Best and most likely path for Grossdeutchsland ?

Eurofed

Banned
In the most recent row of discussions about Greater Germany and how to accomplish it, my PoV has been criticised as being too much Prusso-centric, and too neglectful of possible alternatives and the actual defects of a Prussian model that would get somehow expanded to Grossdeutchsland dimensions, my typical approach to the task so far.

Although I'm strongly persuaded that the Kaiserreich, despite its undeniable (but often overrated) defects, suffers by a lot of undeserved bad press, there may be some merit in the critique. So let's try and throw the issue wide open.

What would be in your opinion the most plausible/likely way and the best overall method (best for Germany first and foremost, and for Europe and the world secondarily) to create a Grossdeutchsland that endures to modern times, with a PoD between 1789 and 1939 ? Please make your argument both in terms of most likely and most preferable path. I'd also like to make the outcome of this discussion in a couple polls eventually.

"Greater Germany" for this purpose means a united German state that has to own all territories OTL Germany owned by August 1939, plus Danzig, West Prussia, and Upper Silesia. If the PoD occurs before 1919, it has to include Czechia as well. Elsass-Lothringen, Luxemburg, and South Tyrol are optional.

In order to be a preferable alternative to the OTL path, this Germany has to become as liberal, democratic, tolerant, and militarist as OTL UK or USA, and as economically, militarily, and culturally powerful as OTL Kaiserreich plus Austria and Bohemia-Moravia. They do not need be any imperialist (although they may), but a giant Switzerland equivalent is both way implausible and boring for foreign policy purposes. Of course, the 1939-1945/1989 catastrophe has to be entirely averted.
 
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The Kaiserreich to be sure does get conflated with Nazism more often than it should be. The two regimes were not the same, and the Kaiserreich's flaws, while grave, were no worse than those of other societies of their time. Where Nazi Germany's flaws verged in on improbably believed were it not real territory.

I think that Grossdeutschland is unlikely post-Westphalia if we include Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, and Luxemburg in the mix. However if we define Grossdeutschland as including the territory of the historical German Empire + Austria, a possibility is that the German Confederation serves as a model. if a movement shows up that advocates transforming the Confederation into an All-Germany EU-style mixture of political and economic unions, with autonomy for the various states within the Union *then* it might be possible for Grossdeutschland to happen gradually without immediately getting the rest of Europe to sit up and take notice.

This is less a Switzerland and more of a German equivalent to the unified Scandinavian states and might even emerge as a replacement for the original HRE. It's impossible for the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs to peaceably form a single state, yet if an all-German body can emerge that provides a growing core of pan-German identity on the basis of common trade and common infrastructure then one can have a Greater Germany without the only real Germans being warlike, murderous thugs.

The big elephant in the room will always be German particularism and the reactionary nature of all the German monarchies, whether that reaction was only an army with a state or a more sophisticated version. Liberal Germany needs the combination of an intelligenstia and an equivalent of the Duma to build off of. So the possibility is that in 1848 those movements find some idea of a unified identity and have the chance to build a "Germany" that is the inverse of the OTL model which favored thuggish military brutishness to anything else.

The interesting point about this is that if the liberal Germans stay in Germany and don't immigrate to the USA that has some butterflies on the US Civil War but that's for a different topic.

The major defects of the German Empire of OTL were as follows: 1) the army was a de facto state within the state and its loyalty was to the Army first and Germany second, and 2) no means to integrate liberal/SPD German opinion and conciliate the Kaiser at the same time. Meaning the largest single party in the system will always be excluded. A means to bring these guys into the system and have them identify with it both cuts off the possibility of German Communism having any native sympathy or power and allows for a truly German Germany.

I do not think that Grossdeutschland is necessarily very likely, if only because it requires viewing the state purely on ethnic grounds, and by the time that mindset appears in Germany the problem is all the other nationalisms will also exist and that produces at least an OTL scenario when it comes to nationalities not-the-nation-state's in the nation-state's territories. If Grossdeutschland appears in the 1840s/1850s, or at least the core of it it can mitigate that problem before it starts spilling over into Central Europe and the Balkans.
 
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So, what about different 1848? Seems quite obvious for me.

Indeed. I can think of half a dozen PODs in the 1848 period alone that would lead to Großdeutschland.

Heck, even by 1866 its quite possible to still create a Großdeutschland; though obviously by then it would be much more difficult than it would be in the Vormärz.
 
I think have the Napoleonic wars end differently with France being able to negotiate, Prussia doesnt get Westphalia and Hungary is independent. Have the west in some confederation, a Federation might be beyond things.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Indeed. I can think of half a dozen PODs in the 1848 period alone that would lead to Großdeutschland.

Care to make a quick resume of them ? :D

Heck, even by 1866 its quite possible to still create a Großdeutschland; though obviously by then it would be much more difficult than it would be in the Vormärz.

Not that likely if you want the liberal, non-Prusso-/Austro-centric version, though.
 
Care to make a quick resume of them ? :D

21 May 1849; Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, likely as a matter of pride, refuses to bend knee and kiss the ring of Tsar Nicholas. Russian forces never invade Hungary, allowing the Hungarians to successfully break free of the Hapsburgs, which forces Austria into a more German-centric orbit. Großdeutschland is fairly inevitable with both Prussia and Austria fighting over Germany, as opposed to OTL's Austria which had to focus on half a dozen different territories, ethnicities, nationalisms, and religions.

20 May 1849; Heinrich von Gagern doesn't lead the remaining liberals out of the German parliament, divided it in two. Instead the parliament remains a united front of liberal and radical aggregation, granting legitimacy and support to the ongoing revolutions across the German states. When the reactionaries in Prussian push on the revolutionaries, the revolutionaries push back, and Berlin is toppled; even IOTL the Hohenzollerns were far from secure in their own kingdom during the 1848-49 period.

14 May 1849; When Frederick William issues a decree ordering the Prussian delegates to return from Frankfurt, they refuse. The Hanoverians and Saxons never issue their similar orders, and the parliament remains the political, and social, center of the German reform/revolutionary movement. Further Frederick William is publicly weakened by his inability to force his subjects to listen to him. Once again the spark for another Berliner Uprising is now there, and Frederick William is too weak at this point to resist such an insurrection.

10 May 1849; von Gagern doesn't resign as Minister of the Reich in response to Archduke John's refusal to condemn the Prussian intervention in the pro-imperial constitution uprisings in Saxony. See above for my earlier von Gagern POD.

10 May 1849; The approaching revolutionary peasant army reaches Düsseldorf in time to relieve the siege of the trapped revolutionary militia inside, as well as crushing the Prussian forces formerly besieging the fortress between the two. Almost all of the Prussian Rhineland is now in revolutionary hands. The revolutions in Baden, the Palatine, Hanover, the Hessian and Thuringia states, and potentially Saxony itself. The Großdeutschland German Confederation is retained in form, though now split between a weakened reactionary Prussia and Austria and a powerful (especially economically) liberal 'West Germany' along the Rhine with access to the North Sea.

4 May 1849; Neither Saxon King Frederick Augustus nor his conservative government manage to sneak out of Dresden to Königstein, which means no provisional revolutionary government is established in Dresden, and no de-legitimizing the Saxon pro-constitutional movement, and no Prussian intervention in Saxony (which domino-effect led to the other interventions). Eventually Frederick Augustus is forced to accept the Paulskirchenverfassung, and soon Bavaria, Hanover, and other 'Third German' states follow, leaving out the reactionary Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs as an impediment toward liberal unification. The latter two likely don't last long under such pressures.

23 April 1849; After the Hungarians retake Budapest Görgey is able to resist Kossuth's calls for the Magyars to capture Buda Castle, in which a small (less than 100 man, iirc) Hapsburg garrison has holed up. The weary Hungarians are thus refreshed and ready to fight when the Austrians come back just weeks later, perhaps even launching offensives of their in the mean time. See the above for 'Hungary independent, Austria into Großdeutschland' scenarios.

21 April 1849; When Prussian King Frederick William dissolves both chambers of the Prussian Diet in response to that body's acceptance of the Paulskirchenverfassung, and they're urging for him to do the same, Berlin once again rises up against the Hohenzollern reactionaries. Even if successful in putting them down Frederick William's position is now greatly weaker than it was at the same point IOTL, and he's never able to launch his interventions across the smaller German states. Once again the liberals win out in the long-run.

5 April 1849; When Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph orders all Austrian delegates to the German parliament return to Vienna, they refuse. See further above for similar, though later, POD involving the Prussians.

28 March 1849; The German parliament selects another prince to elect Kaiser instead of Frederick William. Alternatively Frederick William is still offered the crown; but instead of a hereditary crownm with a de-facto veto, the Kaiser is only an elected monarch, potentially with only a delaying veto. Either way Frederick William's rejection, or lack thereof ITTL, is less damaging to the German parliament, and another prince is found; likely at this point the crown would pass to Maximilian of Bavaria.

23 March 1849; Franz Joseph, once again out of pride, never sends word to Tsar Nicholas asking for Russian aid in putting down the Hungarian revolution. See above for potential and likely butterflies.

5 March 1849; When Franz Joseph announces in no uncertain language that, contrary to all expectations, the Voivodina Serbs would not be recognized as an autonomous kingdom within the empire, the Voidodinian Serbs and their allies from the Principality of Serbia across the border turn on the Hapsburgs instead of 'merely' ending their conflict with the Hungarians.

9 February 1849; When Russian forces from the Danubian principalities are invited into Transylvania by the counter-revolutionary Romanians and Saxons (ethnic Germans in Hungary) there, they are far more successful... at first. Then they are horribly devastated and routed by the Hungarians in a spectacular battle that drives the Russians back and reignites the Romanian revolutionary movement. Russia never intervenes in Hungary, and the Magyars now have much better odds of achieving their independence. See above once again for 'Budapest breaks from of Vienna' scenarios.

5 January 1849; Though the Austrians manage to take Budapest, they don't capture and execute Batthyány, who continues to rally moderates to join the revolutionary cause, and a much more charismatic persona than the often abrasive Kossuth. Again, Hungary free, Austria into Großdeutschland.

5 January 1849; Alternatively the Austrians never take Budapest, because Görgey resists his more moderately liberal-minded officers and doesn't make the Vác Proclamation, and therefore doesn't sit on the sidelines and essentially let the Austrians walk into the Hungarian capitol.

Shall I go on? Those are all just from the spring of 1849 - 1848 has many more potential PODs that could lead to a non-Prussian, liberal, Großdeutschland.

Not that likely if you want the liberal, non-Prusso-/Austro-centric version, though.

It depends on what the POD is and how the war plays out. I believe we've had this discussion before in fact in other threads.
 
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