Deleted member 100251
Title ^. If Teddy Roosevelt won in 1912 and 1916, either under his Progressive Party or as part of the GOP, and World War I still occurred. Would the Great Depression be averted?
Would a Teddy Roosevelt win in 1912 and 1916 avert the Great Depression?
No. Why would it?
After 1918, the foundations of the international financial system were incredibly fragile, and the knowledge of how to prevent Depressions was only gained by experience. Stopping the Depression is damn hard.
I think your best bet for an earlier POD is have William Jennings Bryan dismantle the gold standard early.
After 1918, the foundations of the international financial system were incredibly fragile, and the knowledge of how to prevent Depressions was only gained by experience. Stopping the Depression is damn hard.
I think your best bet for an earlier POD is have William Jennings Bryan dismantle the gold standard early.
Maybe if you can keep the US out of WW1.
All the bond issues and wotnot that were boosted in 1917/18 got ordinary folk used to buying such things. W/o that you may not get tee frenetic purchasing that led up to the Wall Street Crash.
But TR of course is not the best POTUS for that. Bryan or Champ Clark might be better bets.
We tend to think of money and investment factors as the causes of the Depression. After all, departure from the gold standard was the path out, as it started with FDR (and ended with Nixon). But we also can not forget manufacturing factors: railroads had saturated the country in the twenties and the expansion that drove the economy for two generations or more, would end. With skyscrapers and automobiles coming along, investors did not expect the demand for steel to change. But as early as the late twenties, some very short rail spurs were already being dismantled as motorized trucks came along. Also, for the first time in centuries, the North American frontier was no longer that grand “relief point” for the rest of the developed world in an economic downturn.
Back to the OP, if TR wins four terms, WW1 is likely shortened as the U.S. enters early. Different peace terms can change the twenties dramatically, and of course, the factors that made WW2 what it was. So the timeline would need to create more American involvement in developing less developed parts of the world to shore up the economy in 1928 and 1929.
Back to the OP, if TR wins four terms, WW1 is likely shortened as the U.S. enters early. Different peace terms can change the twenties dramatically, and of course, the factors that made WW2 what it was. So the timeline would need to create more American involvement in developing less developed parts of the world to shore up the economy in 1928 and 1929.
You could get a minor recession after entete default, but we could get a shorter and earlier kustnet curve in USA like 80's rather a massive collapse, so more downturn but not as catastrophic as OTL, still something hope make Keynes and alternatives and criticism as popular as OTL
Highly doubtful. Until Germany started sinking American ships there was next to no popular and Congressional support for war, so at most TR could probably only bring it forward a couple of months.
If he somehow did manage to bring it about sooner, the greatest effect would be a massive increase in American casualties, as US troops will come to Europe during the period of stalemated trench warfare. Assuming the peace treaty is as unpopular as OTL's (almost certain - any peace treaty will leave huge numbers of people dissatisfied) there are likely to be several hundred thousand Americans whose loved ones have died, essentially, for nothing. Expect US opinion to be even more isolationist than OTL. "More American involvement" is the least likely result.
Wilson was running against a "war candidate" and didn't won by much in 1916. TR would intervene to try and prevent war in 1914, and if he failed to do so and still won in 1916 means that the whole "narrative" of the war in the USA would be changed.
It doesn't take much for TR to go to war in 1915 over the Lusitania assuming all the changes from 1912.
Changed in what way?
What changes from 1912, exactly? And, whatever they were, why should they make the slightest difference to the nation's unwillingess to go to war in 1915 - an unwillingness common to both parties? Support for war was negligible at that point, and would still be so irrespective of who was POTUS or anything he said or did.
BTW Hughes was not a war candidate, though Democrats did their level best to paint him as such, making him "guilty by association" with TR.
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TR was calling Wilson a Copperhead by 1916 for his refusal to support the Entente. Hughes campaign got money from J P Morgan then working for the British Government.
TR was not a man to stand on the sidelines and just watch the war. He would have been an active, very influential voice. He was not a man who would campaign on a 'he kept us out of the war" line.
TR would have changed the US perception of the war.
Of course a changed US position could have changed German attitudes. General peace talks in late 1915/early 1916 are not an impossibility.
What I'm sure of is that TR is too big a butterfly for WW1 to stay exactly the same.
Or just changed the perception of TR. Had he tried to badger people into war, his popularity could have collapsed as fast as Wilson's did four years later. Note that his 1916 support was a handicap to Hughes, not an asset. Had TR died three years earlier (ie Jan 1916), Hughes would probably have won.
Does it have to stay exactly the same?
The OP was about the Great Depression. Why would lengthening or shortening WW1 (or changing the peace treaty) cause the Depression not to happen?
National Debt.
Before WW1 it was not a problem. After WW1 it was.
The great depression was not purely a US event, it was a global one.
National debts resulting from WW1 and from ToV had a massive efect on the global economy.
And will still be TTL. Knocking a few months off the war still leaves them at horrendous levels.
Not necessarily. It could be a lot more than a few months. And a lot can change in post war Europe.
He would be on a rooftop in Sarajevo with his trusted model 96 winchester taking out would be assassins.
It certainly wouldn't have made any difference to the Dustbowl or the agricultural depression (which would probably have been even worse without the Dustbowl and the Holodomor suppressing grain production internationally) which was down to improved productivity due to fertilisers and tractors and declining demand for fodder as cars and lorries replaced horses. Nor would it have removed the market saturation in white goods and radios at the end of the twenties (except insofar as a stabler China and a non-Bolshevist Russia might have slightly enlarged the global market -possibly postponing the recession until about 1932 in the USA and around 1934 in Europe).
The OP was about another Roosevelt presidency during Wilson's terms. Most agree how any changes on a WW1 timeline can profoundly change the rest of the century. Now, IMO, a major contributor to the depression was America's fragile economic reliance on the continuous expansion of railroads that would fade in the late twenties. A robust international economy might create a market for steel and concrete that mitigates the impact of the Depression. The same holds for radios and small appliances, as electricity was still coming to developing countries.
It can't be much more. After all the OP requires TR to win in 1916 as well as 1912, which will be next to impossible if he has attempted to push the country into war, or if it is widely suspected that he will do so if re-elected.
And 1916 will be hard enough anyway. If TR is seen as a warmonger, the Democrats, who will have barely missed victory in 1912 and may well be in control of Congress, will make the very most of it. Add to this the fact that many (perhaps a majority) of the *Republicans* in Congress will be Regulars who supported Taft in 1912, and will in all likelihood be praying for a Democratic victory to give them a chance to regain control of the GOP, so that crippling himself further by advocating (or even seeming to advocate) war could easily put the final nail in his coffin.
Why should it be any more robust than OTL?
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