Aftermath of Robert Conroy's "1901"

[Rickdukulous Rex]

In 1901 by Robert Conroy the German Empire decides to enact one of their bolder war plans against the United States in well, the year 1901, in order to seize Cuba and the Philippines.

The novel has the Germans land on Long Island and seize Brooklyn before taking the rest of Manhattan and downstate New York as well as part of Connecticut before trench warfare sets in.

The Americans win the war in the end (spoiler) by cutting German supply lines with the Germans never managing to leave the pocket around New York City and reach Boston (their secondary goal). The book then has Germany fall to a military coup at the end that is basically Nazis 30 years early.

I'm interested in how the aftermath of the book would shake up, particularly the effect on the national character of the United States if the fantasy scenario of an enemy army on the East Coast actually happens. In the book the US under Teddy Roosevelt builds up a large army to drive out the Germans and I imagine being invaded will make the US decide to not dissolve this army as completely as we dissolved the Army of the Republic.

Would the US begin to become more bureaucratic earlier? Would the Progressive reforms take place with greater ferocity in response to the pressures of war? Would the US end up interventionist at an earlier date?

 

[Polish Eagle]

It's been years since I read the book, so some of my points may have actually been addressed in the text.

First off, the German-American minority is going to suffer badly, as will any Irish-Americans who are too obviously sympathetic to Germany over Britain (which, in the end, was de-facto a US ally). You may even see laws against speaking German or printing German books in the US (obviously unconstitutional, but the courts upheld morally worse things IOTL).

Despite the author's remark about making Jews into a scapegoat for the German defeat, I actually don't think that's likely. Antisemitism wasn't a huge factor in German politics at this time, and if anything the loss to America and Britain (which were producing a great deal of the racist literature that formed Nazi ideas) might sour the Germans on anything like OTL "Aryan race" thinking. Also, a big part of Nazi antisemitism was imported White Muscovite ideas--which isn't happening ITTL. Not to mention that the natural ally for a Germany aligned against the English-speaking world is the Tsar, if the post-imperial Germans can patch things up. You'd more likely see an attempt to revive the League of the Three Emperors, minus the German Emperor. Though since the alliance between Petrograd and Paris was set up by this point, I'm not sure Germany could insert itself back into the Tsar's good graces. Though if the Russo-Japanese War happens as IOTL...maybe?

It is likely that the US formally signs a treaty of alliance with Britain. TR already had an Anglophile foreign policy IOTL, and the events of TTL will cement that tendency.

 

[Dave Howery]

I wonder if the biggest affect might not be on how the rest of the world sees the USA. I've always had a vague idea that before WW2, the USA was regarded overseas as 'rich, but insular and not all that powerful or important'. Now, the USA has just defeated a major power, has one of the bigger fleets around (although still a distant second to the RN), and is about to build the Panama Canal.