Woodrow Wilson dies - 1918

In OTL, on October 2, 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke. Let's move that up a year - to October 2, 1918, and have it kill him.

Thomas Marshall becomes US President.

How does this affect Versailles? Does the League or Nations gets formed, does the US join?

Mike Turcotte
 
IOTL, Mrs. Wilson ran the country with her husband incapacitated. If he's dead, she can't do that...

I don't know anything about Wilson's VP, but I'd imagine he'd not have much effect on the treaty-the European allies pretty much ignored Wilson anyway. I can't see any US Senate agreeing to join the League. Probably the shaky new President doesn't make the huge effort Wilson did.
 
To the contrary, it was Wilson's obstinacy and refusal to compromise that killed it. All Lodge was seeking was a guarantee of no automatic deployments without congressional approval and no standing League armed forces. Very reasonable requests, and just about any of his successors could've passed it without much, if any, controversy. Marshall and Lansing would've given those guarantees and the US would've joined.
 
No, because Wilson's wartime actions had already alienated 3 Democratic base constituencies. Irish-Americans, with a hollow promise to help secure Irish independence from the UK with the UK doing it voluntarily rather than UDI followed by a treaty and partition as per OTL. Downright Sea Mammal levels of ASB-ness. Then there were German-Americans, with the anti-German Kulturkampf of 1917-8. German literature was banned and publicly burned and many GAs were interned. Finally, Wilson's foot-dragging on female enfranchisement and ordering the force-feeding of suffragette hunger strikers. On top of that, he tried to use the war as a domestic political tool against the GOP in a crude manner during the 1918 midterms, implying that voting GOP wasn't patriotic. So no, no Dem victory in 1920.
 
A brief reading of Wiki paints a very interesting picture of Marshall, and opens up several avenues for his presidency.
Thomas Riley Marshall (March 14, 1854 – June 1, 1925) was an American Democratic politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1921. A prominent lawyer in Indiana, he became an active and well known member of the Indiana Democratic Party by stumping across the state for other candidates and organizing party rallies that later helped him win election as the 27th Governor of Indiana. In office, he proposed a controversial and progressive state constitution and pressed for other progressive era reforms. The Republican minority used the state courts to block the attempt to change the constitution.

His popularity as governor, and Indiana's status as a critical swing state, helped him secure the Democratic vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Wilson in 1912 and win the subsequent general election. An ideological rift developed between the two men during their first term, leading Wilson to limit Marshall's influence in the administration, and his brand of humor caused Wilson to move Marshall's office away from the White House. During Marshall's second term he delivered morale-boosting speeches across the nation during World War I and became the first vice president to hold cabinet meetings, which he did while Wilson was in Europe. While he presided in the United States Senate, a small number of anti-war senators kept it deadlocked by refusing to end debate. To enable critical wartime legislation to be passed, Marshall had the body adopt its first procedural rule allowing filibusters to be ended by a two-thirds majority vote—a variation of this rule remains in effect.

Marshall's vice presidency is most remembered for a leadership crisis following a stroke that incapacitated Wilson in October 1919. Because of their personal dislike for him, Wilson's advisers and wife sought to keep Marshall uninformed about the president's condition to prevent him from easily assuming the presidency. Many people, including cabinet officials and Congressional leaders, urged Marshall to become acting president, but he refused to forcibly assume the presidency for fear of setting a precedent. Without strong leadership in the executive branch, the administration's opponents defeated the ratification of the League of Nations treaty and effectively returned the United States to an isolationist foreign policy.

Well known for his wit and sense of humor, one of Marshall's most enduring jokes came during a Senate debate in which, in response to Senator Joseph Bristow's catalog of the nation's needs, Marshall quipped the often-repeated phrase, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar", provoking laughter. After his terms as vice president, he opened an Indianapolis law practice where he authored several legal books and his memoir, Recollections. He continued to travel and speak publicly and died on a trip after suffering a heart attack in 1925.
 
To the contrary, it was Wilson's obstinacy and refusal to compromise that killed it. All Lodge was seeking was a guarantee of no automatic deployments without congressional approval and no standing League armed forces. Very reasonable requests, and just about any of his successors could've passed it without much, if any, controversy. Marshall and Lansing would've given those guarantees and the US would've joined.

Ah. I sit corrected:). I guess I must be viewing it through a modern lens. Frankly I can't see much difference even if the US were in the League.
 

mowque

Banned
Ah. I sit corrected:). I guess I must be viewing it through a modern lens. Frankly I can't see much difference even if the US were in the League.

I think it would give the League more...standing and prestige if one of the largest and richest nations sat on it. Might bring the Soviets in earlier?
 
The League as designed was useless. There was no commitment to collective security or guarantors comparable to the UNSC. Perhaps most key, along with the lack of a Security Council analogue, was the lack of an ATL equivalent of the UN Charter's Chapter VII. Kissinger makes these points in Diplomacy quite effectively. Nor would any of the Great Powers have wanted something like that due to divergent interests. Keep in mind that the interwar US military was the size of Sweden's in the mid-1930s. Until WWII the tradition had been full mobilization in wartime and demobilizing 90% of those forces after the war was over. No prominent OTL 1920s presidentiable would think about retaining even 50-55% of the wartime military, let alone be able to sell it to an essentially isolationist public. Even FDR couldn't do it, and the interwar presidents or potential presidents don't have 1% of FDR's political skills.
 
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