Posted on 09/11/2010 12:27:06 PM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER
We only got 'big dog' status when we nuked Japan.
What if FDR had 4+ terms and no WWII.
???
formerly: "OnTheDress"
Great job, and so sadly true.
I can only speculate if Hitler had continued his hunger for liebersraum and Japan had continued their militaristic ways without the United States getting involved at all.
In the run-up to our involvement in WW2, this country was awfully darned isolationist. Roosevelt ran in 1940 on a platform of not getting our boys involved in a foreign conflict.
If the United States had stayed out of the conflicts, Hitler would have gone ahead and conquered Europe, Russia and most of Africa.
Tojo would have implemented his Far Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere, which would have included Australia and China, and possibly India also.
North America would have then been pretty much isolated from the rest of the world.
I don't know whether South America would have come under Hitler and/or Tojo's influence, but would guess they would have.
In 1940, when we finally woke up and initiated the draft, we had only 188,000 people in uniform. Unless we decided to really beef up our military still not intending to get involved, we would have been pretty impotent.
Of course this makes a lot of assumptions, but I think we would have remained a sleeping giant until Adolf, Tojo, or their successors decided to own the United States. Then we might have awakened - too late.
Pearl Harbor was the turning point, then.
Japan forced us to where we are, until this 0bamaside happened.
That is why I asked...
>>In 1940, when we finally woke up and initiated the draft, we had only 188,000 people in uniform. Unless we decided to really beef up our military still not intending to get involved, we would have been pretty impotent.<<
Not only that, but these troops were still equipped wih M1903A3 Springfields, BARs, water cooled Browning Machine guns and a woefully inadeguate navy. Tanks, like the Lee and Grant, were obsolete. Airpower consisted of a few B-17s and P39/40s, F4Fs, F2As and SB2Cs.
I am NOT saying there would have been no changes but remember that the USofA was artificially depressed industrially by the Depression and the various Lend-Lease programs were already revving up the armaments industries. Britain had already survived the Blitz and Sea Lion Invasion threat and Hitler had already gotten stuck into Russia. Japan would have had difficulty making the Co-Prosperity Sphere with the US Philippines sitting right on it's doorstep.
Given these facts, the US would have been drawn into the war and probably sooner than later, most likely in 1942 by Japanese actions and with the US declaring war upon the German Axis because of U-Boat actions.
In our real history, the US cancelled more war contracts in 1944 than the combined Axis had built in the previous decade. These included super battleships bigger than the Iowa Class and super carriers as well as jeep carriers. While Allied airpower trailed Axis technology, the quantity being brought to bear had a quality all of its own. The results might have been a far more battered Europe, Russia and China/Asia but I think that the outcome would have been the same.
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