“The court got scared that court packing would threaten the independence of the judiciary, so they relented and agreed to uphold some of FDR’s socialist schemes.”
They shouldn’t have been so scared, as no matter how popular FDR was nor how effective was his propaganda, he could convince neither Congress nor the public that the best way to deal with the cloistered old men in robes holding back the Future was to water them down. The court-packing scheme was destined to fail. In fact, was failing. FDR bit off more than he could chew, which we tend to forget, since we give him the roundabout victory.
SCOTUS, I think, knew this, yet simply tired of being unpopular. Which I’da thunk was one of the reasons we have (or had) an independent judiciary.
I'm not so sure. What if the court continued to strike down popular programs over the course of the next 2-3 years? A a scenario in which the public and Congress becomes sympathetic to FDR's court-packing plot is not beyond the range of the plausible in my mind.
Unfortunately, unless one day someone figures out how to create and alternative universe in which the court held its ground, it's one of those things we'll never know.