For All Time Pt. 3

For All Time Pt 3
January-February 1942

-In OTL, early 1942 saw the openings of the first joint Anglo-American economic committees the Combined Raw Materials Board, the Munitions Assignments Board, and the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board, with their goal as coordinating the economic and industrial policies of the Allies. In OTL, they were reasonably efficient and worthwhile...but that was under Roosevelt.

Henry Wallace neither likes nor trusts the British Empire in general and Winston Churchill in particular. While he reluctantly agrees some sort of economic cooperation is needed between the Great Powers, he'd like to have someone on the committee besides Great Britain; and when his lobbying efforts to Stalin fail, he settles for making sure the cooperation is done his way.

Instead of the various boards, policy and planning will be made by the Combined Industrial Board, and its various subcommittees; and Wallace knows just the man to run the American side of things. While the former director of the Securities and Exchange Commission is far to the right of Wallace, he is a self-made millionaire, like the new President, and also shares with him a strong suspicion of the British Empire. Plus, he has extensive experience as the former Ambassador to Great Britain.

-Early 1942 also saw the beginnings of South America turning away from the Axis; the governments of Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay all broke off diplomatic and economic relations with the Axis powers during January and February, after the US (and Secretary of State Cordell Hull) helped show them what a good idea it was.

Henry Wallace, however, with his extensive interest in South America, calls in the foreign ministers of nearly every nation on the continent (consulting but ignoring Hull, who he regards as a bigoted old fossil) and strongly invites them to go one step further, to declare war on the Axis powers.

Many demur, at first, after all, all their countries have a significant rightist political element (many are governed by right-wing governments, especially Vargas in Brazil), and their governments will look like lapdogs if they declare war because Wallace cracks the whip.

Wallace is a businessman, though, and knows how to negotiate with inferiors; he offers them something of a national bribe, lots and lots of Lend-Lease aid, to make up for the economic disruption caused by the loss of German trade.

Argentina is the first to withdraw, President Ramón S. Castillo knows full well he will be overthrown if he turns his back on neutrality, and frankly, he'd rather not be overthrown. Wallace continues to stubbornly insist that every nation involved in the secret talks must declare war, or they'll all look weak, finally going to so far as to make intimations of "cleaning house in the Americas" to Castillo's representative.

Castillo, whose government is on shaky ground back home, realizes the enormous opportunity Wallace has handed him, and has his government release word of much of the negotiations publicly, in mid-February, just as Bolivia is breaking diplomatic relations with Germany.

Riots sweep the capitol cities of South America save Buenos Aires. All of the governments involved in the Wallace negotiations survive, barely, but they all withdraw angrily. There will be no South American economic cooperation with the United States, no post-war trend toward democratization, at least for the moment, and détente is dead. Castillo, with his new, solid power base, takes the opportunity to purge an ambitious young colonel named Juan Perón.

Cordell Hull comes near to resigning; in two months Wallace has undone almost a decade of his life's work, and Wallace looks, perhaps unfairly, like an idiot, more so after he continues to insist he was right all along.

Meanwhile, on the domestic scene...

-Wallace has submitted his Second New Deal plan to Congress, detailing the Board of Race Relations, the nationalization of war industries, the Food For Victory Commission, and the significantly increased funding for civilian New Deal programs. He could probably get away with creating many programs by executive order, but he wants his Hundred Days, he wants to show America that he's as good as FDR when it comes to handling Congress.

-Unfortunately, he's not. Wallace doesn't even bother to negotiate with Congressional leaders; he calls up Sam Rayburn and Alben Barkley, champions of the New Deal in Congress, Speaker and Senate Majority Leader respectively, and tell them to vote for the bill, and get others to vote for it too, the whole package.

They point out that while some parts of the bills are good ideas, many are pink as a salmon, and that's just not good. For that matter, very, very few Southern Congressmen and Senators are going to vote for anything called the "Board of Race Relations" when it's to be run by a noted, err...leftist like Harry Dexter White.

Wallace says, "Well, make them! That's your job, isn't it?" and hangs up, muttering about professional politicians...

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