I was in Sheldon, IA this past weekend where I snapped some non-digital photos of the joint CMO/MILW depot there in town (still in remarkably good shape). It’s an interesting “corner” design with half aligned on the MILW secondary main (now ICE) and half aligned on the CMO main (now UP). Sheldon is now the western terminus of the Iowa, Chicago & Eastern, and hats-off to that community for keeping the depot up.
At breakfast I got to talking with some locals, and we began to speculate on what would’ve happened with the US rail system had WWII never happened? Suppose one of the several plots to eliminate Hitler actually succeeded prior to 1941 (there were a number of high-ranking German officers who plotted his removal well before the failed attempt in '44). Suppose the Japanese emperor had a change of mind, or perhaps if the German-Italian alliance wouldn’t have been in-place, leaving Japan alone to face the US, Britain and the Commonwealth and France combined - perhaps Japan would’ve backed-down?
How would peace in the 30’s and 40’s have affected American railroads?
Here’s what Carl, Bill, Mary and I came-up with:
1.) The interstate highway system, envisioned originally to facilitate a more rapid overland transportation system in-case of a foreign invasion, may have been delayed in its creation.
2.) Joseph Stalin, and his brutal policies within the USSR, may have been assassinated or driven from power, as his purges made many, many enemies for him inside and outside the party (he was terrified of an internal coup - that was the cause for the purges). This certainly would’ve delayed the development of the arms race, and that may have allowed more governmental funding for infrastructure improvement/development.
3.) Without the severe wear & tear on the physical plants of the railroads, the railroads would not have emerged from the late 40’s in terrible cond
…One thought that crossed my mind would be the question you touched on…The Great Depression. I suppose we’ll never know and really can’t very well project how long it might have taken us to really pull up and out of that terrible time.
WWII changed so much of what every one did that comparrison is almost impossible to say what would have happened if WWII would not have been a reality.
So much change was brought on by really bringing to market products we had to have for the war effort and perhaps would not have been developed nearly as quick.
Wonder if the Televison industry might have been pulled ahead somewhat as it was just beginning to happen before advancement of the war effort was put into effect. Many areas {maybe most} never saw TV develop until well after WWII ended.
As for railroads…They might have been let deteriorate even further since the country was in a terrible down economy and I wonder how they might have afforded to put them back together again for first class running…
I respect a man with realistic vision. I was also in Storm Lake, IA on my trip. The old IC depot is covered with gang graffiti, much in spanish. A clothier just down the street from the depot was displaying “Cerrano 13” gang shirts proudly just inside the entrance. Two Mexican flags were seen hanging from front porches. I left and won’t return to that town, which is depressing since I’d heard good things from when it was known as a popular resort. As long as you stay upwind from the Tyson chicken plant, maybe it still has some charm, but the waitress I spoke with said they were losing tourist and vacation business every year.
Not sure how we’d all be speaking German, however, if 'Dolf wasn’t around to conquer us?
What if the Germans and Japanese had won World War II? And the Germans controlled the Eastern, Southern, Midwest and Gt Plains? And the Japanese controlled California, the Pacific Northwest and part of the Intermountain States.
A genius of a writer named Philip K. Dick took that premise and rode with it in his insightful 1962 novel, THE MAN IN THE HIGH TOWER. I would recommend it to anyone; good, suspenseful reading. But especially to you in this case since you want to read up on alternative pasts.
Good luck!
BTW if the name Philip K. Dick sounds familiar it might be because he wrote the stories that inspired the films BLADE RUNNER and TOTAL RECALL.
If the Germans and Japanese had won World War II, I’d guess Hawaii would be part of Japan, and the Chinese probably would have evicted the Japanese in the 1960s. Germany would have controlled the Ukraine well into the 1950s or 1960s as well. Neither power would have tried to invade the “Lower 48” across wide oceans.
The lands they coveted were on their doorsteps.
First off, the best chance for WWII to not have happened is if the Brits & French showed some spine and backed the Czechs in early 1938 - the German military (especially the likes of Canaris) were sending signals that they were prepared to depose Hitler if the Allies were aiming to fight. With European powers not being distracted by the war with Germany, Japan would have likely been a lot more careful and may have kept fighting a war of attrition with China. Instead we got “Peace in our time” and maybe 50 million (or more) preventable fatalities.
As for what would have happened in the US, we would have probably taken several more years to get out of the great depression - recall that US economic output in 1938 was still behind where it was in 1929. One eason being is that the preparation for war was bringing in a huge demand for machine tools as older machines were not adaptable to the recently developed high speed tooling.
Dieselization may have progressed a bit faster, since the builders would have been free to build engines for locomotives instead of the Navy. It’s likely that we would have seen more high speed passenger trains in service - who knows, the Pennsy might have been able to get the T1 done right.
…I wonder how it would have effected the American Steel Industry…
I suppose much {in industry}, that did happen just would have been in “slow motion” with development. Recovery being very slow out of the Great Depression would have slowed advancement.
I think it would have taken quite a bit more time to actually put the G D to history.
That is a big question, because so much has to be taken into account. “What if” history can be kind of fun, but conjecture can only go so far.
The plots to assasinate Hitler were never really put into action, because the German General Staff was as afraid of itself as it was of Hitler. They were stuck in a very difficult position, and it was pretty much one of their own making. The German General staff was very much stuck in Prussian tradition, and one of those traditions was total subservience to the Head of State. The German generals considered themselves “apolitical” in fact, politics within the general staff was forbidden. Anyway, the long and short of it is, it’s hard to say with any certanty what woiuld have happened, had Hitler not come to power, or had been taken out. There were so many dynamics involved in the world at that point. One must remember the position Europe was in as a whole during the Great Depression. Germany was utterly prostrate after WWI, and that is what had led to Hitler’s rise in the first place.
However, peace throughout the 30’s probably would have led to a longer recovery from the Depression in the first place. Instead of coming out of it during the ramp up to WWII - the defense industries were already beginning to turn out some weapons for the Europeans in 1939, and Roosevelt directed the building of a “Two Ocean Navy” about that time too. It’s tough to say what would have happened, and when the economy would have recovered. Would it have been 1941, or later? Perhaps 1942, 1943? Even later? Then, without the war, the “post war boom” would have never happened, and that would resulted in a longer rebuilding of our economy, probably even into the 1960’s. As far as the railroads go, I don’t know enough about them to speak to what would have/could have happened.
On the one hand, some technological advances like television and diesel locomotives may have become commonplace quicker than they did, but as has been noted, the problem is how long it might have taken for the Great Depression to end?? In 1941 unemployment was better than the 25% rate of 1933, but it was still hovering around 10% range.
I think the interstate’s might have still happened however. Eisenhower was involved in a cross-country movement of military equipment in the 20’s as a young officer which convinced him of the need for better roads across the US. Of course without WW2 Ike would have remained an obscure officer and wouldn’t have become president, but I’m sure he’s not the only one that supported the idea of improved interstate roads. If the big auto makers got behind the idea it might still have been pushed through on the basis of creating so many jobs to help battle the high unemployment rate.
Of course if WW2 hadn’t started in 1939, FDR may well have retired and left office in March 1941, so depending on who succeeded him, US policies on many issues could have been very different.
No WWII -all of the following would have been delayed for who knows how long:
Atomic energy, atomic research, nuclear weapons
Radar - while invented in the late 30’s the explosion in its use - microwaves and all the other things associated with them - would have been put off for a long time.
Drastically reduced productivity because there would have been no G.I. Bill to provide the educated workforce to fuel an economic boom. A lack of such a work force would have had a large impact on the overall economic well being of the U.S.
Advances in medicine - too many to list.
Computers and everything releated to their use and development.
Solid state electronics.
The few books I’ve read on the subject of the impact of the war on the U.S. economy suggest, as has been mentioned, a much longer time to recover from the Great Depression and without the things listed above that recovery would most likely have been a shadow of what it was.
How would all of this impact the railroads - well, one of the results of the above - particularly #3 could have been a huge delay in the need for/interest in containers. This in turn, would have resulted in the pre container restrictions on international trade and that would have had a direct impact on the way the railroads are operating today.
It appears to me that some of you are Sci-Fi readers.I am and so is Al-In-Chgo [He addmited it when he named some of Phillip Dicks’ work].Ialso like the “what if” stuff.
With out a lot of detail ,I think the depression would have been prolonged,the railroads would have deteriorated faster and consolidation or government takeover/control would have happened sooner.
Volumes have/will/can be written.
If you like this type of fiction try “Bring The Jubilee” by ?[can’t find my copy].The SOUTH won the Civil/War of Northern Agression.
Another thing that won’t have happened is the depopulation of the Midwest and the boom on the West Coast. Many of the people who didn’t fight in the war moved to California to work in the defense plants and never came back. Of my mother’s male cousins, (large family), they all either fought, farmed or went to the plants and NONE of the defense workers came back to the rural Minnesota town she grew up in.
…The massive rebuilding after the war was everywhere. How long would it have taken to equal that with out having been in such a war…?
As I think back…My thought is there was a society and culture before and then a different one after the war that kind of took us on out to a new era. And it’s been evolving ever since.
This is my “favorite” WWII alternative scenario. From the standpoint of the world situation on the eve of WWII, it is not possible that the Japanese could have won. It would have taken a total capitulation of the U.S for the Japanese to win. As far as invading the United States, that is strictly science fiction. For starters, the Japanese simply did not have the industrial base to sustain any kind of protracted, long range war effort. If the Japanese had managed a victory during the Battle of Midway, they simply would have been unable to extend their influence beyond that island. In fact, had they invaded Midway, and taken it, they would have had one tough time supplying such an isolated and remote outpost. As far as using it as a staging base for an invasion of Hawaii and California, that is also non-starter. By June of 1942, the time when Midway occurred, the Hawaiian Islands were garrisoned by no less that 100,000+ fighting men. In addition to that, there were several hundred Navy, Army, and Marine combat aircraft available as well as the ships of the Pacific Fleet. Midway, and Hawaii would have been at the end of a very, very long logistical string that would have been all too easy to inderdict and disrupt. Midway is at least 1,000 miles from Hawaii, and Hawaii is at least that distance from the West Coast. Any kind of invasion would have been doomed to failure.
If we had lost at Midway, it would not have doomed us to defeat. It would have just delayed the end of the war until 1946, or even as some suggest, 1947. If we had lost Midway, it’s possible that we would have "close
The only (albeit minor) disagreement I have with that excellent write-up, is that Hitler wasn’t actually interested in the complete destruction of the slavs. He wanted “living space” for the Germanic peoples which Byelorussia and the Ukraine offered. His vision was to drive the slavs from that region and establish essentially an armoured frontier to contain any attempts by the Soviets to reclaim their western territories. The complete destruction of the slavic peoples was something even Hitler didn’t dream was possible. He simply wanted them removed (killed, enslaved, or driven east) to enable the German people to populate the cleared areas and be able to produce the kind of population needed to dominate, without necessarily conquering, the rest of the world.
You’re right about that, thanks for picking up the point that I missed. Lebensraum is what Hitler was after, and that indeed was the reason for his drive east, in addition to the acquisition of more resources and raw materials.
The US army brass was worried about both Great Brittain and Hawaii falling to our foes and they started designing the boeing B-36 bomber. It eventually had a 36 hour endurance and could have bombed Germany from Nova Scotia and guam from the US and Japan from Hawii. If the war had gone on to 1947 the Enola gay would have probably been a B-36 we’ll never know.
If WWII never happened, the last generation of steam locomotives would have been a lot smaller. There would have been no B&O EM1 2-8-8-4, Milwaukee Road S3 4-8-4, or Union Pacific FEF3 4-8-4.
Alco would have developed a competitor to the EMD FT, which would have sold in reasonable numbers. The RS1 would also have been upgraded to 1500 HP, and the resulting “RS2” would have sold quite well - especially since EMD would have no competing product.
The airlines would have taken away a good deal of the first class passenger trade. “Big” planes (DC4, Constellation) were coming into service that could make the Chicago - West Coast flight nonstop. Passenger traffic would have declined faster than it actually did.
The “losers” and “winners” among railroads would not have changed. There would have been no wartime traffic boom to pull railroads out of bankruptcy.
In Chicago, the North Shore and South Shore interurbans would not have had the traffic growth to bring them out of bankruptcy. They might have “muddled through” to be bought out in the late 1950s (as C&O actually bought out South Shore).
The Chicago Aurora and Elgin would have prospered due to the growth in Chicago’s western suburbs. When the Congress Street Expressway was built service wouldn’t have been cut back to Forest Park. Instead, CA&E trains would run around the Loop over what is now the CTA pink line.
Finally, CNS&M 300 (wood coach adopted by CERA before WWII) would be one of the prize exhibits of the Illinois Railway Museum.