Collect Post 1990 German PODs Thread

[oberdada]

Since Thande pointed out that we lack AH with current German PODs, I have decided to finally start this Thread.
(So you know what to do, if you don't like it ;-)
This is supposed to be a collection of (mostly) political PODs in the Reunified Germany, so basically anything with a POD starting from
October 3rd 1990. PODs that happen a bit earlier are OK, as long as they don't alter the unification process. PODs after the 2017 Federal Election
should be considered current politics and belong in chat.

(Examples:
WI: Peter-Michael Diestel stays in the DSU and leads it into the 1990 Federal Election is OK, since although the POD is before October 1990,
it won't have an effect on the reunification

WI: The SPD won the 1990 Volkskammer election does not fit, since a SPD Lead government would likely prolong the process.
WI: Gregor Gysi became chancellor in 1991 does not fit, since it is clearly ASB.)


I will post a couple of PODs, some as short ideas, oneshot scenarios, some might even become TL in their own right, who knows
Feel free to join, but please stay polite and number (like this: #1 #2 ...) the POD you are referring to or when startimg a new one.
NO DISCUSSIONS ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER, unless as part of a POD and NO NAMECALLING. please

 

[oberdada]

#1
Date of POD: September 13th 2002
Type of POD: Death of a candidate
result: altered Election result in the 2002 Federal Election, hung parliament
On Friday the 13th Ernst Welters, PDS direct candidate for Treptow-Köpenick rushed from the trolley to the convenient close
ATM machine in Köpenicks old city, but was unfortionetly hit by a speeding car and passed away hours later in a local hospital.
Despite having resigned due to the Bonusmeilenaffaire less then 3 month prior, Gregor Gysi could be convinced to run as replacement candidate.
The Election (in that district) was postponed to October 6th and Gysi won with a couple 100 of votes, defeating incumbent Siegfried Scheffler.
With the 3rd direct seat, the PDS was once again in parlament, even though not strong enough to form a Fraktion.
Therefore neither red-green, nor black-yellow had a majority. SPD is still largest Party, barely 8000 votes ahaed of the CDU/CSU (as in OTL)
Background: This POD combines 2 rare cases of the German electionlaw: 1. A party that gains 3 direct seats is exempt from the 5% threshold (as OTL 1994 PDS, 1957 DP)
2. If a direct candidate dies shortly before the federal election, the party may nominate another candidate, the election in that district can be postponed 2 weeks
if there isn't enough time otherwise (As it happened in Dresden in 2005)
This gives the voters of that district the special situation to know who the rest of the country has voted, and can therefore consider this in tactical voting.
Normally this can not influence more than one or two seats, but since thge PDS already won 2 direct seats, it results in ca 25 Extra seats for the PDS and therefore changes the outcome of
the election.

(In OTL Erst Welters did not win the seat, but continued politics on the local level untill he passed away in January 2018.)

 

[oberdada]

#2
Date Of POD: Early 1998
Type of POD: Candidacy
Chairman Oskar Lafontaine announces that he will be the SPD candidate for Chancellor in the 1998 Federal Elections.
Gerhard Schröder is pissed, but not able to organise a coup.
Schröder still wins the Niedersachsen election, but with fewer votes than OTL, so the red-green coalition is continued.
While Lafontaine manages to mobilise the left wing of his party and the PDS has dropped in the pollings, he can't go for the
"Neue Mitte" Blairstyle approach as Schröder did. The election is open

 

[Lautréamont]

#1
Date of POD: September 13th 2002
Type of POD: Death of a candidate
result: altered Election result in the 2002 Federal Election, hung parliament
On Friday the 13th Ernst Welters, PDS direct candidate for Treptow-Köpenick rushed from the trolley to the convenient close
ATM machine in Köpenicks old city, but was unfortionetly hit by a speeding car and passed away hours later in a local hospital.
Despite having resigned due to the Bonusmeilenaffaire less then 3 month prior, Gregor Gysi could be convinced to run as replacement candidate.
The Election (in that district) was postponed to October 6th and Gysi won with a couple 100 of votes, defeating incumbent Siegfried Scheffler.
With the 3rd direct seat, the PDS was once again in parlament, even though not strong enough to form a Fraktion.
Therefore neither red-green, nor black-yellow had a majority. SPD is still largest Party, barely 8000 votes ahaed of the CDU/CSU (as in OTL)
Background: This POD combines 2 rare cases of the German electionlaw: 1. A party that gains 3 direct seats is exempt from the 5% threshold (as OTL 1994 PDS, 1957 DP)
2. If a direct candidate dies shortly before the federal election, the party may nominate another candidate, the election in that district can be postponed 2 weeks
if there isn't enough time otherwise (As it happened in Dresden in 2005)
This gives the voters of that district the special situation to know who the rest of the country has voted, and can therefore consider this in tactical voting.
Normally this can not influence more than one or two seats, but since thge PDS already won 2 direct seats, it results in ca 25 Extra seats for the PDS and therefore changes the outcome of
the election.

(In OTL Erst Welters did not win the seat, but continued politics on the local level untill he passed away in January 2018.)

Oh god, you've combined the worst excesses of gerrymandering* with the insanity that was negatives Stimmgewicht. Was incoherent screaming in election threads a thing on the AH.com old board?

I'm not sure that Gysi wins this, though. From what I gather - and that isn't much, I can't even find the full 2002 results for Treptow-Köpenick - the local electorate very much knew IOTL that they're holding the fate of the PDS Bundestag group in their hands. Welters wasn't shy about this. If they did not vote for Welters while having to fear a CDU-FDP government under Stoiber, I don't think they would vote for Gysi when SPD is already the first party**. The data I found is that the OTL result wasn't even close, 39,3% for SPD's Scheffler vs. 30,1% for Welters.

But of course we don't know what would happen. It's all a bit insane, you get sympathy voting for Gysi, tactical voting for him, tactical voting against him. It's completely uncharted waters. The closest thing we saw so far is the Dresden catch-up election in 2005, where the effect was somewhere between 5 and 10%.

Even if Gysi loses and we essentially get OTL, all hell is going to break loose as far as electoral law is concerned. The Dresden 2005 catch-up election was the catalyst for the introduction of Ausgleichsmandate, as it triggered a bunch of Verfassungsgericht cases which ended with negative vote weight being judged unconstitutional. Your scenario is different, it's not exactly a case of negative vote weight and has nothing to do with overhang seats. Maybe it's going to end with the abolition of the 3-seat exception.

If he wins... well, no idea. Schröder isn't exactly the type to work with PDS. He didn't work with Linke in 2005 IOTL after all. But he isn't exactly the type to work with Stoiber either, 2002 is more partisan than 2005 due to the looming Iraq war and anyway Friedrich Merz was still a thing back then. And he isn't exactly the type for a minority government either.
I'll guess he tries for SPD-Greens-FDP, it predictably falls through, and he comes cap in hand to CDU. Still no Chancellor Stoiber and no German involvement in the Iraq war, though - no way he rolls over on that.

*) I wasn't even aware that you can gerrymander under the German system, and yet it turns out that they've literally gerrymandered the PDS group out of existence in 2002. The two constituencies SPD gained from PDS in 2002 were actually redrawn beforehand to include parts of West Berlin. Huh, you learn something new every day.

**) Except it isn't: The OTL absolute vote difference between SPD and CDU in Treptow-Köpenick was larger than the difference between SPD and CDU/CSU overall. ITTL, CDU/CSU has more votes than SPD after Sep 22. SPD-Greens still has a Bundestag majority, though.

 

[Lautréamont]

Another thing I've been wondering about, what if Bolko Hoffmann lives longer?

To clarify, Bolko Hoffmann was a stockbroker, entrepreneur and fixture of right-populist politics from the '70s on. In particular, he founded Pro DM in 1998, a political party whose raison d'être was fighting first against the introduction of the Euro, then for Germany to leave the Eurozone. To be frank, no one cared. The guy simply ended up as the epitome of conservative Don-Quijotery in the early '00s, paying huge sums out of his own pocket to fight the Euro for ten years without anyone noticing.

Given that, it strikes me as a cruel irony that Hoffmann died in August 2007, aged 69 - the same month as the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis.

One has to wonder what would happen if he was still around when that one evolves into the Eurozone crisis. Would he be seen as a visionary by the conservatives and fiscal hawks who criticized Schäuble's actions from the right? Would AfD be stillborn due to the competition from Pro DM, or not be founded at all? Or would Hoffmann abandon Pro DM to join AfD, possibly with the consequence of strengthening Lucke's wonk wing against Petry?

 

[oberdada]

Lautréamont gets #3 for Bolko Hoffmann living longer (thanks for Joining in)



#4 "A little less Fukushima."
March 2011: Tsunami, happen, the nuclear power plant is severly damaged, but TepCo manages
to avoid a nuclear meltdown.
The Staff is better trained an knows that vents for the air cooling system have to reopen
manually, and this bit of extra colling buys enough time to get the pumps running an cool
the reactor. Saltwater is still used, so the reactors are ruined.
For the anti-atomic crowd this shows how dangerous the technology is, we almost had a
second Czernobyl 25 years later.
For the pro-nuclear crowd, this shows how save the technology is, even under this extreme
conditions, there was no disaster.
Meanwhile in Germany: the Merkel-Westerwelle government has just cancelled the atomic
compromise of 2001, the game is on again after 10 years of relative calmness in the
subject.
Nobody is planing new powerplants, but old ones will be allowed to run longer.
And there is an election coming up in Baden-Würtemberg, and it looks like SPD and Greens
could be strong enough to replace the Black-Yellow Coalition under Stephan Mappus.
But in this TL they are not. it is close, but CDU and FDP end up with a 1 mandate majority,
despite heavy losses especially for the later.
- Angela Merkel does not change her energy policy.
- Nuclear Power remains a hot topic for years.
- As does S21 in Stuttgart
-Winfried Kretschmann considers to run in the 2013 Green primaries

 

[freivolk]

#5. The sunny summer of 2002
POD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_European_floods
August 2002 see different weather patters, preventing the massive rainfalls, which led to castrophic floods of 2002.
This floods allowed Chanccelor Gerhard Schröder to profilate himself as a crisis manager, which let to a rise of the SPD in the polls, resulting in a close red-green victory in federal election of Septembre 2002.
Without this floods Edmund Stoibers CSU/CDU stays ahead in the polls and becomes chanccellor.

 

[oberdada]

#6 5.01%

The (west German) Greens do slightly better in the first Elections after the Re-Unification (OTL 4.8%) and make the 5% threshold in the western voting area.
Results: Helmut Kohl still has a majority for his coalition. (No changes here)
The Greens form a Fraktion with the additional 8 Alliance90/ Green MPs from the East.
Without the shock of missing the 5% threshold the 1992 party conference is even more chaotic than in OTL, gut does not provide the cleaning storm as in OTL.
Fundis and eco-socialists like Jutta Ditfurth stay.
In 1993 the merger with Alliance 90 fails. About 20% of the members join the greens individually, the rest stay and transform into a special interest party for Eastern Germany, much at the expense of the PDS (re)entering all East German state parliaments in 1994 and Berlin in 1995.
In the 1994 Federal Elections the Greens drop out with only 4.5%, Alliance 90 get 1%, the PDS 3.7% and only 2 direct seat. ( Heym and Müller do not get in due to heavy campaigning by Alliance 90 for direct seats in Eastern Berlin. Instead the SPD wins those seats.)

Edit:
As Original Poster I have taken the liberty of revitalising this thread due to new interest it. (And for shame that I gave up on it so early)

 

[oberdada]

#7 February 24th 2014, Karlsruhe:
Constitutional Court upholds 3% threshold for European Elections

Result: The 7 seats of small parties go to bigger parties, assuming the same result CDU and SPD get +2, LINKE, FDP and CSU +1

Long-term change: In 2019 almost every party ran in the European Elections, the prospect of getting a seat with just 0.6 - 0.7 % was just to good.
So there will likely be a shorter ballot paper.

Without Martin Sonneborn as MEP, DIE PARTEI will not make the development of the last years.

 

[oberdada]

Speaking of Martin Sonneborn:

#8: Martin Sonneborn does not try to bribe a certain FIFA official with the promise of a Coocoo Clock and tasty German sausages and the 2006 World Cup takes place in South Africa.
Germany puts its name forward for 2010 uncontested.

(It is not absolutely clear that this really happened this way exactly in OTL, but it might. And I just love it and want it to be true)

 

[Lautréamont]

#7 February 24th 2014, Karlsruhe:
Constitutional Court upholds 3% threshold for European Elections

Result: The 7 seats of small parties go to bigger parties, assuming the same result CDU and SPD get +2, LINKE, FDP and CSU +1

Long-term change: In 2019 almost every party ran in the European Elections, the prospect of getting a seat with just 0.6 - 0.7 % was just to good.
So there will likely be a shorter ballot paper.

Without Martin Sonneborn as MEP, DIE PARTEI will not make the development of the last years.

I'm not entirely confident that results would stay the same otherwise. I tend to think that the no-threshold rule is to blame for the Left's poor showing in 2019, as, in the West at least, the kind of person who would vote Left is also the kind of person who actually voted PARTEI, Pirates, the animal rights' folks whose name I forgot, even Volt in OTL 2019.

Speaking of Martin Sonneborn:

#8: Martin Sonneborn does not try to bribe a certain FIFA official with the promise of a Coocoo Clock and tasty German sausages and the 2006 World Cup takes place in South Africa.
Germany puts its name forward for 2010 uncontested.

(It is not absolutely clear that this really happened this way exactly in OTL, but it might. And I just love it and want it to be true)

Germany still doesn't win it. There's some cosmic balancing force making sure that there is no timeline where Germany wins in a year fitting the meter of that fucking Sportfreunde Stiller song.

 

[ferdi254]

1999 POD. The SPD-Green government decides to wait with the "doppelte Staatsbürgerschaft" (double nationality but the term has a special connotation in Germany) until after the election in Hessen. Without the boost of the campaign against it the CDU looses, red-green keeps a majority in the Bundesrat. Due to him having become unimportant and under pressure Roland Koch decides to go down in a blaze of glory uncovering the illegal donation system of the CDU in full as much as he knows about it which prompts further escalations. Merkel becomes head of the CDU as OTL but due to much higher repayments of public funds the lack of the boost of Hessen and seen as worse than OTL in terms of illegal donations the CDU does not get traction in 99-02.

 

[Antheus]

1999 POD. The SPD-Green government decides to wait with the "doppelte Staatsbürgerschaft" (double nationality but the term has a special connotation in Germany) until after the election in Hessen. Without the boost of the campaign against it the CDU looses, red-green keeps a majority in the Bundesrat. Due to him having become unimportant and under pressure Roland Koch decides to go down in a blaze of glory uncovering the illegal donation system of the CDU in full as much as he knows about it which prompts further escalations. Merkel becomes head of the CDU as OTL but due to much higher repayments of public funds the lack of the boost of Hessen and seen as worse than OTL in terms of illegal donations the CDU does not get traction in 99-02.

This is very interesting. My take is: Much would play out like OTL, but the decline of Schröder's authority might very well be prolonged. He still wins in '02, still implements his Agenda policies, but is less panicked in '05 (no idea if NRW still falls, but also if it does he might be calmer) and waits for the regular election in '06, where the economic situation benefits him. If Merkel fails, she is ousted by the CDU, which could also be a long-term benefit for the SPD, as Merkel IOTL managed to get people, especially young women, especially in urban areas to vote for the CDU who wouldn't have otherwise.

 

[Salvador79]

PoD in 2003:
Peter Hartz is accused of peculiation and embezzlement two years earlier than IOTL, and he steps down as head of the Commission for the Reform of the Job Market, too.
(Who would replace him? Heinz-Peter Gasse?)

How would this affect the commission's reform concepts, their adoption in parliament, and public opinion on the process?
My hunch is that the reforms continue without significant modifications (since they were basically proposed and massively supported by the Bertelsmann Foundation anyway, Hartz had little actual impact on it, I think, and the whole stuff was just so much in line with the dominant neoliberal views of the time) and their parliamentary adoption would proceed as IOTL, too (Schröder had announced his Agenda 2010 early in 2003 already, and the centre-right opposition parties were there to support and radicalise the reform laws anyway, as they did IOTL).

But public perception might have been altered nonetheless, from a very benign view on all these close ties between leading Social Democrats, union representatives and Betriebsräte with the employers' side ("Genosse der Bosse" sounded ambivalent back then, not as clearly derogatory as it sounds now), which Bertelsmann publications like the Stern repeatedly portrayed as a German version of the Dutch "Polder model" capitalist-labour-reform-partnership, towards a more critical view of "sell-outs"...

 

[freivolk]

Bad Bundesbank
Pod: 1991

Deutschland, ein Wirtschaftsmärchen

Ulrike Herrmann erzählt die Geschichte der "sozialen Marktwirtschaft" und macht Schluss mit Legenden und den falschen Mythen vom Wirtschaftswunder. Deutschland ist reich, aber die gängigen Erklärungen sind falsch. So soll Ludwig Erhard der "Vater" des Wirtschaftswunders gewesen sein - in...

books.google.de

I´m no economic expert, but this book contains a lot of interesting POD. One thesis of the author is, that the Bundesbank, because of a obsessive fear of inflation several times created avoidable recessions.
On of this cases would be 1990/1. The Bundesbank massive raised the interest rates, strangling the unity boom in the crib and putting pressure on the rest of Europe, which resultet in Britain in "Black Wendsday".
If theBundesbank keeps the interest rates low, it could result in a more succesfull Aufbau Ost and a less eurosceptic Britain.

 

[freivolk]

#6 5.01%

The (west German) Greens do slightly better in the first Elections after the Re-Unification (OTL 4.8%) and make the 5% threshold in the western voting area.
Results: Helmut Kohl still has a majority for his coalition. (No changes here)
The Greens form a Fraktion with the additional 8 Alliance90/ Green MPs from the East.
Without the shock of missing the 5% threshold the 1992 party conference is even more chaotic than in OTL, gut does not provide the cleaning storm as in OTL.
Fundis and eco-socialists like Jutta Ditfurth stay.
In 1993 the merger with Alliance 90 fails. About 20% of the members join the greens individually, the rest stay and transform into a special interest party for Eastern Germany, much at the expense of the PDS (re)entering all East German state parliaments in 1994 and Berlin in 1995.
In the 1994 Federal Elections the Greens drop out with only 4.5%, Alliance 90 get 1%, the PDS 3.7% and only 2 direct seat. ( Heym and Müller do not get in due to heavy campaigning by Alliance 90 for direct seats in Eastern Berlin. Instead the SPD wins those seats.)

Edit:
As Original Poster I have taken the liberty of revitalising this thread due to new interest it. (And for shame that I gave up on it so early)

Überhangmandate wouldnt be an issue after this election. Although the SPD would get more votes, Kohl would have a large majority. But ironicly the small majority IOTL was partly his excuse to not let Schäuble take over.

 

[oberdada]

OP here / I just thought of a POD, and remembered this thread

#10 5 years of Red-Red-Green at the Saar

Type: coalition agreement
Date: 11. October 2009

After the State election, the Green party had found itself in the surprising role of kingmaker with just 5.6% and three seats.
So what instead of going for Jamaika, they had opted for red-red-green, as had been widely expected and the coalition holds for the entire term?

Sounds rather irrelevant, but has large butterflies:

It is the first successful 2RG coalition in the west.

PM Heiko Maas, he might eventually still become a politician on the Federal level, but probably not as fast.

Deputy PM Oskar Lafontaine. It is almost unheard of a former PM becoming a minister in a future government, especially after switching parties.
He might choose to stay head of the Fraktion instead.
Anyhow, he is suddenly part of a government.

AKK is still MP, but no longer minister. She will therefore not become PM in 2010, or General secretary and chairwoman of the CDU.
If Angela Merkel picks an informal successor, it will likely not be her.

Simone Peter will still become minister for environment and energy, but serve for the entire term. Therefore will not become co-chair of the green party in 2013. I can't come up with a potential alternative at the moment.

 

[ramones1986]

#11 DNF

Type: Media/Broadcasting
PoD(s): 1952/1963

Result: The national news bulletins (Das Erste's Tagesschau and ZDF's heute) are produced by Deutschland Nachtrichtenfunk (DNF), an organization collectively owned by the regional broadcasters that composed ARD, said to be inspired by its Dutch (NOS) and British counterparts (ITN); nonetheless, it retained their respective facilities in Hamburg and Mainz, althought it shared Berlin studios for some of their programs.

PS: I first thought of Deutsche Welle (DW) as the producer of the bulletins, but I don't want to violate their remit, unless Deutschlandfunk/DNF could be considered as their domestic counterpart, particularly post-reunification.

 

[oberdada]

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-merkel-won-a-majority-in-2013.546138/

#12

 

[Pragmatic Progressive]

Has anybody thought about the POD on April 1, 1991 of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder not being shot or surviving?