Challange: France as a great power

BigBlueBox

Banned
Have Germany collapse into a civil war at the end of World War 1. France marches to Berlin and "restores order", while splitting up Germany and setting up a puppet Rhenish Republic. The Russian civil war turns south for the Bolsheviks, who are eventually defeated after a longer and much more brutal civil war. The disparate White factions are unable to form a proper government, so the central government remains weak and Russia descends into warlordism. France is able to draw Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia into its sphere of influence. Combined with its control of the Rhineland, this makes France even more powerful than Britain, thus making France the most powerful country in Europe.
 
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Huh, it's a challenge?

It's a great power according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power#Great_powers_by_date which makes sense given that it has its spaceport, its complete nuclear weapon industry (unlike UK, for example) and has a network of bases and possessions kinda unmatched outside the US (second exclusive economic area in the world). By "strong", you seem to imply military power, but I don't really see a country vastly more powerful in Europe, except for Russia - if you count it in Europe.
 
Agreed. France has less economic power than Germany, to be sure, but also has soft and hard power advantages that Germany lacks. France is on par with the United Kingdom, I suppose, though France's position in the EU gives it more allies, but France is well ahead of Italy never mind Spain or Poland.

If we're talking about France as a great power on the scale of Germany, you would need somehow to create a French economy that would be as relatively strong--at least as much of an export powerhouse--as Germany. More, since even now Germany has a population 25% greater than that of France, unless you make France perhaps implausibly welathy relative to Germany you are going to need to narrow the demographic gap somehow.
 
Agreed. France has less economic power than Germany, to be sure, but also has soft and hard power advantages that Germany lacks. France is on par with the United Kingdom, I suppose, though France's position in the EU gives it more allies, but France is well ahead of Italy never mind Spain or Poland.

If we're talking about France as a great power on the scale of Germany, you would need somehow to create a French economy that would be as relatively strong--at least as much of an export powerhouse--as Germany. More, since even now Germany has a population 25% greater than that of France, unless you make France perhaps implausibly welathy relative to Germany you are going to need to narrow the demographic gap somehow.
Funny thing, barely 20 years ago, it was France that was exporting a lot compared to Germany. The idea is that it isn't necessarly a fixed geopolitical issue, mostly a question of politics.
 
More, since even now Germany has a population 25% greater than that of France, unless you make France perhaps implausibly welathy relative to Germany you are going to need to narrow the demographic gap somehow.

This might be somewhat distasteful, but what if the Soviets tried instigating a eugenics/population control policy in East Germany as a perceived solution to the "German Problem". Trying to make the population less aggressive by trying to depress testosterone production with chemicals in the water or something? That would have an impact, at least in the window of a few generations, though itd correct over time and you'd get a baby boom economic boost in the future...
 
Huh, it's a challenge?

It's a great power according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power#Great_powers_by_date which makes sense given that it has its spaceport, its complete nuclear weapon industry (unlike UK, for example) and has a network of bases and possessions kinda unmatched outside the US (second exclusive economic area in the world). By "strong", you seem to imply military power, but I don't really see a country vastly more powerful in Europe, except for Russia - if you count it in Europe.

making france a great power,at least in an european context,is indeed quite easy,but making it the strongest with such an late POD is another issue. an century of underwhelming population growth,the hemorrhaging of WWI and the roots of political instability have already happened.
 
Challange: Make France the strongest nation in europe with a pod in 1917.

I'm still trying to decide on the exact PoD, but France had some very interesting people on what you might call the "reformist right" of the political spectrum during the interwar years. I have a sketch timeline in my head about what might happen if these people were gelled together into a French Christian Democratic party.

One of the most important early impacts of this would be to have France retain the income tax after WW1, instead of repealing it as they did in OTL. This better-funded French government would then (under Christian Democratic and Socialist led governments) would weather the post WW1 inflation better (meaning the WW1 debts are a heavier burden), be better able to invest in re-construction efforts leading to more immigration, a faster rebound from the economic damage of WW1 (which in turn means that the recovery in French fertility that developed after WW1 is made more evident) and France is better able to weather the Great Depression since not being so traumatized by the post-WW1 inflation means the French are more willing to experiment with different policies during the Great Depression. The result is a much stronger and more confident France in the 30s, which rather derails WW2. A long cold war with Germany would then drive this France to heavily invest in her colonies, resulting in a Federal French Empire that is by the modern day a definite superpower, though one of the weaker members of that small club (which depending on how I decided to go with events in the rest of the world, could be as large as 5 or 6 countries, or as small as 3 countries).

Also, with the recent declines in British military power, France could already claim to be the strongest nation in Europe, though only by a whisker.

fasquardon
 
This might be somewhat distasteful, but what if the Soviets tried instigating a eugenics/population control policy in East Germany as a perceived solution to the "German Problem". Trying to make the population less aggressive by trying to depress testosterone production with chemicals in the water or something? That would have an impact, at least in the window of a few generations, though itd correct over time and you'd get a baby boom economic boost in the future...

I do not see how that would have any impact. I'm not sure what this would even be supposed to do, honestly.
 
France is able to push away the lines of the trench warfare, pushing right into germany. the russian civil war ends in a split russia, with mamy difftent states arrisinh, and germany collapses in pieces by the preasure of the war. a few years later a war starts between britain and france, resulting in a split britain and france takes british colonies.

(now I'll go read other responses)
 
Metropolitan France doesn't have the demographics to be a geopolitically independent great power in Europe during the 20th century. Becoming London's junior partner is the only way it managed to avoid being overwhelmed by Germany in 1914. A defeated Germany still had a larger military potential than a victorious France, there's a reason the French elite's strategy in Europe was hiding behind the Maginot line.

If it can hold on to the Empire in some semi-federal greater republic it may boost its economic weight somewhat, but it's hard to make a colonial empire a net benefit rather than a liability for much of the twentieth century.

France was the mostly populous non-Russian country in Europe from the late medieval period up until the early nineteenth century, but it fell behind future Germany's population because it was the basically the first country to enter the demographic transition. Declining birth rates during the 19th century caused a sizable amount of angst and experimentation with natalist policies that didn't close the gap between France and Germany.

Because Germany started developing later than France, it spent most of the nineteenth century in the low death rates + preindustrial birth rates stage of rapid population growth, while France was approaching the low death rates + lower birth rates demographic equilibrium of a typical developed country. France is likely to converge with or surpass Germany's population later in the 21st century, but that's future history rather than an after 1900 matter.
 
A defeated Germany still had a larger military potential than a victorious France, there's a reason the French elite's strategy in Europe was hiding behind the Maginot line.
Good thing that IRL, it wasn't and that this is a very bad urban legend propagated by bad History courses. The Maginot Line's goal was to force the reduction of the frontline's size to a smaller area where the French could funnel the German military and ideally take the fight to the Low Countries. As for being geopolitically independent, it managed it much better IRL than either UK or Germany after the war.
 
It's imaginable that France might catch up if it as an even more open immigration policy than OTL, but I have no idea how politically sustainable hat would be.
 
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