would a civil war have been possible in the 20th century

say FDR died from polio and wasnt there to issue the economic reliefs that kept the country afloat up until ww2. would it have been theoritically possible for a civil war to break out over the great depression if the citizens got fed up in this time.
 
A civil war in the 20th Century *is* possible but it requires PODs back quite a bit before the Great Depression and the right/wrong (YMMV) combination of idiocy and Stupid Virus on the part of US leaders, as well as some means to pony up either an insurgency or some kind of quasi-army. The USA's likeliness of a civil war is pretty limited when its army is the size of Romania's with a population rather a bit larger than Romania's.
 

gridlocked

Banned
Not with a POD post 1900 barring an atomic war.

If the American Civil War never happened and settled the question of states right it is possible to have a civil war in the 1930s for instance. However then we get into the questions of Butterflies for such a big change.
 
It is very unlikely there would have been a second American civil war in the 20th century. There were no ongoing constitutional crises (over slavery) which caused the Civil War. Nor was the democratic process ever challenged or lost legitimacy. One of the good things about a well functioning democracy is that no one person is essential. Consensus builds and there is a deep bench to draw from. For a civil war to happen, both sides need access to a lot of guns and willing recruits, and ultimately the US didn't have any significant group that was going to challenge the Federal government.

There was a lot of continuity between Hoover and FDR in terms of their approach to the Depression so FDR wasn't absolutely essential to his programs being enacted. There was a lot of consensus being built. In fact, a lot of the things FDR gets credit for actually began under Hoover. Even the Bank Holiday was originally a Hoover proposition, it's just that Hoover wanted to announce it with FDR in order to garner the most public support for the measure, but FDR wouldn't agree to announce it together. Most of the good things that came out of the New Deal was likely to happen even without FDR. The things that were likely to have been unique with FDR are probably those elements that are the most controversial in terms of their impact, or things that we know didn't work like the NRA or the Court Packing scheme. If FDR isn't around, then other people will likely step up.

The closest public disturbances in the US occurred in the late sixties and early seventies. That is the most likely time for some kind of uprising, but again there are long term factors that prevented it from exploding. Progress in civil rights was being made (indeed, the major improvements had already been made before the late sixties) and the Vietnam War was ending. Even a series of blunders or mistakes at this time was unlikely to divide the country into armed camps, although domestic terrorism could have become worse as groups like the Weather Underground became as successful as the Red Brigades or Red Army Faction in Europe.
 
A civil war in the 20th Century *is* possible but it requires PODs back quite a bit before the Great Depression and the right/wrong (YMMV) combination of idiocy and Stupid Virus on the part of US leaders, as well as some means to pony up either an insurgency or some kind of quasi-army. The USA's likeliness of a civil war is pretty limited when its army is the size of Romania's with a population rather a bit larger than Romania's.

One thing I've always wondered regarding another US civil war: why do authors always seem to assume that the army as a whole will side with the federal government and the rebels states (whoever they are) will need to start an army from scratch ? You would assume that National Guards and State defense forces units might feel more loyalty to their respective states and so there would already be something that could more or less function as a coherent whole. Thats also not assuming that whole parts of the regular army might not defect if their leader do so and he is charismatic enough to bring the rest with him.
 
One thing I've always wondered regarding another US civil war: why do authors always seem to assume that the army as a whole will side with the federal government and the rebels states (whoever they are) will need to start an army from scratch ? You would assume that National Guards and State defense forces units might feel more loyalty to their respective states and so there would already be something that could more or less function as a coherent whole. Thats also not assuming that whole parts of the regular army might not defect if their leader do so and he is charismatic enough to bring the rest with him.
Because before the Civil war loyalty was primarily to individual states, now it is to the country as a whole and the army is more loyal than most
 
One thing I've always wondered regarding another US civil war: why do authors always seem to assume that the army as a whole will side with the federal government and the rebels states (whoever they are) will need to start an army from scratch ? You would assume that National Guards and State defense forces units might feel more loyalty to their respective states and so there would already be something that could more or less function as a coherent whole. Thats also not assuming that whole parts of the regular army might not defect if their leader do so and he is charismatic enough to bring the rest with him.

The CSA in large part did create an army from scratch, though the Union did too to a very large degree.
 
One thing I've always wondered regarding another US civil war: why do authors always seem to assume that the army as a whole will side with the federal government and the rebels states (whoever they are) will need to start an army from scratch ? You would assume that National Guards and State defense forces units might feel more loyalty to their respective states and so there would already be something that could more or less function as a coherent whole. Thats also not assuming that whole parts of the regular army might not defect if their leader do so and he is charismatic enough to bring the rest with him.

Not at all. Most of those foces swear loyalty to America first and the state they come from second.
 
The closest public disturbances in the US occurred in the late sixties and early seventies. That is the most likely time for some kind of uprising, but again there are long term factors that prevented it from exploding. Progress in civil rights was being made (indeed, the major improvements had already been made before the late sixties) and the Vietnam War was ending. Even a series of blunders or mistakes at this time was unlikely to divide the country into armed camps, although domestic terrorism could have become worse as groups like the Weather Underground became as successful as the Red Brigades or Red Army Faction in Europe.

Some politicians at the local and state level opposed de-segregation to the point of calling in the national guard so if things go a bit more heated up, you might have the prologue of a nice conflict
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Could there have been a civil war in the 20th Century? Um. . . how about the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the Chinese Civil War (1946-1949), not to mention countless civil conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America?
 
One thing I've always wondered regarding another US civil war: why do authors always seem to assume that the army as a whole will side with the federal government and the rebels states (whoever they are) will need to start an army from scratch ? You would assume that National Guards and State defense forces units might feel more loyalty to their respective states and so there would already be something that could more or less function as a coherent whole. Thats also not assuming that whole parts of the regular army might not defect if their leader do so and he is charismatic enough to bring the rest with him.

They assume this from all the historical US insurrections, of which the Civil War was the most enduring and protracted. The majority of US officers stayed in the US Army of 1861, after all. Ironically in the 1930s two officers who would indisputably side with the Feds would be Nutbar George and Dugout Doug......
 
Some left-wing or populist revolutionary situation might emerge if the US does a particularly bad job of handling the depression and the wars of the early part of the century. The lack of a powerful US army early on makes such a revolution more feasible.
 
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