able to organize its intervention. This, in turn, would either have prevented the intervention or resulted in a situation in which the Chinese divisions were defeated while attempting to enter Korea.

In the wake of a shorter, more successful Korean War, the US Army would have been much less inclined to adopt the Pentomic organizational structure. This means that there would be no need for all of the Sturm und Drang involved in the build up of conventional forces that, in our time line, took place in the early 1960s. One possible result of the absence of this great upheaval would be a US Army in which understanding of conventional operations was more nuanced and the champions of conventional forces felt less embattled. This may have led to a better understanding of the Communist strategy in Indochina, which involved the cooperation of conventional and irregular forces. (In our time line, there was a fierce debate within the US Armed Forces concerning the nature of this strategy, with advocates of counter-insurgency in one corner and advocates of conventional operations in another.)

The effect of this change upon the various Berlin crises would have been much, much smaller. This is because the problem faced by Free World forces in Berlin was less a matter of force structure than of space and access. Thus replacing the Berlin Brigade with the Berlin Division would only have made the aerial resupply of the city harder to organize and a land blockade more tempting. It would also have made West Berlin appear more like an armed camp, and thus less of a showcase for capitalism and democracy.
 
You would need an almost immediate transition to the cold war, perhaps even before WWII concludes. I dont think this could happen with Stalin so perhaps Stalin dies in 43 or 44 and his replacement is less calculating and overplays his hand. Soviets in Norway and Greece. They dont pull out of Iran in 1946. They actively support Mao during the conclusion of WWII and attack Chiang. Just thinking outloud here but it would have to be really, really obvious and threatening.

The thing you have to remember was that by 1945 there was war exhaustion. The GIs just wanted to go home. The politicians were far less interested in overseas troop commitments that what was the case in 1955. It took the fall of China, Korea, and the development of the Soviet bomb for the US to truly take a more active approach with conventional forces overseas. And even then we still largely relied on the bomb because it was such more effective cost deterrent.
 
basically what I mean by this is WW2 ends and the US military downsizes a sizable amount but not too much the CVA 58 is still canceled but the US military maintains a lot more ready troops and gear and less nukes
 
As RamscoopRaider first noted, you've got your work cut out for you trying to get the US public to accept the idea that a big military should be maintained postwar. OTL it was hard enough to just maintain the occupations of Germany and Japan.

It's certainly a fact Harry Truman wanted to see the military downsized in favor of extending New Deal programs farther. (IMHO, it should also be clear there was a certain need of this, the extending ND if not the downsizing--a housing shortage for instance was a severe problem postwar). "Willie and Joe," the average American GI, just plain wanted to go home.

But I think any politician one shuffles in to replace Truman if that is one's desire, especially if one assumes that 1944 would be a slam dunk for anyone running as FDR's VP and therefore it would surely a be a Democratic President in the postwar period, even if one finagles in as conservative and/or pugnacious a candidate as one can find, that even the most persuasive or passionate case for retaining a substantially larger US conventional force would be rowing very hard against a very strong suck-tide.

Now it is also a fact that the US military did get drawn down very deeply indeed OTL, to the point that we had almost nothing to throw into the Korean conflict initially. Perhaps it is reasonable to draw it down somewhat less, and compared to the post-war nadir of US force (at least looking only at the margin left over when occupation duty in Europe and Japan is deducted) considerably greater force might be retained.

But face the fact that the USA was simply in no mood to stretch out WWII mobilizations into an ongoing global empire. Surely some enthusiasts for such a thing could be found, but equally surely they'd be outnumbered and shouted down angrily by those desiring a return to normality.

One should note that what had Stalin most worried in the post-war half-decade or so was not the US nuclear arsenal, but the potential of the USA, and other capitalist nations backed by the USA, to mobilize conventional forces if we were provoked into doing so. That we wanted to stand down as much as we could was a help to him, but he never doubted that with too much provocation, the western powers could come back very strong, very fast, and therefore generally tiptoed in many theaters where Soviet power or local Communist movements could have carried the day.

Sometime in the past few weeks I was thinking of some ATL provocation or developing situation that would persuade even a USA led by Truman to maintain a very sizable portion of the peak wartime mobilization, but I can't recall it right now, or even whether it was plausible or completely ASB. Even if a Republican like Taft could get elected, I don't think that makes heavy postwar force levels plausible, unless one drastically changes the situation overseas. Frankly I don't think there would be a bit gap between "situation that Americans are determined to assume will be handled by the threat of the Bomb" and "situation so bad that keeping the Spring '45 levels of mobilization and all the A-bombs Leslie Groves can churn out put together can't stop it from running out of control." I don't think any plausible Stalinist plans would reach the latter and therefore would be covered, until some moment of panic such as Korea, by the former. With the clarification it was not the Bomb itself scaring Stalin, but the vast potential to mobilize the Manhattan Project represented, this option for deterrence was sufficient to keep the peace, generally, OTL after all. Anything presenting enough of a clear and present danger to persuade the western victors over the Axis to stay armed and stay mobilized would also be so scary its wielder might laugh at deterrence and press on to turn the combat of the previous war continuously into a new fight on a new front.

You tell me what sort of threat might exist anywhere that would be that scary and undaunted?
 
Upon thinking a little more, I think I should just reemphasize--the decision to demobilize was clearly not a partisan whim of Truman's. Consider the parallel situation of Britain; the Tories under Churchill could have held off dissolving the War Cabinet and postponing elections until total victory, over Japan as well as Germany, was won, but their political calculation was that their best chance was an early election, to give Labour the least time to organize; Churchill and the rest of his party were confident they were going to win based on the wartime mentality. And yet Labour trounced them, and it was the Services vote overseas, permitting British subjects deployed all over the world to vote, that tipped the balance decisively. (Americans deployed overseas did not get to vote in 1944). After the election of 1946, Truman faced Republican majorities in Congress, and they too did little to check the tide of demobilization. Bear in mind the Cold War mentality was not really established until the Korean War. Prior to that, it was the Democrats who were more consistently in favor of military buildup and deployment, specifically against the Axis. I named Taft as an example of a Republican most extremely against the New Deal establishment, but I suspect his isolationist and fiscal conservative backers would be just as parsimonious about conventional military spending, if for very different reasons, as any New Dealer keen on turning guns to butter. The coalition equating a big military and conservative patriotism had simply not been formed yet; it had its exponents and backers, but nowhere near a national consensus yet.

It would then take some serious ATL spadework to prepare the ground in advance, before 1945's victories, for sustaining a big part of the mobilized force indefinitely after the war. The only plausible foe to maintain a big standing army against would be the Soviet Union, and there are those who argue that the Red Goliath of 1945 was made of clay, the Soviets so stretched thin by the rigors of the later part of the war that they were liable to collapse. I'm very skeptical of that, and would say rather that by remaining in occupation of Eastern Europe rather than returning to their decimated home, the Red Army maintained itself, eating up Soviet reparations on the spot as it were. If one assumes they would fight as tenaciously after victory as they did before then yes, the Red Army was a mighty steamroller indeed and keeping conventional forces in Western Europe that could check it conventionally would have been tantamount to keeping the lion's share of maximum WWII mobilization going. I do think the USA could have afforded to do it, economically. I don't think there would be anything close to a majority supporting it politically. Figures like Patton and MacArthur were out of step both with the New Deal majority on the left and with key bastions of right-wing support as well; the latter might applaud the destruction of the Red Menace, but not the tremendous distortion of US policy that would be involved in maintaining the standing army necessary to do it.

I suppose the least implausible means whereby the USA might have checked demobilization and maintained say a third or even half of the wartime peak might be if policymakers were to commit to defending Chiang Kai-shek's regime in China. It was self-evident in 1945 that to really commit, with no exit strategy other than victory, to that would surely mean sending a lot of GIs and associated kit to China and stationing them there, to immediately confront and most likely start shooting it out with Chinese Communists counted as allies during the war only yesterday. The US public had a huge dread of being bogged down in a land war in Asia, including vast legions who later never tired of baiting the Democrats with "Who lost China?" It would be politically ASB for any plausible US leader to openly and clear-sightedly commit to propping up the KMT come what may, but just perhaps, if Roosevelt had chosen a different running mate in '44 or one can finagle a Republican victory in 1940, just maybe a commitment that was hoped to be modest, just to stiffen up the KMT a little bit and take a firm stand against the ChiComs, might spiral, step by nightmarish step, into a full-blown US stand in China, which would turn into a nightmare to make Korea look like Candyland. That would perforce end the draw-down, but note only by sucking the USA into another war quite as nasty as any theater of the previous war. Almost certainly before it got to that level, we'd have generals using A-bombs to try to level the field a bit. What the Soviets would do, I'm not exactly sure!

What I am sure of is that any sensible US leader in the mid-40s would be very careful not to get drawn into that quicksand in the first place, and if it means Chiang must fall, so be it. Few would want to just wash their hands of him openly and cold-bloodedly, but many would seize on any excuse they could to avoid tying the fate of the USA to him irrevocably either. Mostly they'd kid themselves into thinking that with modest degrees of US aid Chiang could beat the Communists on his own, as they evidently did OTL.

Another aspect of going with adjusting things considerably uptime of 1945 by putting in a Republican in '40 might be that possibly an ATL Administration might not do the Manhattan Project at all, or take half-measures. Given that it delivered useful bombs, and then in literal handfuls, only by late 1945 OTL, any delays or soft-pedaling seems likely to mean no bombs available to the end of the of the war. This might mean that as the war approaches endgame, American policymakers have only the alternatives of either downsizing the US conventional forces and abandoning Europe and East Asia to Soviet influence, or somehow finagling US domestic support for sustaining the huge mobilization indefinitely. As I said this was hardly conventional Republicanism of the interwar years, so this is a tough row to hoe for any ATL.
 
As RamscoopRaider first noted, you've got your work cut out for you trying to get the US public to accept the idea that a big military should be maintained postwar. OTL it was hard enough to just maintain the occupations of Germany and Japan.

It's certainly a fact Harry Truman wanted to see the military downsized in favor of extending New Deal programs farther. (IMHO, it should also be clear there was a certain need of this, the extending ND if not the downsizing--a housing shortage for instance was a severe problem postwar). "Willie and Joe," the average American GI, just plain wanted to go home.

But I think any politician one shuffles in to replace Truman if that is one's desire, especially if one assumes that 1944 would be a slam dunk for anyone running as FDR's VP and therefore it would surely a be a Democratic President in the postwar period, even if one finagles in as conservative and/or pugnacious a candidate as one can find, that even the most persuasive or passionate case for retaining a substantially larger US conventional force would be rowing very hard against a very strong suck-tide.

Now it is also a fact that the US military did get drawn down very deeply indeed OTL, to the point that we had almost nothing to throw into the Korean conflict initially. Perhaps it is reasonable to draw it down somewhat less, and compared to the post-war nadir of US force (at least looking only at the margin left over when occupation duty in Europe and Japan is deducted) considerably greater force might be retained.

But face the fact that the USA was simply in no mood to stretch out WWII mobilizations into an ongoing global empire. Surely some enthusiasts for such a thing could be found, but equally surely they'd be outnumbered and shouted down angrily by those desiring a return to normality.

One should note that what had Stalin most worried in the post-war half-decade or so was not the US nuclear arsenal, but the potential of the USA, and other capitalist nations backed by the USA, to mobilize conventional forces if we were provoked into doing so. That we wanted to stand down as much as we could was a help to him, but he never doubted that with too much provocation, the western powers could come back very strong, very fast, and therefore generally tiptoed in many theaters where Soviet power or local Communist movements could have carried the day.

Sometime in the past few weeks I was thinking of some ATL provocation or developing situation that would persuade even a USA led by Truman to maintain a very sizable portion of the peak wartime mobilization, but I can't recall it right now, or even whether it was plausible or completely ASB. Even if a Republican like Taft could get elected, I don't think that makes heavy postwar force levels plausible, unless one drastically changes the situation overseas. Frankly I don't think there would be a bit gap between "situation that Americans are determined to assume will be handled by the threat of the Bomb" and "situation so bad that keeping the Spring '45 levels of mobilization and all the A-bombs Leslie Groves can churn out put together can't stop it from running out of control." I don't think any plausible Stalinist plans would reach the latter and therefore would be covered, until some moment of panic such as Korea, by the former. With the clarification it was not the Bomb itself scaring Stalin, but the vast potential to mobilize the Manhattan Project represented, this option for deterrence was sufficient to keep the peace, generally, OTL after all. Anything presenting enough of a clear and present danger to persuade the western victors over the Axis to stay armed and stay mobilized would also be so scary its wielder might laugh at deterrence and press on to turn the combat of the previous war continuously into a new fight on a new front.

You tell me what sort of threat might exist anywhere that would be that scary and undaunted?
My idea was an ASB POD that nuclear weapons can't exist. So instead America would have to retain conventional forces.
 

Wallet

Banned
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demobilization_of_United_States_armed_forces_after_World_War_II

The entire US military was on the verge of massive protests after the Axis surrender to go home. Thousands protested in Guam, Hawaii, Japan, France, Germany, Austria, India, Iran, UK, and in the US. Basically anywhere US troops were stationed. The biggest was in the Philippines where 20,000 troops marched on Army HQ in Manila.

Plus you had intense public pressure that wanted the 7.5 million brothers, fathers, and sons to come home.
 
I believe main problem in Korea was that MacArthur once again spent more time playing Generalissimo than he did making sure his Infantry Divisions of occupation troops were trained up to combat ready. He complained that his equipment was faulty or worn out when the kimchi hit the fan but that was no one's fault but his own.
 
In the context of the Korean war US readiness is not so dependent on larger conventional forces as on better. Mac did neglect attention to training of the occupation force. & the excuse of worn out equipment was more a matter of attention than one of massive funding. Macs attitude was not unique. The national defense policy laid out by the new Sec Def Louis Johnson included the idea that conventional forces would be stood back up only after nuclear weapons had won the war, the the Army would be a mop up and occupation force vs a capable field force. This meant politically astute General Officers reduced their expendentures for training & equipment readiness in favor of other things. ie: facilities maintance or equipment long term storage & disposal.

... What they need is heavy forces more prepared to move, as it was they had to get something there fast and threw lightly armed occupation forces against the KPA. ...

Getting a somewhat larger portion of funds for training and better attention to that would have been huge for the 8th Army & its Japan occupation forces. A few Army units were kept at a reasonable state of readiness. The 82d Airborne was the one division size formation, a few smaller seperate or independant units like the infantry regiment in Trieste were in good shape. As it was the poorly trained & unprepared 24th ID stalled the NKPA a week in its delaying actions from Osan to Taejeon, had the 8th Army been able to field three properly trained Inf Div with proper equipment the battles would have gone very differently.
 
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