5 Unfought Wars That Would Have Changed Everything

5 MacArthur's Nuclear War

Depending on who you ask, General Douglas MacArthur was either one of the greatest heroes or greatest assholes in American history. After becoming generalissimo of the army during WWII, he was given the honor of heading up all UN forces when North Korea invaded South Korea in June of 1950. By mid-September MacArthur and his UN troops recaptured South Korea, but it was only a matter of weeks before MacArthur decided he might as well shimmy on over to North Korea while they were in the neighborhood.

Naturally, the Chinese got pissed over this charge into communist territory, and answered back with some troops of their own. At this point, the conflict was forced into a stalemate, not unlike the stalemate MacArthur and President Truman were enjoying over who exactly was in control of the United States Army. Especially after the Joint Chiefs of Staff convened to authorize MacArthur the ability to use nuclear weapons against Chinese targets without presidential approval.

Mac was poised to drop 30 to 50 atomic bombs on the country, including "the mainland cities of China," whether Truman liked it or not.

What Stopped It:

Truman grew a pair and fired him.

When Truman met MacArthur in 1950, the general refused to salute the Commander-in-Chief. That should have tipped him off as to who he was dealing with. When Truman told him to shut the hell up about nukes, MacArthur rallied the Joint Chiefs of Staff against him. Truman had a rogue general on his hands.

As if these private acts of insubordination weren't enough, pretty soon the story broke that MacArthur had sent a letter critical of the President's war policy to the Speaker of the House and the press the same day that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were meeting to give him nuke power. By April, 1951, Truman had had enough and he fired MacArthur's ass. No Chinese nuclear war for him.

If The War Had Happened...

Nuclear weapons would have become conventionalized weapons of war, and China would have been nuked several times over. As for the post-war, any country that had a nuke would have probably used one by now thanks to MacArthur's lead.

Oh, yeah, there is also the question as to what would have become of the U.S. presidency after MacArthur had essentially staged a military coup against Truman.

4 Fall Grun aka Stopping Hitler Before WWII

World War II, as you probably already know, started when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, and lasted until the Axis nations surrendered in 1945. Over those years, 60 million people were killed and most of the world's countries got involved with over 100 million people deployed in some form or another. Now, imagine if the entire thing could have been avoided by taking the Nazis out before they ever really got started. That's what some historians think might have happened if the Fuhrer would have gotten his way in the Fall of 1938.

In 1938, Hitler wanted the Sudetenland, the western part of Czechoslovakia that was largely occupied by ethnic Germans. And Hitler wanted it bad, so bad that he was ready to launch a war for it. The invasion he planned was called Fall Grun, or Case Green, and the Fuhrer was going to use all of the Nazi military might to get it.

What Stopped It:

This miracle of peace.

Even though Hitler wanted war more than anything else that Christmas, England and France were still shaken over the previous world war. So the European powers managed to talk Hitler into a group therapy session at Munich, and Hitler got the Sudetenland (without Czechoslovakia's approval) in exchange for promising to be nice for the rest of the century.

But what if Hitler had shown up drunk, pissed on the carpet, and left?

If The War Had Happened...

WWII would have been over before it began.

Hitler's generals whipped up their plan to invade Czechoslovakia, Fall Grun, but they may as well have called it Operation Many Dead Nazis. The German military was in no way prepared for what would have been war with France and England in 1938, especially while the bulk of their army would have been fighting their way through the Sudetenland. Their whole military was "under-trained, underprepared and unequipped" for any kind of a fight, which is why Hitler's chief of the general staff Ludwig Beck resigned in protest over the operation.

So, if the Munich Pact hadn't blundered its way into existence, Hitler would have invaded, England, France, Poland and Soviet Russia would have rallied against them, the Nazis would have exhausted their resources, and they would have been soundly defeated in months. Boom. Done. The conflict would likely have gone down as one more European war, getting a one-page summary in the history books. No blitzkrieg, no fall of France, no Holocaust and a new cast of characters in every WWII shooter ever made.

3 War Plan Red, aka The U.S. Invasion of Canada

While Anglo-American relations may seem awesome now thanks to J. K. Rowling, Monty Python and Shaun of the Dead, the fact remains that the U.S. and UK spent a lot of time trying to kill each other before settling on their common interests. War Plan Red was America's playbook for a worst-case military scenario with the entire United Kingdom: Britain, India, Canada, anywhere that flew the Union Jack.

By 1902, the U.S. had already fought two wars with England and nearly fought a third one in 1896. So when the UK established an alliance with our not-friends Japan, the U.S. government got a little jumpy. Things cooled off after WWI, but the U.S. Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy nevertheless approved War Plan Red as late as 1930. Nobody thought we would ever use it until something kind of scary happened in 1937... there were rumors that King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom was pro-Nazi.

What Stopped It:

A little WTF moment in history called the abdication crisis. On December 11, 1936, Edward VIII shocked the planet when he resigned as King-Emperor of the British Empire to marry a twice-divorced desperate housewife named Wallis Simpson. Who was Wallis Simpson? A woman who Hitler himself thought "would have made a good Queen."

While the king wasn't exactly in a position of great authority over his country to begin with, he was perfectly capable of leaking Allied secrets to his German buddies. Which, by the way, is something historians suspect he and Wallis did once the war started and the UK was firmly in the anti-Nazi camp. Edward was still a nightmare for the Brits, but fortunately he was no longer in power.

If The War Had Happened...

Say hi to the new United States of America.

The War Department recognized that Canada was the British Empire's best route to strike deep into the American continent, so War Plan Red dictated that the U.S. would launch a full invasion against Canada via Vermont, North Dakota and the Midwest. The playbook even included such delectable pointers as how "the best practicable route to Vancouver is via Route 99."

With the Great Lakes a war-zone and Canada's Pacific and Atlantic coasts blockaded by the U.S. Navy, War Plan Red would have ended in nothing short of Canada's utter surrender to the United States of America. Worst case scenario: the United States gets Quebec. Best case: the whole plate of pancakes plus whatever islands in the Pacific, Atlantic and Caribbean we considered a threat to America's newfound superpower status.

2 Defense Scheme No. 1, aka The Canadian Invasion of the U.S.

Remember that whole invasion of Canada we were just talking about? Well, it turns out that the whole time the U.S. Army was planning to invade Canada, the Canadians were secretly planning their own invasion of the United States of America. Defence Scheme No. 1 was the brainchild of Canada's Director of Military Operations and Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel James "Buster" Sutherland Brown.

Which Buster probably wouldn't have done if The New York Times hadn't accidentally broke a story on their front page about War Plan Red on May 1, 1935.

What Stopped It:

Common sense.

Despite being described as a "fantastic desperate plan just might have worked," Defence Scheme No. 1 was terminated by the Canadian Chief of the General Staff Andrew McNaughton on the grounds that Canada had better things to do than invade the U.S. The scheme and its schemer were dismissed as "quixotic," which is probably a good thing in light of how Defense Scheme No. 1 was basically the bow and arrows to War Plan Red's uzis.

If The War Had Happened...

If "Buster" Brown had his way, Seattle, Great Falls and Minneapolis would have all felt the full might of the Mounties in a spectacular sneak attack. Then, Albany and Maine would have been invaded as part of a counterattack against an anticipated Yankee invasion.

Canada would then fight a defensive war with the U.S. while they waited for the Royal Navy to sail in and finish the job from either ocean. The U.S. would have been under siege from every front. Had the United States and Canada gone to war again, there's a good chance that the winner would have been whoever struck first.

1 Operation Unthinkable

As World War II started to wind down in Europe, it became clear that the U.S. and USSR would emerge as the two dominant superpowers of Earth. This did not bode well with various Allied leaders on account of Joseph Stalin being just as big an asshole as Hitler, but seriously... what could these guys do?

The Soviets had already taken the biggest beating in history and emerged stronger than the Incredible Hulk. They possessed half of Europe, some of the best generals that ever lived and a military that now numbered something north of 10 million; the largest army in history, ever, and perhaps the most experienced one to boot. Seriously, who would want to mess with these guys, especially after winning World War II thanks enormously to their help?

Churchill's fear of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe led to the British Chiefs of Staff Committee forming Operation Unthinkable on May 22, 1945. Although Churchill insisted that the operation was purely "hypothetical," it is worth noting that the plan's "overall or political object is to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire." In short, it was a contingency plan for a Soviet invasion that the Brits knew would never be coming because it was actually Churchill's plan for a preemptive war with the Soviet Union.

Operation Unthinkable called for "the date for the opening of hostilities" on July 1, 1945, a declaration of World War III while World War II was still winding down. And it didn't help that Churchill was fully aware of America's successful nuclear tests. In his mind, the United States and the United Kingdom would United Ass Kick the USSR if the Soviets kept up their aggressive posturing in Europe.

What Stopped It:

Numbers. Sheer numbers.

As blood drunk as Churchill was, his Chiefs of Staff were sober enough to recognize that the Soviet land forces outnumbered the Allies two to one. And that's after the British planned to rearm 100,000 captured German soldiers to invade the Soviet Union. Bear in mind, this would be the second time the Germans invaded the USSR.

The success of Operation Unthinkable would depend on the Americans, who weren't interested in jumping back into war while they were still fighting in the Pacific. Or, at all. Truman wasn't interested in fighting the Soviets. Ultimately, the whole thing was dropped before it got off the ground. And then Churchill was given the sack.

If The War Had Happened...

If there is one thing that should be taken out of the entire chronicle of military history, it is that Russia is really freaking hard to conquer. Hell, we're not even talking about Moscow here; Stalin was prepared all the way back to the Ural Mountains during WWII. Russia had winters, it had rivers, it had more mud than roads, it had the army that killed the most of the Germans during World War II.

The only way we could have come even close to winning this war would be if the U.S. dropped the A-bomb. Since the U.S. had only two of them in its arsenal and it took exactly two to win the war in Japan, we would have pretty much started this war by stalling the one in the Pacific.

Most likely scenario: the Soviets would have kicked the ever-loving shit out of England and marched all the way to the Channel, while Truman told Churchill "I told you so."

For more baffling plans of war, check out Nuke the Moon: 5 Certifiably Insane Cold War Projects. Or learn about some conflicts that were just plain stupid, in The 5 Most Retarded Wars Ever Fought.

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