What would it take to keep US out of WWII European war?

All,

This is good stuff.

Julian: Are you sure US would declare war? As far as I know, the German declaration saved the day for Roosevelt insofar as a unilateral declaration would need a very strong case and Roosevelt didn't exactly have one.

US didn't have any treaty with Poland (nor with Britain in 1939/40 for that matter), so why would they or rather how could they?

Blondie: There is another thread right now on Wilkie's presidency. Would he have been more "soft" on the war issue? after all, the "no to war" squad was his background (until he changed his mind, apparantly).

The fall of France? well, maybe. It was a shock that it could happen so fast to the entire world. A more slow-moving battle might just have ended up in a stalemate, but would that in itself have fostered a non-intervention from US (Wilkie or Roosevelt)?

Internal problems. I like that idea. What were the bigger problems in the US which could have "swamped" any presidency into focusing on domestic issue rather than the war? The only one I can really see is "new deal" but, though having its own problems, were starting to work very well.

Would those have required action prior to 1939 and then have required consistent "management bandwidth" through to 1941/2?


The US naval policy is another thing in the pot.

How well was it US policy to not have one single power dominating the Continent? Freedom of the seas is obviously important but wold it be a case for war? Not so sure there.

can we elaborate on that point, because that really points to a very hardline policy from US. Who would institute it? King?

There is a critical one as well: Japan

If Japan moves up in time and is attacking PH earlier (could be some reasons, but let us not go into that for now) in say 1938, then US would be fighting Japan only and then what? no time for Europe?

Or if PH is delayed (which was a bit problematic, I know) to say 1943?

Is it important to have Roosevelt at the helm or would the basic underlying reasons for intervention still be the same?

Ivan
(sorry for posting such a long response)
 
All,

This is good stuff.

Julian: Are you sure US would declare war? As far as I know, the German declaration saved the day for Roosevelt insofar as a unilateral declaration would need a very strong case and Roosevelt didn't exactly have one.

Well consider that the United States was already providing vast amounts of aid to Great Britain, escorting it's merchant shipping, and essentially bankrolling it's war against Nazi Germany. Even without a war with Japan it would have extended Lend Lease to the Soviet Union by 1942. Thus it' still be backing the Allied war effort even without becoming directly involved. After that it's only a matter of time until Nazi Germany slips up and sinks a US vessel, with a war declaration coming shortly afterwards. Nazi germany may simply declare war on the US anyways; by 1941 they were essentially fighting an undeclared war in the Atlantic, so making it official changes little.
 
yes, that's the point. They were already committed.

So, in essence, we need to have that commitment to go away? that will require that FDR is not elected as I see it?. Now we are also on the Wilkie thread, but he might still have been as committed, so that is not a solution to this.

It has to go further back then? back to the election in '36 against Landon? But Landon was not a serious threat. Should it really go all the way back to '32 against Hoover?

If we go too far back, it has a tendency to become a bit too fuzzy I should think.

Comments?
 
yes, that's the point. They were already committed.

So, in essence, we need to have that commitment to go away? that will require that FDR is not elected as I see it?. Now we are also on the Wilkie thread, but he might still have been as committed, so that is not a solution to this.

It has to go further back then? back to the election in '36 against Landon? But Landon was not a serious threat. Should it really go all the way back to '32 against Hoover?

If we go too far back, it has a tendency to become a bit too fuzzy I should think.

Comments?

Plus there's the assumption that everyone except FDR would be isolationist, and ignore the more interventionist public opinion of the early 1940s. Certainly there might be less commitment, but no commitment at all is next to impossible to achieve as it would directly harm US interests.
 
Horrible again. It is a dead-end. The basic underlying facts cannot be changed enough to allow for a non-intervention. Damn!

Well, it was a good try, though.

Thanks all

Case closed!

Ivan
 
France kicking Germany's ass in 1940. Which would also keep the Soviet Union out of the war as well.

Has anyone ever written a good timeline on this? I have seen a few where france does better, but given a French thrashing of Germany in 1940 would be unequivocally a good thing, i am surprised one hasn't been written.

Francophobia on the board? Or too much Germanurbation?
 
Has anyone ever written a good timeline on this? I have seen a few where france does better, but given a French thrashing of Germany in 1940 would be unequivocally a good thing, i am surprised one hasn't been written.

Francophobia on the board? Or too much Germanurbation?

I think it's more that people then as now were deceived by the degree to which German victory ultimately unfolded to realize that this was the product of an extremely narrow victory staking all on a massive gamble that was not exactly likely to work. Germany can easily screw up its invasion of France, and then a year later the Allies begin an invasion of Germany that proves to be a prolonged nightmare of urban battles, and the great gamble of Hitler's invasion of the USSR becomes fodder for ATL AHs. Because this is about the only way the Nazis can or will postpone Barbarossa.
 
It is actually shocking how much of German/Prussian military history going back to Frederick the Great and earlier was wild rolls of the dice.
 
It is actually shocking how much of German/Prussian military history going back to Frederick the Great and earlier was wild rolls of the dice.

It's not so much when you consider Prussia oscillated between disaster and success, and that the rolls of the dice worked in the 19th Century but failed both times in the 20th. If it works, don't fix it is a mentality people everywhere hold.
 
Sarge, the OP only specified that the US would stay out of the European war.

The inevitability of US strategic interests clashing with Japan's leading to war over the Philippines to protect the oil source in the DEI remains unchanged.

Which means that the inevitable US-Japanese War will be even more of a curbstomp, as the US can now fully concentrate its military might against Japan while Germany is contained in Europe.

The British and French can also put up a better fight in Asia.
 
It is a dead-end. The basic underlying facts cannot be changed enough to allow for a non-intervention. Damn!

One sci-fi-ish possibility: what if the U.S. cannot participate in the war, because on 1937/10/30, Ohio is flattened by Hermes (a 1 km asteroid that barely missed Earth on that date). U.S. losses would be comparable to USSR's losses for WWII, before it even started, and it would take a decade or more to recover.

Would WWII even take place? (rough guess: yes, Germany vs UK+USSR, while Japan gobbles up China/Indonesia/Philippines unopposed). Would it drag on long enough for the U.S. to get involved? (probably not: it would end in a peace of exhaustion). Would there be a WW-III with A-bombs in the 1950s? (your guess as good as mine).
 
yes, a meteor would do something about the basic facts.

That near-miss was apparantly quite real. It was within 5 hours of striking earth.

It would have been major, like those movies my youngest likes to watch!

Ivan
 
One sci-fi-ish possibility: what if the U.S. cannot participate in the war, because on 1937/10/30, Ohio is flattened by Hermes (a 1 km asteroid that barely missed Earth on that date). U.S. losses would be comparable to USSR's losses for WWII, before it even started, and it would take a decade or more to recover.

Would WWII even take place? (rough guess: yes, Germany vs UK+USSR, while Japan gobbles up China/Indonesia/Philippines unopposed). Would it drag on long enough for the U.S. to get involved? (probably not: it would end in a peace of exhaustion). Would there be a WW-III with A-bombs in the 1950s? (your guess as good as mine).

Celestial objects impacting, Yellowstone erupting, stuff like that, is usually considered to be outside the normal range of PODs.
 

b12ox

Banned
Has anyone ever written a good timeline on this? I have seen a few where france does better, but given a French thrashing of Germany in 1940 would be unequivocally a good thing, i am surprised one hasn't been written.

Francophobia on the board? Or too much Germanurbation?
The French would have had to get more desperate to make it harder for the invader than they did in OTL. The german desperation was enough to tip the scale. The Fuerer had a vision and he convinced his soldiers their volksdeutsche were being maltreated behind German borders. The French didn't even try to defend its own borders.
 
Celestial objects impacting, Yellowstone erupting, stuff like that, is usually considered to be outside the normal range of PODs.

True, but:

1. A normal POD (different elected leaders, different outcomes of early battles, etc.) probably won't be sufficient to make the U.S. stay out of WWII. We need a large POD that somehow hurts the U.S. but not Europe.

2. This impact came frightfully close to happening that day (unlike an arbitrary Yellowstone eruption, which could not realistically have happened in the 1940s due to lack of magma in the chamber). It's not just some random smite.

* Although Goebbels will no doubt try to spin it that way: "blah blah God hast gesmitten the filthy American pig-dogs blah blah etc."
 
Although that meteor was pretty close, I also believe that it will be hard to take it into this discussion. I kinda like it, but alas, let's leave that one alone.

(a horrible consequence would be that NCR's head office in Dayton OH, will be wiped out. No cash registers for the entire world will mean economic melt down all by itself!).

Ok, serious.

The last item is really:
An earlier PH: will it keep US out of Europe?
A later PH: no German declaration of war in 1941/2.

I am not sure this is even enough to keep US out.

Ivan
 
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