What if the remaining kingdom of Prussia had been divided into several States after WW1 instead of remaining a Mega State within the Weimar Republic. Would it have changed much of Germany's interwar years, or would things mostly have stayed the same?
Breakup of Prussia post WW1
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I'm also very interested in this. Hugo Preuß, the one who made the draft for the Wiemar constitution wanted to reorganize the territories but was criticized from the right and therefore failed to get it implemented. If anyone has any more details on Preuß proposal I would be very happy.
I'm going to give this a little bump. Anyone has any input?
In the Ostelben area, I could see Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia and East Prussia as Laendeers.
In west, Westphalia-Ruhr could be a state.
Realpolitik
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I don't think it would change the rise of the Nazis, considering that it was in Bavaria to begin with. But it could change the structure of the Weimar government.
Seems like a reasonable assumption. If anyone knows Preuss concrete proposal I would be in tears but I figure they can be quite hard to find.
Well if you aim to create a republic that breaks with its imperial history breaking up the feudal structure seems like a good idea! But yes, it is fairly ironic.
During the Weimar years, Prussia was actually considered a republican 'Fortress' within Germany. The social democratic Minister of the Interior Carl Severing successfully placed members of the Weimar Coalition (SPD,DDP,Zentrum) in leading positions within the state bureaucracy and the police throughout the 20s. Thus necessitating the 'Preußenschlag' against its government under Otto Braun in 1932, paving the way for a certain Austrian ...
Breaking it up might have resulted in several of the new states swinging decidedly to the right, especially the more rural ones.
Breaking it up might have resulted in several of the new states swinging decidedly to the right, especially the more rural ones.
Realpolitik
Banned
Basically. Bavaria was notorious as the home of of the right wing crazies, not Prussia. Those wild men from the mountains have the capability to think of such ideas and rather emotional enough, but are normally restrained by their humanity and sentimentality. North Germans are somewhat more blunt, tenacious. The Prussians typically didn't think in terms of abstract racial theories, but if you tell them to do something, no matter how brutal...
My maternal grandmother's family is northeastern German (well, apparently there were certain Slavic origins looking at the names and they were Catholic, but nobody *dared* bring that up in front of their faces. 100 percent Prussian, nothing else. It's not unusual, look at Manstein or Falkenhorst. Mixing was far more common in Central/East Europe than in Western Germany) in background, but they married into a Bavarian family after the war, and my physicist uncle is a profound Bavarian who loathes Prussians, like his dad. It's so interesting to see the personality conflicts between him and my thoroughly Prussian great-aunt/grandmother.
Bavaria. It really is Europe's answer to Texas. Culturally speaking, it's a lot more like Austria than Northern Germany. People don't realize this.
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This!
However, I also agree that a partition of Prussia would not have helped the Weimar Republic. Pomerania, probably also East Prussia, would have become DNVP, and probably later NSDAP-strongholds....given the Nazis more probing grounds than just Thuringia.
In the long run, it would probably have been inevitable, as the federal structure fully based on the monarchies of pre-1918 was more and more anachronistic.
Well, the Allies saw to it.
A self-managed break-up could perhaps have avoided the Colonial subjugation of Westphalia under those terrible Rhinelanders.
Ok, so instead creating a new thread with small modifications I am posting it here.
Let's presume that in Versailles Germany is not only forced to break up Prussia into Länder like in Hugo Preuss draft, but also to reform their voting system (threshold of 5 % for single parties and 8 % for coalitions, d'Hondt method ) and any articles about emergency powers are forbidden in the constitution (no Kaiser-like privileges for Kanzler, President or any similar authority).
How could it butterfly away Nazi's Machtergreiffung in 1933 and possibly WWII?
Break up of Prussia inside German Republic into new Länder could help a West Slavic speaking ethnicities, a pre-nations, that wanted to stay with Germany in single state, but were also seeking some autonomy, that is for Upper Silesians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Upper_Silesians and possibly for Masurians.
Masurians were not so politically organised as Upper Silesians, and according to 1925 census, they made only a 16,3 % of population of East Prussia district, not so much but on the regional level this could help their consolidation.
Masurians were not so politically organised as Upper Silesians, and according to 1925 census, they made only a 16,3 % of population of East Prussia district, not so much but on the regional level this could help their consolidation.
Brandenburg gets no capital of its own?
Did Entente countries have thresholds? If not why should they be interested in forcing one on Germany?
And regarding emergency powers for the president, keep in mind that without them the president would have been forced to offer Hitler to form a coalition government after the July 1932 federal elections. Had the Entente powers forced an FPTP electoral system on Germany Hitler wouldn't even have needed a coalition as the following map of the July 1932 election results demonstrates.
Had Wilhelm Marx been elected in 1925 and then re-elected in 1932 or had Hindenburg continued to resist making Hitler chancellor or had he died on 28 January 1933 and been suceeded by someone who'd have equally resisted making Hitler chancellor this ability to have a chancellor govern by presidential decree would have been hailed as the tool that saved Germany from a Hitler dictatorship once an economic recovery would have returned a parliamentary majority for the democratic parties in the mid 1930s.
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Experiences of Mecklenburg Schwerin is a good example of what might have happened with a partitioned Prussia. There the NSDAP won an absolute majority of seats in June 1932, so that like Thuringia it had a Nazi state government.
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