What If? The Presidency of Henry Wallace.

[Glocksman]

What if FDR hadn't been forced to drop Henry Wallace from the ticket during the 1944 elections and Wallace became President upon FDR's death in April 1945?

Would Wallace have authorized use of the A-Bomb?

Wallace was known to have a positive outlook on the USSR.
Would a Wallace administration have avoided the Cold War?
Or would a Wallace administration have lost the Cold War by refusing to fight it?

What effect would Wallace's economic ideas have had on the US economy?

Would we be better off today if Wallace had stayed on the ticket or was it to America's benefit that he was forced off in 1944?

[Perinquus]

Thank God Wallace was dropped. He wouldn't have taken nearly as tough a line against the Russians as Truman did. His administration would have been shot through with Soviet spies, as Roosevelt's was - or even worse, as Wallace was even more pro-Soviet than Roosevelt was. His economic policies would have been much more socialistic, which would not have been good. But it is really his attitude toward the Soviets which would have been disastrous. He was simply far too trusting of them, and far too inclined to believe the best and discount the worst about them. Even Wallace himself, in later years, became disillusioned with the Soviets, as he found out just how much they were puppetmasters of his Progressive party, when he ran as a third party candidate in 1948.

Wallace was an absolutely classic example of the brilliant, but naive man. It would have been terribly bad for this country to have had such a man as president.

[Glocksman]

IIRC, the man (Harry Dexter White) that Wallace said he'd have picked for his SecTreas turned out to be a Soviet spy.