# If the Depression and WW2 never happened **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 25, 2013, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868 "2013-06-25T13:34:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/21 "2013-06-26T01:45:59Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > **Nemo** , the Model T was introduced in 1908. Cars were a product for the masses by 1929, with or without the GD/WW2. Not really. Ford did make cars cheaper but they were still considered luxuries not necessities. The majority of adult Americans did not own a car in the thirties (although admittedly this might have been different in a world where there was no depression). The war stopped public car production. It was after the war that owning a car became normal in America. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/22 "2013-06-26T01:50:30Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Most colonies were more of a hassle than they were worth, and decolonization would’ve still happened. > [@Bartman](#): > > I’m not so sure. In many ways the overseas colonies were more expensive to run than they returned to the mother countries. Empires were an expense - but they were also a resource. You can’t measure power solely in terms of money. A country spends money building an army and navy - but it becomes more powerful than a country that saves its money by not having a military. Same thing with colonies. Even if they cost money to administer, they give a country resources and manpower. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/23 "2013-06-26T04:10:15Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > TV, yes, it was a commercial product that had the existing radio networks pushing it forward. > > But I don’t know about cars as much. The war created a lot of industrial capacity for building military vehicles and that was there to be converted to automobile manufacturing after 1945. Without that wartime expansion, I think the automobile industry would have grown at a slower pace. Cars would have existed but they would have been more of a luxury product and less of a product for the masses. Also, no interstate system. Laissez-faire would continue to reign supreme for one. That is, until it didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/24 "2013-06-26T04:20:54Z")
Germany probably would be even stronger in Europe than it is to-day with the British retreating to their “Splendid Isolation” and France not experiencing the Thirty Glorious Years backed by the Marshall Plan. Anschluss may very still have occurred between a democratic Germany and Austria. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/25 "2013-06-26T04:38:53Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Also, no interstate system. Probably not. Most likely no suburbs either. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/26 "2013-06-26T04:45:22Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Anschluss may very still have occurred between a democratic Germany and Austria. Questionable in my opinion. Nationalism is always a strong force. There were some pan-Germans who put their “German” identity ahead of their Austrian nationality but they were never a majority. The pan-German minorities in Austria, the Sudentenland, Memel, and Danzig served mainly as an excuse for Hitler to take over. Without there being Nazis willing to march in, I don’t think we’d have seen a German expansion occurring just by a voting process. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/27 "2013-06-26T04:47:28Z")
Women may not have the role they have in the workplace today. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/28 "2013-06-26T06:48:35Z")
I wonder if India would have been made independent _earlier/_. The Government of Indian Act 1935 was a gradual progression of legislative reforms from 1919 to grant India more autonomy with a view towards Dominion status in the future. When WW2 broke out Churchill, who opposed Indian independence on principle, shut down that programme and debate citing the needs of the war. This ended up radicalising a lot of local Indian nationalist groups and uniting them into a few loud voices rather than lots of small voices. Perhaps independence would have taken place in the earlier 1940s, but much more on British terms, perhaps not two countries (India/Pakistan) but more discretion for the Princely States, and the British monarchy would remain Head of State. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/29 "2013-06-26T07:34:53Z")
Proxy wars between the US and USSR would have happened sooner, maybe 30s or 40s. The USSR would likely break up sooner. Oh yeah, judo would have been an Olympic sport 20 years sooner, in 1944. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/30 "2013-06-26T13:28:34Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > No welfare states in Europe or North America. I’m sorry, are you referring to public housing or to social safety nets? ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/31 "2013-06-26T14:19:02Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Women may not have the role they have in the workplace today. Also racial minorities. And homosexuals, ironically. San Francisco became a hotbed (so to speak) of activity in part because of the number of young men were stationed there during WWII. The future political scene would not have developed from such a position of strength. > [@Willcross](#): > > Does anyone think technology might have actually slowed? It seems that WWII and the following Cold War made huge advances in many fields due to the pressure of the war. > > Could things such as radar, nuclear tech (civilian and military uses), aviation, submarines, space science, have been delayed? Would other things have advanced in their place? Who knows, hard to tell I guess. Great question tho! All those would have been delayed, maybe never developed. Jet engines, synthetic rubber leading to polymer science, electronic computers, integrated circuits and the electronic revolution… ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/32 "2013-06-26T14:35:31Z")
The first nuclear war would be really messy. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/33 "2013-06-26T14:44:06Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > And homosexuals, ironically. San Francisco became a hotbed (so to speak) of activity in part because of the number of young men were stationed there during WWII. The story I heard was that soldiers and sailors who were court martialed were discharged at the nearest debarkation point in the United States. And for anyone serving in the Pacific theatre, that would almost always be San Francisco. During the war a lot of soldiers and sailors were discharged for homosexual activity. Many of them had no desire to return to their hometowns so they ended up staying in San Francisco. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/34 "2013-06-26T14:56:54Z")
There’d definitely be a lot more mainstream bigotry and anti-semitism. It’s staggering to see how respectable such views were perceived pre-war; it was Nazism that, ironically, made it become generally repugnant. ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/35 "2013-06-26T18:56:36Z")
Nazi policy also helped inspire modern medical ethics, including the right to informed consent. And they regularized the German language, on the way to making it the official language. One has to wonder what Ferdinand Porsche would have designed if not prompted to produce the VW Beetle… ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868/36 "2013-06-26T19:36:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Questionable in my opinion. Nationalism is always a strong force. There were some pan-Germans who put their “German” identity ahead of their Austrian nationality but they were never a majority. The pan-German minorities in Austria, the Sudentenland, Memel, and Danzig served mainly as an excuse for Hitler to take over. Without there being Nazis willing to march in, I don’t think we’d have seen a German expansion occurring just by a voting process. Well nationalism _was_ a strong force but it was oriented toward pan-German nationalism rather than patriotism toward whatever land the Germans inhabited. In the Sudetenland and Danzig at least, the local franchise of the Nazis dominated the German vote while Austria hadn’t yet developed a separate identity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-depression-and-ww2-never-happened/661868.md?page=1)