WI: Woodrow Wilson's Stroke In 1919 Fatal?

The consequence that immediately leaps to
mind: The US joins The League of Nations
after all. But do you agree my fellow posters? What else?
 
One interesting difference Marshall could make:

"Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall was reported in the New York Times of April 21, 1919, to the effect that he 'would send a sufficiently large force to Russia to thoroughly exterminate the Bolsheviki.'" Evans Clark, *Facts and Fabrications about Soviet Russia* http://books.google.com/books?id=po0bAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA14 (Clark's book is a pro-Bolshevik polemic, but the same quote is found in Charles Marion Thomas, *Thomas Riley Marshall, Hoosier Statesman,* p. 252.)

Does he try to carry out that policy in this ATL? I think that by the time Wilson suffered his stroke in OTL, it was probably too late for the US to save the Whites. Also note that Marshall made his statement in April, when the temporary success of Kolchak's Spring Offensive led many people in the West to overrate his chances of success.
 

Marc

Donor
You're assuming his death is reported... (tongue only moderately in cheek).
Not a part of American history that I've spent any real attention too - outside of some interest in the social and cultural developments of the Teens, that was fairly radical. But I recall once hearing someone who was a Wilsonian scholar comment that Thomas Marshall might not have made a particularly good president, but he distinctly was a better man than Wilson. In any case, Marshall succeeding a dead Wilson isn't likely to be anything than a fill-in Presidency - the Republicans were returning to ascendency.
 
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The consequence that immediately leaps to
mind: The US joins The League of Nations
after all. But do you agree my fellow posters? What else?

Um... why do you say that? The opposition to the US joining the League came not from Wilson (It was his baby, after all), but from the Republican-controlled Congress. If up against the much less ambitious and weaker-willed Marshall I highly doubt they'd buckle into surrendering American's sovereign forgien policy any more than they would IOTL. However, I do think that while there was a chance of him persuing a stronger anti-Bolshevik policy abroad, he'd have more respect for legal rights and basic order domestically than Wilson, taking the edge somewhat off the 1919-1920 "Red Scare" in the US.
 
Um... why do you say that? The opposition to the US joining the League came not from Wilson (It was his baby, after all), but from the Republican-controlled Congress. If up against the much less ambitious and weaker-willed Marshall I highly doubt they'd buckle into surrendering American's sovereign forgien policy any more than they would IOTL. However, I do think that while there was a chance of him persuing a stronger anti-Bolshevik policy abroad, he'd have more respect for legal rights and basic order domestically than Wilson, taking the edge somewhat off the 1919-1920 "Red Scare" in the US.

Well, because the only way Wilson could have gotten the League past a Republican-controlled Senate
was to accept Republican "reservations" to the Treaty of Versailles. Although more than 2/3 of the Sen-
ate favored the League in one form or another, Wilson simply did not have the votes in the Senate to
have it accept the treaty without any reservations @ all. In short, he had to compromise. But this Wil-
son- a stiff-necked soul if there ever was one- utterly refused to do. OTOH historians generally agree
that if Marshall was a lesser character, he was also far more flexible. He thus would have accepted the
reservations, the treaty would have been ratified, & the US would have joined the LON after all.*

*- For example, see Samuel Eliot Morison, THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, Vol. 3,
p. 216 of the 1972, Mentor paperback edition.
 
Um... why do you say that? The opposition to the US joining the League came not from Wilson (It was his baby, after all), but from the Republican-controlled Congress. If up against the much less ambitious and weaker-willed Marshall I highly doubt they'd buckle into surrendering American's sovereign forgien policy any more than they would IOTL. However, I do think that while there was a chance of him persuing a stronger anti-Bolshevik policy abroad, he'd have more respect for legal rights and basic order domestically than Wilson, taking the edge somewhat off the 1919-1920 "Red Scare" in the US.

But the hard-core opponents of any League (the so-called Irreconcilables) were a minority within the Republican Party. Most Republicans were willing to accept the League if Wilson agreed to the Lodge Reservations. Now you might say that if Marshall agreed to the Lodge Reservations, the Republicans would just present new demands. But in view of widespread public support for some sort of League, and the likely popular perception that Wilson had been "martyred" in the fight for the League, I just don't think they could get away with that, and plenty of Republicans would break ranks with Lodge if he tried that.

Even if you say that Lodge always wanted to kill the League, that his proposed reservations were just a ploy, the very fact that Lodge did not openly oppose the League per se meant that he recognized the idea of a League (which after all Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft had both supported) was popular, even among people who had doubts about Wilson's version.

As I have posted in soc.history.what-if about Lodge's decision to insist on reservations rather than to oppose ratification outright:

"This involved an element of risk, since theoretically Wilson might accept the reservations (and once that happened, Britain and France would accept that having the US go into the League with reservations was better than having it not go in at all). Senator James Watson (R-Indiana) in his *As I Knew Them* recalled how he had actually raised this point with Lodge:

"'Senator, suppose that the President accepts the Treaty with your reservations. Then we are in the League, and once in, our reservations become purely fiction.' (Watson, like Borah and other irreconcilable opponents of the League, thought that declaring that the US was not bound by Article X unless Congress decided on the use of force would not amount to much. Once the League's Council had voted to use force, with the US delegate agreeing, Congress, he thought, would not dare refuse; to turn down a President's request under such circumstances would greatly embarrass the US before the world.)

"Lodge was not worried, replying with a smile, 'But my dear James, you do not take into consideration the hatred that Woodrow Wilson has for me personally. Never under any set of circumstances in this world could he be induced to accept a treaty with Lodge reservations appended to it.'

"'But,' Watson retorted, 'that seems to me to be a slender thread on which to hang so great a cause.'

"'A slender thread!' Lodge exclaimed. 'Why, it is as strong as any cable with strands wired and twisted together.'

"Lodge was right--yet in a sense Watson was right, too. There *was* a slender thread--Wilson's life. Wilson would never have accepted the Lodge Reservations, but what if his stroke had killed him? Then the much more flexible Thomas Marshall would have become President, and the combination of Wilson's 'martyrdom' and Marshall's willingness to accept the Lodge Reservations (or at least something like them) could have made US membership in the League inevitable."
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/71c89de9983668a3

Would formal membership in the League have made much difference? I doubt it. The US did informally cooperate with the League, for example, in the Manchurian crisis of 1931. Granted, it went no further than moral disapproval and a refusal to refuse to recognize Manchukuo, but that is probably as far as it would have gone as a member of the League, too.

Again I'll quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

"I do not think that joining the League would have affected the basic fact of American public opinion during the 1930's: that most people thought that it was a mistake for the U.S. to have joined the Great War, didn't want it to happen again, and were worried that League sanctions would lead to another war. Remember all the nations that *did* join the League and then helped appease Germany, Italy, and Japan anyway. I don't think the U.S. would have been any different.

"Also note that, for example, if the question arose of economic sanctions on Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia, the U.S. government, even as a member of the League, would surely take into account the existence of a large Italian-American vote. German-Americans were even more numerous, and while they were more 'assimilated' than in 1914-18 and less enthusiastic about Hitler than about the Kaiser, they were still far from eager for a war with the Fatherland, or for sanctions that might lead to war. Note the comment made by the American diplomat Joseph Grew in his diary in 1924: 'Every position he [an American member of the League's Council or Assembly] might take with regard to European politics would infuriate some national element at home, the Italians or the Irish, the Germans, Poles, or Jews. This is the real and practical reason for our not joining.' Quoted in Richard W. Leopold, _The Growth of American Foreign Policy_, p. 454."
 
Does Marshall run and maybe even win in 1920?

He may run, but I don't see him winning. With or without US membership in the League, there is just too much dissatisfaction with the past eight years for the Democrats to have much of a chance in 1920.
 
He may run, but I don't see him winning. With or without US membership in the League, there is just too much dissatisfaction with the past eight years for the Democrats to have much of a chance in 1920.
True, but elevated vice presidents benefit from the perceived martyrdom of theiir slain or deceased predecessors, no? TR, Truman, and LBJ come to mind.
 
True, but elevated vice presidents benefit from the perceived martyrdom of theiir slain or deceased predecessors, no? TR and LBJ come to mind.

But McKinley and JFK were popular, anyway, so all TR and LBJ had ro do was build on their popularity.

(I know some people will object to my saying JFK was popular, but the final Gallup poll before JFK's death (after his popularity had declined from its Cuban Missile Crisis highs, after civil rights cost him support in the South) showed him with a still healthy 59-28 percent job approval rating https://plus.google.com/u/0/1177130...5951181922493340962&oid=117713002461778944960 and leading Goldwater by sixteen points.)
 
But McKinley and JFK were popular, anyway, so all TR and LBJ had ro do was build on their popularity.

(I know some people will object to my saying JFK was popular, but the final Gallup poll before JFK's death (after his popularity had declined from its Cuban Missile Crisis highs, after civil rights cost him support in the South) showed him with a still healthy 59-28 percent job approval rating https://plus.google.com/u/0/1177130...5951181922493340962&oid=117713002461778944960 and leading Goldwater by sixteen points.)
What about FDR/Truman?
 
What about FDR/Truman?

Truman's very high initial job performance rating came down pretty quickly, as the 1946 election showed.

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I don't see the LON getting passed under any circumstances, even if the stroke kills Wilson immediately. As far as a serious intervention in Russia, not happening. Sure lots of folks in the USA are antibolshevik, but there is no way the US Congress or the population would go along with the sort of deployment that might make a difference - the whites were so screwed up nothing could save them
 

SpaceCowboy

Banned
One interesting difference Marshall could make:

"Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall was reported in the New York Times of April 21, 1919, to the effect that he 'would send a sufficiently large force to Russia to thoroughly exterminate the Bolsheviki.'" Evans Clark, *Facts and Fabrications about Soviet Russia* http://books.google.com/books?id=po0bAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA14 (Clark's book is a pro-Bolshevik polemic, but the same quote is found in Charles Marion Thomas, *Thomas Riley Marshall, Hoosier Statesman,* p. 252.)

Does he try to carry out that policy in this ATL? I think that by the time Wilson suffered his stroke in OTL, it was probably too late for the US to save the Whites. Also note that Marshall made his statement in April, when the temporary success of Kolchak's Spring Offensive led many people in the West to overrate his chances of success.
Wouldn't this require Congressional approval?

Also, would President Marshall have been interested in securing Senate ratification of the security treaty with France? After all, it seems to me that this treaty was even more important than the League was.
 

SpaceCowboy

Banned
But the hard-core opponents of any League (the so-called Irreconcilables) were a minority within the Republican Party. Most Republicans were willing to accept the League if Wilson agreed to the Lodge Reservations. Now you might say that if Marshall agreed to the Lodge Reservations, the Republicans would just present new demands. But in view of widespread public support for some sort of League, and the likely popular perception that Wilson had been "martyred" in the fight for the League, I just don't think they could get away with that, and plenty of Republicans would break ranks with Lodge if he tried that.

Even if you say that Lodge always wanted to kill the League, that his proposed reservations were just a ploy, the very fact that Lodge did not openly oppose the League per se meant that he recognized the idea of a League (which after all Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft had both supported) was popular, even among people who had doubts about Wilson's version.

As I have posted in soc.history.what-if about Lodge's decision to insist on reservations rather than to oppose ratification outright:

"This involved an element of risk, since theoretically Wilson might accept the reservations (and once that happened, Britain and France would accept that having the US go into the League with reservations was better than having it not go in at all). Senator James Watson (R-Indiana) in his *As I Knew Them* recalled how he had actually raised this point with Lodge:

"'Senator, suppose that the President accepts the Treaty with your reservations. Then we are in the League, and once in, our reservations become purely fiction.' (Watson, like Borah and other irreconcilable opponents of the League, thought that declaring that the US was not bound by Article X unless Congress decided on the use of force would not amount to much. Once the League's Council had voted to use force, with the US delegate agreeing, Congress, he thought, would not dare refuse; to turn down a President's request under such circumstances would greatly embarrass the US before the world.)

"Lodge was not worried, replying with a smile, 'But my dear James, you do not take into consideration the hatred that Woodrow Wilson has for me personally. Never under any set of circumstances in this world could he be induced to accept a treaty with Lodge reservations appended to it.'

"'But,' Watson retorted, 'that seems to me to be a slender thread on which to hang so great a cause.'

"'A slender thread!' Lodge exclaimed. 'Why, it is as strong as any cable with strands wired and twisted together.'

"Lodge was right--yet in a sense Watson was right, too. There *was* a slender thread--Wilson's life. Wilson would never have accepted the Lodge Reservations, but what if his stroke had killed him? Then the much more flexible Thomas Marshall would have become President, and the combination of Wilson's 'martyrdom' and Marshall's willingness to accept the Lodge Reservations (or at least something like them) could have made US membership in the League inevitable."
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/71c89de9983668a3

Would formal membership in the League have made much difference? I doubt it. The US did informally cooperate with the League, for example, in the Manchurian crisis of 1931. Granted, it went no further than moral disapproval and a refusal to refuse to recognize Manchukuo, but that is probably as far as it would have gone as a member of the League, too.

Again I'll quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

"I do not think that joining the League would have affected the basic fact of American public opinion during the 1930's: that most people thought that it was a mistake for the U.S. to have joined the Great War, didn't want it to happen again, and were worried that League sanctions would lead to another war. Remember all the nations that *did* join the League and then helped appease Germany, Italy, and Japan anyway. I don't think the U.S. would have been any different.

"Also note that, for example, if the question arose of economic sanctions on Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia, the U.S. government, even as a member of the League, would surely take into account the existence of a large Italian-American vote. German-Americans were even more numerous, and while they were more 'assimilated' than in 1914-18 and less enthusiastic about Hitler than about the Kaiser, they were still far from eager for a war with the Fatherland, or for sanctions that might lead to war. Note the comment made by the American diplomat Joseph Grew in his diary in 1924: 'Every position he [an American member of the League's Council or Assembly] might take with regard to European politics would infuriate some national element at home, the Italians or the Irish, the Germans, Poles, or Jews. This is the real and practical reason for our not joining.' Quoted in Richard W. Leopold, _The Growth of American Foreign Policy_, p. 454."
What about the French security treaty? What would have been President Marshall's view on it?

Also, I agree that, in any case, the U.S. would probably be disinclined to give guarantees to Poland, Romania, et cetera in the late 1930s if Hitler still comes to power in Germany in this TL. However, the key question is whether the U.S. nevertheless enters World War II in 1939 in this TL out of a sense of duty to its allies Britain and France?
 
Or the obvious one: Harding/Coolidge.....

Harding was still popular at the time of his death. And even when the scandals came out, no one thought that Coolidge was implicated. Indeed, there wasn't any evidence against Harding, only those around him. so no reason why it should seriously hurt the Republicans.

Add to that the general prosperity and the crippling divisions in the Democratic Party, and the 1924 campaign was all over before it began. Precisely the opposite of what the "in" party faced four years earlier.
 
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