I have to correct my above post (this is the problem with going from memory on my facts and figures) The Japanese actually completed 9 aircraft carriers from 1942 onward, and the US built 22, including 141 escort carriers.
[quote user=“WIAR”]
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
Although I’m a Northeasterner I’ve always been under the impression that WWII provided a big shot in the arm for the infrastructure of the Southeast United States, particularly in regards to heavy industry. I’m under the impression that large parts of the South lagged behind the rest of the country in terms of development from the Reconstruction era until the Second World War and the huge construction projects (some of which started during the “New Deal” such as the TVA) started the shift of a lot of manufacturing Southward…
I think we’d still be in the steam to diesel transistion. Think for a moment. The modern steam power being developed would have had a long life instead of “run hard and put away wet” too many times. The railroads would have no economic incentive to invest heavily in diesels because their steam locomotives were still viable. EMD would not have been able to point out “you have to replace them anyway,…” Railroad employment would still drop, but with many backshops still in operation, not the way it did.
Without WWII driving up the demand for fast transportation, the airline industry would have developed much more slowly. Railroads might still be operating their own passenger trains as the interstate highway system would not exist to siphon traffic away. Life would be lived slower, because boys couldn’t say “if you loved me, you’d do it before I ship out.” The frantic pace of life today really sped up during/after WWII. If the public eventually demanded quicker coast-to-coast travel (and why would they), we would have the successor to GG1s on a high-speed rail network.
OK, back to reality.
First of all the Japanese made a terrible blunder in attacking Pearl Harbor. It cost them the war. Pearl Harbor galvanized America to destroy the Japanese war machine; and destroy it we did. Japan wanted a negotiated peace. Japan would have been smarter to have attacked only the Phillipines and forced the US Navy to come to them. The distance from Guam to Pearl Harbor is the distance from New York to Southhampton England, Just how the US Navy planned to fight Japan with those World War I battleships is anyone’s guess. We had no bases between Pearl Harbor and Manila except for Guam and Wake Island. The US Navy would have had an extremely difficult time going on offense.The Pacific is one pretty big ocean. The Imperial Japanese Navy was close to its bases and the US Navy would have been a long way from home.
As to the Question, I think that things would be remarkably similair to what we have today. Remember that the first stretch of the Pennsylvania turnpike opened in 1940. There would have been a push for more limited access highways and the trucking industry would have grown rapidly. Railroads were already overbuilt in the east and midwest and you would have seen abandonments, mergers, and the decline of the Passenger train.
Another questions to ask.
What if the Railroads had been given as great of importance in being technologically improved as all the military branches?
If the railroads had been thought of as an important branch of the Military they would have modernized quickly. Instead they were practically used up and discarded. The policy toward the railroads appeared to be exhausted depression era thinking, but by the people in power who were least affected by the shortages. The railroads were the main transportation for the big stuff, but the lowest of priorities for improvements.
Andrew
Where did you read this?
The approval process for what railroads could build during WWII seemed a bit backwards looking. What on earth were they thinking approving old Steam Locomotives for the railroads while pushing Jet Aircraft for the military. It seems like they wanted the railroads to stay stuck in the past to break their power on the transportation of the nations people and products.
Andrew
And how did the jet aircraft fare?
Please remember that during World War 2 a great proportion of domestically produced heavy liquid hydrocarbons, gasoline, and aviation fuel were committed to the war effort. America did not have much on an interstate pipeline network for moving these liquid fuels. Unit trains of tank cars hauling crude oil and finished petroleum products from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas to east coast refineries and ports were the order of the day. And most of those trains were pulled by locomotives that did not require liquid fuels, specifically coal-fired steam engines, which meant that more of those liquid resources were available to power naval ships, the mechanized army, plus bomber and fighter aircraft. Powering those trains with diesel locomotives probably would have put quite a strain on America’s fuel supply.
By the end of 1945 half of the world’s economic output came from the United States. 1945 or 1946 was the last year that U.S. crude oil production met the entire needs of the American economy.
…B-36 bombers…Weren’t they awesome for that time frame. For anyone haven’t ever seen one, Wright Patterson AFB Museum…Dayton, Oh. is where I got to eyeball one {many years ago}, up close. {I would assume it’s still there}.
I did get to see and hear {that was the impressive part}, the sound they made as they flew over.
Wow! What and enjoyable and informative discussion. I laude everyone for staying to the the topic. I too find it interesting to think of the what if in regards to history. I plan on getting the Newt Gingrich books regarding WWII from the what if perspective. Thanks for the good thread.
Well it may have increased the movement but it was already in progress before the war, certainly my aunt and uncle had moved from Minneapolis to San Francisco by 1939 for example. It’s certainly true that it’s a rare Minnesotan who doesn’t have cousins in California.
The biggest move of course had been the “dust bowl” people from Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas who went to California in the '30’s. Plus at the same time blacks from the rural south were moving north, usually by train, so those from Mississippi went on the IC to Chicago, those from the mid-south went to Detroit, and those from the eastern part of the south went to New York and Philadelphia.
Well jet aircraft were in the experimental stage, I don’t believe the US created a jet fighter until the very end of the war, after Germany and Great Britain had created useable jets.
Diesels were a fairly new technology, and early diesels were prone to break-downs and problems…plus many diesels that were built were being sent overseas, which is why the typical Russian freight diesels of the 1950’s-1980’s bore a striking resemblence to an ALCO RS-1 - that’s what they copied after getting some during the war from the US. Besides, who was making diesels?? EMD wasn’t as huge as it would become, and ALCO was still primarily a steam builder. It made much more sense for ALCO, Baldwin, Lima et al to do what they did best - build steam engines.
BTW don’t forget oil products were rationed during the war, including automobile gasoline. Coal was in comparison more abundant and didn’t have the processing issues of oil. Also oil was burned by the Navy in their ships, which had priority over domestic uses.
Maybe a bit, especially coastal shipbuilding areas I guess. But the “sun belt” boom really didn’t take hold until maybe the 1960’s-1970’s. Go back to 1955 and the South was generally still fairly rural, with few large cities or large manufacturing centers compared to the North and increasingly the West.
[quote user=“WIAR”]
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
You need to take into account that the Dutch and French were defeated, and it looked like Germany was also going to defeat Russia and the British at the time. The Japanese probably felt the time was right to expand their territory.
Plus their plan may have worked if the US carriers had been in Pearl Harbor and had been destroyed on Dec 7th. Without them, what ships we had still afloat would have had no air support and it would have been almost impossible to fight any battles. The US might have had to sue for peace - which is what I think the Japanese hoped would happen…that is, I don’t think the Japanese would have tried to invade the mainland US, but with out the US in the war they probably would have been able to invade Australia.
BTW anyone watch the “Battle 360” series on the USS Enterprise?? Pretty interesting stuff.
That’s not a realistic projection. The US had massive ship-building facilities and the naval bases at San Diego, San Francisco and of course on the east coast and the gulf. Losing four carriers at Pearl Harbor would never have been cause for Roosevelt, the Congress and the military to consider suing for peace. If we’d lost twice that many, it still wouldn’t have prevented our declaration of war - it just wasn’t in the mindset of the American people. Heck, after the decimating Japanese naval strike at Port Arthur in 1904, czar Nicholas II (incompetent boob that he was) wasn’t compelled to sue fo peace, over Chinese territory that wasn’t rightfully a Russian possession. Why would we sue for peace after Pearl Harbor?
I disagree with “NO ISRAEL” Zionism did not start after or during WWII, but in the middle of the 19th Century, when immigrants intending to farm joined religious Jewish settlers that had been in the Holy Land for centuries, some invited to return when Muslims drove out the Crusaders, some escaping from the Spanish Inquisition and some that of families that never left despite the Roman and then much later the Crusader persecution. In fact, Roosevelt litterally sold out the Jewish community to the Saudi Arabians for the oil that was necessary to insure Allied victory in North Africa. He had gotten Stalin’s agreement for Jewish immigration to Israel at Yalta, but then met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in a lake in Egypt on a USA warship, who told him flatly that Jews must go back to where they came from after WWII. But Truman defied the State Department in recongnizing Israel, largely resulting from the pleas of his old Jewish business partner. If it had not been for the need for Arab oil during WWII, the very special relationship of a “Christian” America with a Kingdom that forbids any open Christian worship of any sort (and has paid for and supported open persecution of Christians in the past), would never have occured, and the immigration of Jews from the Arab countries would have been a matter of choice, rather than as refugees from Saudi- inspired persecution. Perhaps Israel would not be called Israel. It would not be called Palestine, because the Arabs in the Holy Land never called themselves Palestinians until well after Israel was established in 1948. Perhaps it would have been called the Land of Abraham, or just the Holy Land. Jerusalem is derived from the Hebrew “City of Peace” but the Arab name is El Kuds, meaning Holy City, and the Arab University in Jerusalem is called El Jamayel El Kuds, the El Kuds University. But WWII did not create Zionism. O