After World War 1, the German Empire lost a few slices (Polish Corridor, Posen, Alsace-Lorraine), but stayed largely intact. Austria-Hungary was disintegrated.
Is there anyway post World War One, that rather then having a large Germany and a small Austria, we could end up with 2 mid sized German states, such as:
- Prussia (largely resembling the North German Confederation of only 50 years prior, maybe the other states in the former German Empire becomes provinces of Prussia to create some quick stability?)
- Austria (basically "Austria" + Bavaria + Baden + Wuttemburg + maybe Saarland?)
My initial thoughts were something along the lines of the Soviets beating the Polish or something in the Polish-Soviet War - the UK and France would want some semi-strong buffer states to act as a shield (rather then a glut of small unstable states from the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, and an unstable Germany), and then maybe a similar to OTL prohibition on unifying.
Thoughts? I don't know how attached Bavaria is to the German Empire, but it does seem culturally closer to Austria, and I believe the idea of a Bavaria independent of Germany was at least mooted during World War 1...