Germany actually lost most of its iron producing capacity with the French re-acquisition of Moselle, and the Longwy-Briey basin which was located within it.
If you look on the map on plate 2, it shows that most of the key Westphalian coal field is on the east side of the Rhine.
As for iron ore, Germany could still import from Sweden, and indeed that would make her production more efficient (indeed, the Lorraine iron ores are extremely low grade, which is why they soon fell out of production - I think in the 1960s in OTL).
As for losing the coal of Silesia (which would end up with Poland as OTL), well... In OTL the Poles were desperate to sell coal to Germany. Germany instead started a trade war as soon as her treaty obligations to trade with Poland elapsed. So, if Germany doesn't start a trade war there she can import plenty of coal (coal which wouldn't be hard to grab early in an alt-WW2).
All of it ? If yes that will lead to a interesting demgraphic make up for the Czechoslovak Republic because next to adding 1 million poles to it, there will 4 million
germans added. Which makes germans the single largest ethnic group. Not mayority so.
Right. I mean, just like I'm not proposing this as a "more fair" Versailles, I'm not saying that Czechoslovakia/Bohemia will be more stable.
But the territorial losses are pretty much the absolute maximum the Entente would ever consider (and to be honest, it's very, very unlikely that the Entente would sign over German Silesia to the Czechs like that).
Whatever toxic ideology arises from the ashe of Versailles ITTL will be just as toxic and NatSoc but a lot more anti-western.
Seriously, is that worse?
A more anti-Western German regime is likely to provoke Western resistance earlier. And if France gets occupied Eastern-Front style, for humanity in general that's going to be worthwhile if it avoids the monstrous disaster that was the German invasion of the Soviet Union and results in a shorter war. It sucks for the French and the Germans sure. But I don't see any reason to play favorites and say that they deserve to be treated any better or worse than any other nation of people.
And angry and pissed of Germans inside another state are a bad idea.
Is that really so much worse for Germany than the anger against reparations and disarmament? From the point of view of the generals, this treaty would actually be better, since while it maims Germany worse territorially, it implicitly recognizes the German right to build an army worthy of a great power and seek redress in future. The OTL treaty really stung the officer class because it stripped Germany of an army worthy of her position (as they saw it) and her right to have an army worthy of her position. It made them afraid that if they didn't do everything they could to undermine Versailles, the proud Prussian military traditions would be lost and the country would fall into the hands of the decadent and the socialists by default.
In an alternate ASB version where France could afford to mobilize their entire army to occupy areas in Germany for an indefinite period of time
France could do this if they kept the income tax after WW1.
What would worry France more is keeping Britain and America happy, which is one of the ways this treaty could go down the dustbin. I could easily see the French deciding in the late 20s or early 30s to get out of the Rhineland since international opinion had shifted against their presence there and the British occupation forces had long ago pulled out. Then down the line a couple years you might see an Anschluss type moment as whatever German regime marched triumphantly over the Rhine to re-unify the region.
And the Americans will be even less involved, at a certain point they would be so pissed off that they would set off an economic nuke by pressuring the Entente with immediate repayment of their loans.
Really? The US would be so angry that they'd torpedo the economies of two of their biggest trading partners and erstwhile allies in the name of one of their biggest trading partners and erstwhile enemy?
I don't see it.
Sure, the US could easily be angry even after their own negotiators had been party to carving Germany up more than OTL - they were generally unhappy about Europe not just getting along in OTL. But angry enough to start a trade/financial war? (And make no mistake - in this era such actions were considered acts of war - indeed, the Treaty of Versailles in OTL had a specific clause that gave the Entente the right to make economic war on Germany should she ever be uncooperative and that the German government could not consider such Entente economic violence as an act of war.)
where the USA is radically indifferent towards human rights
Eh. Let's not white-wash here. The American ideas on human rights in OTL required war and ethnic cleansing to make practical. (Of course, since these ideas were widely shared on both the Entente side and the Central Powers side, it's not really fair to blame the Americans for these ideas - they were widely held.)
If the application of "national self-determination" ended up screwing over Germany as bad as it screwed over the Turks and the Hungarians, would anyone in the former Entente really care? Really? I just don't see it. The Entente found excuses to justify giving Syria to the French, Smyrna to the Italians and Greeks, Transylvania to Romania, all of Vojvodina to Yugoslavia, the lowlands of Slovakia to Slovakia, Lvov to Ukraine, Memmel to Lithuania and Teschen to Poland...
There were really promising developments happening inside the Kaiserreich and the war only accelerated them.
I don't dispute that. What I dispute is that the Germans would be any better at addressing the wounds of a maimed Europe than the Entente were. Europe was seriously messed up by WW1. Seriously, seriously messed up. And whoever wins is going to be left holding the bag. And... I find it hard to imagine that where the French, British and Americans all went "someone else can clean up this mess!" the Germans would decide any different. I mean, it's not like they broke Europe - their allies and enemies in WW1 had done alot of breaking too!
And angry and pissed of Germans inside another state are a bad idea. It is likely that the ATL Nazis/NatBols can pull of a Czechoslovakia in the countries that are "blessed" with annexing majority German areas. Who would stop them ? Britain that is immediately plunged into a massive financial crisis due to Americans recalling their loans? ITTL the crisis of the Empire that occured after WW1 is going to be more bloody and drawn out. France, who wasn't even able to really occupy the Rhineland IOTL?
For sure. And it's one of the reasons why I thought it was interesting to raise this question.
For my own part, here's what I think the possibilities are:
Germany is reduced territorially angry as all heck (but not much more angry due to the lack of the long-term provisions of OTL's treaty). However, she's still able to recover as a great power.
How it goes after that depends very much on whether Germany can regain the lost territories without general war like it did with OTL's Anschluss and taking the Sudetenland and Bohemia. This is especially true with the Rhineland, since if they don't gain that, they basically can't launch a Blitzkreig into France.
How angry the Germans themselves are I don't think matters though. Moral outrage does not win wars.
fasquardon