A Historian Reacts - What if Theodore Roosevelt won the 1912 election? (WhatIfAltHist)

welcome back everybody to another reaction video well this is one that i regularly have requested and this is what if alt histories what if teddy roosevelt won the 1912 election so i have not watched this video yet i'm very interested to see uh what direction he takes these the ones that i've watched of his in the past have all been pretty solid uh you can tell he's done his research that he knows what he's talking about obviously all of this is subject to one's opinion nobody knows for sure what would have happened but i'm very curious to see because throughout history theodore roosevelt is one of those rare presidents who is pretty much universally lauded by both republicans and democrats today as having been a great president uh he is in a stretch of pretty bad presidents actually uh and comes along and is consistently ranked in uh usually in the top five almost always in the top ten of our greatest presidents of all time depending on the the poll or the survey that you look at but theodore roosevelt also our youngest person to ever serve as president of the united states not the youngest elected but the youngest to ever serve a fascinating story we've talked some about his story before there is a movie in the works with leonardo dicaprio planning to take on the role of theodore roosevelt i'm not sure how i feel about him for the choice but uh i have found myself questioning choices of actors for roles before and they've done brilliantly so i won't question it until i see it i'm fascinated to look at it and hope that they cover a lot of his story but we're going to dive right into this and i'll uh try to offer my comments as we go along don't forget to hit that like button the link is in the description to the original content creator please check them out give them a like and a subscribe as well let's see what they have to say this man is teddy roosevelt he is without hyperbole possibly the greatest american that has ever lived he was a historian philosopher hunter traveler cowboy and president he was republican president of america from 1901 to 1909. his presidency was a great one known for the rise of america to world power the creation of the national park service and the destruction of the monopolies that controlled and were strangling the american economy he left the presidency for a term but then ran for re-election in 1912. he lost to this man woodrow wilson one of the most famous presidents today he was a southern history professor and ex-president of princeton college in new jersey so let's talk for a second about theodore roosevelt some of you have seen my other videos so i apologize if this is rehashing some of that information but if you're new to the channel first of all welcome second of all um just a little bit of background on theodore roosevelt theodore roosevelt was born in the 1850s he's actually one of his earliest memories is seeing abraham lincoln's funeral procession down his road in new york city when it came to new york city in fact there's a famous photograph of the funeral procession heading down i don't know what street it was in new york city but there's a picture that shows two little boys in a window and that's theodore roosevelt and his brother the brother being the father of uh eventual first lady um eleanor roosevelt who was theodore's niece but uh theo roosevelt's fascinating backstory incredible history it like i said it's worth watching but his rise to the presidency is pretty quick actually he's a new york state assemblyman for a while uh he is i think like assistant secretary to the navy uh when the spanish-american war breaks out he leaves that post to uh raise a a company or a regiment of volunteer soldiers known as the rough riders he leads them in cuba eventually many years after his his death he is awarded the medal of honor uh for his performance at san juan hill he comes home as a war hero runs for and is elected governor of new york shortly after he's elected governor of new york uh president mckinley's running for a second term his vice president had died in office so they need a new one and uh the republicans who really don't like theodore roosevelt he's kind of annoying to them and they just want to put him somewhere where he'll be quiet not a problem they decide the vice presidency is a good place to put him so that's where they end up putting him not expecting that a few months into mckinley's second term he'll be assassinated and theodore roosevelt will be elected president he hated being called teddy he preferred tr or theodore he is the inspiration for the teddy bear there's a story behind that as well there's a whole lot more to his story that we won't get into today uh but yeah uh his decision to run for a third term really only a second elected term in 1912 against his former protege william howard taft splits the republican vote and allows for the election of woodrow wilson it took america an almost geometrically opposite direction from that teddy roosevelt planned this election may not seem important but in hindsight it would have completely changed the direction of history so what if teddy roosevelt won the 1912 election believe me things will change to understand why roosevelt lost we need to understand the american politics of the time the two main parties of the time the republicans and democrats are the same as today but at completely different political stances and regional power bases the republicans are mainly the party of northern protestants while the democrats are mainly the party of southerners and catholics however northern protestants outnumbered both of these groups to the extent that the republicans won almost every election and completely dominated american politics from the end of the civil war in 1865 to 1912 there was only one democrat president besides the grover cleveland woodrow wilson it's fair to say too that it's not just that simple it never is that simple that's a that's a pretty fair generalization of the situation but it is certainly a little more complex than that as all things are uh you know it's not just simply northern protestants you can see very strong republican base in eastern tennessee but that goes back all the way to the american civil war when eastern tennessee was very pro-union at a time when the rest of the south was not you can see southeastern kentucky's very fro are very pro-republican you can see obviously south carolina incredibly democratic more than anywhere else parts of louisiana and texas but by and large that was true this one was the first democratic president since before the civil war today america has a primary system by which the party candidate is chosen by an election among the people this wasn't always the case at the time the party elite simply made backdoor deals to pick their favorite candidate in 1912 teddy roosevelt wasn't the darling of the republican party taft was roosevelt disliking taft ran his own side campaign inside the republican party to make the republican party pick him instead and again it wasn't quite as simple as just saying he disliked taft taft was actually his hand-picked successor tas from ohio comes from a very powerful political family that's pretty much you know almost right up there with like the kennedys or the bushes and things like that taft uh multiple generations of tafts in state and national government just as recently as 15 20 years ago we had a taft who was governor of ohio not a very good one not very popular but he was governor um so william howard taft is his hand pick successor but he takes the republican party in a much more traditional direction which is not the way that theodore roosevelt wanted it to go and so roosevelt kind of turns on him and runs against him for the republican nomination in 1912 but doesn't get it and that's when he splits off and runs as a third-party candidate he was much more popular than taft however the party elite still picks taft roosevelt then founded his own party the progressives or as everyone actually calls them the bull moose party because teddy said they'd be as powerful as a bull moose this had the effect of splitting the republican party with half going to teddy and the other half to taft this allowed woodrow wilson as the democrat to emerge as a plurality leader even though he only had 42 percent of the vote and you know there are other elections in history where this has happened abraham lincoln's election is an example of this now now lincoln's isn't quite that simple because if you look at the the straight math he still would have had the votes even if all the democrats had voted for one candidate lincoln still would have won a narrow victory but it's not quite as simple as that because you could argue that the campaign is completely different and we don't don't know what would have happened if it had been one republican versus one democrat instead of four different candidates running bill clinton running with a strong center right ross perot seemingly siphoning off votes from george h.w bush some people will argue that wasn't the case but you know bill clinton wins with like a a percentage of vote in the low 40s lincoln was around 40 same kind of thing however if the republican elite picked teddy roosevelt they would have won the election as said before the republicans were practically destined to win every election and teddy roosevelt was universally loved northerners made up the vast majority of americans would have had trouble supporting such a flaming southerner as woodrow wilson with the civil war still in living memory and this is the map i got by combining the election votes for taft and teddy roosevelt in red for your information kentucky and maryland were very close being within points two of either party winning so they could go either way teddy roosevelt ran mainly off a progressive agenda this included improved workers rights universal suffrage for women more social welfare programs and strangely the building of infrastructure and tapping of alaskan resources so this is pretty interesting because you know for example everybody remembers that woodrow wilson is the president under whom women's suffrage takes place it's during his administration that women get the right to vote but theodore roosevelt was also in favor of women's suffrage so that was going to happen regardless of which one of those two men was in office and theodore roosevelt is also incredibly um strong on the stance of uh preserving our natural resources uh national parks that sort of thing and yet he wanted to tap the resources of alaska so it kind of goes a little bit against the view that people have of theodore roosevelt with the republican party in charge of congress we can assume that this agenda would be passed however teddy was on the radical wing of the republican party and so he can't assume that the centrists in his party would completely support his agenda also no president with the exception of polk has been able to keep all of their campaign promises both of these mean that we should assume a more moderate version of teddy's policies would be the ones that would be passed and you know that's one of those things that's always the case presidents people running for president can make promises and they can fully intend to keep those promises but there's a difference between what you say when you're not in office and what happens when you actually get in there and you have to face congress and you have to deal with finding out information and changing circumstances you weren't aware of when you were an outsider running so it should be expected that things are gonna have to change there were several things that the wilson administration did that would not happen in this timeline wilson was horrifically racist meaning his presidency resulted in the expulsion of workers of color in the u.s government and the segregation of the us military he also gave power to the racist kkk types in the south by giving them a free hands and encouragement correct me if i'm wrong on this but the u.s military had already been segregated and remained segregated until after world war ii right around the time of the korean war i believe it was truman who desegregated the us military it hadn't been desegregated since going all the way back to the beginning of the revolutionary war um so maybe there's something i'm not aware of that i'm missing but i'm fairly certain that uh black and white enlisted soldiers did not serve in units together the wilson administration saw a massive revival and height of the kkk this had the effect of worsening racial relations for a very long time and it should be noted too that the clan was not simply a racist organization a lot of the clan activity during wilson's administration was actually directed toward immigrants catholics for example i hear where i live uh nearby in the city of niles ohio there was a big nationally published uh publicized clan rally that took place in the early 1920s and it was primarily directed toward catholics teddy roosevelt meanwhile had a more of a white man's burden look where he believed that blacks would gradually be given equality to whites and blacks should follow the example of whites to reach civilization the wilson administration also saw the growth of the central federal government and especially the president today the president is the central figure of american politics just look at how much tv time donald trump gets however this wasn't always the case and only over the 20th century did the president gain this sort of godlike status the wilson administration was the first to do this expansion of presidential power in this vein he believed that it was the right of the president to be able to exceed constitutional power and there were other things that happened and maybe he'll get into some of this during the wilson administration the the passing of uh a constitutional amendment that allows for a direct income tax which was something new there's also the direct election of senators which is brand new up until that point in history u.s senators two from each state if you're not familiar with how that works each state gets two senators uh we're selected usually by the state legislature it wasn't really something that was done by voting statewide like you have today this led to the growth of the federal power that has been happening ever since being so under regulation meant teddy roosevelt also stood for federal power but he was far more conventional as approach and didn't believe federal power should exist just for its own sake with better communications and tv it seems inevitable that the president and central power would become more powerful over american history but maybe less so than an hour timeline and it's actually theodore roosevelt who talks about that concept of the president having a voice that gives him a certain power that other people other politicians don't have he called it the bully pulpit in other words you know take advantage of your position and your perceived authority and use that use your voice in that situation to push your agenda fine this election is primarily important though because it was the one in which world war one took place and as all my fans know world war one was of course the climax of all history or at least that's the way it appears from all the emphasis i give to it on this show a big difference comes from roosevelt and wilson's approaches to geopolitics roosevelt saw geopolitics as an enormous contest between nations with inherently different self-interests pitted against each other he thought the quote-unquote civilized nations should have enormous militaries to spread civilization and protect it from barbarism he felt that america needed an enormous navy to control the oceans that surrounded america in order to protect it from outside powers he thought that it was america's duty to manage the balance of power for its favor but also for the greater benefit of western civilization an arsenal of democracy if you will woodrow wilson had a very different view he actually had two almost diametrically opposed geopolitical views at the same time firstly he believed in national self-determination which meant that every ethnic group should have its own nation which would be able to manage its own affairs without interference from outside nations this was kind of revolutionary in the age of rampant colonialism being the horrific racist he was however meant that he thought this should only be applied to white nations the second was the need to make the world safe for democracy this meant that the u.s should interfere in foreign politics and hope of spreading democracy in the american political system america should invade other countries to change their unjust political systems us foreign policy should be dictated by morals not geopolitical interests he also felt that an international union or league of nations should be created to manage peace and extend democracy and wilson had kind of a messiah complex he kind of viewed himself as the the guy who could make all of this happen the guy who was going to bring peace to the world who was going to provide these wonderful things for all of these poor people around the world who who needed a benevolent benevolent leader like him to usher in this wonderful vision for them this created a strangely dualistic foreign policy approach to woodrow wilson on one hand wilson kept america out of world war one until towards the end due to the self-determination of the powers involved also after the war the u.s tried to negotiate for the creation of all sorts of small ethnic states like lithuania yugoslavia and czechoslovakia he also invaded lots of countries to help make them become safe for democracy during the wilson administration the us invaded haiti the dominican republic and mexico he also mounted a failed attack on northern russia to slow communism teddy roosevelt would have a very different view he would stick out of the caribbean nations not seeing as part of america's strategic interests at the time however he would get involved in world war one earlier so it's interesting because the us look into the caribbean it was not a new concept uh you know during the american civil war there was a lot of talk that if the south were to win that they would look to expand into the caribbean expand into mexico central america etc and spread slavery and kind of spread their own ideas that way when ulysses s grant is president of the united states he uh seriously considered trying to buy what is today the dominican republic had the deal in place with the people on the ground in the dominican republic but couldn't get congressional approval to make it happen um so that it's always been an area that the u.s kind of had its eyes on in our timeline teddy roosevelt wanted to get involved in the war years before the us did in our timeline he wanted to bring peace by making the odds so against germany that they would sign a peace treaty teddy roosevelt by this point would be so popular that he could drag the us into the war he would use the sinking of the lusitania as an excuse to enter the war in 1915 or 16. instead of the zimmermann telegram in 17 he would actually try to trump it out as a fight for peace and civilization and that's all that's all plausible because uh by 1916 by the time the lusitania even before things like the zimmerman telegram there uh there was significant anti-german sentiment in the u.s there's also a very significant portion of people that were pro-german u.s has a huge german population a lot of people myself included my wife included most people in northeast ohio and other parts of the country have significant german roots but i think he would have had the support to go forward with war especially with unrestricted submarine warfare happening things of that nature i'm assuming as the republican pick he would win the 1916 election thus extending his term of office to 1920 also no us president has ever lost a re-election during a war now this will be interesting because theodore roosevelt actually dies in 1919 historically so in that situation he would have died before the end of that term assuming he still would have died if he had been president u.s entrance of the war would result in a very different war in our timeline the germans knew they couldn't win a protracted war against the united states even after they beat russia this is why they launched the martin offensive to wipe out the antanto where the americans could fully get their gears going in this timeline the germans would be fighting a two-front war simultaneously against the twin behemoths of russia and the east in america and the west and would have simply given up roosevelt wanting to maintain the balance of power in europe thus keeping all the european nations strong would not want to germany with a year more or less of war the populations of europe would not be as bitter and thus not demand as draconian a treaty against the germans it would be like the congress of vienna after the napoleonic wars which didn't france because the signers knew that a stable france was what was needed for a stable europe with such a peace the germans would not feel so terrible about making peace not thinking it would destroy the german race in our timeline the americans pulled out of the versailles treaty with the republicans not supporting it and wilson in a coma this left the treaty to basically only britain and france both of which were horribly bitter against germany this resulted in a punitive treaty and that's a good point the the lack of a stronger influence by the united states on the treaty of versailles definitely has an impact on that and he's right too that the length of the war and the bloodshed in 1917 1918 certainly would have pushed britain and france further toward being more punitive uh so i i can accept his uh his theory that a treaty in this situation would not be as punitive on germany and therefore do we not get a world war ii it's quite possible in this timeline with the united states having an enormous army in europe and a force for moderation the treaty would be more lacks it would likely involve the return of alsace lorraine to france the parceling out of the colonies to britain and france and the giving of german poland to russia there would be far fewer reparations and likely no war guilt clause the kaiser would remain in power without the weimar republic being shoved down the german people's throats the austrian empire being a collection of habsburg marriages more than a real country would have gotten a worse deal the serbs deadly get the entirety of ethnic serb bosnian lands and romania would actually be extended to conquer transylvania hungary slovakia and bohemia austria croatia might even be split into two different countries the ottomans not having really lost much land at this point of the war and being peripheral to europe's worldview had come out more intact i might disagree with him there because even before the great war takes place the ottoman empire is in a steep decline they had lost the balkan wars and um you know i think i think even if it doesn't happen right away within a decade or so the ottoman empire probably falls apart anyway if the austro-hungarian empire doesn't stay together i don't see the ottoman empire doing so maybe with an area like southern mesopotamia or arabia being split off but mainly doing fine finished revolution in russia with the war ending earlier and with less blood the battlefield humiliations in home front pain never would have been bad enough for russia to have the communist revolution in october however the february constitutional republic revolution might still have happened because it was earlier but in general the tsars would still be in power russia would be in much better shape economically in this timeline in our timeline the communists forced marched russia into heavy industry while sacrificing everything else they destroyed the strong agricultural base needed to create an industrial society by killing the prosperous peasants or kulaks and also destroying personal initiative by killing the kulaks they sidelined every other industry besides heavy industry and left the russian economy a skeleton that couldn't stand up as a real economy before the war the tsars were industrializing fairly rapidly the tsars didn't really interfere in the economy much and wouldn't have killed millions of peasants russia would have actually had a well-rounded economy and become a rapid growing economy approaching first world status now i'll confess i don't know quite enough about russia at this time other than what was happening in the civil war and with the czars to be able to judge uh his comments on the economy so i probably will just stay out of that but i would be curious some of you who are much more familiar with that would love to hear your thoughts on what he's saying there about the direction that russia goes uh in the event that the czar is not overthrown because the war ends earlier and they don't end up getting out of it like the way china is now in our timeline also hitler never would have risen to power the nazis were created in the myth of the stab in the back theory in which germany would have won the war but was stabbed in the back by fill-in-the-blank evil minority if the peace treaty wasn't so terrible the war never would have made germany so bitter and if the germans lost so roundly they never could have pretended they could have won there would be no world war ii as we knew it in our timeline with a fanatical nazi germany trying to regain its glory and conquer the world i'm not sure if there would be a war though maybe an industrialized behemoth russia would invade west in the 1950s or germany would try for another rematch this time under the kaiser i just don't know i i think it's fair to say there would have been something that would have happened because uh with the growth of world powers something was going to go down but we just don't know what it was but it's it's definitely fair to say that in this timeline there's not going to be a world war ii as we know it because for all the reasons that he already mentioned in our timeline american foreign policy has been built off wilson's ideas not roosevelt's this would be different in this timeline the u.s will look back on how well world war one turned out and decided to mediate the world system in our timeline the u.s with an inherently moral outlook was horrified the cynicism of europe after the war thus setting up for the horrors of world war ii also eight more years of roosevelt's gargantuan naval growth would turn the u.s into a naval power we never would have seen the league of nations which is created by woodrow wilson roosevelt would have seen such an organization as useless and naive and it's kind of fascinating if you think about it in our real timeline that uh woodrow wilson's kind of the the one who wants the league of nations and then the united states never joins it because the uh treaty was never ratified by the u.s senate um also just kind of as an aside speaking of world war one remember that much more personal for theodore roosevelt his son quentin was killed in world war one uh quentin was a fighter pilot was shot down in 1918 after the war he had been buried in one of the world war one cemeteries there after uh theodore roosevelt jr who was a division commander at the time of his death dies in july of 1944 and he was buried in the normandy american cemetery they actually exhumed quentin and buried him next to his brother so i think he may be the only world war one casualty that's buried in the normandy world war ii american cemetery and this would mean there'd be no united nations either the successful descendant of the league of nations also they're likely to be no european union which is a similar federation of nations likely based off the league of nations that the u.s helped create in europe we would still see the rise of japan being mainly unrelated to events in europe the us taking up the role of policing the pacific would inevitably come into conflict with the japanese but if in this timeline the u.s has a much more powerful navy than it does you would think that would be a deterrent to japan attacking like at pearl harbor um because japan already recognized that they were outgunned by the us and if the u.s navy is that much more powerful they probably just don't even attempt to go there the u.s is seer size would mean that it could beat the japanese in this war thus giving it a pacific seer of influence maybe without the german threat in the west the russians would also divide up the japanese empire with the americans communist movement worldwide without russian support for example the us would easily crush the communist cuban rebels or the nationalists would win the chinese civil war with a shorter world war one and no world war ii the european colonial powers would never have run out of energy and so europe would maintain their colonial empires the world today would still be very colonial the us would maintain a sphere of influence across the pacific and latin america while the european powers and russians would maintain their colonial empire not sure how i feel about his view on now we're getting a little further out obviously so you know the further away you get from these events into the future the more the theories can diverge from one another so cut them some slack on that but i think i disagree on the idea that colonialism would still exist in some form i think that was going to go regardless without world war one being so horrifying without world war ii europe never would have lost faith in its civilization since world war ii traditional european civilization belief in progress than religion collapsed this would have never happened in this timeline having countless cultural and religious side effects what if i'll test thank you for watching after last timeline being so grim it felt like you guys deserved a happier one well that was pretty interesting uh that's actually a really fascinating thing to ponder uh how differently the world could have been with something as simple as the party bosses of the republican party choosing a different nominee in 1912. how different the world could have looked now one could also argue that you know what we can't see is that as bad as things like world war ii were it could have actually been much worse because maybe we avoided what could have even been an absolutely more devastating war i don't know but at least on the surface it's pretty fascinating to think about let me know what you think about all that use the comment section below don't forget to hit that like button and uh be watching um if you if you haven't already turn on your notifications if you're a subscriber uh just turn on all notifications it's right there next to the subscribe button because i will be posting an announcement about a live stream probably for tomorrow uh as we are this close to 100 000 subscribers and i if at all possible if the time of day works and it will probably be sometime tomorrow night i'm guessing i want to be live streaming when we hit 100 000 subscribers so thank you in advance hopefully we'll see you there

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 113,695

Keywords: alternate history, the election that ruined everything, what if roosevelt served three terms, historian reacts, theodore roosevelt biography, alternative history, president roosevelt, 1912 election, alternate history hub, alternate history of the world, what if

Id: RABib7E71cA

Length: 30min 15sec (1815 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021