AHC: Most people between Volga and Rhine speak German as 1st language

I guess something in pre christ times would be feasible.
I think such early POD would just butterfly German language. Germanic language option is much easier (Goths were not that far from Volga OTL) but for German only succesful General Ostplan could give such result.
 
I think such early POD would just butterfly German language. Germanic language option is much easier (Goths were not that far from Volga OTL) but for German only succesful General Ostplan could give such result.
Yeah, thats what I meant. Germanic groups settle the area, but as you said what comes out of this will hardly be German.

And yeah, Generalplan Ost. I guess we had already some threads about that plan. If I remember right, the area becomes a giant graveyard with some few Nazi outposts.
 
Divert the Slavic migrations.

This still leaves the Balts, the Finno-Ugric and various steppe populations (turco-mongol speaking or Indo-Persian speaking) between the Oder and the Volga to take care of.

There is basically no way except in a Vlad Tepes award worthy timeline to have a German speaking eastern europe even if we change german to germanic. The land wasn't empty when the slavs went there.
 

raharris1973

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Good point that German(ic) is easier to do than German.

If we're going for Germanic, the Wolves of the Steppe thread with the Goths would work to do the trick.

...and of course this is the obvious choice-

And yeah, Generalplan Ost. I guess we had already some threads about that plan. If I remember right, the area becomes a giant graveyard with some few Nazi outposts.

And Haakwood directly points out its problem (the Germans were never going to get much settlement in the 20th century).

But is there scenario that could get a close result between the classical era and 20th century?

For example, any PoD between the printing of the Gutenberg Bibles (and establishment of literary German) and the end of the 19th century work?

What about anything a bit earlier like between the rule of Louis the German in the 800s over the East Frankish Kingdom to the printing of the Gutenberg Bibles? That at least gives us Mongols and plagues and some eastward crusading to work with. Said TL would probably have something called "German" although it would evolve differently from our own.
 
A HRE that manages to consolidate itself in the early to high middle ages would not only be able to avoid the great German catastrophies like the 30 years war (a third of the German population dead) and exert considerable cultural influence over it's neighbors, but would also allow a much more successfull Ostsiedlung, like in OTL Prussia and to some extent the Baltics.

Also, the great Russian population boom only really happened in the 19th century, before that, Russia was ridiculously underpopulated. If you have a more persistent Mongolian rule that hinders the development of modern agriculture, while Europe speeds ahead in terms of technology, you could easly have a barely populated Russia that falls under foreign domination during the equivalent of TTL colonialism and imperialism.
 
A HRE that manages to consolidate itself in the early to high middle ages would not only be able to avoid the great German catastrophes like the 30 years war (a third of the German population dead) and exert considerable cultural influence over it's neighbors, but would also allow a much more successfull Ostsiedlung, like in OTL Prussia and to some extent the Baltics.

I agree. A Germany that united in the middle ages would probably lead to much of a much greater German speaking area. The population of the Germanies in 1500 was 14 million, roughly equal France while Russia had 6 million and Poland/Lithuania had slightly less than 5 million.
 
A relatively simple option, I think, might be to have Poland-Lithuania to never form, but instead for Poland to end up under a hypothetical large-ish Brandenburg. As Bohemia/Hungary show, a sufficiently powerful German overlord might lead to a significant German-shift, maybe enough to turn Poland (and Bohemia, now completely encircled in a sea of Germans) into almost-Germany.

Once you've done that, anything weakening Lithuania/Russia will create even more opportunity.
 
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