AHC: Germanize the Baltic

Nietzsche

Banned
The challenge here is to make as much of the Baltic, which here means roughly the modern day territories of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia along with the traditional territories of East & West Prussia, as German/Germanic as possible. For the purposes of the exercise, acceptable 'German' cultures are broadened to include the following, along with the traditional German ones:

Swedes
Norwegians
Danes
Dutch
Flems

No PoD before 1226 and the appeal for aid from the King of Masovia.

Note: Ethnicity is not the issue here, in any sort of "German blood" sense. The people there must simply identify as Germans, and others consider them as Germans.
 

wormyguy

Banned
One could argue that they are in fact the most German region of the world, as Scandinavian languages are, IIRC, the most similar to proto-Germanic.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
One could argue that they are in fact the most German region of the world, as Scandinavian languages are, IIRC, the most similar to proto-Germanic.

That's the exact reason I included the Scandinavians. But I mean the mainland Europe Baltic coast.
 
Keeping the Livonian Order's control more powerful would go a long way. See how Prussia was more or less thoroughly Germanized due to the Teutonic Order, and only lost its German speakers due to WWII.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Keeping the Livonian Order's control more powerful would go a long way. See how Prussia was more or less thoroughly Germanized due to the Teutonic Order, and only lost its German speakers due to WWII.

Indeed, but would it be possible to make German(or, as I stated, a Germanic language) the most-spoken in the areas? It doesn't need to be super-majority, a plurality(with the general acceptance that German is indeed the 'main' language) would be fine.
 
For some reason I thought this thread was going to be about uniting the entire Balkans as a single powerful nation.
 
Baltic languages essentially survived because of:
a) Lithuanian successful resistance to the Teutonic Order, and, more generally, to Christian and German attempts at conquest.
b) Reformation made preachers to write and print stuff in Estonian, Latvian dialects, Prussian and Lithuanian in order to convert the common people (most of the nobility was German-speaking anyway).

I think you should change at least one of these factors.
 
The Baltic region was heavily Germanized IOTL, what changed that was WWII. The nobles were German-speaking and found a good, pleasant home in Imperial Russia which is how Russia had generals named Barclay de Tolly and Paul von Rennenkampf.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
The Baltic region was heavily Germanized IOTL, what changed that was WWII. The nobles were German-speaking and found a good, pleasant home in Imperial Russia which is how Russia had generals named Barclay de Tolly and Paul von Rennenkampf.

But that was merely the nobility. I'm looking for the whole population to be Germanized.
 
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