Austria unifies Germany

Mostly inspired by a EUIII game where, as Austria, I own or have as vassal most of Germany. Is an Austrian Germany possible, with Vienna as the capital? What would have to change in order for this to come about, beside nerfing Prussia?
 
I certainly don't think it's impossible, but the biggest problem (presuming that the PoD is early enough to butterfly Wilhelm I's kingship in Prussia, or else things are pretty hopeless for Austria in my opinion) is Hungary. The Habsburgs had other non-German domains too, but Hungary was the big one. As long as the Habsburgs want to keep their huge multi-ethnic empire they can't really get behind pan-Germanism, which precludes an Austrian-led Germany (I wouldn't call a German Confederation which is dominated by Austria but doesn't get remotely centralised "Germany" any more than I would call the HREGN "Germany").

I'd think, then, that the Habsburgs would have to lose Hungary for this to occur. The obvious candidate for that is the Hungarian rebellion in the Revolutions of 1848. Give Russia some reason or other to not help Austria, and perhaps also make the rebellions in Austria proper more severe, and that might put an end to Austrian control of Hungary. Though there would be pterodactyl-sized butterflies from such a weakening of the Habsburgs and an independent, presumably fairly liberal state emerging in Eastern Europe, it would give the opportunity for Austria to jump on the pan-Germanist bandwagon as long as (as you pointed out) Prussia, which is probably a superior candidate to Austria even after Hungary is lost because of its greater Germanocentrism, is suitably weakened and/or isolated from the other German states.
 
If the Habsburgs handled the Thirty Years War better, then Austria could easily have ended the war before the French or even Swedish invasions, and set up a centralized state. It was the failure of the Habsburgs to win the war that saw Germany remain divided while the other states in Europe centralized.
 
Mostly inspired by a EUIII game where, as Austria, I own or have as vassal most of Germany. Is an Austrian Germany possible, with Vienna as the capital? What would have to change in order for this to come about, beside nerfing Prussia?

An Austrian Habsburg dynasty which concentrates on Germany instead of the Balkans and Italy?

The last chance for that might have been the early 30 Year War?

Afterwards do you really think even the Habsburg allied Southern Catholic German states were willing to spend money and soldiers for "Austrian adventures" in Italy or the Balkans?
 
There are multiple opportunities for Austria to "unify" Germany. Just like the OTL German unification, however, it's likely that several German-speaking areas would be excluded, like Switzerland and Prussia.

Seven Years' War: Austria and Russia crush Prussia, then sign a separate peace with Britain. Austria takes Silesia, France still loses, and Austria is the unchallenged hegemon of Germany, eventually unifying most of it.

Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon dismantles Prussia. Austria gets the Rhineland instead of Prussia at the end of the war, giving it control of the vast majority of all German-speaking territory. In the long run, this makes unification much more likely.
 
If the Habsburgs handled the Thirty Years War better, then Austria could easily have ended the war before the French or even Swedish invasions, and set up a centralized state. It was the failure of the Habsburgs to win the war that saw Germany remain divided while the other states in Europe centralized.

A big factor getting in the way of an Austrian-led Germany at the time is the fact that most of the northern-German states were protestant while the Holy-Roman Emperor of the time, Ferdinand II, not was stupid he was a catholic-bigot.
 
A big factor getting in the way of an Austrian-led Germany at the time is the fact that most of the northern-German states were protestant while the Holy-Roman Emperor of the time, Ferdinand II, not was stupid he was a catholic-bigot.

True, but enough Habsburgs were eccentric enough that I don't think this is an obstacle.
 
Noting the various suggestions for time-periods like the Thirty Years' War, I suppose it brings in the question of era. I've been focusing on 19th-century PoDs purely because I know almost no history before that century, so I ought to say that my statements on the plausibility of this challenge should be taken with that in mind.

There was hage opportunity to archive this in 1848! All Austria had to do was to support the National Assembly and to accept the Imperial Crown.

That's like saying "All that the Nazis had to do to win WW2 was to not invade Russia"; it ignores that the people in question, in this case the Habsburgs, were institutionally incapable of it. (In case someone gets a bit silly, I ought to clarify that I'm not saying the Habsburgs were like the Nazis.)

The Hohenzollerns refused to ally with the liberal revolutionaries (remember, the French Revolutionary Wars weren't so extremely long ago by 1848) and instead chose to crush them, even though the alternative, of cooperation, could probably have been achieved without huge concessions in regard to royal power (the revolutionaries were in a pretty desperate position) and would have hugely strengthened the power of Prussia and its king. I can't imagine that the Habsburgs would be less conservative-royalist than the Hohenzollerns (who weren't exactly heralds of social progress themselves), especially when they had far less to gain (displacing Austria as hegemon of Germany) and far more to lose (firm control over Habsburg non-German lands just as much as over Habsburg German lands) by cooperating with the revolutionaries, and indeed their OTL behaviour conforms to what this would make us expect. We can't underestimate the ideological aspect of the Revolutions of 1848; I'd claim that for that reason it was never a realistic option for the Emperor of Austria or the King of Prussia to accept a "crown from the gutter", in spite of the revolutionaries' optimism to the contrary.
 
Would it be possible for a Hapsburg monarch to willingly give Hungary over to another member of his family? Maybe if a succession crisis arises, and the two claimants in question agree to a compromise whereby one gets the Hungarian territories and the other gets to keep the lands inside the HRE.
 
I certainly don't think it's impossible, but the biggest problem (presuming that the PoD is early enough to butterfly Wilhelm I's kingship in Prussia, or else things are pretty hopeless for Austria in my opinion) is Hungary. The Habsburgs had other non-German domains too, but Hungary was the big one. As long as the Habsburgs want to keep their huge multi-ethnic empire they can't really get behind pan-Germanism, which precludes an Austrian-led Germany (I wouldn't call a German Confederation which is dominated by Austria but doesn't get remotely centralised "Germany" any more than I would call the HREGN "Germany").

I'd think, then, that the Habsburgs would have to lose Hungary for this to occur. The obvious candidate for that is the Hungarian rebellion in the Revolutions of 1848. Give Russia some reason or other to not help Austria, and perhaps also make the rebellions in Austria proper more severe, and that might put an end to Austrian control of Hungary. Though there would be pterodactyl-sized butterflies from such a weakening of the Habsburgs and an independent, presumably fairly liberal state emerging in Eastern Europe, it would give the opportunity for Austria to jump on the pan-Germanist bandwagon as long as (as you pointed out) Prussia, which is probably a superior candidate to Austria even after Hungary is lost because of its greater Germanocentrism, is suitably weakened and/or isolated from the other German states.

First off, An Austria that was capable of pulling this off...would not be A-H...It would be simply AUSTRIA itself...literally...the Eastern Realm.. So depending on conditions Germany would simply be mega Austrian Empire, of which the Germans would be the pre-dominant ethnic group. It would need to evolve to some kind of Federalized commonwealth type entity.

The alternative is simply spinning off Croatia and Hungary as separate Hapsburg Kingdoms. Bohemia would by necessity would need to be part of Austrian Germany, hence why the federalized entity might be more likely. And yes United Commonwealth of Austria does have an interesting note. But it would take a master stroke of diplomacy to accomplish this and its likely it would need to evolve in small steps over time rather than all at once.

Had Austria have been pushed out of Italy at the Congress of Vienna, then they would have focused on their eastern domains and Germany, instead of trying to dominate everything in the centre of Europe, the focus would have been narrower. Then perhaps Austria could have put the Prussians in their place, but it would have been difficult and would require a great deal of their attn at that point.
 
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