Stresemann and Briand in government at the same time right after the Peace? Franco-German rapproachment? A joint peace memorial in Verdun?

I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING T____T my poor heart can't take this <3 <3

That was a wonderful update! After October 2nd, when I'm done with my exams, I'm considering pitching you a few ideas for a guest update about German political developments, but we'll brainstorm it when I return :D
 
Smoland.

Do Poland and Lithuania have a common border?

They do have a common border in the far eastern reaches of their lands for the time being, through Polish control of the westernmost reaches of modern Belarus, this is only a rough line, but it runs from around Pinsk to Lida. Whether they will retain that into the post-Russian Civil War is a debate for later.


Woops I responded to an older installment! Wasn't thinking. Hmm... I wonder how the Polish are going to treat this

Not a problem at all. The Poles have very mixed feelings at the moment about all of this, on one hand they now have an autonomous Kingdom of their own, on the other hand they are completely dependent on Germany and effectively serve as clients to them. It is an improvement from having no kingdom at all, but that isn't exactly a high bar to start with.

Stresemann and Briand in government at the same time right after the Peace? Franco-German rapproachment? A joint peace memorial in Verdun?

I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING T____T my poor heart can't take this <3 <3

That was a wonderful update! After October 2nd, when I'm done with my exams, I'm considering pitching you a few ideas for a guest update about German political developments, but we'll brainstorm it when I return :D

I am happy to hear you enjoyed it!

Just PM me when you are ready to brainstorm.
 
And you think Germany wouldn't fall into the same mentality? I see little difference even if the Entente observed the forms I doubt Germany comes out much different
Then you missed the whole argument. Read this again:
The shock of arriving at Versailles and expecting an orderly series of negotiations only to have the terms crammed down your throat with no say in them was definitely traumatizing to all of the Central Powers and their successors. I also think that if they had actually negotiated, the terms would have turned out considerably more lenient than they were IOTL.
Forms matter. Especially if you are the loser. You want to retain some dignity/honor/pride. Thats what the forms are for. You may not prevent the Dolchstoßlegende entirely, but you will prevent it from becoming the only thing. You should read more contemporary german internal newspapers et al. The lack of forms was the thing which made it so virulent.

At Vienna, the french got a delegation and were allowed at the negotation table. 1871, the same. At Versailles, the germans got no seat, no negotiation and no dignity. If you propose that this had no impact on future behaviour/internal politics in Germany you are delusional.
 
Then you missed the whole argument. Read this again:

Forms matter. Especially if you are the loser. You want to retain some dignity/honor/pride. Thats what the forms are for. You may not prevent the Dolchstoßlegende entirely, but you will prevent it from becoming the only thing. You should read more contemporary german internal newspapers et al. The lack of forms was the thing which made it so virulent.

At Vienna, the french got a delegation and were allowed at the negotation table. 1871, the same. At Versailles, the germans got no seat, no negotiation and no dignity. If you propose that this had no impact on future behaviour/internal politics in Germany you are delusional.

While I personally feel you are right as regards the effect of a lack of forms, I do think it is time to bring this debate to an end. It seems to be getting a bit heated, and I think you could have cut the delusion comment from your post. I don’t want this to spin out of control, a spirited debate is one thing but personal attacks are another.

Hope you understand. :coldsweat:
 
Hope you understand. :coldsweat:
I do. I felt justified in including it because it reflects the attitude that germans must be automatically evil. For me, such assumptions are the antithesis of alternate history, since it does not ask why.

Ok, now I am really finished.

Now, on to more useful things:
WWI memorialising being not reserved to the Entente - instead being a common ground (at least in Europe, can't say about the USA). The consequences should be massive - both in each nation internally and for the continent as a whole. On the top of my head:
  • "martial glory" is most definitly on the decline as a social measurement - since what glory is to be gained in useless slaughter?
    • Of course this has quite a few consequences: Diminished prestige, discourse-power moves away from the right (since "Thats unpatiriotic!" is no longer an automatic showstopper)
    • In the Central Powers, the aristocracy will start losing their hold on the officer-positions (and the armies as a whole will get more "technical", i.e. more pioneers, technical troops, etc. All traditionally domain of the non-nobles)
    • Maybe pacifism will be more moderate and not go down the "no war at any cost" route
  • There will be fast-ish franco-german rapprochement
    • This implies no WW2 either, since going to war against both GER and FRA (and AUS, UK, and, and, and..) is suicidal.
      • This means the italians will fume, but be limited to africa
    • Time to scare perfidious albion ^^
    • But there won't be an early EU - the germans have enough sattelites, and the french want to be partners, not subjects eventually
    • A-L will at somepoint either be forgotten (i.e. not worth fighting about) or be a condominum (prop ITL 20??, when they have to host the EU somewhere - its nice, central and symbolical)
  • Roaring 20ies forever? Or at least, without backlash. I own faksimile copies of the "Berliner Ilustrierte" - and those go from "whee-heee" to "Order, order, order" real fast.
 
Hi everyone, I have run into a bit of a pickle and I was hoping that someone might have a solution.

IOTL Britain had to deal with a considerable threat to their Pacific and Indian holdings in the naval sphere, and ITTL that is still the situation.

Now IOTL this was a topic of considerable debate with the dominions, eventually ending in the creation of a massive naval base at Singapore, but without a proper fleet to fill it. IOTL the idea was to send much of the Home Fleet to Singapore if need be, where it could serve as a second home base for the navy. However, this was only possible because the threat of the German Fleet had been ended when it was sunk off Scalia Flow.

There were discussions of a Commonwealth fleet payed in part by the dominions combining as a single force, but IOTL the national governments of India, New Zealand and Australia balked at what they viewed as a significant loss in autonomy.

Now ITTL, the threat to British holdings is still there in the form of Japan and America (even if they are allies for the time being) and as such something needs to be done to defend British Pacific holdings. However, the OTL model would not work under TTL context.

My challenge/question is, what other models might be implemented in this situation?
 
Hi everyone, I have run into a bit of a pickle and I was hoping that someone might have a solution.

IOTL Britain had to deal with a considerable threat to their Pacific and Indian holdings in the naval sphere, and ITTL that is still the situation.

Now IOTL this was a topic of considerable debate with the dominions, eventually ending in the creation of a massive naval base at Singapore, but without a proper fleet to fill it. IOTL the idea was to send much of the Home Fleet to Singapore if need be, where it could serve as a second home base for the navy. However, this was only possible because the threat of the German Fleet had been ended when it was sunk off Scalia Flow.

There were discussions of a Commonwealth fleet payed in part by the dominions combining as a single force, but IOTL the national governments of India, New Zealand and Australia balked at what they viewed as a significant loss in autonomy.

Now ITTL, the threat to British holdings is still there in the form of Japan and America (even if they are allies for the time being) and as such something needs to be done to defend British Pacific holdings. However, the OTL model would not work under TTL context.

My challenge/question is, what other models might be implemented in this situation?
My - naive and probably unworkable - solution would be to combine the dominions (IND, AUS, NZL, South-Africa) navies into a "dominion navy" without british command (but with british participation), thereby sidestepping the autonomy thing. But then again, that would make it a hard sell in Britain proper. But then again the trouble-on-steroids may not leave them much choice, than to do so on an ad-hoc basis.

OR

Bribe/coerce/influence the germans/french into not being a threat. I think there are enough anglophiles in the german government to make some sort of Washington Naval Treaty feasible. Especially, if the germans decide to grab the sanitiy ball an invest in landbased naval aviation, cruisers and submarines. You'd probably have to fork the Med' over the the french...

In conclusio: UK has to die one death. They can pick which, but they have to pick.

Something I forgot from my previous post: The german merchant navy isn't seized ITL - holy shit, that one is f*cking huge.
 
With the peace treaty they have a year or 2 of space have them start to build up a navy, not in one quick burst but a slow burst that way one they now a navy there’s and 2 they can now replenish that navy without having to send them all the way out from Britain but they would have to build up an infrastructure to build a navy there though that why it would be a couple year burst
 
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WWI memorialising being not reserved to the Entente - instead being a common ground (at least in Europe, can't say about the USA). The consequences should be massive - both in each nation internally and for the continent as a whole. On the top of my head:
  • "martial glory" is most definitly on the decline as a social measurement - since what glory is to be gained in useless slaughter?
    • Of course this has quite a few consequences: Diminished prestige, discourse-power moves away from the right (since "Thats unpatiriotic!" is no longer an automatic showstopper)
    • In the Central Powers, the aristocracy will start losing their hold on the officer-positions (and the armies as a whole will get more "technical", i.e. more pioneers, technical troops, etc. All traditionally domain of the non-nobles)
    • Maybe pacifism will be more moderate and not go down the "no war at any cost" route
  • There will be fast-ish franco-german rapprochement
    • This implies no WW2 either, since going to war against both GER and FRA (and AUS, UK, and, and, and..) is suicidal.
      • This means the italians will fume, but be limited to africa
    • Time to scare perfidious albion ^^
    • But there won't be an early EU - the germans have enough sattelites, and the french want to be partners, not subjects eventually
    • A-L will at somepoint either be forgotten (i.e. not worth fighting about) or be a condominum (prop ITL 20??, when they have to host the EU somewhere - its nice, central and symbolical)
  • Roaring 20ies forever? Or at least, without backlash. I own faksimile copies of the "Berliner Ilustrierte" - and those go from "whee-heee" to "Order, order, order" real fast.

All of this is supremely interesting, and at least in part why I previously mentioned that imho Germany will be one of the countries most unrecognisable from our present in terms of political culture. Since this is a peace with honor, the militaries might well be viewed with great respect for their sacrifice and their service - but at the same time, trust in military might as capable of bringing about a clear-cut solution in your country's favour will be severely curtailed, especially if you're a land-based power with no colonial empire... so the balance might be similar to what you see in the US. "Thank you for serving" and "happy veteran day" but a significant part of public opinion will be well away from jingoism and will ask for concrete motivations for why the army is being employed at a particular time.

I do think there is a chance of an EU equivalent at some point, although bear in mind we don't know what Zulfurium has planned for the future, we might well get some other global cataclysm. It might be similar to our own, or a regional subforum at the League of Nations (as was the plan in the real interwar) with an assembly and a general secretariat, who knows - but I do think the European powers are in for a wake up call when the post-Copenhagen gluttony subsides and they realise the flanking powers are still on the ascendancy and European countries alone cannot compete.
A sort of "federal district of Alsace Lorraine" as the capital district/location of the general secretariat would basically be alt-history porn imho, but not sure how feasible it is, especially because after this war, I don't expect A-L to really be contested anymore save from far right groups. Strasbourg is an excellent choice irrespective of the symbolism of the region though.

Hi everyone, I have run into a bit of a pickle and I was hoping that someone might have a solution.

IOTL Britain had to deal with a considerable threat to their Pacific and Indian holdings in the naval sphere, and ITTL that is still the situation.

Now IOTL this was a topic of considerable debate with the dominions, eventually ending in the creation of a massive naval base at Singapore, but without a proper fleet to fill it. IOTL the idea was to send much of the Home Fleet to Singapore if need be, where it could serve as a second home base for the navy. However, this was only possible because the threat of the German Fleet had been ended when it was sunk off Scalia Flow.

There were discussions of a Commonwealth fleet payed in part by the dominions combining as a single force, but IOTL the national governments of India, New Zealand and Australia balked at what they viewed as a significant loss in autonomy.

Now ITTL, the threat to British holdings is still there in the form of Japan and America (even if they are allies for the time being) and as such something needs to be done to defend British Pacific holdings. However, the OTL model would not work under TTL context.

My challenge/question is, what other models might be implemented in this situation?

Ehh, the dominions are probably pretty pissed about the outcome of the Great War. Think of how ANZAC Day is still remembered with considerable bitterness nowadays in Australia and New Zealand and magnify it. Combined with the unrest in Ireland, I think the dominions are going to be very leery of giving up their autonomy and making further economic and/or military sacrifices for the British. With that said, they *do* need to worry about Japan...

I will first and foremost suggest that an OTL equivalent of the Washington Naval Deal should be on the cards. Germany and Britain were discussing a naval holiday before the war already, and the British have a considerable incentive to propose this now (to contain their allies) while Germany has an incentive to accept, since their status after the war greatly strengthens their hand. Sure, they won't be able to claim parity, but the fixed rate they can get is probably going to be higher than they would have gotten otherwise, securing their position as a global naval power - and this would have the benefit, from Kuhlmann's point of view, of driving an even bigger wedge between the USA, UK and Japan (the thought that former enemy Germany gets better conditions in a naval treaty might well send Tokyo in a fury, replicating what already happened with France and the US during the ceasefire). This also has the benefit of taking some wind out of the sails of the Siberian effort, which strengthens the status of the Don Whites as the legitimate Russian successor.

With that said, Britain is also likely to look in-house. If building another fleet is out of the question, then they either need to make concessions to the Dominions to sweeten the pot and convince them to man the Singapore naval base themselves, or they can trade the new security guarantees they recently offered to France in exchange for a French naval build up from Indochina to shield the Asia-Pacific. That of course would mean casting their lot with Europe over their overseas allies, and it's a dangerous gamble. The other route remains available - pivot decisively towards the United States - but in the 1920s that seems very premature. They are likelier to see the US as a rival than as an ally in these matters, whereas France is a fellow colonial power with a similar understanding of colonial rule. Still, if the situation is completely stalled over time that might open the way to more creative solutions.
 
All of this is supremely interesting, and at least in part why I previously mentioned that imho Germany will be one of the countries most unrecognisable from our present in terms of political culture. Since this is a peace with honor, the militaries might well be viewed with great respect for their sacrifice and their service - but at the same time, trust in military might as capable of bringing about a clear-cut solution in your country's favour will be severely curtailed, especially if you're a land-based power with no colonial empire... so the balance might be similar to what you see in the US. "Thank you for serving" and "happy veteran day" but a significant part of public opinion will be well away from jingoism and will ask for concrete motivations for why the army is being employed at a particular time.

I do think there is a chance of an EU equivalent at some point, although bear in mind we don't know what Zulfurium has planned for the future, we might well get some other global cataclysm. It might be similar to our own, or a regional subforum at the League of Nations (as was the plan in the real interwar) with an assembly and a general secretariat, who knows - but I do think the European powers are in for a wake up call when the post-Copenhagen gluttony subsides and they realise the flanking powers are still on the ascendancy and European countries alone cannot compete.
A sort of "federal district of Alsace Lorraine" as the capital district/location of the general secretariat would basically be alt-history porn imho, but not sure how feasible it is, especially because after this war, I don't expect A-L to really be contested anymore save from far right groups. Strasbourg is an excellent choice irrespective of the symbolism of the region though.
OTL, Germany frist was about as militarist as France, then it didn't want to know anything about the military, then it was ultra-militarist and then it was *meh* and by now it is extremely (imho far too much) anti-military (n.b. not anti-militarist).

ITL probably, "having served" (your term of conscription) will still be a measure of a man but with the caveats that alternate service (looking at you, THW) won't be seen as dishonorable (but total refusal still will be). Furthermore, as you write, foreign adventurism will be severly curtailed in both France and Germany - and jingoism is dead, dead, dead (go to the Verdun memorial as for "why"). Especially if both nations retain conscript armies - those aren't easily used for such things, compared to all-volunteer (see: USA). Society-wise, the presence of Kuhlman et al in the OKW/OKH will do its part for internal reformation - and the quenching of gung-ho militarism (basically, Germany goes back to the Scharnhorst/Clausewitz/Friedrich II attitude about the army and war).
For the French, well have you seen the butchers' bill? Attaqué a la outrace is dead, dead, dead. As are the carreers of most of its proponents. A lot of blood was spilt, for little to no gain.
 
Handed in my thesis today. Feels great! :D
The immediate post-war period and the latter parts of the Great War are incredibly eventful and were foundational to the structures and beliefs that permeate our world today. The borders of the Middle East were drawn - with the dominance of Wahabi Islam in Arabia setting the stage for the OTL rise in religious extremism once Saudi Arabia began exporting their religious model,
I think that the one bright part is that this will no longer happen because the Arab rebels were the hammesites and they were some argues liberal and moderate compare to Nejd who was the reason of washbasins so no that the hammeistes have such a huge advantage teh nejd will be destroyed by the hassmesites or by there another name house of meca
 
Another thing to keep in mind regarding an alternate naval conference: it would help redefine the role of Italy in the postwar.

IIRC, Italy at the peace treaty got its colonial empire 100% dismantled, but wasn't placed under any extra obligation about disarmament or reparations on the mainland. The country is, of course, shattered right now - both economically and politically, I'm the first to realise that as an Italian. However, if the country doesn't splinter, Italy's baseline has remained intact: it will still be Italy ten or twenty years from now, rather than a puppet or a largely cut-down-to-size successor. Which means, imho, that it will be either a participant or a topic in any naval conference.

Everyone and their mother is probably going to argue that Italy needs to reduce its fleet now that it has no colonial endeavour to support, although some in Allied circles might underestimate the intensity of Italian enmity and consider that they'll get back into the fold eventually, and a decently sized Italian navy will be a counterweight to an Austro-German encroachment of the Adriatic. This doesn't really make sense from our POV (I don't see Italy going back to normal diplomacy any time soon) but it does make sense from a 1920 POV. It could also be seen as a way of bringing Italy back to "international normality" a bit like the first times Germany attended international conferences in the interwar OTL.

In other words, Italy has a stab-in-the-back legend, has been greatly humiliated at the conference and its power projection has been mauled - but the country's power base is intact. Of course right now there are too many giants in Europe for them to challenge, but if the Balkans implode again and Italy is in a militarist, ultra-revanchist grip I fear it won't end well. But regardless - a demand for a fleet reduction at a naval conference might inflame that outrage even more, so it has a lot of interesting implications for second grade or third grade powers as well.
 
Italy has a stab-in-the-back legend
Except - and this is very important - it's not a legend. If the enemy had taken stuff from them, then it would well be; but in here the allies helped dismantling the country's colonial empire, helping themselves to whatever they wanted. It's a stab in the back. It's not a legend, and no one Italian will be seen as rational if they say it was.
 
Come to think of it, Bulgaria is also probably developing a stab-in-the-back narrative about its wartime allies right about now. The map we saw in the Copenhagen Conference update shows that Bulgaria's final borders are far more narrow than what was originally promised to Bulgaria - and what Bulgaria originally occupied.

These terms are realistic - as in, there's no doubt that the senior Central Powers would be able to enforce them on Bulgaria in this state - but they're going to leave a very bitter aftertaste in the mouths of Bulgarian nationalist circles. Add to that the piss-poor relations with the Ottomans, and certain other events during the war, and you have everything you need for a very strong stab-in-the-back narrative.
 
the internal situations of Austria and Italy will be very tense and prblemic. the Austrians won but they know that the Germans helped a lot for that victory, their army has to demobilize to find jobs for those soldiers and make many changes to improve their effectiveness. Many people are going to begin to make more democratic reforms to the government and in Hungary people will try to Hungarian Hungarian not have much power.

In Italy the political situation and the country was a tense place with a bitter taste for defeat. but with the peace treaty it will be worse since they were humiliated and lost their colonial empire, many politicians would say that Italy should have remained neutral or respect the alliance with the central powers, their politics will be worse than the OTL in which they won the war .

extra: Italy occupies a strong man, a person who raises the country and the one in the next years of suffering, they occupy Scolar Visari, joke .
 
Hi everyone, thank you for pitching in it has been quite helpful. Took a bit to read up on what people had to say.

I got invited to the pre-premier for a really interesting Danish movie which dealt with the legacy of eugenics in Denmark - specifically the practice of forced sterilization which was perpetrated from the 1930s to the late 1960s, and it got me thinking about the issue. Now, it will be quite a while before things settle down enough to start dealing with issues like eugenics, ideological developments in various countries and a variety of other issues which aren't immediately significant geo-politically, but at some point I am going to have to get into it. It is actually a topic I have thought about quite a bit before, so it should be really interesting to explore properly. IOTL Scandinavia was a pioneer in eugenics programs (I read a rather biting description at one point of the differences between Scandinavia and Germany, most significantly comparing the relatively "peaceful", "scientific" and "moderate" approach of the Scandinavian eugenicists - specifically describing how it was connected to the Danish welfare state and a wish for the Danish people to be as healthy and genetically "strong" as possible - with the Germans taking those idea and deciding "nah, we won't do that. Rather than work to improve our genepool, lets just kill everyone we think might be impure". Found it an interesting, if dark, perspective.) and there are some pretty worrying connections between Scandinavian culture and German nationalist culture. Scandinavian thinkers were "pioneers" in "Aryan" mythmaking and in many ways laid much of the foundation for German thinkers in ultra-nationalist circles. (It is wierd how similar ideas, at least in my eyes, seems to have played out differently in Scandinavia and Germany. In Scandinavia (rather crudely put) the thought was "Of course we are superior, that is why we need to go out and help all the poor lesser beings out in the world", while in Germany it was "Of course we are superior, we need to kill everyone who isn't superior."

That isn't to say eugenics practices, particularly in the 20th century, weren't absolutely horrific on a general basis.

Now in response to what all of you have been talking about:

@XLII I think that a lot of the stuff you discussed with regards to how Germany might develop moving forward was generally in the right direction, though moving in that direction will probably be an extended process with plenty of hitches and divergences on the road.

Regarding British naval presence in the Pacific, I think people are on the right track with regards to requiring concessions for the dominions to pay and man the force in the region. How exactly that works will take some time to work out. The British really don't have the resources to build an entire new navy for the Pacific, but could contribute at least a good part of the ships to it. The relationship with Japan will also be important to consider, although how exactly that plays out is something I am still working to figure out.

I also agree with @Ombra that some sort of conference to fix naval armaments will be necessary, it is just a question of how exactly that turns out. That said, I think people will wait with that until more of an equilibrium is reached - already have an idea about what year it might be. That said, I wonder if Germany would be willing to accept anything other than parity with the British and Americans.

Regarding Italy, the situation is going to be extremely complicated and as you should see with the next update. Things are going to be in a considerable state of flux and the end result will take a while to clarify.

As regards stab-in-the-back myths, I don't think you are going to see it play too large a role in Bulgaria. While nationalists aren't going to be super happy about the situation, they secured control of most of what they actually wanted. They got Macedonia, they got Dobruja and are now the premier slavic power in the Balkans. That is not a bad haul when you consider how ramshackle their state was by the end of the war.
 
Regarding eugenics, it‘s not out of the question that it might survive into the present day in some form ITTL, especially once knowledge of genetics advances. I think there were several reasons why the concept was marginalized IOTL. There was the whole Nazi thing of course, but i think the bigger reason is the general prevalence of egalitarian attitudes that have come to dominate nearly all aspects of politics and culture, despite the advances in genetic science and the knowledge we have today about the role our genes play in determining not only our physical traits, but likely intelligence too – and possibly even personality traits, at least to some extent. Discussion of these kinds of topics are considered very toxic, and it‘s becoming harder to even publish scientific papers about this these days, at least not without the risk of being marginalized academically. Some have called the current orthodoxy ‚Neo-Lysenkoism‘ (after the infamous Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, followers of whom rejected genetic theory as ‚bourgeois‘ and ‚fascist‘), and i think the comparison is not entirely baseless.

I don‘t know if forced sterilizations would still be a thing in the 21st century (probably not), but if it exists i could see it being voluntary, with sterilization being a condition to be eligible for welfare for example, at least for people with known genetic conditions, or who are mentally challenged/retarded, or whose IQ is below a certain threshold or something like that. It all depends on general social attitudes – because those have not only an effect on politics, but on science too, as much as scientist might refuse to admit it. The more egalitarian those attitudes become, the less likely it is that stuff like eugenics would be accepted. Whatever the case, the more pseudoscientific aspects of the whole thing are probably going to be marginalized eventually nonetheless, even without being discredited by the Nazis or marxist academics.

I also agree with @Ombra that some sort of conference to fix naval armaments will be necessary, it is just a question of how exactly that turns out. That said, I think people will wait with that until more of an equilibrium is reached - already have an idea about what year it might be. That said, I wonder if Germany would be willing to accept anything other than parity with the British and Americans.

Probably not global parity, but maybe local parity? Meaning that Britain would outnumber them overall, but the Germans would have naval parity in Europe at least, since Britain‘s fleet, while larger, would be spread much more over all corners of its empire compared to Germany. I could see negotiators come up with all kinds of creative solutions in this regard.
 
Enjoy the movie!
So, regarding eugenics: the book "The Coming of the Third Reich" by Richard J Evans delves a lot into Imperial German and Weimar politics, as you might expect for a book that ends in 1933, and while I feel like a bit of a douche for adding yet another name to your growing pile of research material, I think it will hold a lot of information on domestic aspects that you might need, and that would still be relevant to an alternate Germany. On the subject of eugenics, the beginning of the push in Germany came, as in Scandinavia, from the medical profession, with considerable assistance from the bureaucracy devoted to welfare and the Social Democrats and other parties in government.

With Weimar's extensive welfare, as well as the spirit of scientific excitement in Germany during the time, there was a vigorous effort to turn welfare allocation into a science, and doctors were the prime instigators of this quest, firm in the belief that they could create a genetically healthy population and thus boost the effectiveness of both their practices and welfare programmes. As you can quickly surmise, Weimar's tremendous financial woes added a grim urgency to the endeavour - they were, in their own mind, trying to save the welfare system by pushing for harder and harder stances on eugenics.
ITTL the welfare state is unlikely to be as large as Weimar's, the government is unlikely to house a large SPD presence and the financial woes won't likely be there, or not on that scale, so you might well be looking at a development more similar to that we saw in Scandinavia, Switzerland and the United States.

BTW, Britain kind of backed itself into a corner there, I agree. They will likely push for officer control of any Dominions Navy anyway, but who's eager to go serve and die under British officers again after Gallipoli or what happened to the Canadians in operation Georg?

EDIT forgot to answer about an Anglo/German naval agreement. I don't think Germany would have accepted anything less than parity before 1914. Now, however, the situation is somewhat different:

1) Wilhelm has been somewhat sidelined, although the new framework for chancellor appointments sort of brings him back in the loop to an extent.
2) OHL and the government have a wholly different and more moderate attitude, further tempered by the experience of the war.
3) With the development of powered flight, which was combat tested extensively in 1919, Germany might see a chance to win a diplomatic victory with reasonable but limited naval concessions, and still compensate in military terms by investing heavily in naval aviation.

This makes a lot of sense for Germany in Europe because of the nature of its coasts and where it needs to operate. They still need the High Seas Fleet for power projection, naturally, but as of now their colonial empire is kind of strange, and their Chinese concession is very isolated. The Germans must know that even with a big high seas fleet, the Chinese concession is hard to defend without basing rights elsewhere (where do you house a gargantuan HSF as opposed to a merely large one?); and that while the experience of the blockade hammered home just how important a strong fleet is, the High Seas Fleet was not enough to break it, and new thinking is required.

I don't know if there's any naval expert here that can give a better input than mine, that would be appreciated - I simply think that Germany would indeed care about its naval strength very much, and likely push for local parity in Europe, but also that the experience of the war taught them that they need to build a navy that suits their strategic needs, rather than Wilhelm's pride.
 
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Probably not global parity, but maybe local parity? Meaning that Britain would outnumber them overall, but the Germans would have naval parity in Europe at least, since Britain‘s fleet, while larger, would be spread much more over all corners of its empire compared to Germany. I could see negotiators come up with all kinds of creative solutions in this regard.
I'll have to agree with Rufus here - Germany is not going to build up the HSF until it matches the USN and the Home Fleet.

If you think about it, which parts of the navy covered themselves in glory in the war:
The submarines and the various slightly-crazy cruiser-raider captians. Those branches will see the biggest growth, not the next-to-useless metal behemoths of the HSF. So basically, while the germans would accept non-parity for battleships and et al at such a conference, they'll gun hard for parity/superiority when it comes to cruisers (of all tonnage classes) and submarines. Maybe - I'm not a naval history buff enough - even when it comes to escort carriers (which are superb raiders, once you think about it).

Edit: For example this fine specimen. These guys got plenty of glory, and thereby plenty of political capital.
 
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A couple of points.

The problem with "eugenics" was a good deal was based on a rather twisted view of race and genetic suitability. You not only had the white/dark/yellow racial grouping, but there was the Anglo-Saxon "race", the Jewish "race", the Slavic "race", and on and on. Modern genetics, and information on the human genome, pretty much debunks all of this. Yes there are genetic differences (mostly of a minor sort) between different populations - high altitude adaptions of the native peoples of the Andes and those of Tibet (which are different), blood type and certain disease entities (hypertension, type II diabetes) in certain groups etc. The eugenicists were looking at "visible" differences, especially skin color, and "social" characteristics that certain groups were "naturally" criminal, or intellectually challenged etc. The sorting criteria the eugenicists used were pretty much at odds with modern genetics.

As far as a naval treaty, the main driver behind it was the fact that everyone, with the exception of the USA, was deep in debt after the war and affording massive naval construction was simply not practical for most of the combatants and the USA was not willing to spend that sort of money on naval armaments during peacetime (or upgrading fortifications/defenses in the Pacific). ITTL with the war going on longer, dealing with territorial rearrangements, etc financial stringencies will be even more of a driver.
 
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