| Cactus Jack's War
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
August 2013
"The vice presidency," John Nance Garner supposedly told Lyndon Johnson on the eve of the 1960 presidential campaign, "ain't worth a bucket of warm piss."
Johnson ignored his fellow Texan's advice and served as John F. Kennedy's vice president before stepping up to the White House following Kennedy's assassination. Garner — Franklin Roosevelt's running mate in 1932 and 1936 — nearly bypassed the vice-presidency altogether.
A self-taught lawyer from Uvalde, Texas, "Cactus Jack" Garner was the powerful Speaker of the House when Roosevelt tapped him as his running mate. The Roosevelt-Garner ticket crushed the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, in the November 1932 election. But under the laws then in force, the two would not take office until March 1933. Many saw the four-month wait as an anachronism, and in March 1932 the 20th Amendment had been introduced to move Inauguration Day to 20 January, starting in 1937. Ratified on 23 January 1933, the amendment also stated that if the president-elect were to die before assuming office, the vice-president-elect would step into his or her place and would be inaugurated. That section took effect immediately.
Twenty-three days later it almost came into use. During a visit by Roosevelt to Miami's Bayfront Park, a 5-foot-tall Italian immigrant named Giuseppe Zangara climbed onto a wooden chair, pulled out a pistol and opened fire.
His first shot hit one of the dignitaries preparing to greet Roosevelt, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Immediately assaulted by purse-wielding Miami housewife Lillian Cross, Zangara's next four shots went wild and hit four other people. Cross and a local carpenter, Thomas Armour, then beat Zangara senseless while the crowd cheered them on.
Roosevelt shook off the Secret Service agents trying to push him back into his car, instead going to his knees to cradle Cermak's head and insisting that the stricken mayor be loaded aboard first. "Don't move, Tony," Roosevelt told him over and over. "I'm glad it was me instead of you," Cermak replied. "Be quiet, Tony," the president-elect answered.
Cermak died after several days of agony. Zangara, a registered Republican, spouted a lot of pseudo-anarchist rhetoric but seems to have been driven mostly by the immense pain of a long-untreated stomach ulcer. Conspiracy theorists — led by radio personality Walter Winchell, who was in Miami for Roosevelt's visit — immediately claimed Cermak had been the intended target all along, and that Zangara carried out the hit on behalf of Chicago gangsters. Zangara himself proclaimed his intent to kill Roosevelt and all other kings and presidents, and expressed no remorse over his shooting of any of the bystanders.
Had Zangara successfully assassinated Roosevelt — a very real possibility had Lillian Cross not leapt to the attack — it would have been Cactus Jack taking the oath of office 17 days later. And history would have been far different. Garner, a conservative of the same stripe that would be labeled "Dixiecrat" a generation later, opposed Roosevelt's deficit spending to the extent that he would challenge his boss for the 1940 Democratic nomination. Garner also disapproved of Roosevelt's staunch opposition to Adolf Hitler, believing that European problems required European solutions.
A Garner administration would have clung to balanced budgets. Without FDR's New Deal programs, the Great Depression could easily have caused even greater economic distress, and lasted much longer. The military spending that helped ease the crisis would not have taken place under the leadership of the isolationist Garner.
Could Zangara's bullets in 1933 have led to a Nazi victory a decade later? Without Roosevelt's powerful presence and immense personal energy, there would have been no Lend-Lease, no Two-Ocean Navy, and no Armed Neutrality. Roosevelt's repudiation of George Washington's unofficial two-term limit deeply offended Cactus Jack, and so a third term would have been unlikely. But almost every serious contender in 1940 — the Democrats Cordell Hull or Harry Hines Woodring, or the Republicans Thomas Dewey or Robert Taft — were isolationists as well. Only the dark horse Republican Wendell Willkie backed giving Britain "all aid short of war."
The Cactus Jack Variant
Charles Ward of South Carolina proposed a Third Reich variant putting Hugh Drum in charge of pre-war military planning, which would have shunted aside leaders like George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton. I'm not sure that would show up at the scale of Third Reich, but it did make me ponder what circumstances would have led Roosevelt to appoint the insufferable Drum to such a position. There were none, I finally decided — but President Garner might have seen things differently. Our Third Reich game allows us to explore the potential effects of Zangara's botched assassination. The effects on American power are extreme.
Absent Roosevelt's strong support, the U.S. Navy would have been far smaller and much less modern. None of the three Yorktown-class aircraft carriers built in the late 1930s would have been present in December 1941, nor would the five Essex-class ships then under construction. All 10 of the American fast battleships had been laid down by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack; none of these would have been built by a Garner administration. The U.S. Navy would consist of two large carriers and one small one, and a nucleus of 15 badly maintained battleships dating to the dreadnought era. The U.S. Marines would remain a small force tasked with shipboard security and base defense.
Air forces would be similarly truncated, without the research and development efforts pushed by Roosevelt and the ready market presented by foreign sales. Ground forces likewise would be even further behind in tank development, and innovative thinkers like Marshall would probably have taken a back seat to conservative seniors like Drum. With Drum in Marshall's chair as chief of staff, cavalry would have continued to have a role in American military thinking: though Drum deployed both tanks and paratroopers in his successful command of the 1941 Carolina Maneuvers, he spearheaded his attack with his horse soldiers. Such conservative thinking, combined with lagging industrial production, would probably mean the U.S. Army would not have gone to war lavishly equipped with trucks and other vehicles, as it did in reality.
There would be no aid to other countries while the United States remained at peace. The U.S. may not transfer BRPs while at peace (14.94). Remove the "America Joins" political marker from play, and remove two of the "Pearl Harbor" markers normally added to the political marker container in Spring 1942.
In Third Reich's 1939 Campaign Scenario, change the American starting position to the following:
UNITED STATES
Starting BRP Base: 120
Growth Rate: 40%
Controlled territory: None
Allies: None.
Diplomacy: The United States is at peace with all.
Units at Start
United States box:
1 x 0-3 HQ
6 x 3-3 INF
2 x 2-4 CAV
2 x 3-5 ARM
1 x 5-4 TAC
1 x 5-8 SAC
1 x 2 CV
3 x 9 SURF
1 x 2 LC
1942 Force Pool Additions:
4 x 3-3 INF
2 x 3-5 ARM
1 x 5-4 TAC
1 x 5-8 SAC
1 x 9 SURF
1 x 2 LC
1943 Additions:
3 x 3-3 INF
1 x 5-8 SAC
1 x 2 CV
1944 Additions:
1 x 3-3 INF
With American BRPs failing to flow to the Allies, and with the United States both weakened and less likely to enter the war, the British and Soviet players will have a much tougher time containing the Axis war machine.
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