User blog comment:Fegaxeyl/No US superpower - but how?/@comment-32656-20110801133146

Well, there being no Marshall Plan or Truman Doctrine isn't really all that possible. The Doctrine is easy to do, and he'd have still done it, and the Plan just wouldn't be as large in scale by any means. Call it a quarter of the otl numbers, at most, with most of its provisions not happening, and concentrated in the UK and Germany, with little elsewhere. Without the plan, there would have been a Depression again.

With a slight American recession, my best guess would be that instead of Americans being the richest, you'd have them about the same as the USSR. Given what the Soviets did otl, that'd mean they come out on top in the end.

Yeah, they were determined to not make the mistakes of WWI, in more ways than one. The GI Bill is the biggest of the plans they had - it gave unemployment, education, and very cheap loans to the returning soldiers for homes or starting businesses. Take out the loans, and at least curtail the education heavily - both went beyond the scope of the original intent of the bill - leaving just the unemployment, and the effects would be far-reaching. The unemployment stays as the original purpose was to prevent another "Bonus March" like in 1932 from occurring, and if you remove that there's a fair chance FDR may not get elected.

No loans mean no housing boom, more soldiers using the unemployment - otl, less than 20% of the money set aside for this was actually used, which would be different here - and that the cities remain crowded and filthy. No education means a shortage of educated labor, giving the USSR a large advantage in that area in the 60s and onward, more people using the unemployment, and the post-war education boom never happens. Without all of that, any "boom" will be delayed several years, and even then it won't be near the scale of otl.