For Want of a Missourian

[Baconheimer]

Welcome to my newest TL. I have not written to many TLs, and of those, very few are actually too plausible. Here, I intend to write one inspired by one of favorite TLs, For All Time. Things are supposed to get really bad. Questions and comments are appreciated.

1944-1946
-In July of 1944, a group of Democrats who oppose the renomination of vice-president Henry Wallace -meet with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to discuss with him a new candidate. They fail to impress the President. Henry Wallace remains the vice-presidential candidate of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


-On December 7, Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeats Republican Thomas E. Dewey with a reasonable margin.


-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies in Warm Springs Georgia. Vice-President Wallace, busy in Congress, is informed and made President of the United States.


-On April 25, President Wallace is told about the Atomic Bomb. He writes that it is 'The most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It should never be used unless absolutely necessary." The Secretary of War is unimpressed at his thoughts. President Wallace speaks with Stalin, agreeing to let him have Berlin with the Western Allies halting on the Elbe.


-In early May, the Soviets take Venice. On the 7th, what is left of the German government surrenders to the Americans and Soviets. V-E Day.


-Starting with the attempted capture of Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian Civil War begins. Soviet supported Norwegian Communists fight against the French and British supported government.


-At the Potsdam Conference, borders for Europe are agreed upon, and plans for the Invasion of Japan are agreed to. Poland will see is borders expanded to the West and lose some of its eastern territories. Germany was to have its territories reduced, losing some land to France in the Saar. The Allies would occupy most of Germany and Austria until further notice. The Allies would also agree to keep fighting Japan until an unconditional surrender was reached. East Prussia would be mostly annexed to Poland with some parts going to the Soviet Union, which would annex much of eastern europe and Danzig. Stalin also comes away unimpressed with Henry Wallace.


-In July, the Labour Party is voted into office, Winston Churchill resigns.


-Fighting continues in the Pacific, as the French, British, and Chinese attempt to regain their lands. Vietnam is the center of fighting.


-On November 1, Operation Olympic begins. US forces take excessive casualties the first day. Nevertheless, the US has superior numbers and better weapons, so they manage to push forwards. They are met by civilians who shoot at them with rifles, use bombs, and even things created by "Special Warfare Units". By late January, the entire island is taken.


-On November 20, the Nuremburg Trials begin. Many ex-Nazis are sentenced to death.


-Also in November, an agreement is reached in which the Chinese Nationalists and Communists will not fight each other until Japan is defeated. That said, there are still skirmishes.


-In February, US and Commonwealth forces land on Shikoku to make the Japanese send troops there. The Emperor Hirohito suggests surrender, and manages to get a telegram written out. Korachiki Anami leads a palace coup, bursting in and stopping a possible surrender. Hirohito is kidnapped and moved into the mountains where he is held captive.


-Meanwhile, Soviet forces have managed to invade Manchuria and Korea, and are doing well there. There navy is not large, so the invasion of Sakhalin is not going very quickly. But it is moving.


-On April 1, 1945, the largest amphibious invasion in history, involving over 35 divisions of US, Commonwealth, and French troops, begins. It will attempt to take Tokyo with two landings. The Allies encounter more opposition than expected, with many former civilians fighting amongst the army. Casualty pages are massive in US newspapers.


-The Norwegian Civil War ends in May 1946 with a Communist victory. Vidkun Quisling is killed, but members of the government escape to France and Britain forming a government in exile.


-The Pope speaks out about the Soviet Occupation of Northern Italy, where they have been eliminating some religious buildings.


-In July, a soldier wounded in Operation Olympic, Ben Bradlee, then a journalist employed by the Knoxville News Sentinel exposes that some sort of weapon is being built in Oak Ridge. Henry Wallace realizes he has to do something. He explains what the device is, saying they have only been around for a while, and explains his doubts at using them. Douglas MacArthur publically pressures him to use the weapon.


-In August, Congress threatens to impeach President Wallace unless he uses the atomic bomb. MacArthur is widely believed to be somewhat behind this.


-On September 1, President Wallace delivers an ultimatum to Emperor Hirohito that he will "strike down upon them with great vengence and furious anger" if the Japanese do not surrender. There is no response.


-On September 5, 1946, US bombers drop atomic bombs on Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Niigata, Tottori, Sendai, Fukushima, Yamagata, Tsuruoki, and Hitachi. The Emperor Hirohito personally sees the mushroom cloud over Yamagata. He orders the generals allow him to surrender, saying that Japan is fated to lose. Josef Stalin becomes extremely agitated, ordering his scientists to work harder.


-September 6, 1946 is V-J Day. Japanese forces all over the home islands put down arms, though considerable pockets of resistance do exist. Japanese forces in China and Korea surrender the next day, and by the end of the week, so do the ones elsewhere.


-September 9, 1946, the Emperor Hirohito signs documents of surrender upon the USS Enterprise. Japan is to lose Sakhalin to the USSR and Okinawa and the Ryukus to China, and the rest of the country will be under the administration of the Allies. Douglas MacArthur is a national hero. Henry Wallace gets none of the glory, instead becoming a puppet president, barely doing anything.


-Greece has ,meanwhile, broken out into civil war between the monarchist government and a coalition of Republicans and Communists. The claimed reason for war is that the referendum in September was rigged.


-The Iran Crisis continues. Iran was occupied by Britain and the Soviet Union in 1941, but the Soviets refused leave, setting up puppet Socialist Republics. The British are unhappy. In late 1946, Winston Churchill makes a speech in the United States that letting the Soviets have Iran is the first step in their expansion.

 

[Paul V McNutt]

This is getting interesting.

 

[Cymraeg]

Why on Earth would the Soviets take Venice in May? 8th Army took it at the end of April!

 

[troosvelt_68]

Not sure if Anami would oppose the emperor.

Although he was strongly against surrender he also was loyal to the Emperor and ordered his troops to surrender despite his views.

 

[Lord Grattan]

Nine (if I counted correct) atomic bombs dropped Isn't that over-doing it a bit?

 

[lukedalton]

Sorry, but how the Soviet had come in North Italy? Magic Carpet? Plus by the end of April the nation was Free, and Italy being a co-belligerant nation (and totally free of soviet troops) will be hardly divided in occupation zone.

 

[Montanian]

Henry Wallace, unlike Truman, had been part of the oversight team on the Manhattan Project since it's inception and been tasked with finding resources/feedstocks for U.S. war production (for which Manhattan had first priority thanks to him.) So I think he would have been ready to use them in lieu of the invasion of Japan at least as readily as Truman, having had years to get used to the idea and uses of the atomic bomb. Wallace was far healthier and a deeper thinker than FDR (world-class geneticist, statistician, economist, soil scientist) and had been a VP with major responsibilities for 4 years and Secretary of Agriculture for 8 years before that (and raised a Republican, his father having served as Sec. of Agriculture during the Republican administrations in the 1920's) so bipartisanship would come more readily.

Wallace was fooled and manipulated by the Soviets (including senior USDA staff who turned out to be Soviet Agents when the KGB archives were opened in the 1990's) so Soviet Lend-Lease, war loans, and sharing of research would have been even greater and response to Soviet aggression in retaining Eastern Europe much weaker than Truman's (along with the whole strategy of containment extremely unlikely.)

The Cold War would be far less cold which would substantially reduce postwar defense spending, but not scientific research which Wallace personally did and had greatly expanded at USDA and helped oversee as Vice President.

Stalin would have a freer hand by far but a much fuzzier foe so while some countries that were saved by containment strategy interventions would at least for a time have Communist parties win control (it's such a defective governance approach that enduring control seems unlikely) but the Soviets, believing they had far less threats under a Wallace administration potentially would put more of their economy into butter rather than guns despite Stalin's paranoia and aggression. So probably no Berlin Wall, Italy and France with bigger Communist parties.

The Marshall Plan for Europe would still occur as the original idea and much of the support was actually Wallace's as was the focus on promoting individual civil rights/human rights that turned out to be an unusually effective foreign policy strategy compared to realpolitik for the Carter Administration. Wallace was an early and significant proponent for the United Nations formation while the Soviet agents who were the lead negotiators in the Bretton Woods treaty, formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Undersecretary of Treasury Harry Dexter White and State's dominant doer Alger Hiss) would make those even less advantageous to the U.S. than they were and perhaps leading to much earlier revision and change under later Presidents.

U.S. trade with the Soviets, and soft influence, would be far higher under Wallace post-war, particularly in agricultural and mining outputs (unlike FDR, Wallace had toured the Soviet Union and while fooled by Potemkin Villages, still had far more understanding of Russia's realities than any U.S. President since Hoover (who'd developed mines there and lived there for a few years) and until Nixon.

Soft power though would be higher with Wallace's VP assignment to retain Latin America in the Allied Camp and past work like creating USDA's Rural Development programs including rural electrification and telephone systems, curing nutritional diseases, and increasing farm productivity (Pioneer Hybrid seeds were one of his inventions and helped found the company while Norman Borlaug of India and Africa's Green Revolution was one of his protegees.)

So a focus on improving the general population's sustenance and situation in the Third World rather than arming their dictators "to resist Communists" would undercut severely the Communists' recruitment and agitation campaigns.

Eisenhower still runs and wins in 1952 but with a smoother transition of policies as Ike's older brother Milton had been Wallace's close friend and number two at Agriculture for many years.

 

[GeographyDude]

Interesante! the softer power works, and sometimes it does.

Like two styles of martial arts, the hard style and the soft style.

I particularly like the part of not arming Third World dictators in some misguided whatever to "resist communism."

 

[TFSmith121]

This - Wallace was no fool; Fat Man and Little Boy would go boom on schedule

Henry Wallace, unlike Truman, had been part of the oversight team on the Manhattan Project since it's inception and been tasked with finding resources/feedstocks for U.S. war production (for which Manhattan had first priority thanks to him.) So I think he would have been ready to use them in lieu of the invasion of Japan at least as readily as Truman, having had years to get used to the idea and uses of the atomic bomb. Wallace was far healthier and a deeper thinker than FDR (world-class geneticist, statistician, economist, soil scientist) and had been a VP with major responsibilities for 4 years and Secretary of Agriculture for 8 years before that (and raised a Republican, his father having served as Sec. of Agriculture during the Republican administrations in the 1920's) so bipartisanship would come more readily.

Wallace was fooled and manipulated by the Soviets (including senior USDA staff who turned out to be Soviet Agents when the KGB archives were opened in the 1990's) so Soviet Lend-Lease, war loans, and sharing of research would have been even greater and response to Soviet aggression in retaining Eastern Europe much weaker than Truman's (along with the whole strategy of containment extremely unlikely.)

The Cold War would be far less cold which would substantially reduce postwar defense spending, but not scientific research which Wallace personally did and had greatly expanded at USDA and helped oversee as Vice President.

Stalin would have a freer hand by far but a much fuzzier foe so while some countries that were saved by containment strategy interventions would at least for a time have Communist parties win control (it's such a defective governance approach that enduring control seems unlikely) but the Soviets, believing they had far less threats under a Wallace administration potentially would put more of their economy into butter rather than guns despite Stalin's paranoia and aggression. So probably no Berlin Wall, Italy and France with bigger Communist parties.

The Marshall Plan for Europe would still occur as the original idea and much of the support was actually Wallace's as was the focus on promoting individual civil rights/human rights that turned out to be an unusually effective foreign policy strategy compared to realpolitik for the Carter Administration. Wallace was an early and significant proponent for the United Nations formation while the Soviet agents who were the lead negotiators in the Bretton Woods treaty, formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Undersecretary of Treasury Harry Dexter White and State's dominant doer Alger Hiss) would make those even less advantageous to the U.S. than they were and perhaps leading to much earlier revision and change under later Presidents.

U.S. trade with the Soviets, and soft influence, would be far higher under Wallace post-war, particularly in agricultural and mining outputs (unlike FDR, Wallace had toured the Soviet Union and while fooled by Potemkin Villages, still had far more understanding of Russia's realities than any U.S. President since Hoover (who'd developed mines there and lived there for a few years) and until Nixon.

Soft power though would be higher with Wallace's VP assignment to retain Latin America in the Allied Camp and past work like creating USDA's Rural Development programs including rural electrification and telephone systems, curing nutritional diseases, and increasing farm productivity (Pioneer Hybrid seeds were one of his inventions and helped found the company while Norman Borlaug of India and Africa's Green Revolution was one of his protegees.)

So a focus on improving the general population's sustenance and situation in the Third World rather than arming their dictators "to resist Communists" would undercut severely the Communists' recruitment and agitation campaigns.

Eisenhower still runs and wins in 1952 but with a smoother transition of policies as Ike's older brother Milton had been Wallace's close friend and number two at Agriculture for many years.

Also, for the OP - just a minor thing, but jarring: Ben Bradlee was a naval officer, and quite proud of it.

Best,

 

[GeographyDude]

There's a tension and hopefully it can be an artistic, creative tension. Baconheimer is saying in the imagined timeline things get really bad, and Montanian is saying that Henry Wallace was actually a capable individual and in fact a deeper thinker than Roosevelt.

And therein might lie our answer, for a person's good traits can and do often work against them. And perhaps similar to "fancy play syndrome" in poker, in complicated foreign policy, you might want to be straightforward rather than brilliant. Also avoiding the trap of authoritarianism. There is a lot going on.

 

[Baconheimer]

This is getting interesting.

Thanks.

Why on Earth would the Soviets take Venice in May? 8th Army took it at the end of April!

Well, butterflies, man.

Not sure if Anami would oppose the emperor.

Although he was strongly against surrender he also was loyal to the Emperor and ordered his troops to surrender despite his views.

I kind of took that part from 1945. If there is another officers more likely to lead a coup, I will change it.

Nine (if I counted correct) atomic bombs dropped Isn't that over-doing it a bit?

I guess it could be, but I was figuring that hundreds of thousands of US deaths storming a country in which every member of society is fighting you might turn people against the war so much MacArthur just wanted a speedy victory.

Sorry, but how the Soviet had come in North Italy? Magic Carpet? Plus by the end of April the nation was Free, and Italy being a co-belligerant nation (and totally free of soviet troops) will be hardly divided in occupation zone.

Again, butterflies, man.

Henry Wallace, unlike Truman, had been part of the oversight team on the Manhattan Project since it's inception and been tasked with finding resources/feedstocks for U.S. war production (for which Manhattan had first priority thanks to him.) So I think he would have been ready to use them in lieu of the invasion of Japan at least as readily as Truman, having had years to get used to the idea and uses of the atomic bomb. Wallace was far healthier and a deeper thinker than FDR (world-class geneticist, statistician, economist, soil scientist) and had been a VP with major responsibilities for 4 years and Secretary of Agriculture for 8 years before that (and raised a Republican, his father having served as Sec. of Agriculture during the Republican administrations in the 1920's) so bipartisanship would come more readily.
OK, admittedly this is true, but I just kind of ignored those facts in the name of the story.

Wallace was fooled and manipulated by the Soviets (including senior USDA staff who turned out to be Soviet Agents when the KGB archives were opened in the 1990's) so Soviet Lend-Lease, war loans, and sharing of research would have been even greater and response to Soviet aggression in retaining Eastern Europe much weaker than Truman's (along with the whole strategy of containment extremely unlikely.)
That is true, so Stalin is getting a bomb sooner than OTL, and that is one thing that helped them advance in China.

The Cold War would be far less cold which would substantially reduce postwar defense spending, but not scientific research which Wallace personally did and had greatly expanded at USDA and helped oversee as Vice President.
Yes, but Wallaces successors will not quite be as pro-Soviet as he is.

Stalin would have a freer hand by far but a much fuzzier foe so while some countries that were saved by containment strategy interventions would at least for a time have Communist parties win control (it's such a defective governance approach that enduring control seems unlikely) but the Soviets, believing they had far less threats under a Wallace administration potentially would put more of their economy into butter rather than guns despite Stalin's paranoia and aggression. So probably no Berlin Wall, Italy and France with bigger Communist parties.
For the present at least, that is the case. Though the Soviets are quite money-drained after invading China.

The Marshall Plan for Europe would still occur as the original idea and much of the support was actually Wallace's as was the focus on promoting individual civil rights/human rights that turned out to be an unusually effective foreign policy strategy compared to realpolitik for the Carter Administration. Wallace was an early and significant proponent for the United Nations formation while the Soviet agents who were the lead negotiators in the Bretton Woods treaty, formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Undersecretary of Treasury Harry Dexter White and State's dominant doer Alger Hiss) would make those even less advantageous to the U.S. than they were and perhaps leading to much earlier revision and change under later Presidents.
Support for the Marshall Plan is still high, but the US is also has also spent a lot of money on the invasion of Japan.

U.S. trade with the Soviets, and soft influence, would be far higher under Wallace post-war, particularly in agricultural and mining outputs (unlike FDR, Wallace had toured the Soviet Union and while fooled by Potemkin Villages, still had far more understanding of Russia's realities than any U.S. President since Hoover (who'd developed mines there and lived there for a few years) and until Nixon.
Again, Wallace is pro-Soviet.

Soft power though would be higher with Wallace's VP assignment to retain Latin America in the Allied Camp and past work like creating USDA's Rural Development programs including rural electrification and telephone systems, curing nutritional diseases, and increasing farm productivity (Pioneer Hybrid seeds were one of his inventions and helped found the company while Norman Borlaug of India and Africa's Green Revolution was one of his protegees.)
This will come into effect later.

So a focus on improving the general population's sustenance and situation in the Third World rather than arming their dictators "to resist Communists" would undercut severely the Communists' recruitment and agitation campaigns.
I am afraid Wallaces successors are not of that opinion.

Eisenhower still runs and wins in 1952 but with a smoother transition of policies as Ike's older brother Milton had been Wallace's close friend and number two at Agriculture for many years.
I dont think that will be happening.

Responses in Red.

Also, for the OP - just a minor thing, but jarring: Ben Bradlee was a naval officer, and quite proud of it.

Best,

OK, maybe I could change it so he was hit by a kamikaze.

There's a tension and hopefully it can be an artistic, creative tension. Baconheimer is saying in the imagined timeline things get really bad, and Montanian is saying that Henry Wallace was actually a capable individual and in fact a deeper thinker than Roosevelt.

And therein might lie our answer, for a person's good traits can and do often work against them. And perhaps similar to "fancy play syndrome" in poker, in complicated foreign policy, you might want to be straightforward rather than brilliant. Also avoiding the trap of authoritarianism. There is a lot going on.

Again, this first chapter ignores real facts so that a bad scenario is being set up. This is not really supposed to be a Henry Wallace timeline.

 

[Redhand]

OK, am I the only one who saw the Pulp Fiction reference? Wallace is definitely channeling some inner badass in his diplomacy in this scenario, and furious anger was indeed unleashed with 9 nukes.