from a Quora = What If Henry Wallace had been kept as FDR's VP?

Brent Cooper
Trial and appellate counsel for Cooper & Scully (1993–present)Sun

What would America be like today if Henry Wallace had been chosen to
serve a second term as FDR's vice president instead of Truman?

Barkley, Wallace and Truman

The Roosevelt-Wallace ticket won the 1940 election,, and Wallace
continued to play an important role in the Roosevelt administration
before and during WWII.

At the 1944 Democratic National Convention, the conservative wing of the
Democratic Party defeated Henry Wallace's bid for renomination, placing
Truman on the Democratic ticket in his stead. The Roosevelt-Truman
ticket won the 1944 election, and in early 1945 Roosevelt appointed
Wallace as Secretary of Commerce as a consolation prize.

But what if Henry Wallace had been VP in 1944. Was the conservative wing
right? FDR died in April 1945 and Truman succeeded him as president.
Wallace did continue to serve as secretary of commerce until September
1946. Truman fired Wallace for giving an address in Madison Square
Garden attacking the Truman administration for excessive anti-Communist
zeal.

Wallace dismissed Truman's alarming statements about meeting the
communist threat as part of a “deliberately created crisis,”

At this time Truman fired him for delivering a speech urging
conciliatory policies toward the Soviets. Wallace and his supporters
then established the nationwide Progressive Party and launched a
third-party campaign for president.

The Progressive platform called for conciliatory policies toward the
Soviets and other left-wing policies. Accusations of Communist influence
followed, and Wallace's association with controversial Theosophist
figure Nicholas Roerich undermined his campaign; he received just 2.4%
of the popular vote.

Henry Wallace would have been a disaster. Potsdam would have been a
disaster. He would have been more sympathetic to the communists than FDR.

Wallace would have more receptive to Stalin’s expansion plans. He would
have opposed the Marshall Plan because of the impact on the Soviets.
Stalin would have taken much more of Europe. The Cold War would have
lasted much longer.

Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis has written that “there is Soviet
documentation that Wallace was regularly reporting to the Kremlin in
1945 and 1946 while he was in the Truman administration.”Later, when
Truman was considering a secret effort to approach the Soviets, his
effort was “blown wide open by Wallace when he was running for president
on the Progressive Party ticket” in 1948.

In 1952, Wallace wrote an article, “Why I Was Wrong,” in which he
declared that his earlier stance in defense of Soviet policies had been
mistaken. Too little too late. It was a good thing he was not the VP in
1944.

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2 comments

Armando Garza
· 2h ago
More proof that FDR is an overrated president

John Fitzgerald
· 13h ago
Thank you: that was very illuminating. I’m always delighted to learn
more about our recent history. Well done!