Point of Difference: On September 13, 1921, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in New York City Presbyterian Hospital. He is 39 years old. The official cause of death as listed as polio (though years later, this assessment would be challenged with alternate theories, including Guillain-Barré syndrome.)
Flash forward eleven years. Herbert Hoover is in the White House and the Great Depression has struck. Hoover is unable to deal with the crisis and is blamed for America's increasing financial woes. Without Roosevelt to lead them, 1928 candidate Al Smith wins the Presidency, with William Gibbs McAdoo as his Vice President.
No Roosevelt means no New Deal. Though Smith has some early successes, by the 1934 midterms, America is in a very bad way. The unemployment level has hit almost 40%, and riots break out across the country. Both Republicans and Democrats are blamed. By this point, the number of Americans supporting both the Communist Party and various far right, Fascist organisations is more than five times higher than it had been in 1930.
Inspired by Hitler's success in turning around the German economy, the American fascist movement, which by 1935 is led solely by William Dudley Pelley, commits to overthrowing President Smith and installing a fascist government across the United States. In early 1936, Pelley leads a 400,000-strong march on Washington, and with the backing of segments of the U.S. military, a powerful group of World War I veterans, business leaders out for their own interests and even some members of Congress, Pelley succeeds in overthrowing the elected government and establishes a fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-communist government in Washington. When this new United States allies itself with Germany, the Second World War becomes radically different...
The world of 2009 in the Fascist USA timeline