John Nance Garner succeeds FDR in 1933, Is a 1936 GOP win/Second Civil War Plausible?

[TheDoofusUser]

So in the TL "The Falcon Cannot Hear", FDR is killed by Zangara like he almost was OTL. Later, due to his policies, Garner loses in 1936 to Alf Landon and due to how Landon handles the country, it slowly crumbles into a Civil War. However, given how that TL is over nine years old at this point and a lot more is known about Garner and Landon at this time (such as Garner being genuinely more receptive to New Deal ideas than the Timeline would suggest or Landon being generally pro-New Deal despite the relatively widespread idea that he was some arch-conservative), it makes the premise of how everything fell apart shaky, at best. On the question at large, if Garner becomes President on March 4th, 1933, is he likely to mess up the Presidency as he did in the aforementioned TL to the point of losing to Landon or a Republican in 1936? How would Landon do if he became President? Could something like what happened with the TL happen like it did or is it extremely unlikely?

In my humble opinion, you kinda need three factors for things to get as bad as it did in TFCH : 1) Zangara kills FDR, as what happened in the TL and Garner proves to be a mess (which I'm unsure of); 2) Huey Long isn't assassinated and thus can run third Party and has a great chance against Garner; 3) Instead of Landon, Have a more Conservative Republican like Newspaper Publisher Frank Knox be nominated and elected due to the vote split among the Democrats and even then, I find what happened in TFCH unlikely. Plausible under set circumstances, but extremely unlikely.

 

[marktaha]

Have had visions of a Garner-Landon-Long election in 1936 - any timelines on it? Garner would have been similar to.FDR in policy in 1933 I think- he was a political realist- but would probably have left administration to local party bosses rather than setting up.Federal.agencies.

 

[TheDoofusUser]

Have had visions of a Garner-Landon-Long election in 1936 - any timelines on it? Garner would have been similar to.FDR in policy in 1933 I think- he was a political realist- but would probably have left administration to local party bosses rather than setting up.Federal.agencies.

an idea I like is Andrew Mellon becomes President in 1929, Upton Sinclair becomes Governor of California as a Dem-Soc Unity Candidate, FDR is killed by Zangara, Sinclair is re-elected in 1934, Frank Knox wins 1936 due to a vote split, Sinclair wins a third term in 1938, the 1940 election is deadlocked between Long, Knox, Sinclair, and Cordell Hull. With no President being inaugurated past January 20th, eventually the Army gets involved and it spirals from there. Is this plausible? I'm not sure, but it would be interesting.

 

[sampleswift]

I think the "Second Civil War in the Great Depression" scenario is often talked about, but very unlikely. In the situation where FDR is assassinated, Garner probably wouldn't have been catastrophically bad. Even if he would have been, the US wasn't that close to civil war even in an awful scenario.

 

[Alex1guy]

Sometimes a good story doesn't need an plausible start

 

[Comte de Geneve]

Even in the event of a deadlock in a contingent election there will be a President on January 20 1941 because the Senate selects the VP from the top 2 finishers and if there is no elected POTUS on 1/20 the VPOTUS assumes the position until a POTUS is elected. No Army intervention required.

 

[Helaena I Targaryen]

Someone's been playing too much Kaiserreich.

 

[TheDoofusUser]

Someone's been playing too much Kaiserreich.

actually, I haven't even touched HOI4 in a long time, lol. This idea was just me looking at the plausibility of TFCH considering it makes Garner out to be some kind of Arch-Conservative along with Landon and how it spirals from there.

 

[dcharles]

I think that a 2ACW is probably unlikely, unless quite a few things break in certain ways after the POD.

However, I do think that the possibility of some type of coup taking place is systematically underestimated. Reaction and revolution (intentionally small r) were in the air in the 1930s, and I do think that the avoidance of such is due in substantial proportion to the once-in-a-century levels of competence that FDR displayed. There were lots of plots, and the US has a long, long, long, history of organized right-wing terror, and those groups infiltrating the government. To say that the US had some deep mystical relationship to democracy in this era is deeply overstated. Every black person in the South at the time lived in a totalitarian society, all white people in the South lived in an authoritarian one, and both were governed by a one-party authoritarian system. Furthermore, all minorities elsewhere in the country were at best, living in an authoritarian social conditions. That's well over a third of the country that doesn't experience meaningful democracy at all, and in fact lived in conditions of unfreedom. When you add that up with the frequency of outright ballot-stuffing and other blatant forms of cheating that were still fairly common in many places, it's clear that US democracy was still very superficial in this era.

TLDR; A coup of some kind is quite possible. Maybe there's a civil war later on--maybe even something that forces the US to exit WW2 or never enter it--but that's far from a certainty. It's entirely dependent on the nature of coup and the decisions of the people who are running the government in the subsequent years.

 

[Garrison]

Sometimes a good story doesn't need an plausible start

If you want to create something in the Writers Forum then no it doesn't, in Post-1900 it pretty much does. Honestly a second civil war in the 1930s probably requires major changes decades earlier, not the last couple of elections.

 

[brunohusker]

So in my opinion, it doesn’t mean a Republican victory in 36. Garner wasn’t as progressive as FDR but he wasn’t heartless. He’d be for public works like electrification and might even look more into opening up land for settlement and sell unused federal land. He also was for social security so we would see some good will from that. Where I fear Garner might be bad is with unions as he hated strikes and disliked the unions. As such, I feel like if the socialists get a decent candidate in 36, the might get numbers similar to Eugene Debs.

I think you’d still see the Dems win and as Huey Long and Floyd Olson are both dead by November of 36, we don’t see a big third party movement except maybe from the socialists and even then at best they might just help Landon in parts of the Midwest and New England.

Even if Landon rolls sixes and wins these states though, he still loses the electoral vote though he does have a stronger opposition than late 30s Roosevelt and as his policies haven’t helped alleviate the depression, we probably see a Republican win in 1940.

Also, there won’t be a civil war, but a lot of workers will feel they have no real candidate on their side and might go militant. It might seem like warfare in some places but nothing like a real civil war.

 

[sampleswift]

I think that a 2ACW is probably unlikely, unless quite a few things break in certain ways after the POD.

However, I do think that the possibility of some type of coup taking place is systematically underestimated. Reaction and revolution (intentionally small r) were in the air in the 1930s, and I do think that the avoidance of such is due in substantial proportion to the once-in-a-century levels of competence that FDR displayed. There were lots of plots, and the US has a long, long, long, history of organized right-wing terror, and those groups infiltrating the government. To say that the US had some deep mystical relationship to democracy in this era is deeply overstated. Every black person in the South at the time lived in a totalitarian society, all white people in the South lived in an authoritarian one, and both were governed by a one-party authoritarian system. Furthermore, all minorities elsewhere in the country were at best, living in an authoritarian social conditions. When you add that up with the frequency of outright ballot-stuffing and other blatant forms of cheating that were still fairly common in many places, it's clear that US democracy was still very superficial in this era.

TLDR; A coup of some kind is quite possible. Maybe there's a civil war later on--maybe even something that forces the US to exit WW2 or never enter it--but that's far from a certainty. It's entirely dependent on the nature of coup and the decisions of the people who are running the government in the subsequent years.

Usually when I hear "coup attempt in the 1930s", this usually means "successful Business plot" which seems really unlikely (I wouldn't say it's overdone, but usually this gets shot down by "This has almost no chance of success with how badly it was planned out". As a result, the Business Plot seemed doomed to fail from the start. However, you are right that some other coup attempt (overambitious general? March on Washington?) could have happened in this hypothetical situation?

 

[dcharles]

Going with what a lot of people have said, you maybe need someone less competent than Garner. Either someone very left or very right, but not a capable personality in both cases.

So (different+worse VP than Garner) + Roosevelt assassination= a much more realistic chance of a coup popping off.

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

I completely agree with the comment by dcharleos above that things could have seriously gone off the rails in the USA in the 1930s. However, I've also been convinced by past discussions on this board that just replacing FDR with JNG by itself probably isn't enough. Garner seems to have been fairly competent and would have been able to hold things together. The main point of these scenarios is to get FDR out of the scene. You could do something where Garner and the Republican candidate lose to Huey Long in a close three way race in 1936, this probably has to involve an even worse Great Depression, and this triggers a civil war.

 

[SirCecil]

an idea I like is Andrew Mellon becomes President in 1929, Upton Sinclair becomes Governor of California as a Dem-Soc Unity Candidate, FDR is killed by Zangara, Sinclair is re-elected in 1934, Frank Knox wins 1936 due to a vote split, Sinclair wins a third term in 1938, the 1940 election is deadlocked between Long, Knox, Sinclair, and Cordell Hull. With no President being inaugurated past January 20th, eventually the Army gets involved and it spirals from there. Is this plausible? I'm not sure, but it would be interesting.

I personally prefer the idea of a third term Coolidge, followed by Garner, then you could have Hoover as the Republican nominee in 1936 since he hasn't had his reputation destroyed. Then you have a three way race in 36 the way you described and from there things could get interesting. Maybe not to the level of a Second Civil War, but certainly extended political chaos, like contemporary Brazil.

 

[TheDoofusUser]

Alright so everyone, taking in your suggestions here, I've begun writing a TL with a minor PoD dating back to 1905 with WRH being elected as Mayor of NYC. If anyone wants to look at it and give thoughts on Post 1, the link is here

 

[Alex1guy]

If you want to create something in the Writers Forum then no it doesn't, in Post-1900 it pretty much does. Honestly a second civil war in the 1930s probably requires major changes decades earlier, not the last couple of elections.

Nah, AANW implausible start to very well written peice. Hyper realistic ones get bogged down and never get finished.

 

[Garrison]

Nah, AANW implausible start to very well written peice. Hyper realistic ones get bogged down and never get finished.

Yes but AANW was nothing like as implausible as a US civil war in the 1930s because Garner becomes president. There is no version of that hangs together and TLs that consist of endless handwaving also bog down.