this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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The US was instrumental in backstopping Moscow and Beijing during the late 30s, which is what dragged us into the conflict at Pearl Harbor. Japan was trying to cut our supply lines to it's enemies.
Go back to 1932 and hypothesize that the Dems had flubbed it. Or that some neoliberal hack had taken over after Hoover and dragged out the Depression another four years.
Then imagine fascism fully taking hold in the US like it had in Europe. I don't think the Soviets benefit from that. I also don't think China becomes a Japanese colony (for the same reason Japan was run out of Vietnam without any real Western aid). But you also probably don't get Nixon opening the US economy to China in the 60s.
It raises a ton of question marks across the board. What happens to the Middle East, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim? What happens to India and the African states as they industrialize? What does Europe look like under a post-Hitler government? Etc etc.
Absent the US, I don't see how you get 1950s Europe in any conventional sense
OK, you postulate a lot more hypotheticals.
In the end, a lot of things could have had a major effect, and it's impossible to tell the result.
That's the fundamental problem with the premise. I might suggest comparing WW2 to profit prior periods of global war - the Thirty Years War or the Napoleonic Wars or even WW1 - when looking for a "what might have been?" hypothetical.
WW1 is actually a great comparison, as it illustrates a world that fought a brutal, self-destructive conflict and came out of it learning virtually nothing.
I vehemently disagree on the world learning nothing.
Chamberlain's appeasement policy was motivated by lessons learnt from WW1.
The "sitting war" that left Poland all alone against Germany while Germany's western border was wide open was due to lessons learnt from WW1.
The French defensive strategy was a direct result of lessons learnt from WW1.
The US reluctance to get involved was due to WW1 experience.
Even the crippling reparations for Germany that helped the Nazis rise to power in the first place were a result of lessons learnt from WW1.
My point is: The entire world learnt lessons from WW1. They did the best they could to prevent another war just like it.
But without the benefit of hindsight, they didn't realize how much had changed in the few interwar years, so they learnt all the wrong lessons.
Chamberlain wasn't appeasing Germany, he was negotiating an alliance against Russia.
So much of the grade school education on the prelude to WW2 was calling France/England surrender monkeys. Very little details how the fascist movement had infiltrated these states and was fueling the movements in Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The massive debts assigned to the loser countries after WW1 and the stagnant industrial growth among the "winners" (such that they existed) propelled the planet into a Great Depression.
These were the same colonial patterns that had produced conditions for the First World War.
The countries that broke this pattern - Russia following the Bolshevisk Revolution, Germany under the Weimer and then Nazis governments, Japan during the Meiji Restoration and Taishō period, and the US under FDR - rapidly emerged as imperial powers best positioned to capitalize on stagnation of the Old World.