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I wonder if the first nukes will not be used by German students/rebels/freedom fighters against a Soviet city to bring their protectors/occupiers to their knees. The Soviets are talking a wonderful game of world domination as if this is a game of Risk, but the failure to improve the domestic economy could be a weak link.
I meant more that the Chinese leaders would be more preoccupied with the security situation along the border with an unstable Indian subcontinent, and therefore less likely to direct military attention and resources towards other areas in a provocative or offensive disposition.
Agreed on the first - if nothing else, having all of Germany is a major win by itself. Less so on the latter, mainly "genuine" as there is really no socialist member of the Comintern who has come willingly, just as in OTL, and regardless of the kind words emanating from Moscow the people of Poland, Germany, the Baltics, etc. are seeing the boot-heel of Stalin insofar as our authAAR has related to date.
Hard to see this in the written work... I could see where the puppet states develop nationalist revolutionary movements ripe for Soviet co-opting, but that's a far cry from a native pro-Soviet movement in Romania, Hungary, etc. and Stalin will have a difficult time fomenting such sentiment on a mass scale once stories of the reality on the ground start to reach neighboring countries from Poland and Germany. Not to mention this is still the same Soviet Union which enacted the Purges and some other things in the 1930s I'm not going to talk about on these forums.
Where the Soviets are clearly better off than OTL is (1) controlling the whole of Germany, at least so long as Germany retains any capability that hasn't yet been looted by the Red Army's prize battalions, (2) lack of opposing superpower in Europe, at least for now as Turkey could drift westward should Soviet ambitions feel too bold, and (3) following from both points a stronger ability to reach out to the broader globe - the Middle East, Asia, and probably also more able to solidify gains in the Global South generally.
Where the Soviets are worse off than OTL is primarily in the Balkans/Black Sea region, since Turkey is the regional hegemon here. That's a bigger deal than it might sound like, since a major aim of OTL Soviet foreign policy was securing warm-water ports. In OTL this never materialized as it was, but here the Black Sea itself is much less under Soviet domination and Turkey's nascent naval ambitions further threaten that theater, at least in Soviet thinking (Turkey, of course, is probably happier to play the good neutral party here). Whether Stalin et al will be able to resist pressing on Turkey out of paranoia in this matter will be a key deciding factor of how the new world order shakes out, as it could easily become a distraction and friction point for both nations (and potentially motivate pseudo-Cold War-era buildups, hopefully not on such a large scale, if both sides feel sufficiently threatened).
I guess the Soviets could also find and leak what the allies, esepcially rhe british, and what rhe US under FDR, intended to do to Germany.
Sure, the Soviets stole some of their industry. But Churchill wanted to tear the country in half to remake Austria but big, and FDR wanted to tear the entire country into bits like the federation of the rhine.
So far as the germans and the rest of the world know, faced with those three options, the Soviet one is at least rhe best for the germans themselves.
I guess the Soviets could also find and leak what the allies, esepcially rhe british, and what rhe US under FDR, intended to do to Germany.
Sure, the Soviets stole some of their industry. But Churchill wanted to tear the country in half to remake Austria but big, and FDR wanted to tear the entire country into bits like the federation of the rhine.
However, history has shown that when an occupying power attempts to make the occupied citizenry accept them as the least-worst evil, the response rather than open arms and warm fuzzies is usually a violent independence movement. The good news is that Stalin will have no qualms about dealing with such a thing, the bad news is that he will not be winning hearts and minds in the process.
Crush all initial opposition and denazify the country with stalin, then the next leader can appoint a German socliast government and move through genuine reconciliation. It did sort of work OTL, and they have a lot more resources and power to throw at Germany TTL.
It's more often the United States in my own experience. My results might be skewed slightly though, as I have sometimes tagged to New Zealand, Nepal or some other Allied minor to ask the U.S. very nicely to invade Japan... which they usually do within a few months.
Crossing those straits can be tricky as I remember from trying this with Nicaragua - the IJN kept sailing ships through the straits and forcing units to cancel their movement orders!
Recently, I found a rabbit-hole that holds a clue as to the long-term Turkish-Soviet dynamics. The Organization of Turkic States consists of five (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Uzbekistan) nations where the majority speak a Turkic language. The world's sixth (Turkmenistan) Turkic speaking nation is an observer. With the exception of Turkey, these nations were part of the SU until 1991. With a more powerful Turkey, would Turkey encourage students and workers from Soviet Turkic speaking areas. Also, would Turkey aid independence movements. There are also areas of Russia & China with Turkic speaking majorities.
The organization does have one non-Turkic observer: Hungary. Hungary is in many ways like Turkey. It is the largest nation in its language group (Finno-Ugaric) and is isolated from others in its group.
Recently, I found a rabbit-hole that holds a clue as to the long-term Turkish-Soviet dynamics. The Organization of Turkic States consists of five (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Uzbekistan) nations where the majority speak a Turkic language. The world's sixth (Turkmenistan) Turkic speaking nation is an observer. With the exception of Turkey, these nations were part of the SU until 1991. With a more powerful Turkey, would Turkey encourage students and workers from Soviet Turkic speaking areas. Also, would Turkey aid independence movements. There are also areas of Russia & China with Turkic speaking majorities.
The organization does have one non-Turkic observer: Hungary. Hungary is in many ways like Turkey. It is the largest nation in its language group (Finno-Ugaric) and is isolated from others in its group.
Honestly, it sound smore like something that would bring the two closer together, at least so long as the Soviets played somewhat nice with the turk nations. Which they presumably will, because we have far more important things to be doing very far away from the black and caspian seas.
The next four chapters are all now plotted out, and three of them essentially written. With three big elections coming up (US mid-terms, Turkey and France), the resolution of India's post-independence arrangements and events in China, among other things, I thought it best to break up the second half of 1946 into more bite-sized segments than try to cram them into a couple of longer chapters. I think it also makes episode commentary a bit more manageable.
There's only a very small game play component left by now (basically about nuclear research, which I've decided to persist with for now). So this is just me still doing a lot of the philosophical/strategic setting up of this immediate post-war period. This next chapter on the US is a case in point: it covers Dewey's evolving foreign and defence policy rationale (including the internal tensions within the Republican party between interventionists and isolationists) and then the election itself. Where, you'll all be unsurprised to discover, I've decided to go for a far more detailed House election apparatus this time! Same goes for France and Turkey in subsequent 1946 chapters.
But first, another round of feedback to the latest comments. Much of them focused on the US-Soviet relationship and Soviet prospects, power and outlook. These matters will be dealt with in further (if not completely yet, because the events are still unfolding) in the next few chapters, so I won't go into too much detail in the feedback below. And much of it was effectively dealt with in the comments exchange, so I'll just add the odd observation, without trying to give a full answer (which would involve some spoiling, or telegraphing things I haven't actually decided on yet).
Eh...remember they are in much better standing with the world than OTL. A genuine comintern of socialist nations who are backing their ideology, alongside some strong puppets. A very close ally who is also still dependant upon them for security. No real threat of any kind nearby in the old world.
Bascially, the Soviets really do occupy a very strong postion, and their best bet forward is to play it well: integrate themsevles at a high level in as many international groups as possible, make as many friends, allies and semi puppet regimees as possible in the post colonial world, and ensure that the west stays out of europe and Asia.
Everyone else also wants the russians to do this, because at least for the next decade or so, the Soviets really could say screw it and make a good attempt at conquering and puppetting the rest of europe, the middle east and Asia by force. The UK and Turkey do not have anything close to the power to stop them, and are compeltly out of postion to anyway. The US might, but it would take years to gear up their economy to fight such a massive world war, and in that time, mainland Europe is probably taken.
It would be a bad move in the end for the Soviets, but they absolutely could do it, in game or in universe, and have a good chance of taking most of the world down with them.
So whilst on paper, Turkey controls half the comintern, in reality, those buffer puppets between the two are going to be very Soviet leaning, and the entire UGNR is going to be relying heavily on the Soviets for all kinds of support and aid as they attempt to keep their extremely unwieldy empire together. Meanwhile France is surrounded by communists or comintern members, Asia has no western presence at all, and might not have any in the future, and Russia took less damage and fewer casualties than in the OTL war.
They aren't invincible, and the pendulum will swing back towards the west eventually, but for the next decade (and certainly until stalin dies), the society Union is the strongest force on the planet and everyone knows it.
I can agree with much of this, though still maintain the entropy of alt-real world events, human fallibility, Soviet administrative incompetence and economic inefficiency/stagnation mean the rose coloured glasses could be featuring a bit here. Kelebek isn't be running this regime: it's Stalin and his underlings + successors. Oh dear!
It's a fair point that the Turkish position is fragile by comparison, but that can also open their eyes to other opportunities for safeguarding their future, even as they try to keep sweet with the Soviets for as long as they can.
I wonder if the first nukes will not be used by German students/rebels/freedom fighters against a Soviet city to bring their protectors/occupiers to their knees. The Soviets are talking a wonderful game of world domination as if this is a game of Risk, but the failure to improve the domestic economy could be a weak link.
Now there's a scary thought! . Coincidentally, you will see some measures taken by the Soviets soon they may be trying to manage some of that risk. Though they're more worried about Western espionage stealing their nuclear secrets at the moment. After all, it's what they would be doing if the positions were reversed!
I definitely agree with the observation on the inherent weaknesses in the Soviets' domestic position. We might end up coining the term 'Paper Bear' in this AAR at some point!
I meant more that the Chinese leaders would be more preoccupied with the security situation along the border with an unstable Indian subcontinent, and therefore less likely to direct military attention and resources towards other areas in a provocative or offensive disposition.
OK, but for now they're insulated from that by Tibet being independent, so for the Nationalists its not yet a thing. There will be far more on China in a few episodes' time.
Agreed on the first - if nothing else, having all of Germany is a major win by itself. Less so on the latter, mainly "genuine" as there is really no socialist member of the Comintern who has come willingly, just as in OTL, and regardless of the kind words emanating from Moscow the people of Poland, Germany, the Baltics, etc. are seeing the boot-heel of Stalin insofar as our authAAR has related to date.
I think these are fair points. For the Soviets, taking Germany was a chance to eviscerate them (militarily and economically) , that being their major take-out, along with nuclear and rocket scientists. Depriving the West of their economic power, too. But they will not get the same benefit from running Germany the Allies did in the OTL FRG (ie West Germany). It is now like a larger version of the OTL DDR. Which could end up giving them a nasty bout of indigestion.
Hard to see this in the written work... I could see where the puppet states develop nationalist revolutionary movements ripe for Soviet co-opting, but that's a far cry from a native pro-Soviet movement in Romania, Hungary, etc. and Stalin will have a difficult time fomenting such sentiment on a mass scale once stories of the reality on the ground start to reach neighboring countries from Poland and Germany. Not to mention this is still the same Soviet Union which enacted the Purges and some other things in the 1930s I'm not going to talk about on these forums.
Where the Soviets are clearly better off than OTL is (1) controlling the whole of Germany, at least so long as Germany retains any capability that hasn't yet been looted by the Red Army's prize battalions, (2) lack of opposing superpower in Europe, at least for now as Turkey could drift westward should Soviet ambitions feel too bold, and (3) following from both points a stronger ability to reach out to the broader globe - the Middle East, Asia, and probably also more able to solidify gains in the Global South generally.
Where the Soviets are worse off than OTL is primarily in the Balkans/Black Sea region, since Turkey is the regional hegemon here. That's a bigger deal than it might sound like, since a major aim of OTL Soviet foreign policy was securing warm-water ports. In OTL this never materialized as it was, but here the Black Sea itself is much less under Soviet domination and Turkey's nascent naval ambitions further threaten that theater, at least in Soviet thinking (Turkey, of course, is probably happier to play the good neutral party here). Whether Stalin et al will be able to resist pressing on Turkey out of paranoia in this matter will be a key deciding factor of how the new world order shakes out, as it could easily become a distraction and friction point for both nations (and potentially motivate pseudo-Cold War-era buildups, hopefully not on such a large scale, if both sides feel sufficiently threatened).
Largely agree. Per comments above, they are taking Germany apart rather than benefitting from their productive power. You can assume (unlike Turkey might have done) they have essentially demolished most of their armed forces, expropriated a large amount of their industry, raided their agricultural production (see more in a coming chapter) and imposed collective economic systems of an economy that won't be getting any Marshall Plan rebuilding boost later on.
I see them concentrating more on Asia in these coming years: why upset the apple cart in Europe or get embroiled in the Middle east, which they can let Turkey worry about for the foreseeable future. Especially as in this ATL, there will be no Soviet-Turkish crisis over Soviet Navy access to the Med via the Bosphorus (as there was in OTL 1946, which along with the civil war in Greece was a catalyst for the Truman Doctrine and Cold War escalation), given their still friendly relations. For some of the reasons you mention above, this becomes a valuable bargaining chip for Turkey. Maybe they will offer basing rights in one or more selected UGNR ports. A bit like OTL India, maintaining parallel arrangements with both the US and USSR, but able to keep them well apart physically.
I guess the Soviets could also find and leak what the allies, esepcially rhe british, and what rhe US under FDR, intended to do to Germany.
Sure, the Soviets stole some of their industry. But Churchill wanted to tear the country in half to remake Austria but big, and FDR wanted to tear the entire country into bits like the federation of the rhine.
So far as the germans and the rest of the world know, faced with those three options, the Soviet one is at least rhe best for the germans themselves.
All a bit academic re Germany. What the Allies may have discussed in their darker periods is certainly no worse than what the Soviets are now doing to Germany (see below for a bit more on this). Poland gets off a little better, because with Germany its more punitive and vengeful, but as we all know there's not much love lost there either. Same goes for Finland, and I bet the Danes are really happy about ending up in the Eastern Bloc!
See above. Not sure anything the Soviets say about possible Allied plans in GW2 would persuade them that would have been worse. In TTL, the US were members of the Comintern and wouldn't have developed those plans in the first place. Churchill is gone now, with a completely different government in charge, so that's easily brushed off too.
The relevant ATL comparison here is the brief Turkish occupation, which was way more benign and amicable. The Turks wanted to keep the German armed forces largely in the field, did not try to dismantle their industry and had more natural political affinity with the conservative post-coup German regime that killed and replaced Hitler. Even if the Turks don't try to make something of this (which they haven't yet, out of both Soviet friendship and prudence), it may still be a powerful counter-point to the increasingly nasty Soviet occupation, deconstruction and repression panning out in 1946.
However, history has shown that when an occupying power attempts to make the occupied citizenry accept them as the least-worst evil, the response rather than open arms and warm fuzzies is usually a violent independence movement. The good news is that Stalin will have no qualms about dealing with such a thing, the bad news is that he will not be winning hearts and minds in the process.
Crush all initial opposition and denazify the country with stalin, then the next leader can appoint a German socliast government and move through genuine reconciliation. It did sort of work OTL, and they have a lot more resources and power to throw at Germany TTL.
Only partly agree with this. They've already appointed a new socialist government, but it won't be attracting much popular legitimacy. And the harder they suppress, the more they risk provoking something dangerous. A recently Nazi Germany, unified (so they have to worry about repressing the whole population, not just the Eastern segment of it). And they'd really rather just concentrate on the border with France, the confrontation with Japan and creating more mischief in Asia than getting bogged down in Germany. And do they actually have a lot more power and resources to throw at Germany in TTL than OTL? I don't necessarily see why that would be the case.
It's more often the United States in my own experience. My results might be skewed slightly though, as I have sometimes tagged to New Zealand, Nepal or some other Allied minor to ask the U.S. very nicely to invade Japan... which they usually do within a few months.
Yes, I've seen that happen too. And in my Q&D2 game, it was France. I think whichever the dominant Allied power is seems to be the one most likely to invade the Home Islands? Always helped by Japan not defending itself properly.
Crossing those straits can be tricky as I remember from trying this with Nicaragua - the IJN kept sailing ships through the straits and forcing units to cancel their movement orders!
Heheh, you don't have to accept them. And that was a very apposite reference. IIRC @diskoerekto might have mentioned something along those lines at the time: and I'd not heard of the OTL line when I created the in-game one! A nice coincidence.
Recently, I found a rabbit-hole that holds a clue as to the long-term Turkish-Soviet dynamics. The Organization of Turkic States consists of five (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Uzbekistan) nations where the majority speak a Turkic language. The world's sixth (Turkmenistan) Turkic speaking nation is an observer. With the exception of Turkey, these nations were part of the SU until 1991. With a more powerful Turkey, would Turkey encourage students and workers from Soviet Turkic speaking areas. Also, would Turkey aid independence movements. There are also areas of Russia & China with Turkic speaking majorities.
The organization does have one non-Turkic observer: Hungary. Hungary is in many ways like Turkey. It is the largest nation in its language group (Finno-Ugaric) and is isolated from others in its group.
Honestly, it sound smore like something that would bring the two closer together, at least so long as the Soviets played somewhat nice with the turk nations. Which they presumably will, because we have far more important things to be doing very far away from the black and caspian seas.
An interesting point. There's certainly a current impetus to 'be nice to Turks at home and abroad'. We won't get that far, but if these polities were still around once we get to the age of modern fundamentalist terrorism, it could be a chaotic and dangerous mix.
To All: thanks so much for all the interesting and robust discussion. It does help shape and refine my thinking on many of the issues, some of which I use OTL catalysts for, others cut from entirely new AAR narrative cloth. Next chapter out shortly.
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Chapter 254: The United States – July to December 1946
Chapter 254: The United States – July to December 1946
The ‘Dewey Doctrine’ – Early Developments
In mid-July 1946, Dewey’s White House (as opposed to the more conservative and isolationist State Department under Taft) began developing a policy framework to guide its foreign policy during the seond half of the presidential term. This policy was at first kept ‘close hold’ between the President himself and selected presidential advisors, given it would be controversial politically during the campaign for the mid-term congressional elections. Notably because Taft and State would certainly argue against its ‘forward-leaning’ elements. News of such internal dissension would inevitably leak and undermine Republican prospects in November, where they were already facing the ‘traditional’ mid-term reaction against an incumbent president.
In its early drafts, the Dewey Doctrine promoted an American foreign policy that pledged American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats." Its primary goals were containing post-war Soviet geopolitical expansion; and swaying other governments seen to be totalitarian (or on the margins of totalitarianism) more towards democratisation. Two prime candidates in that regard, where such movements had already begun indigenously, were Turkey and Japan.
The US also placed China in this basket, where the Nationalists were certainly anti-communist and had a notional parliament but could hardly be termed a liberal democracy under Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang. And the newly independent India was seen as another test case, where the emergence of a pro-Western democratic government was seen as a highly desirable outcome.
In other areas, the lines would become more blurred, especially where genuine liberation movements against colonial or occupying powers might arise, such as in Vietnam or Indonesia. Realpolitik considerations would arise, such as whether to support an Allied country in a ‘wrong-headed’ attempt to extend colonial control past its use-by date (eg Indonesia), or where a wider strategic interest may sway the ‘morally correct’ choice (eg Vietnam).
Dewey’s administration was more likely to err on the side of practicality and assessed US national self-interest than become too ideologically fixed in its responses, or to risk getting overly involved in a possible wider conflict with the Soviet Union which would soon have access to atomic weapons. This would temper US responses and likely prevent the imminent confrontation escalating, at US instigation anyway, into what some were beginning to term a possible ‘Cold War’.
Of course, Soviet actions and reactions might force such an escalation, so another arm of the Dewey Doctrine would be to keep the Soviets engaged in international organisations such as the League of Nations (especially the Security Council), the LNAEC, the IMF and so on, as well as seeing if they could be brought into the world trade and economic system more fully.
On the other side of the ledger, the US would aim to prevent, defeat or at least contain new communist uprisings. But, under Dewey, by indirect means, through economic or military aid (overt or clandestine, depending on the circumstances). Under all but the most exigent circumstances, direct US military intervention in proxy wars and certainly against Soviet forces was to be avoided. Any US ‘boots on the ground’ must be covert and plausibly deniable, principally through the efforts of the new CIA, which had taken over the role previously performed by the OSS.
More generally, the Dewey Doctrine implied American support for other nations threatened by Moscow, a bipartisan view shared with the bulk of Democrats (if not with the minority isolationist wing of the Republican Party). It would thus have the potential to become the foundation of American foreign policy for the coming years.
The proposed doctrine would, if implemented, mark a definitive shift of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union from a wartime alliance to a policy of containment of Soviet expansion, as advocated by diplomat George Kennan. Though the stance was distinguished from an even more interventionist ‘rollback’, by implicitly tolerating the existing Soviet takeovers in Eastern Europe.
Another logical implication would be greater US involvement with the Allied nations and closer coordination on strategic and diplomatic matters with the UK in particular. However, at this stage even the ‘hawks’ in Dewey’s inner circle, influenced by Republican ‘Internationalist’ Senator Vandenberg, fell short of arguing for the US to formally join any Western military alliance. Of course, Secretary of State Taft was more of a ‘Monroe Doctrine’ man:
"The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. President James Monroe first articulated the doctrine on December 2, 1823. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the United States."
Left: Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R), an increasingly major influence on White House foreign policy thinking in 1946. Right: Secretary of State Robert Taft, still an advocate for caution in foreign policy and proponent of limited US involvement in international relations beyond the ‘American hemisphere’.
Draft wording of a possible announcement of the policy to Congress stated that: "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Essentially, Dewey contended that because totalitarian regimes coerced free peoples, they automatically represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the United States.
But ‘Dewey’s Corollary’ was that such resistance by the US should not itself lead to national security being endangered directly. This was especially important when Western intelligence was reporting that the Soviet-German atomic programme was on the cusp of developing a viable weapon capability. The UK was also making some progress, but given the US remained apart from the Western Alliance (as the old GW2 Allied grouping was becoming known in public discourse), they could not rely on UK providing any ‘atomic defensive umbrella’ in the future. This strategic dissonance would lead to another key decision being taken a few months later.
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Other Events
Working under the codename of the Venona project, on 31 July American cryptanalyst Meredith Gardner was able to make the first breakthrough in a team project to crack the secret codes used by the Soviet Union in its espionage activities in the United States. After his successful decryption of one encoded phrase within intercepted telegrams, the team was able to deconstruct more of the coded transmissions. By 20 December, Gardner decrypts revealed the existence of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project. Venona messages also indicated that Soviet spies worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, and even the White House.
Meredith Gardner (far left); most of the other code breakers were young women. Gardner used this material to break into what turned out to be NKVD (and later GRU) traffic by reconstructing the code used to convert text to numbers. Gardner credited Marie Meyer, a linguist with the Signal Intelligence Service with making some of the initial discoveries of the Venona codebook.
On 3 September, President Dewey approved the go-ahead for "Project Paperclip", ostensibly a campaign to lure more German scientists to the US and to keep them from being taken to the Soviet Union. Ten days later, the Soviet Union issued decree No. 2163-880s, launching Operation Osoaviakhim, to physically transfer German atomic and rocket production potential to the USSR.
As part of the development of the Dewey Doctrine, in mid-September the president was presented with a top-secret report by his White House foreign policy team entitled American Relations with the Soviet Union. "The US must be prepared to wage atomic and biological warfare", the report stated in part, adding that "a future atomic war with the USSR would be 'total' in a more horrible sense than any previous war and there must be constant research for both offensive and defensive weapons." This would lead to the immediate resumption of the suspended US atomic program by the end of the month.
Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Ernest Lawrence (left to right) were recalled as scientific advisers to the revived Manhattan Project at the end of September 1946.
The brochure Communist Infiltration of the United States was released by U.S. Chamber of Commerce on 9 October. Eventually, 400,000 copies were distributed.
A sign of the times.
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Mid-term Elections: Campaign and System
The 1946 U.S. midterm Congressional elections were held on 5 November. As mentioned above, Dewey’s administration had contended with a hostile congress since coming to power in January 1945.
Congressional standings following the 1944 elections.
It had not suffered any great domestic or foreign policy disasters and the economy was performing strongly enough, but nor had it carved out a strong public image and record. As the campaign began, it faced a ‘traditional’ anti-incumbent swing in the popular vote, where all House of Representatives candidates were up for re-election.
For the 1944 election, a detailed state-by state system was used for determining the electoral college votes, while the House starting point was approximated using the overall popular vote from the 1944 presidential election. The Senate was decided by applying the popular state vote to the Senate seats up for re-election.
This time, for the House each state would start with the percentage of votes achieved at the 1944 presidential election, while each state would have the same number of seats each as in OTL. However, the seats would then be allocated proportionally for each state, applying the new percentage after national and state swings to the number of seats for the state. Other party results would be taken from OTL 1946, with those seats excised from the respective state’s count.
The ‘swing tables’ used would be the same as last time, with any percentage change being applied as a simple swing to or away from the Democrats.
The Senate would be calculated in the same way as for 1944.
Based on the state of play at the start of the campaign (using the applied 1944 results), a moderate increase for the Democrats in the House would be expected if nothing changed, with the Democrats gaining 234 seats, the Republicans 200 and the American Labor Party retaining its one New York seat. However, to balance this the Senate was coming off a great Democrat wave from when the current 33 senators up for re-election had seen almost two-thirds of them return Democrats.
Harry Truman was the incumbent Democrat President after the death of Roosevelt in April 1945. At the 1946 mid-terms, the Republican Party captured control of both houses from the Democrats. In the Senate, a 56-39 advantage for the Democrats gave way to a 51-45 Republican majority, while in the House of Representatives, the Democrats' 242-191 lead was reversed, with the Republicans up 246 to 188.
During the campaign, opinion polls indicated no appreciable change in national sentiment [0% swing], leaving the Democrats on target to increase their lead in the Representatives. They would expect to lose seats in the Senate, but the extent of that loss – and whether the Republicans might be able to eke out a majority there – would depend on state-by-state results. Former Vice President Harry Truman was a significant campaigner during the 1946 mid-terms. Many naturally saw his as his ground work for a tilt at the Democratic presidential nomination for the 1948 election.
Harry Truman on the hustings for the Democratic Party, October 1946.
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Election Day: 5 November
On election day, the largest swings to the Democrats came in Mississippi and Oregon (5% each) and Pennsylvania (4%). The Republicans did comparatively better in many of the local contests, with big swings in Connecticut and Vermont (6%), Utah (5%) and Massachusetts, Nevada and South Carolina (4% each). The Progressives lost both their seats and the one independent was unseated, with the American Labour Party retaining its one seat in New York.
This better-than-expected local performance by the Republicans helped minimise the loss of seats. In the end, the Democrats gained 9 in net terms, gaining 6 from the Republicans and 3 from the Progressives and the sole Independent elected in 1944.
In terms of the overall vote, of the 34,410,324 cast in the House elections, the Democrats received 17,945,938 (52.2%), the Republicans 15,770,672 (45.8%) and all others 693,714 (2.0%).
For the election nerds among my dear readAARs, here is the full state-based House results table.
One of the new Republican representatives elected to the House that year was one Richard M. Nixon.
For the Democrats, John F. Kennedy was elected to a safe House seat in Massachusetts.
In the Senate, the Democrats picked up California, Minnesota, New Jersey and Oregon. The Republicans gained Delaware, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming from the Democrats and Wisconsin from the Progressives. In net terms, this gained 6 seats for the Republicans – enough to give them a narrow Senate majority, without the need for a Vice Presidential casting vote.
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Post-Election Implications
In summary, although the Republicans had lost a little ground in the House, this did not change the balance there. But significantly for Dewey, the potential damage had been minimised and he had gained a narrow majority in the Senate, thus improving his overall political position in tactical terms.
One unresolved issue going forward would be the internal debate between the advocates for a more internationalist ‘Dewey Doctrine’ and the Taft-backed supporters of a more isolationist foreign policy status quo. This debate hotted up following the mid-terms and continued through December. Dewey would allow the internal debate, which inevitably seeped out into the public domain, to go on until the new year, with a decision to be made prior to and announced in his programmed 6 January 1947 State of the Union address.
Diplomatic developments concerning US interests in Asia and the Middle East will be dealt with in subsequent chapters. The major strategic issues were Japan, China and India, while the flashpoints in Palestine, Vietnam, Korea and Indonesia would also figure in US (and others’) calculations. The US defence expansion continued, while the revived atomic program was also back into full swing as 1946 ended (more details on that in the next chapter).
Thanks for the minute detail of the US election. For the selective Kennedy fan (more Joe Jr., Bobby; less JFK, Teddy); did Joe Jr. survive the war? Maybe die rolls between Jr. and JFK with high surviving. Dewey v. Taft, will be decided by the actions of Moscow more than Washington. Television will give a new immediacy to every action and bring the world inside every home.
Thanks for the minute detail of the US election. For the selective Kennedy fan (more Joe Jr., Bobby; less JFK, Teddy); did Joe Jr. survive the war? Maybe die rolls between Jr. and JFK with high surviving. Dewey v. Taft, will be decided by the actions of Moscow more than Washington. Television will give a new immediacy to every action and bring the world inside every home.
Thanks! I suspect I’d have Joe survive, but maybe having say lost a leg and not being ready to pursue a political career. JFK served in the Navy but his PT boat never got sunk, so he doesn’t have that back injury or painkiller dependency. May give him more endurance and sharpness than OTL, but may not change his choices in personal life.
You’re right about TV, as Dewey’s 1947 State of the Union will be the first one televised. It will give him a major platform - depends how well he uses it. He was a pretty adroit courtroom attorney, though, and now has the full support of the White House staff behind him.
Good observation re the Soviets: in this world, they do have more options, initiative and momentum than OTL, but no shortage of potential pitfalls either, plus the risks and opportunities of being the front-runner, with the US having the far larger and more powerful economy and potential military-industrial complex to deploy and being happier to counter-punch for now.
He'll definitely be energetic, considering what he managed to do OTL. Don't know whether he'll be president, but I can't see him not being a very, very prominent democrat.
He probably would have tried to do something with all available, given what transpired! How each one would go in TTL May figure a bit more, though I’m uncertain the epilogue will reach as far as the 1960s.
He'll definitely be energetic, considering what he managed to do OTL. Don't know whether he'll be president, but I can't see him not being a very, very prominent democrat.
Yes, I’m thinking so. Would he make the same dubious moral choices in his personal life? Not sure. But his energy would be increased and his charisma undiminished, that’s for sure. And with old Joe pushing, something would happen.
Under all but the most exigent circumstances, direct US military intervention in proxy wars and certainly against Soviet forces was to be avoided. Any US ‘boots on the ground’ must be covert and plausibly deniable, principally through the efforts of the new CIA, which had taken over the role previously performed by the OSS.
Essentially, Dewey contended that because totalitarian regimes coerced free peoples, they automatically represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the United States.
He'll definitely be energetic, considering what he managed to do OTL. Don't know whether he'll be president, but I can't see him not being a very, very prominent democrat.
I can't help but think he wouldn't actually be too different, just because he was so energetic in OTL and also because lack of drug addiction has very little to do with surviving having the back of one's head blown off. Not to mention, debatably, that I do think his political charisma outweighed his actual political accomplishments, which I don't see changing here. Overall not likely to be one of the major butterflies here.
In its early drafts, the Dewey Doctrine promoted an American foreign policy that pledged American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats." Its primary goals were containing post-war Soviet geopolitical expansion; and swaying other governments seen to be totalitarian (or on the margins of totalitarianism) more towards democratisation. Two prime candidates in that regard, where such movements had already begun indigenously, were Turkey and Japan.
Of course, Soviet actions and reactions might force such an escalation, so another arm of the Dewey Doctrine would be to keep the Soviets engaged in international organisations such as the League of Nations (especially the Security Council), the LNAEC, the IMF and so on, as well as seeing if they could be brought into the world trade and economic system more fully.
But, under Dewey, by indirect means, through economic or military aid (overt or clandestine, depending on the circumstances). Under all but the most exigent circumstances, direct US military intervention in proxy wars and certainly against Soviet forces was to be avoided. Any US ‘boots on the ground’ must be covert and plausibly deniable, principally through the efforts of the new CIA, which had taken over the role previously performed by the OSS.
And now Dewey is starting to tread on more dangerous ground, perhaps risking confrontation with the Soviets, but certainly exposing the U.S. to the unintended consequences of his interventions.
The UK was also making some progress, but given the US remained apart from the Western Alliance (as the old GW2 Allied grouping was becoming known in public discourse), they could not rely on UK providing any ‘atomic defensive umbrella’ in the future.
To be fair, the U.K. is not much further ahead than the U.S. and neither is all that far behind the German-led Soviet programme. The gap between all three may only be a couple of years or so in TTL.
On 3 September, President Dewey approved the go-ahead for "Project Paperclip", ostensibly a campaign to lure more German scientists to the US and to keep them from being taken to the Soviet Union. Ten days later, the Soviet Union issued decree No. 2163-880s, launching Operation Osoaviakhim, to physically transfer German atomic and rocket production potential to the USSR.
I think Dewey's missed the boat here as the Soviets are now locking down their programme. Also, it's very hard to imagine any kind of clandestine German R&D happening without the Soviets becoming aware of it, so there shouldn't be any risk of German technology actually falling into German hands!
This better-than-expected local performance by the Republicans helped minimise the loss of seats. In the end, the Democrats gained 9 in net terms, gaining 6 from the Republicans and 3 from the Progressives and the sole Independent elected in 1944.
In net terms, this gained 6 seats for the Republicans – enough to give them a narrow Senate majority, without the need for a Vice Presidential casting vote.
