Challenge: Slavic Eastern Germany

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a world where:

1. The Polabians remain Slavic speaking, and are the majority population in the area they inhabit. (Assimilating them into another Slavic ethnic group, like the Poles or Czechs, is OK.)

2. As a consequence of this, the Elbe is considered the (rough) boundary between German and Slavic Europe.

The POD can be anytime after the Treaty of Verdun.
 
Have a Nazi Germany which crosses a few more lines, leading to Poland's border being pushed that far westward. OTL, there were many Russians and Poles who already wanted to have Lusatia annexed to Poland on the basis of the its Sorb minority. Have a bit more of a push, and you might get there. You might technically call the Sorbs Polabians as well.
 
Have a Nazi Germany which crosses a few more lines, leading to Poland's border being pushed that far westward. OTL, there were many Russians and Poles who already wanted to have Lusatia annexed to Poland on the basis of the its Sorb minority. Have a bit more of a push, and you might get there. You might technically call the Sorbs Polabians as well.

Degermanizing Berlin! I think that's a bit far even for Stalin.

I kind of had a medieval POD in mind...after all, Poland at one point looked like this. What if Piast Poland hadn't broken up, and instead expanded westwards?
 
Berlin was originally Slavic anyways, but doing that would put Germany as a whole against the USSR, and wouldn't be a smart move. To achieve the OP's request, we need to either make the Polabians demographically stronger, with higher birth rates, or somehow butterfly and German Drang nach Osten.
 
Berlin was originally Slavic anyways, but doing that would put Germany as a whole against the USSR, and wouldn't be a smart move. To achieve the OP's request, we need to either make the Polabians demographically stronger, with higher birth rates, or somehow butterfly and German Drang nach Osten.

I think, we could have the Polabians get Christianized before the Germans are or have the Christian Missionaries turn them Christian before the 11th century at least.
 
The Polabians were at least a five separates tribes/tribal confederations: Veleti (later knowns as Lutizi), Obodrites, Hobolans, Rugians/Ranians and Drevlans (the "true Polabians", because were settled on another bank of Elbe). Polabians dialects were probably very distinct from each. Slavic Polabia was very sparsely populated, various tribes living in dense areas to considerable distances were separated by empty spaces.

The Polabía had only one chance to preserve own Slavic identity - by subjugating oneself to a strong Slavic state, who was capable of effective resistance against the German Reich - Poland or Bohemia. However, it would have to be consistent with decision of all local political bodies.
 

ingemann

Banned
Short of USSR ethnic cleansing East Germany, this won't happen unless someone decide to depopulate France. The reason for this was that the German tribes land was significant denser populated (X10 the German per square mile) thanks to the German use of heavy plough. At the same time the sinking of the Low Lands resulted in massive population migration of Frisians, which resulted in Germanic lands being overpopulated.
Honestly the only way I can see the Germans not move to the east, is if the Muslims win at Tours and their slave raiders depopulate northern France (through a mix of the population being enslaved and fleeing) as it would give the Germans a more fertile area to settled.
 
Honestly the only way I can see the Germans not move to the east, is if the Muslims win at Tours and their slave raiders depopulate northern France (through a mix of the population being enslaved and fleeing) as it would give the Germans a more fertile area to settled.


I think the Germans could move west if Northern France becomes depopulated due to the Viking raids and people fleeing them and later it would be repopulated with Germans.
 
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