PONDERING the “what ifs” of history is a fascinating but quite pointless occupation; what has happened, has happened. We can however learn important insights from history if we examine why a particular event took place or why one particular policy was adopted rather than another.
 
Such speculation can help us avoid or attempt to avoid some of the worst pitfalls of the past when making policy today.
 
Despite the demise of the socialist bloc and with it the removal of the “communist threat,” the world finds itself in the throes of a new cold war that is morphing into a hot one, both in Ukraine and Palestine. Why do we appear to be repeating history? Below, I re-examine a historical moment when the world could have taken a very different trajectory.
 
With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the US faced the most severe economic decline in its history. The rapid rise in unemployment and poverty throughout the industrial and agricultural heartlands, together with a strengthening of left-wing and socialist forces, threatened the very existence of the capitalist system.
 
It was saved by the strongly interventionist policies of president Franklin D Roosevelt, aided by his able Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace.
 
For his third period in office, Roosevelt overcame strong opposition from conservative leaders in the Democratic Party to ensure that Wallace was nominated as vice-president at the 1940 Democratic Convention. It was a dream ticket, and they won the presidential race handsomely.
 
Wallace was one of those rare US politicians who was knowledgeable about a wide array of subjects, including home and international affairs, and was an expert in statistics and economics.
 
When Roosevelt first took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to stabilise the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. He had realised that only radical measures could solve the systemic crisis.
 
Against the wishes of big business, he immediately introduced measures to ameliorate the worst poverty and unemployment as well as providing generous government grants to fund social infrastructure projects. This became known as the New Deal.
 
Over the following eight years, his government instituted a series of projects and programmes aimed at restoring prosperity to the country. The New Deal did indeed fundamentally and permanently change the US federal government by expanding its size and scope — especially its role in the economy.
 
Roosevelt saved capitalism and prevented a potential revolution, but the capitalist class, despite gaining from these investment policies, was too dumb to recognise it. For them, Roosevelt and his advisers were simply crypto communists.
 
As secretary of agriculture under Roosevelt from 1933 to 1940, Wallace was largely responsible for the major shift in federal agricultural policy. During the ’30s, many US farmers, particularly the smaller and medium-sized ones, were plunged into poverty by falling prices, largely as a result of over-production.
 
As a result, there was also widespread unemployment in rural areas. Wallace used government money and supportive measures designed to curtail agricultural surpluses and to ameliorate rural poverty. He was one of the most radical members of Roosevelt’s cabinet.
 
British intelligence employed Roald Dahl (yes, that Roald Dahl) to spy on Wallace when the latter was posted to Washington DC in 1944.
 
In his pamphlet Our Job in the Pacific, Wallace had called for the emancipation of all colonial subjects. When Churchill and British government officials read his text they were incandescent and lobbied Roosevelt to part ways with his vice-president.
 
William Stephenson, head of MI6 in New York, wrote, “I regard Wallace as a menace and I took action to ensure that the White House was aware that the British government would view with concern Wallace’s appearance on the ticket at the 1944 presidential elections.” The rest of the world did not share Dahl’s and MI6’s view.
 
In March 1943, Wallace made a tour of Latin America and speaking in Spanish he electrified his audiences. In Costa Rica he addressed 655,000, when his plane landed in Chile he was greeted by 300,000 and similar welcomes were given in Peru and Ecuador.
 
His appeal to “the common man” and his anti-imperialist message won him many friends. “If the liberation of the people for which the fight is going on today with the blood of youth and the sweat of workers results in imperialism and oppression tomorrow, this terrible war will have been in vain,” he told them.
 
Wallace was no communist firebrand but a man of strong principle, progressive vision and commitment to social justice and emancipation. He advocated closer co-operation with the USSR, a strong UN and reduced spending on arms. He epitomised the “common man” philosophy of the New Deal Democrats.
 
Roosevelt was keen to keep him as his running mate as he was popular among working people and his progressive ideals would help steer the country through the rocky times ahead.
 
At the Democratic Convention in July 1944, in a Gallup poll of delegates, 65 per cent chose Henry Wallace as the vice-presidential nominee. His acclaim made it ever more urgent for his detractors to make their move.
 
That is how then barely known and colourless Harry Truman got his name on the ballot, even though he had been bottom of the list of nominees. However, as at most such party conventions, the party leaders and big business made sure that their candidate would win.
 
Wallace was far ahead in the initial balloting and the final nomination vote was about to be taken when the convention was adjourned on a pretext. Overnight, arms were twisted and deals done, so that by the next morning, Truman’s victory was in the bag.
 
Had the vote gone ahead before the adjournment there is no doubt Wallace would have been elected and as a consequence of Roosevelt’s untimely death the following year, would have become president during that key period at the end of the war which would decide post-war global structures.
 
There may have been no atomic bomb, no nuclear arms race and no cold war.
 
Roosevelt died in office in April 1945 and Truman succeeded him as president. On becoming president, Truman admitted that he was totally out of his depth: “It is a terrible responsibility,” he wrote, “and I am the last man fitted to handle it.”
 
He left education after completing high school, had little knowledge whatsoever about the world at large and, into the bargain, was a bigot, a dyed-in-the-wool racist and anti-semite.
 
Although Wallace was kept on as secretary of commerce, Truman sacked him in 1946 for delivering a speech urging conciliatory policies toward the USSR.
 
Wallace went on to found the Progressive Party whose platform called for detente with the USSR, desegregation of state schools, racial and gender equality, a national health insurance programme, and other progressive policies.
 
Wallace stood as its presidential nominee in 1948, receiving more than one million votes. Just as in Britain, the entrenched two-party system militates against third-party candidates and big business and its supine media servants made sure that Wallace didn’t stand a chance, despite his previous high popularity among ordinary voters. Today, he is sadly almost completely forgotten.