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USA Loses WWII

DeltaV11.2

DeltaV11.2

Ignore the fact that this premise makes very, very little sense for a broad variety of reasons.

If the USA were to continue fighting the war until, say 1947, and then were forced to end the war, but without the compromise of the US mainland, what would be the economic and political consequences thereof. In other words, how capable was the US of sustaining the outlay involved in WWII?

A guess based on the peak debt in 1945, 121.7% of GDP, growing by 21% a year, suggests a debt burden of around 160% of GDP. Would this be the limiting factor, or would it have been more social and political?

EDIT: Because seemingly people really need to know how this happened to be satisfied. The USA lost the war in a completely conventional manner. During the war, only the USA had nukes, and there isn't a single attributable divergence point. The USA negotiated a surrender in 1946-47 which included only territorial concessions, i.e. the USA is still allowed to have a military. The UK negotiated a similar treaty which ceded most of its colonies to Germany. Italy has the portion of them it wanted. Japan seized most of SEA, India is a puppet state of the axis that probably isn't very long for the world. Chinese resistance continues. USSR has lost much of it's western area, and is slightly smaller then modern-day Russia.

Postwar both Japan and Germany have completed their own nuclear programs. Germany probably around 48-49, Japan around '50, but Japan's arsenal is growing faster then Germany's and has a greater focus on non-weapons development(Japan is home to the hypercentrifuge, and had WWII plans for nuclear submarines). None of the Axis powers like the USA, but they also don't like each other very much.
 
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I think more issues are going to be cause by the Nazi's killing a lot of folk then the US economy.
 
We Americans will lose our war boner early.

Seriously though, I imagine the isolationists will gain quite a bit of popularity after this.
 
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The only way I can see the U.S losing is teleporting Nazis.

With that, the big problem should be the U.S being gutted by massive amounts of dead citizens before it worries about its economy.
 
As soon as the Nazis got their asteroid mining stations operational and their nuclear fusion engines for the tanks and planes, the US economy was going to crash anyway.
 
DeltaV11.2 said:
A guess based on the peak debt in 1945, 121.7% of GDP, growing by 21% a year, suggests a debt burden of around 160% of GDP. Would this be the limiting factor, or would it have been more social and political?
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More social and political, to be honest. Plenty of nations have held debt burdens higher than 160% and weathered the storm in terms of economics.

What will be a huge concern is virtual certainty of another massive European immigration wave in the late forties and likely extending to the early sixties. A whole lot of Russians will be needing to get the fuck out, and their traditional fleeing grounds of France (occupied by Germans), the UK (at least wrecked economically) and China (wrecked economically, probably still occupied in parts) are no-go zones. A lot of Poles, possibly French, possibly Greeks, etc. and obviously Jews of every nationality are going to be showing up on our doorstep, with corresponding shifts in the political winds. Obviously there is going to be a rise of nativist politics as with every immigration wave, but I think it will be particular bad because I expect communists to be a disproportionately large bloc amongst the throngs of the post-war immigrants while at the same time the American fascist parties will have been vindicated by fascist nations winning the world's largest war. Reds and Blackshirts brawling openly in the streets of NYC, oh joy!

With FDR's foreign policy discredited before his death in a pretty decisive way, it would probably mean a severe swing back to isolationism and, combined with the usually nativist sentiment, protectionism in trade. The US would almost certainly still be the largest economy in the world, but not to the huge degree we saw in OTL. There is going to be serious upheaval among former colonies, and probably a lot of wars that were tamped down by the existence of the post-war West's political/military coalition will actually escalate into outright brawls. Imagine the British Empire just going *poof* one day, in a figurative sense -- in a world without the United Nations, mind you -- in the years and decades after it has been established you are "allowed" to invade large swathes of another nation with open force and keep all your winnings. Wars, wars everywhere. For pretty much any reason you can think of: land grabs, resource grabs, secessions, unification of traditional homelands, religious and ethnic purges, economic extortion, literal wars over trade and smuggling, etc.

Shit would be interesting times, in a Chinese sense.
 
Mental Omega said:
The only way I can see the U.S losing is teleporting Nazis.

With that, the big problem should be the U.S being gutted by massive amounts of dead citizens before it worries about its economy.
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Yeah. TBH, the only way this is happening is if the Navy and Army Air Corps are taking heavy enough losses that they out pace production capacity, since we'll probably be calling on Latin America to actually contribute troops if the war is going that badly.

Like, if midway and the coral sea are complete and utter flukes in favor of the IJN, and the British manage to get starved out, and chased into across the Ganges by the IJA that could maybe start a defeatist attitude enough that another few years of continuing tactical defeats would make the US political establishment consider a negotiated peace.
 
Civilian population and troop numbers of enemy nations are obliterated by millions of tons of chemical weapons as the United States last major strategic option is used to the hilt. Ghost cities become a thing. Russia is able to move into the European heartland virtually unopposed. Staying away from the irradiated industrial cities.

Japan is flattened and gassed. Pop and industry is set back 200 years.
 
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Pandora's_Folly said:
Civilian population and troop numbers of enemy nations are obliterated by millions of tons of chemical weapons as the United States last major strategic option is used to the hilt. Euros p
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I think the point of this thread is that America suffers as total a defeat as it can without being completely occupied. Essentially even if Germany, Japan, Italy, and the Axis minors suffer, America would have to suffer worse.
 
Pandora's_Folly said:
Ok.....
Japan never moves against pearl harbor.
by 41 Germany invades england.
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I think it's more like; somehow Japan, Italy, and Germany magically defeat the U.S to the point where its forced to come to the surrender table. I dunno, maybe every sailor in the IJN discovered the ability to turn into various Toho and Daiei Kaiju and completely smashed the American west coast and annihilated the American pacific fleet entirely or something.
 
Mental Omega said:
I think it's more like; somehow Japan, Italy, and Germany magically defeat the U.S to the point where its forced to come to the surrender table. I dunno, maybe every sailor in the IJN discovered the ability to turn into various Toho and Daiei Kaiju and completely smashed the American west coast and annihilated the American pacific fleet entirely or something.
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Basically Germany has to do everything right and not do anything wrong or we have to back and have Hitler die in WWI and a more competent guy named Hartler takes over instead. That's the level of rewrite needed.

The US and Canadas industrial ouput is just so ridiculous, both in terms of isolation from enemy action and in size, in comparison to the Axis powers that Germany's best Case scenario is to hold the US off long enough to seize Britain and either not attack Russia or decapitate it during a not fucking winter war.

Edit japan's situation is much the same. Keep the giant asleep and try really hard not to fuck up. Maybe coordinate an on attack russia with Germany to split the bears attention.
 
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Pandora's_Folly said:
Basically Germany has to do everything right and not do anything wrong or we have to back and have Hitler die in WWI and a more competent guy named Hartler takes over instead. That's the level of rewrite needed.

The US and Canadas industrial ouput is just so ridiculous, both in terms of isolation from enemy action and in size, in comparison to the Axis powers that Germany's best Case scenario is to hold the US off long enough to seize Britain and either not attack Russia or decapitate it during a not fucking winter war.

Edit japan's situation is much the same. Keep the giant asleep and try really hard not to fuck up. Maybe coordinate an on attack russia with Germany to split the bears attention.
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Just assume that magic aliens helped the axis and crushed the United States at home and decided to not occupy America.
 
Pandora's_Folly said:
Basically Germany has to do everything right and not do anything wrong or we have to back and have Hitler die in WWI and a more competent guy named Hartler takes over instead. That's the level of rewrite needed.
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Nah. A Germany on total war footing throughout 1941 and 1942 doesn't allow the Red Army figurative breathing room and let it play catch up to the Wehrmacht. Pairing this with a Hitler who doesn't fire his best military minds for the "crime" of giving sound advice makes the war a considerably more bloody affair and possibly ends with the Germany offering terms and the Soviet Union accepting them.

Or you could go another track and have him not invade the Soviet Union at all -- historically they gained less from looting the land and exploiting the people than they did through peaceful trade -- and with all those soldiers who didn't die on the East Front instead bulking up their position in Europe, the western Allies cross-channel invasion looks a lot more risky. A complete win there for the Germans doesn't leave many options for bringing them to the table and this forum has a no-nukes rule so...

What's the play?
 
Speaking as OP.

Look; this thread is not for arguing about how the Axis wins. This thread is for discussing the negative effects on the US of losing the war. You can presume that both Japan and Germany declared war on the USA, and the USA and Allies lost. There's really no way you're going to make sense of this, which is why I put it in the OP to not try.

In general, you can presume that the USA was defeated overseas in a catastrophic manner, and would have been clearly unable to prevent an invasion of US soil, but likely would have been able to fight a land war. The US surrender was not unconditional, but it did functionally end US influence outside of the Americas, i.e. the cessation of all distant colonies. The 48 states are intact, but I'd say that Hawaii and parts of Alaska are no longer US territory. The other allies had crippling terms imposed on them. The USSR is a rump state. The UK has lost its colonies, and it's domestic situation has been ruined by extended bomber attacks and submarine blockade. France has ceased to be as a country.

It's kinda awkward to keep nuclear weapons out of a discussion of WWII outcomes, so I'll put a spot here about them. USA has nukes, Germany has nukes, Japan has nukes. All have bombers capable of striking targets in the other powers, but these bombers must be based outside of their homelands to be able to return to base after an attack. Major strategic strike capability is still years away when the war ends. The silly part is that this is probably the most reasonable part of this scenario.

No longer speaking as OP.

Internal-wise, I'd say this could lead to a collapse of the Democratic party. At minimum all of the present leaders will get the axe- no way will Truman receive a second term having presided over the end of the war. Isolationism will, as Apocal commented earlier, be back in a big way. However, I think this would prompt the maintenance of the armed forces at a WWII level, rather then the pre-WWI/WWII attitudes. More of a focus on preventing an invasion then avoiding entanglement. There will be lots of recrimination over the naval disarmament treaties, and at any rate Japan, Germany, and Italy are unlikely to not maintain navies of a threatening size, prompting the US to do the same.

Long-term, I'd expect the same problems that the IRL Soviet Union faced. Spending 30-40% of your GDP on national defense might keep you from being invaded, but it will ruin your domestic economy. Everyone else will probably be running similarly high defense budgets though, so this will be less of a relative issue.

Does anyone think that the USA could come apart? I don't really think that there could be a "failure state" of that kind for the USA, but we've never been in that situation so it's hard to be certain. Are there tensions in the US at the time that could prompt civil war in this sort of situation?
 
The only way the US could have lost WWII is for the Yellowstone super volcano to go off, or it got hit by an asteroid.

There is no way Japan and Germany can out produce the US, it has twice the industrial capability of them both put together.
 
Andras said:
The only way the US could have lost WWII is for the Yellowstone super volcano to go off, or it got hit by an asteroid.

There is no way Japan and Germany can out produce the US, it has twice the industrial capability of them both put together.
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Assume that America lost because the Axis had an army of Kaiju or something.

Forget about how America lost, just imagine what would happen if America was a totally defeated (but not conquered) power in WW2.
 
The US can lose everything overseas in 1942. And in 1943 it will still have the largest Navy on the planet, by the end of 43 it will be larger then every other navy combined. You can't defeat the US w/o conquering it. It is completely self sufficient.
 
Andras said:
The only way the US could have lost WWII is for the Yellowstone super volcano to go off, or it got hit by an asteroid.
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Andras said:
The US can lose everything overseas in 1942. And in 1943 it will still have the largest Navy on the planet, by the end of 43 it will be larger then every other navy combined. You can't defeat the US w/o conquering it. It is completely self sufficient.
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We could, you know, just accept peace terms and status quo of a Japanese-dominated Pacific and a Nazi-dominated Europe.
 
Andras said:
The US can lose everything overseas in 1942. And in 1943 it will still have the largest Navy on the planet, by the end of 43 it will be larger then every other navy combined. You can't defeat the US w/o conquering it. It is completely self sufficient.
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This. The US has industrial reserves of every major and minor industrial input except maybe titanium and I am not too positive about that. It also controls the Panama Canal which it will destroy rather than let fall into enemy hands. Not just the locks but collapse the canals and drain the lakes while it's at it.

Beaten back to its side of the Atlantic America either to become
A: isolationists, maybe annexing canada. Makes sense as something like 80% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the border. Turning inward. A particularly awesome possibility is the US going, fuck you guys I'm leaving, and begins building a space program in earnest.

B. The combine. The US annexes every rock and island it's allowed by treaty. Takes cuba, the Caribbean, Bermuda, Mexico, and every point a foreign power could use as a staging point for an invasion. They use south ameRica as satallite states.



C: Basically we get WW3 Nuclear Bugaloo around 1950ish
 
In order for this to be a meaningful question you have to explain how the US lost, because whatever OCP you invoke is inevitably going to dominate the post-war world as well. Absent an explanation there's nothing to talk about, because we have no idea what kind of shape the US is in or what resources its enemies have. "What if the nazis had nuclear weapons first?" is a completely different scenario than "What if Godzilla was real and decided to defend Japan?"
 
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