WI: US goes to war just before the Great Depression

How would the US going to war in either 1927, 1928 or early 1929 affect the Great Depression. Would it prevent it or make it worse?

Countries the US would go to war with would probably be Japan or Great Britain.
 
War is almost certainly to be with Japan. While the US and UK had some diplomatic spats during the period, they settled all their major differences much earlier. Japan and the US have much greater differences they never really settled, and the lower ranks of the IJA and IJN could produce the sorts of loose cannons to start a war, in China most likey

Probably prevent the depression. Higher taxes to pay for the war take some of the air out of the bubble, and increased military production would mean that there is less excess capacity over-saturating the civilian market. Stock market bubble may still collapse if the war starts in 1929, but unemployment will never reach OTL depression levels due to larger military and need for war production. Any earlier and enough hot air is let out to prevent a full on depression IMO
 
There was some anti-British feeling in the US after the failure of the Geneva Naval Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Naval_Conference but it was in the nature of "OK, let's outbuild them then" not "let's start a war with them." A war with Japan was almost as remote. Franklin D. Roosevelt observed in his 1928 Foreign Affairs article: "Only the most excited of the Admirals will seriously consider the possibility of invasion either of the United States or of Japan by sea...." https://webcache.googleusercontent....ur-foreign-policy-0+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
 
Strictly speaking the US was waging the Banana Wars is those days. Mainly in Nicaragua 1927 - 1932, tho US Marines had been present in earlier years.

The Shanghai occupation of 1927-1928 was not a war, but was not a trivial military operation. A fair chunk of the Pacific fleet made a "Port Call" & a landing force of the 15th Infantry Regiment and a Brigade of US Marines appeared on the Shanghai streets.

.. A war with Japan was almost as remote. Franklin D. Roosevelt observed in his 1928 Foreign Affairs article: "Only the most excited of the Admirals will seriously consider the possibility of invasion either of the United States or of Japan by sea...." https://webcache.googleusercontent....ur-foreign-policy-0+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Which kind of dodges around that War Plan ORANGE outlined a naval war & eventual blockade, invasion on the Japanese home islands was not on the 'to do' list in WP ORANGE. Roosevelt was kind of hinting at this in his statement.

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Probably prevent the depression. Higher taxes to pay for the war take some of the air out of the bubble, and increased military production would mean that there is less excess capacity over-saturating the civilian market. Stock market bubble may still collapse if the war starts in 1929, but unemployment will never reach OTL depression levels due to larger military and need for war production. Any earlier and enough hot air is let out to prevent a full on depression IMO

WP ORANGE did contemplate a massive naval construction program. A couple new classes of BB, new cruisers and destroyers to match, and more of those new fangled aircraft carrier ships. More important would be the fleet train of support ships the Navy wanted but did not have in 1928. OTL that was about two years construction dragged out over four years. So the shipyards are booming for a couple years if things play out according to the ORANGE plan. Of course the Japanese may screw the pooch at the start and a large construction program not be needed...

On the War Department side the plans for the Army were not large. As I understand the US Army was to provide a expeditionary force of 50,000 men in six months, & 100,000 at the twelve month mark. Presumably another 100,000 if the war extends to fighting on the larger islands. Getting that together from the undersized Army of 1928 means mobilizing at least that many men from the reserve officers, a National Guard Division or two, and intaking a largish batch of recruits to fill out the lower ranks. Including stateside support services and Army Air Corps expansion the strength rises from 250,000 to 500,000 in 12 months. IIRC the Marine Corps was to provide a couple Expeditionary Brigades and a half dozen base defense battalions. So perhaps 25,000 men minimum.
 
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Governments make all sorts of contingency plans that have a negligible chance of actually being implemented. (In fact, if you are a military planner and you are not making contingency plans even for extremely unlikely wars, you are not doing your job.)
 
WP ORANGE was one of the most tested and throughout through contingency plans made in the 19th & 20th Century. It was also one of the few carried through most of the war. Although executed at a far larger scale than planned the Central Pacific offensive King & Nimitz engineered was pretty much WPO as worked out from the early 1920s, right up through Kimmels WP-46 written in March 1941. Since the war scare of 1907 the USN had been planning and testing, both on the map table and in fleet exercises a naval war with Japan. Many different strategies were tried, critically examined, retried, and most rejected. As fought in WWII the central Pacific strategy emerged in broad outline in the 1920s. Marine Major Ellis "Operations in Micronesia' a seminal work on modern landing operations was one of the many papers resulting from this long running planning effort. Hector Bywaters 'The Great Pacific War' book was based on USN war-games of the 1920s. Bywaters thing fictional narrative is one of the most acessable insights into USN thinking of the early 1920s. At the other end Kimmels WP-46, his play book as it were, for a war with Japan represents the other end of USN analysis & planning. Although Europe competed for attention USN requests for naval construction 1938> were deeply influenced by the WPO being at the center of USN thinking.
 
Wow, what a fascinating idea. Does this delay a Depression-level event or could the inevitable next contraction in the economic cycle be less destructive? If so that will have immense consequences for politics and maybe completely alter the face of WW2 if it happens at all - not to mention potentially preventing the rise of Keynesianism, Roosevelt-era progressivism and European social democracy...
 
Wow, what a fascinating idea. Does this delay a Depression-level event or could the inevitable next contraction in the economic cycle be less destructive? ...

The second. The Depression was the result of deep long running economic trends. Some relief can be had from a robust naval construction program & placing up to one million men in Navy and Army uniforms. (Sixteen million were in uniform in WWII). Conversely the ultra fiscal conservative nature of Congress & the Presidency at the time argues against anything but the most careful financing of this Pacific war. There will be strong arguments from voters, business leaders, and their pet politicians that the US cannot afford this war & finical ruin will result from it. That ruin may not be the actual case, but will be the perception by a fair number of voters & the business community. In 1928 the finical fallout from the Great War was still raining down on everyones head. No one wanted to see the same sort of after effect from another war. So, there may be a misguided effort to prosecute this war on the cheap. Thus reducing any mitigation of the oncoming Depression.

Successful, or unsuccessful this hypothetical war has significant knock on effects for US mobilization for any later European war. With this several years experience its probable some of the major mistakes of OTL 1938-1942 will be avoided. Specifically industrial planning will be resolved sooner; weapons development further along; doctrines less theoretical with recent experience behind them, and a pool of mid grade officers with actual combat experience in the Army and Navy. OTL the US Marines were the only US group that went to WWII with less than two decades between combat experience. A Pacific war gives the next generation of Army colonels and generals actual operating & combat experience. That counts for something if and when the US Army goes off to fight in Europe.
 
Once again, though, why would the US have fought Japan in the late 1920's? Even a decade later, China alone wasn't enough to do it--the US didn't impose serious sanctions on Japan until after the fall of France and Holland when southeast Asia was also menaced. US resentment in 1927 was directed against the Chinese Nationalists, not Japan, because of the Nanking incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_incident_of_1927 US relations with Chiang did improve after he broke with the Communists, but nobody wanted to see the US go to war for him. The US was far more hostile to Soviet Russia than to Japan, yet it certainly gave no thought to going to war over the Soviet-Chinese clash in Manchuria in 1929. And of course the US would go no further than the Stimson "non-recognition' doctrine in 1931 despite the flagrant Japanese aggression. Why would it go further in, say, 1928?

You could just as well say, "well, there was War Plan Red; therefore a war with the UK was plausible." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red But it wasn't! No matter how detailed a contingency plan, there isn't going to be a war unless the political basis for a war exists.
 
Once again, though, why would the US have fought Japan in the late 1920's? Even a decade later, China alone wasn't enough to do it--the US didn't impose serious sanctions on Japan until after the fall of France and Holland when southeast Asia was also menaced. US resentment in 1927 was directed against the Chinese Nationalists, not Japan, because of the Nanking incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_incident_of_1927 US relations with Chiang did improve after he broke with the Communists, but nobody wanted to see the US go to war for him. The US was far more hostile to Soviet Russia than to Japan, yet it certainly gave no thought to going to war over the Soviet-Chinese clash in Manchuria in 1929. And of course the US would go no further than the Stimson "non-recognition' doctrine in 1931 despite the flagrant Japanese aggression. Why would it go further in, say, 1928?

You could just as well say, "well, there was War Plan Red; therefore a war with the UK was plausible." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red But it wasn't! No matter how detailed a contingency plan, there isn't going to be a war unless the political basis for a war exists.
Presumably it takes a series of events to build a base of support for war. Such things can spring up awfully fast

Japan is a much more plausible target than the UK for a number of reasons, racism, a greater sense of rivalry and not having settled its colonial differences earlier. Weakness of the Japanese political system, which is not far out from a period of trouble and the breakdown of democracy, and suffering from the effects of the Showa financial crisis. Weak governments are more likely to be unable to back down from a crisis. Likewise the Japanese military is starting to break lose from civilian control and become the tail that wags the dog. Ultra-nationalism becoming popular among the civilian population making them more likely to be inflamed against other nations

Of course nobody is going to set out to go to war. But US-Japan relations of the time are a lot more vulnerable to a random unfortunate event being blown up into war. On both side their is racism and a dislike of the other among the general population. On the Japanese side you have a civilian government that cannot survive any loss of face, thus has a hard time backing down, and a military already slipping the leash, with junior officers increasingly prone to acting on their own

It's not likely, but its plausible. War between the US and UK is implausible as the US and British public have a better opinion of each other, the British and US governments are stronger than the Japanese one, trade ties are greater and the US and British militaries are firmly under civilian control. If something unfortunate happens between them, the population are unlikely to take it as badly, the military won't do anything to make the situation worse and the political system is strong enough to survive a loss of face
 
Once again, though, why would the US have fought Japan in the late 1920's? Even a decade later, China alone wasn't enough to do it--the US didn't impose serious sanctions on Japan until after the fall of France and Holland when southeast Asia was also menaced. US resentment in 1927 was directed against the Chinese Nationalists, not Japan, because of the Nanking incident. ...

This is the core question for this thread. The OP does not give a Point of Departure. Since as Davids post makes clear there is no easy or believable cause OTL in 1928, we'd have to reach back a ways to come up with a logical line of events. Maybe some expert on Asian affairs can point to a series of PoD from 1907 or later that could lead to a 1920s Pacific war?

I suspect such a PoD/s would waive away the Washington Naval treaty, either preventing it or causing the US & Japan to abandon it after war becomes a threat. Depending on which affects the compositions of both navies very differently as war starts in 1928. About the only change I can address is the up grade of the Kongo class battle cruisers was not complete. Maybe two would be upgraded at the start. The IJN would have to choose between taking the remainder out of action to renovate, or keep relatively vulnerable ships in action.

I'd have to check and see if the Daihatsu landing craft & related transports had been under construction previous to this. The US had the Lexington & Saratoga 'operational' by this year, but still had a long way to go in having a useful weapon. Ditto for Japan. Reconnaissance & harassment attacks may be the best these new weapons can accomplish. Doctrine on both sides regulated submarines to coastal or area defense, with a few long range boats as fleet scouts. The German attempt at submarine interdiction/blockade of Britain in the Great War was regarded by 'experts' as a failure. Neither the USN nor IJN was preparing for a serious submarine campaign vs cargo shipping. I doubt either side had any VLR aircraft for practical long range reconnaissance.
 
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