Slender Threads: 'What If's' of History. Almosts and Alternatives

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When America Almost Succumbed to Military Dictatorship

The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right by Sally Denton. When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in March, 1933, America was desperate. This book explores two startling events that have been largely ignored by historians: "anarchist Giuseppe Zangara's assassination attempt on Roosevelt, and a plutocrats' plot to overthrow the government that would come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch." Washington Post review:

Denton quotes the historian William Manchester: “The evidence strongly suggests that had Roosevelt in fact been another Hoover, the United States would have followed seven Latin American countries whose governments had been overthrown by Depression victims.” ...American fascist parties formed paramilitary groups called the silver shirts, the khaki shirts or the black shirts, a Crayola box of colors inspired by Hitler’s brownshirts and Mussolini’s blackshirts. “Dangerous or not,” Denton notes, “America was awash with right-wing groups overtly bent on government takeover outside the bounds of the democratic electoral process.” The largest effort was a well-financed Wall Street plot to organize the American Legion to march on Washington, seize the White House, overthrow the president and install a famous military hero, Smedley Darlington Butler, as leader of a fascist state modeled after Italy. Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient and firm supporter of Roosevelt, turned the ringleaders in.

""There was a lot at play. It could have gone very different directions," Denton told NPR. An excerpt from the book is included here.

Other historians of the period such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. did not take the military coup threat seriously, and assessed that the American republic was never in serious danger. 

Yet President Franklin Roosevelt was not so sure. A disturbing episode is documented in the book, FDR, by Jean Edward Smith.  During the 1932 campaign, while lunching at Hyde Park with his aide Rexford Tugwell, Roosevelt called Gen. Douglas MacArthur "the most dangerous man in America." Observing MacArthur's violent dispersal of downtrodden military veterans seeking their bonuses in Washington in July of that year, in apparent defiance of an order by President Hoover, Roosevelt saw MacArthur as capable of violating civilian control of the military. He told Tugwell: 

“You saw how he strutted down Pennsylvania Avenue. You saw that picture of him in the Times after the troops chased all those vets out with tear gas and burned their shelters. Did you ever see anyone more self-satisfied? There’s a potential Mussolini for you.”

(Hat tip, George Will.)

MacArthur was said to be a back-up general in the Business Plot against the U.S. government, though he denied it at the time. He was later accused of defying an order from President Harry S Truman not to invade North Korea at the 38th parallel, and seeking war with China. He did publicly disagree with President Truman, saying he wanted to topple the communist Mao Tse Tung and restore the Nationalist Chinese Dictator Chiang Chi Shek to power on the mainland. As a result, Truman fired the widely popular General MacArthur in April 1951, almost setting off a public revolt in America. Right-wingers accused the president of being soft on communism and losing China to the communists. But the principal of civilian control of the U.S. military ultimately endured.

These events do make one wonder: what if Franklin Roosevelt had been assassinated in 1933? Might the U.S. have succumbed to military dictatorship? What if General MacArthur were more defiant of President Truman, or if the military leadership was unified against the president's policies? Could they have staged a military coup?

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Posted at 03:07 PM in 1930s, 1950s, American Military History: What If's, FDR, Korea, Necessity of Wars?, Truman | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Prominent Historians Tackled the Great 'What If's' of 19th and Early to MId 20th Centuries

It is fascinating to discover American military historian Robert Crowley's collections of essays on counter-factual history known as "What If..." He edited three volumes between 2000 and 2004, in which prominent historians explored some of the close calls of history. Among the eminent historians contributing to these volumes were Stephen Ambrose, David McCullough, James McPherson, and Robert Dallek.

The American Revolution, Civil War and World War II provides many plausible alternative histories. Crowley, et al. explore:  

  • Thirteen ways the Americans could have lost the revolution.
  • What if Britain had kept the 13 colonies? Historian Caleb Carr makes a number of assumptions about how the 19th and 20th Century would have been different and in some ways, better off.
  • What if the South had won Antietam (Sharpsburg) in 1862? Instead of a battle to a draw, the South could have inflicted devastating losses on the North if Gen. Lee's plans had not been leaked to Yankee Gen. McClellan. What if the South had won Gettysburg? Heavy losses in either/or both of these battles could have put enormous pressure on President Lincoln to negotiate a settlement with the South, allowing the Confederacy to survive. 
  • Journalist-historian Tom Wicker asks what would have happened if Lincoln did not make the emancipation proclamation or if the 14th amendment granting full citizenship to freed slaves in the South was not enacted. 
  • What if Lee had not surrendered at Appomatox? What if the North, in John Wilkes' Booth's wildest dreams, imposed such harsh punishment on the South that guerilla warfare broke out? America might resemble Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
  • How Hitler could have won the war. What if Hitler had not attacked Russia when he did? He might have moved into the Middle East and secured the oil supplies the Third Reich so badly needed, helping it retain its power in Europe. 
  • Could the wartime pope, Pius XII, have prevented the Holocaust?
  • What if the Battle of Midway had been won by Japan? Or if Japan had never bombed Pearl Harbor? Would Americans have entered the war?
  • What if D-Day had been a failure? The Soviet Union might have controlled all of Europe. Ambrose suggests that Allied defeat on D-Day would have meant nuclear devastation for Germany in the summer of 1945. 
  • "What if" Eisenhower ordered American forces to seize Berlin ahead of the advancing Red Army in the spring of 1945 and Stalin quickly retaliated by firing on Americans? World War III could have developed quickly from the ashes of World War II.  

Drill Deeper:

The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.

  • Volume one
  • Volume two
  • Volume three. 

Related:

  • Alternative History Hangouts Offer Some Plausible, Many Implausible Stories
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Posted at 03:16 PM in American Independence, American Military History: What If's, Civil War, Eisenhower, Lessons & Courses, Lincoln, WWII | Permalink | Comments (0)

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