Clare Boothe Luce

In OTL, Clare Boothe Luce's daughter was killed in an automobile accident on 11 Jan 1944. As a result of that, she converted to Catholicism in 1946. Suppose, however, that her daughter survived the accident or that there was no accident at all. She never became a Catholic, and without that electoral impediment, was therefore chosen as Eisenhower's running mate in 1952. As VP, she has the opportunity to do all the diplomatic things she did in OTL, plus several more. This positions her very well to run for President herself in 1960. Who would she pick for VP? Would she beat Kennedy?


I'll add my answers and more soon, but do give yours in the comments.

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Compared to OTL, Ike's choice of Luce slightly hurts his 1952 vote totals. He fails to carry Missouri and Tennessee, but gains Louisiana, giving him a net loss of 14 electoral votes, so it's


Eisenhower 428

Stevenson 103


Still a very comfortable landslide. In 1956, his lead increases, and he carries Missouri and Tennessee, adding 24 electoral votes to total:


Eisenhower 452

Stevenson 79


An even more impressive landslide.

As the 1960 races for the nomination heat up, Eisenhower endorses Luce early on, citing her brilliant diplomatic efforts on his administration's behalf. Opposed for the nomination by both Rockefeller and Goldwater, she is perceived as the moderate candidate, and is nominated on the second ballot at the Chicago convention after Goldwater withdraws and endorses her. Seeing that she was going to be running against Jack Kennedy, she attempted to offset the allure of his military service (and to distance herself somewhat from Eisenhower) by selecting General Matthew Ridgeway as her running mate. The election was close, but Luce squeaked out a victory by carrying all the states Nixon did in OTL, except for Washington State, and also carried Michigan, New Jersey, Missouri, and Minnesota, which Nixon did not. That gave her 270 electoral votes, just barely enough, but enough, to win the Presidency.


President Luce's cabinet picks were no surprise to most of those who knew her:

Secretary of State	Richard M. Nixon	1961–1969
Secretary of Treasury	Henry Ford II	1961–1969
Secretary of Defense	Curtis E. LeMay	1961–1969
Attorney General	Thomas E. Dewey	1961–1969
Postmaster General	Murray Chotiner	1961–1969
	Edward A. McCabe	1963–1969
Secretary of the Interior	Milan Dale Smith	1961–1969
Secretary of Agriculture	Ezra Taft Benson	1961–1969
Secretary of Commerce	Walter J. Kohler, Jr.	1961–1969
Secretary of Labor	George Romney	1961–1965
	Harold Stassen	1965–1969
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare	Robert Finch	1961–1962
	Roger O. Egeberg	1962–1963

The Bay of Pigs invasion is handled quite differently from OTL, in that US ground forces assisted the Cuban revolutionaries, and both air and naval support were provided. This ended with the fall of the communist regime, the death of Fidel Castro, and the exile of Raúl Castro and Che Guevara to the Soviet Union.

President Luce appointed Admiral Thomas H. Moorer to be military governor of Cuba, a post he retained until Enrique Ros was elected President of Cuba in 1963. There is, of course, no Cuban missile crisis in this timeline. But the overthrow of Castro was considered a loss for the USSR, and Nikita Khrushchev voluntarily stepped aside in 1962 in favor of his friend and colleague, Anastas Mikoyan, who became First Secretary and Premier of the Soviet Union. Mikoyan is thought to have been instrumental in encouraging and effectuating Deng Xiaoping's successful coup against Mao Zedong in 1966 and the Ozhlivenie (revitalization) movement that opened up both the USSR and China to the outside world and a general move towards capitalism. Mikoyan was followed by his chosen successor,
Eduard Shevardnadze, in 1970.

The conflict in Vietnam is largely neutralized by the reinstatement of Emperor Bảo Đại 1n 1967 with the support of both the United States and China. He presides over a coalition government that includes Catholics, Buddhists, Caodaists, and communists.

The 24-Hour War.

On 8 June, 1967, Israeli forces attack the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171. President Luce notifies Prime Minister Eshkol that she is sending US forces to occupy Tel Aviv and investigate the incident. She warns that apologies aren't enough, and that those responsible will hang for it. Eshkol resigns and is replaced by Golda Meir, counting on the fact that being American-born, she'll be able to extricate Israel from the mess with the most grace. After deliberating a few months, the Fulbright Commission reports that the responsibility lay with Eshkol (who had died of a heart attack by this time) and Defense Minister Dayan. The Israeli government extradites Dayan to the US to stand trial. There are consequent riots and attacks on US troops in Israel. Meir is assassinated by a Herut activist, and is succeeded by Yitzak Rabin.

In 1968, the Democratic party is pulled to the right, and nominates the conservative Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia to run against the Richard Nixon/John Rhodes ticket. Byrd picks John Connally, Governor of Texas, as his running mate, and they defeat the Republican nominees handily.

Moshe Dayan is found guilty of war crimes in April, 1969, and is pardoned by President Byrd. Dayan returns to Israel.

1972, Byrd and Connally are renominated. The Republicans pick James L. Buckley of New York, and Paul Laxalt of Nevada as his running mate. The Democratic ticket wins a narrow victory.


In 1976, the Republican party nominates Harrison Schmitt, Senator from New Mexico for President, and Phyllis Schlafly Represen-tative from Illinois is nominated for VP. The Democrats nominate VP Connally for the top spot, and he selects Birch Bayh of Indiana to run with him.

 In the first serious third party bid since 1948, declaring that the Democratic party had "lost its soul" to its conservative wing, Senator John F. Kennedy makes another bid for the Presidency, this time as a nominee of the "Unity Democratic Party." He chooses Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois as his running mate. On election day, Kennedy carries only Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The Democrats carry the deep South, plus Texas, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York state.  The Republicans sweep all the other states and win in a landslide.

In 1980, Schmitt and Schlafly are easily renominated. In the Democratic primaries, it's a struggle among Jimmy Carter of Georgia, John Glenn of Ohio, Jerry Brown of California, and Birch Bayh of Indiana. John Glenn is nominated on the first ballot, making it an "astronaut v. astronaut" election. Glenn picks Jerry Brown for VP. 

Harrison goes on to narrowly win reelection, but is assassinated by John Hinkley on March 30, 1981. Schlafly becomes President. As there is no Bayh Amendment in this TL, Tip O'Neill is first in line after Schlafly for the Presidency. But soon after these events, a very similar amendment is offered by Orrin Hatch and is ratified in September, 1982. As the Hatch Amendment is written explicitly to apply to the current President and Vice President, Schlafly appoints Wm Armstrong of Colorado as VP. Her choice is ratified by the Senate.

Also in 1982, President Schlafly invites Shevardnadze to visit the United States. He does so, and extends an invitation to Schlafly to visit the Soviet Union, which she does later that year.

1984. Schlafly and Armstrong are easily renominated, and a Democratic party in disarray, in a very divisive primary season, end up nominating Gary Hart of Colorado over his closest rival, Alan Cranston of California. In a shocking move, Hart does not ask Cranston to be his running mate, which

all the pundits had expected, but instead chooses Texas Representative Barbara Jordan. This was viewed at the time as a desperate move, and the Hart/Jordan ticket went down to defeat in a landslide.

After the election, pundit Pat Buchanan remarked:

Gary Hart just left a couple of words out of his calculations. He thought picking Barbara Jordan would win him the female vote and black vote. But it just brought him the female black vote

In 1988, VP William Armstrong is nominated by the Republican party after surviving strong challenges from Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. As Hart did in 1984, Armstrong bypasses his rivals and chooses John Sununu of New Hampshire as his running mate.

Determined to win this time, the Democrats early on start pushing Senator Pat Moynihan of New York as their favored candidate, who, before entering the Senate, had served in both the Byrd and Schmitt administrations. He easily won primaries over his main challengers, Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Michael Dukakis of

Massachusetts, and was nominated by acclamation at the Democratic convention in San Francisco. His choice for Vice President, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, was also nominated by acclamation.  They are easily elected over Armstrong and Sununu.

Despite widespread discontent over the war in Iran, Moynihan/Bumpers are handily reelected over the Repulican ticket of John Sununu and Susan Molinari in 1992.

In 1996, pledging to continue President Moynihan's policies, Dale Bumpers is nominated for President by the Democrats. He selects Bill Bradley, Senator from  New Jersey, as his running mate. They have high hopes to ride the crest of Moynihan's popularity and extend the Democratic hold on the White House for at least four more years.

The Republicans undergo a highly competitive series of primaries, pitting Susan Molinari, Donald Rumsfeld, Phil Gramm, Elizabeth Dole, and Pat Buchanan against one another. They end up with a Dole/Rumsfeld ticket that narrowly goes down to defeat against the Democrats.

On 4 July, 2000, radical Muslim terrorists hijacked a number of US commercial flights and crashed the planes into Times Square, the White house, and the Capitol building. One plane attempting to hit the Sears Tower was shot down by the Air Force. When the White House was hit, the President and the First Lady were both killed. As most of the hijackers were Saudi citizens, the new President Bradley calls for the surrender of Saudi Arabia to US forces. This is refused, and Bradley orders the invasion and occupation of Saudi Arabia. Resistance if fierce, but soon dissipates.

The Saudi King surrenders, and arrests a number of members of the Royal Family who have been named as conspirators in the attack by US intelligence.

Trials are held. During all this, a tumultuous Republican convention in Indianapolis nominates Phil Gramm for President and Bob Dornan for VP. The Democrats unanimously renominate Bradley, and he selects Paul Wellstone of Minnesota for VP. Phil Gramm wins the election narrowly, with only 3 more electoral votes than Bradley. While Americans are distracted by their own election, a revolutionary cabal headed by Osama bin Laden overthrows the Saudi government and installs Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al-Saud as head of state and Constitutional Monarch. The new king calls for US forces to leave Arabia immediately. Bradely assents to this, and he is widely perceived to have caved in to King Ahmed's demands. The Republican ticket, especially Dornan, makes this into a major campaign issue, and pundits and historians attribute Bradley's loss to this controversy.

Despite all the anti-Saudi rhetoric, the new Gramm administration doesn't modify our Arabia policy in any meaningful way. In a speech given at the University of illinois in February, 2001, the new Secretary of State, Paul Findley, accuses Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran of having backed the bin Laden coup in Arabia, and hints at American support for neo-Zoroastrian rebels in Iran. The speech energizes the rebel movement and the Israeli government and the ADL criticizes Findley for "pouring fuel on the fire" and encouraging anti-Zionists and anti-Semites around the world.

From the Saturday Evening Post, April 17, 2014

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Teddy Roosevelt And World War I: An Alternative History

By: Jeff Nilsson

It’s impossible to declare precisely what would have happened had Theodore Roosevelt been re-elected in 1912. But throughout his career, he was interested in global politics and spreading American influence. There is no question that, as president in 1913, he would have taken a far different course during World War I than the one taken by Wilson. Here’s how we think it might have happened.

In this alternative history …

• America enters World War I two years earlier.
Teddy Roosevelt could never sit by and watch a fight: he either had to break it up or join in. So when the old Rough Rider hears, in 1914, that Germany has marched over neutral Belgium to attack France, he commits our resources, and then our soldiers, to the Allied cause.

• World War I ends two years sooner.
It takes almost a year to build the ships, arm the troops, train them, and land them in France. By late 1915, though, the American Expeditionary Force of 10 million soldiers is fighting alongside the French and English armies on the Western Front. Even with the wasteful tactics of the European generals, which sometimes wipe out thousands of soldiers in hours, the Allies put enough pressure on the Germans to crack their defenses. The Kaiser’s army falls back, across France, into Germany, with the Allies in pursuit. As winter begins in 1916, the Germans are asking for peace terms.

• Adolf Hitler never comes to power.
The German people see their army in retreat, and the Allied armies occupying their cities. They blame their defeat on the military adventurers who run the Kaiser’s government. When young Adolf Hitler starts proclaiming the invincibility of the German army, and the need to prepare again for war, few Germans are interested. Mostly, they’re relieved when the occupying Allied forces arrest him and keep him in a French prison. Without him, the National Socialist party withers away.

• The Communists never gain power in Russia.
Although the Russian army suffers a paralyzing defeat on the Eastern Front, it is mostly intact when the war ends and the troops march home. The German government is too busy saving itself in 1917 to send the exiled Lenin back into Russia. Without their charismatic leader, the Bolsheviks of Moscow make little progress stirring up revolution. Russian veterans happily round up the loudest revolutionaries and ship them off to Siberia. By November, when the Bolsheviks would have seized the government, they have disappeared underground.

• Europe forms a union.
Since the war ends almost two years earlier, Roosevelt is able to talk the Allies into seeking reasonable reparation costs from the Germans and their allies, the Austrians. Before he dies in office in 1918, he has convinced England, France, and Italy to a continental plan similar to that created for France after Napoleon’s defeat. Having exiled its Kaiser and become a Republic, Germany is invited to rejoin the European nations. For the next 30 years, the Congress of Paris ensures the status quo between nations and suppresses any talk of revolution or nationalism.

All these benefits wouldn’t have accrued without some problems. According to one way of looking at history, if Communism didn’t get a strong foothold in Russia, it would have done so in Germany. Japan would still have emerged as a world power and very likely would still have invaded China. If successful, Japan and the US would have very likely found themselves in conflict over control of the Pacific.

Very probably, the atom bomb would have still been developed. Given human nature, it’s very likely one country or another would have had the curiosity to use it. Which country that might have been is anyone’s guess …

Kerensky’s Missed Opportunity

Reprinted from Isegoria:

One hundred years ago Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, ending 300 years of Romanov rule of Russia, and this so-called February Revolution presents one of the great what-ifs of history: 

If this revolution — which actually took place in early March 1917 according to the West’s Gregorian calendar (Russia adopted that calendar only later) — had succeeded in producing a constitutional democracy in place of the czarist empire as its leaders hoped, the world would be a very different place.
If the leading figure in the provisional government, Aleksandr Kerensky, had seized on an opportunity presented by a now-forgotten vote in the German Reichstag, World War I might have been over before American troops reached Europe. In this alternative history, Lenin and Stalin would be obscure footnotes, and Hitler would never have been more than a failed painter.

What is surprising, to anyone who has absorbed the standard victor’s view — according to which the Allies were fighting a defensive war to liberate small states — is that Britain was disingenuous about its war aims, while France declined to state them at all. The reason is that those aims were too discreditable to avow openly. In a series of secret treaties, they agreed in the event of victory to carve up the empires of their defeated enemies.
From the Russian viewpoint, the big prize was the Turkish capital, Constantinople, now called Istanbul; this was promised to Russia in a secret agreement in 1915. The subsequent publication of this and other secret treaties by the Bolsheviks did much to discredit the Allied cause.
Kerensky could have repudiated the deals made by the czarist empire and announced his willingness to accept the Reichstag formula of peace without annexations or indemnities. Perhaps the German High Command would have ignored the offer and continued fighting (as it did when the Bolsheviks offered the same terms after the October Revolution at the end of 1917). But the circumstances were far more favorable in July than they were at the end of 1917. As the Kerensky offensive demonstrated, the Russian Army, while demoralized, was still an effective fighting force, and the front line was far closer to the territory of the Central Powers. Moreover, Kerensky commanded credibility with the Western Allies that he could have used to good effect.
Kerensky’s determination to continue the war was a disaster. Within a few months, the armed forces were in open revolt. Lenin, who was transported across Germany in a sealed train with the High Command’s acquiescence in the hope that he would help to knock Russia out of the war, seized the opportunity. The provisional government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. This Bolshevik Revolution consigned the February Revolution to historical oblivion.
After accepting a humiliating treaty imposed by the Germans, Russia was soon embroiled in a civil war more bloody and brutal than even World War I. By its end, the Bolshevik government, launched as a workers’ democracy, was effectively a dictatorship, enabling the ascendancy of a previously obscure Bolshevik, Joseph Stalin, who would become one of the great tyrants of history. On the other side, the German High Command’s rejection of peace similarly led to defeat, national humiliation and the emergence of the 20th century’s other great tyrant, Adolf Hitler.
We cannot tell whether a positive response from Kerensky to the Reichstag peace initiative would have achieved anything. But it is hard to imagine an outcome worse than the one that actually took place.

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My reaction: I've often wondered about this myself — why Kerensky felt that his government should fulfill the agreements the Tsar had made. The argument above, that his régime might well have survived had he done otherwise, is compelling. I think it's a bit extreme to think that Russia would have ended up with a democratic system like those of Western Europe, but it could well have ended up with something approximating the German constitutional monarchy of the time. A mix of representative democracy and authoritarianism. The world would indeed be a different place. I can visualize WWII being confined to the Pacific conflict with Japan, if it happened at all. 

On the other hand, if WWI had ended early, in this scenario, one or more of the participants might very well have decided to renew it when it seemed advantageous to do so. Britain and France might well have felt cheated of victory, and they might have decided to emulate Mussolini's system, and we could have had WWII a decade earlier.

Do feel free to discuss this in the comments.

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The graphic quote is from one of the commenters on Isegoria. The picture I found on the net.

The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling

by Joe Glasgow

The earth is hit by a comet in 1878, and humanity fights for survival in this alternate history by S. M. Stirling. The book picks up the story in the 21^st century; where technology has struggled to advance, and clings to technology from the late 1870’s. Humanity is dealt a devastating blow in the North Hemisphere, and is left in desolation with a cooling climate.

The North American Hemisphere has lost all semblance of civilization, and has become a land of barbarians. The power of the British Empire has relocated to their colonies in Australia, Indian, and South Africa with the help of their surviving fleet. The French to the Algiers, and the Russians somehow survive and turn away from the Orthodox church. 

The book is filled with fast paced action complete with a Russian conspiracy.  The characterization is solid, and the book rings a bit Kiplingesque. I would recommend read the appendix before you start the book. It is filled with a lot of details that will help when start the novel. The science is a bit shaky, but doesn’t take away from a solid tale by Stirling. 

Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! by Daniel S. Fletcher

Daniel Fletcher’s Jackbook Britain is set 1940 in the Nazi occupied United Kingdom.  There is no Dunkirk in this world and the British Empire has capitulated to Nazi Germany. The British Expeditionary Forces have been captured, and the characters live under the iron fisted occupation of the Nazis.

The first third of the book is a little slow getting started, but the action picks up at that point in the book. If you are looking for military action this doesn’t appear, and his only mentioned or the results hinted. The story focuses more on the social aspects of occupation by the occupied, and their German occupiers.

Fletcher is spot on with his characterization of the British folk, but he fell short with the Germans. The German characters came across being a little too one dimensional. The social commentary was too modern for my tastes, and not period enough.

Myself, I didn’t care for the ending. I thought it was too ambiguous, and would hope this is a series, and not a stand alone book. It is Fletcher’s first novel, and hope we see a second book to get a better feel for his work.  

Guess the POD!

POD=point of departure. What historical event changed to result in this situation in 1947?

NIxon's the One! In 1960!

It wouldn't take much change for Nixon to have won in 1960. A gaffe on the part of Kennedy, perhaps, or rumors of his promiscuous sexual behavior (which we now know to be true), gaining traction. But I like the idea of Rockefeller agreeing to become his VP, which he turned down in our timeline. That might give Nixon New York and one other, maybe New Jersey, and the presidency. So let's see where this takes us:

1960	Rep. Richard Nixon/Nelson A.  Rockefeller John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson Vietnam never develops into a large-scale conflict. Nixon turns the Bay of pigs into a success and Cuba is liberated.
1964	Rep. Richard Nixon/Nelson A. Rockefeller Dem Lyndon Johnson/Pat Brown Passage of civil rights bill, much more moderate than in our time line. Nixon vetoes immigration bill, which then fails, because Ted Kennedy is not in Senate.
1968	Rep. Nelson Rockefeller/George Romney Dem. Harold Hughes/John Connally An economic slump and the unpopularity of the Sarawak war leads to a primary challenge from Pete McCloskey which weakens his candidacy. Senator Howard Baker becomes well-known nationwide because of the Sarawak hearings.
1972	Rep. Nelson Rockefeller/George Romney Dem. John Connally / John Lindsay
1976	Rep./George Romney/Charles Matthias Dem. John Connally / John Lindsay
1980	Dem. Jerry Brown/Jimmy Carter Rep. Howard Baker/Otis Bowen
1984	Dem. Gary Hart/Alan Cranston Rep. Howard Baker/Otis Bowen
1988	Dem. Richard Gephardt/Albert Gore Rep. Donald Rumsfeld/Jack Kemp
1992	Dem. Richard Gephardt/Albert Gore Rep. Julie Eisenhower/PIerre duPont
1996	Dem. Paul Tsongas/Tom Harkin Rep. Julie Eisenhower/PIerre duPont
2000	Dem. Howard Dean/Bob Graham Rep. PIerre duPont/Paul Findley
2004	Dem. Bob Casey, Jr./Bill Richardson Rep. PIerre duPont/Paul Findley
2008	Dem. Bob Casey, Jr./Bill Richardson Rep. Tommy Thompson/MIke Huckabee
2012 2015	Dem. Mark Udall/Joe Manchin Rep. Fred Thompson/MIchelle Bachmann Thompson dies in office. Bachman  becomes President. She selects  James Mattis for VP
2016	Dem. Andrew Cuomo/Barbar Boxer Rep. Michele Bachmann/James Mattis