Danish German alliance?

What would be the simplest path to having Denmark and Germany/Prussia enter into a military alliance, with a POD some time after the 1860s?

Also, what would the effects of this be on later events?
 
Europe batters itself to pieces through war in the first half of the twentieth century. Russia--let's say under a radical, authoritarian government--due to its size ends up as an overwhelmingly dominant political power in the eastern half of the continent. Western powers, including Britain, France, the US, and Denmark, form an alliance to counter Russian influence; that part of Germany not occupied by Russians signs on pretty soon afterward, and by the present day has reincorporated the eastern chunk after the collapse of the Russian empire.
 
What would be the simplest path to having Denmark and Germany/Prussia enter into a military alliance, with a POD some time after the 1860s?

Also, what would the effects of this be on later events?

Before or After the Second Schleswig-Holstein war? if before, that would mean that the whole affair was negotiated peacefully(that means only Launberg, Holstein will be in german hand, and maybe south Schleswig, who were the german majority parts) that would help Denmark, how suffering that distraous war and having a ally in the south, so less problem for those, maybe both Denmark and Germany would seek colonies together

After the War, maybe during bismarck isolationism and a way to heal old wounds? they promise denmark if russia or britain act againd denmark?

the butterflies are bigger if before war, after would be the same, only that Denmark will suffer worse in ww1 even if keep neutral.
 

Tyr Anazasi

Banned
After the war had ended, the Danish king asked for membership in the German Confederation. Bismarck declined. If he accepted...
 
After the war had ended, the Danish king asked for membership in the German Confederation. Bismarck declined. If he accepted...

Dismarck declined because he was (with reason i'd say) concerned about two things

1. Denmark neither was, nor had ever been German. (Germanic yes, but that doesn't count, since then you could make the argument for all the Germanic Ethnities), and accepting them would go against the grain of unifying all the 'Little Germanies'

2. How would UK, which was allready starting to get weary, react to Prussia grabbing some Prime estate with protential naval bases all over the Altanic (Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Danish West Indies (US Virgin Islands)) and a traditionally strong naval nation, which, with relatively minor support could rebuild their navy to previous ages strength (before 1807 Denmark held one of the strongest European based navies ... This could very quickly end with UK going in and Fighting Prussia for Danish Independence, with the ambition to curtail Prussia giving Denmark a good slab of Prussian Coastline (at least whole of Schleswig-Holstein and prehaps some other parts of the Prussian coastlines, and prop Denmark up as a de facto British Protectorate
 
Dismarck declined because he was (with reason i'd say) concerned about two things

1. Denmark neither was, nor had ever been German. (Germanic yes, but that doesn't count, since then you could make the argument for all the Germanic Ethnities), and accepting them would go against the grain of unifying all the 'Little Germanies'

2. How would UK, which was allready starting to get weary, react to Prussia grabbing some Prime estate with protential naval bases all over the Altanic (Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Danish West Indies (US Virgin Islands)) and a traditionally strong naval nation, which, with relatively minor support could rebuild their navy to previous ages strength (before 1807 Denmark held one of the strongest European based navies ... This could very quickly end with UK going in and Fighting Prussia for Danish Independence, with the ambition to curtail Prussia giving Denmark a good slab of Prussian Coastline (at least whole of Schleswig-Holstein and prehaps some other parts of the Prussian coastlines, and prop Denmark up as a de facto British Protectorate


Given that Britain had no particular quarrel with Prussia at this time, she probably wouldn't be all that concerned. Certainly, Prussian naval bases would have been no bother at all compared with French or Russian ones, since the latter powers were GB's main imperial rivals.

But in any case, why should there be any? Denmark was offering to join the GC - a loose confederation in which Austria, not Prussia, was the senior partner - not to cede any territory to Prussia. Had the deal gone through, Denmark would almost certainly have been on the Austrian side two years later, and her army might have been enough to change the outcome - which is no doubt what Bismarck objected to.
 
While Britain still wasn't having any quarrel with Prussia, Denmark joining GC (of which Prussia was the undisputed leader of), would certainly make them sit up and get very concerned ...
 
While Britain still wasn't having any quarrel with Prussia, Denmark joining GC (of which Prussia was the undisputed leader of), would certainly make them sit up and get very concerned ...


In 1864 Prussia was not even close to being the undisputed leader of the GC. As late as 1866 the Diet voted in support of Austria against her, and accepted Prussian leadership only after total defeat in war. And the accession of Denmark would have added a sizeable army to (almost certainly) the anti-Prussian side.

Even if she had been, GB would in all probability have welcomed an increase in her strength, as it would have provided a counterweight to France and Russia, with whom Britain had far more problems at that time.
 
WI Danish-German alliance a century earlier?

The prospects mentioned are enough to make me wonder if a union of some degree (personal union leading to permanent federation and eventual national merger perhaps?) could have been possible between Denmark and neighboring German powers a century earlier still. Hannover comes to mind. Vice versa could Denmark as such have aggrandized on the Continent to the point that a majority of the population under the Danish crown was in fact northwest German?

This might put a check on German unification, with the Danish holdings (assuming here they hold firm, having accepted the rule of the Danish dynasty and not feeling a disability for speaking a different dialect than the ruling core of the total kingdom, and the kingdom can fight off German and other neighboring rivals well enough to keep the territory more or less intact) being as indigestible to a unifier such as Prussia or Saxony (or Hannover, assuming that kingdom is not in the Danish holdings) as Austria was to Prussian hegemony OTL--so there would be Germany, with or without Austria, then a greater Denmark to the north.

But could the Danish dynasty, having proven themselves to be acceptable overlords to their German subjects, be the one that unifies Germany?

Linguistically speaking, of course the range of dialects we call "German" branched off the Scandinavian ones a very long time ago. But the north German local dialects differ from "High German" by quite a lot, being closer to the lowlands languages (Dutch, Flemish) which are in turn remarkably close to English, or anyway what English would be like without the Norman Conquest. Denmark, as a kingdom, has an ancient history by European standards, going back a thousand years even in the 18th century. So I wouldn't foresee an actual merger of Danish and German identity, but is it unthinkable that Germans would come to see membership in the expanded Danish empire as part of their identity?

Yet another possibility would be if an alliance, perhaps secured via intermarriage and thus intertwining the dynasties, would tie Denmark to a northwest German principality that then goes on, using the assets of Denmark as leverage, to unify the northwest and from there become the nucleus of German unity. Here the unified Germany under a northwestern Kaiser is not under the Danish crown; rather Denmark is distinct but strongly tied to the German empire, much as Scotland and England were intertwined before the Act of Union. And perhaps there would even be an Act of that kind and Denmark would relate to Germany as Scotland does to England--both with distinct institutions and of course languages, but under one monarch and one central legislature (if the sorts of princes who set their eyes on unifying Germany would even countenance a legislature.

Bonus points if the German house is Hanoverian, or some other one but the British choose their post-Orange dynasty to import from there too, so we have in the 18th century Britain, Denmark and holdings, and a good chunk of North Sea and/or Baltic Germany all under the same monarch, and if the continental powers will harmonize their succession laws with Britain, eventually a Germanic-language superpower from Prussia to Connaught, from Svalbard down to Bavaria, with the Netherlands and Flanders conceivably getting pulled in too by the sheer mass of it!

I have to admit that that's a bit too dizzying to contemplate, but if we recall that in the 18th century "Denmark" included not just the overseas territories Sian listed but Norway as well, then a fusion of that Denmark and Germany would be a grandiose empire indeed, even if partitioned into two subempires.

Could the Danish Navy, subsidized by the German portion of the realm (as well as the ongoing Oresund revenues--if Dano-Germany survives as a power comparable to growing Prussian hegemony of the 19th century, no one is going to be in a position to demand the Oresund tolls be abolished until the whole meta-kingdom is soundly defeated) make itself a match of the RN, or even eclipse it?
 
I have to admit that that's a bit too dizzying to contemplate, but if we recall that in the 18th century "Denmark" included not just the overseas territories Sian listed but Norway as well, then a fusion of that Denmark and Germany would be a grandiose empire indeed, even if partitioned into two subempires.

Could the Danish Navy, subsidized by the German portion of the realm (as well as the ongoing Oresund revenues--if Dano-Germany survives as a power comparable to growing Prussian hegemony of the 19th century, no one is going to be in a position to demand the Oresund tolls be abolished until the whole meta-kingdom is soundly defeated) make itself a match of the RN, or even eclipse it?

Norway was forcibly ceded to Sweden doing Council of Vienna (against Norwegians wants, as they wanted to stay under danish rule, and if that wasn't possible, independence under the danish crown prince) ... Sound dues was removed in 1857 after increasingly more pressure by all the european naval nations, specially Russia and England, in total paying a one-time fee of 33.5mil Danish Rigsdaler (just shy of 847000 kg Fine Silver)
 
Norway was forcibly ceded to Sweden doing Council of Vienna (against Norwegians wants, as they wanted to stay under danish rule, and if that wasn't possible, independence under the danish crown prince) ... Sound dues was removed in 1857 after increasingly more pressure by all the european naval nations, specially Russia and England, in total paying a one-time fee of 33.5mil Danish Rigsdaler (just shy of 847000 kg Fine Silver)

The loss of Norway was a penalty for being on the wrong side of the Napoleonic Wars--and for being only a medium sized power. (Just about everyone changed sides in the course of the Napoleonic period, did they not?) The nullification of the Sound dues was simply because Denmark was no longer a great enough power to stand up against the naval powers.

Now I suppose a German-Danish union might still have wound up out of step with the victor in some great continental war and been broken up in consequence and there would go Norway. And by the later half of the 19th century a surviving Danish-German union might be on the ropes and not able to stand up to the big powers.

But vice versa the Danes might be on the right side; vice versa they might be one of the leading sea powers and able to hold their own in local waters against the top two put together in the 1850s.

Both these events were before the POD the author of the thread mentions, but I was talking about moving it a century back, to the 18th century. Growing ties to an expanding German state might have given Denmark the strength to avoid both these curtailments of her power.
 
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