After WW1: Old Bavaria becomes part of Austria?

Deleted member 94680

To be fair, at the end of the war OTL the German government surrendered in somewhat of a panic. The 100 Days didn't militarily defeat Germany completely but Ludendorff demanded an end to hostilities. A second 100 Days, possible with increased American support and manpower, might cause the collapse of Germany and result in WAllies on German soil?
 
Probably, but then what?
Imo no power wanted / could keep troops for long periods of time in Germany. Well the Americans could but lacked the will and the British Imo wanted to keep Germany viable. Only France I can see going for it. But alone it would be suizide to do it.

And then that second hundred days opens the door to the red menance in Germany. And with the Russian situation the leaders of the Entente would probably not like that. A German-Russian block with world revolution and red flags could bring further trouble to France and Britian. So keeping a resonable German governement and state my be a thought in the back of some minds.
 
East Germany for the purpose of the OP scenario effectively means 'Prussia'. Calling it East Germany is a big misnomer that only confused the issue.

Of course, you cannot force any major split without actually marching troops into Germany and enforcing it. Occupation. That was not something the Entente wanted to do. So the scenario is kind of doomed from the beginning. It would not have been possible without some major changes in how UK, USA and France thought.

Problem: Austria was not on the winning side of the war. If the allies decided to annex Old Bavaria, they would have given it to Switzerland or to Czechoslovakia, but not to another looser of the war.
Both of those options are complete non-starters. :) Bavaria is not just some no-name province but the third most powerful German state after Prussia and Austria. You would not turn Bavaria Swiss or Czechian, you'd turn Czechia or Switzerland Bavarian. Especially since both already have large German populations, making any remaining languages the clear minority in the resulting hypothetical nation.

The natural division would be dissolving Germany and returning to Prussia, Austria & friends - Prussia leading something based on the North German Federation. With the south maybe united into a counterweight South German Federation of Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden. Maybe add Austria too, but that is not a natural construct and could threaten to fall apart again. And you still would have to invest a lot of effort to keep the two (or three) nations apart permanently. Occupation is only the beginning, you'd need some long-term plan how you can drive a large enough wedge between them to prevent unification desires. While in OTL communist and capitalist ideologies were ultimately not strong enough for that, a north/south divide would be more along actual cultural lines and anything based on that may have a better chance.

There's also French dream of propping up an independent Rheinland based on Rhenish nationalism (here that would mean splitting the majority Catholic West German territories of the NGF away from Protestant Prussian dominance). But that never worked out as a viable entity in history, even though it had some institutional/traditional traction. It would probably collapse since it would be seen as a French puppet - which would of course be true.
 
The best, if not only, way would be to work with the money. The Entente could declare that Prussia and just Prussia was responsible for WWI and should have to pay all the reparations. Furthermore, as early victims of Prussia, the former states of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and Nassau (perhaps even Schleswig-Holstein) would be offered independence from Prussia and indemnity.
If the new Free States would obviously financially and diplomatically profit from being no longer a part of Prussia, then it might be a viable proposition.
 
The best, if not only, way would be to work with the money. The Entente could declare that Prussia and just Prussia was responsible for WWI and should have to pay all the reparations. Furthermore, as early victims of Prussia, the former states of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and Nassau (perhaps even Schleswig-Holstein) would be offered independence from Prussia and indemnity.
If the new Free States would obviously financially and diplomatically profit from being no longer a part of Prussia, then it might be a viable proposition.

That´s an interesting thought. About the problem of enforcing a rearrangement of the German borders, remember that the Versailles Treaty demanded that Germany disarmed and payed reparations, in addition to territorial loses. Even this was something that needed to be enforced. As for the first possibility I suggested, the reason I came up with this idea was that this would be something that might be popular among the people in Old Bavaria, as they were culturally closer to Austria than to other parts of Germany. If you follow the idea launched by Westphalian, you might even use divide and rule tactics to make other parts of Germany want to become independent from the Prussian areas.

East Germany for the purpose of the OP scenario effectively means 'Prussia'. Calling it East Germany is a big misnomer that only confused the issue.

The reason why I wrote Eastern German rather than Prussian is that Prussia at its peak included large parts of Northern Germany, even areas in Western Germany.
 
Top