DBWI: Ineffective German Navy?

Historically, Germany was an obvious candidate for having one of the world's largest navies, given the Hanseatic League and other Baltic and North Sea adventures. The army was rarely emphasized, and often fell behind, with German Kaisers and Stadtholders often recruiting mercenaries from smaller states like Hesse and Switzerland, rather than investing in a standing army of their own.

What if this wasn't the case, and Germany had been more of a land power, with a weak navy?

For one, St. Petersburg probably wouldn't have been founded, as it only makes sense in context of the Hansa.
 
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Historically, Germany was an obvious candidate for having one of the world's largest navies, given the Hanseatic League and other Baltic and North Sea adventures. The army was rarely emphasized, and often fell behind, with German Kaisers and Stadtholders often recruiting mercenaries from smaller states like Hesse and Switzerland, rather than investing in a standing army of their own.

What if this wasn't the case, and Germany had been more of a land power, with a weak navy?

For one, St. Petersburg probably wouldn't have been founded, as it only makes sense in context of the Hansa.

The key here would probably be somehow butterflying away the great Iberian-Hansa commercial rivalry of the 16th century. It was really the League's efforts to penetrate into Frisia via integrating the local merchants into their brotherhood via their mutual Lutheran conversion, as well as the efforts to crack into the Spainish-Portugese closed colonial economy after it's attempted enforcement over the Grand Banks fisheries, that solidified their unity and lead to the "Protestant Berbers"\state sponsered pirates that morphed the purely commercial fleets to a proper Navy. This would have allowed the Spainards to retain their naval dominance in the eastern Atlanic and maintain their exclusive claims to the Americas, rather than finding their forces split (and defeated on both fronts) by the Hansa in the Atlantic and the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, resulting IOTL's tripartite division of the Western Hemisphere into the Protestant North, Catholic Center, and Islamic South.
 
Historically, Germany was an obvious candidate for having one of the world's largest navies, given the Hanseatic League and other Baltic and North Sea adventures. The army was rarely emphasized, and often fell behind, with German Kaisers and Stadtholders often recruiting mercenaries from smaller states like Hesse and Switzerland, rather than investing in a standing army of their own.

What if this wasn't the case, and Germany had been more of a land power, with a weak navy?

For one, St. Petersburg probably wouldn't have been founded, as it only makes sense in context of the Hansa.
The end result would be that Metropolitan Germany would have been far larger.It’s weak army meant that it consistently lost lands to France,Austria and Poland. If they did not fuck up their priorities,they would not have lost Rhineland,Prussia,Bavaria,Pomerania and Swabia.
 
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Just because Pomerania and Prussia are semi-independent as Hanseatic Republics, doesn't mean they're lost to Germany. No way the naval-orientated government wouldn't have kept the Baltic at all costs. The German navy and the strong influence of the Hansa in those lands, coupled with the importance of ensuring Germany dominated the Baltic, meant that when Germany did lose Prussia to the Poles, the Hanseatic coup in the major cities of Koenigsberg, Danzig, and Elbing during one of the Polish Civil Wars saw it returned (with greater autonomy) to the Kaiser.

And when Germany lost Pomerania to Sweden, the Navy blockaded the entire North Sea. By the time the Swedes got to Hamburg and Berlin, the blockade ruined their supply situation so much that Sweden had to retreat when faced by the admittedly ill-trained German Army. It took a long time for Sweden to admit defeat, and the Kaiser lost the First and Second Battle of Rostock, but the Third saw Sweden finally falter and surrender. The Swedish Navy was ruined, and Gotland let Germany keep the Swedes bottled up for the rest of history.

The strong navy and the merchant ties with the Empire were also what allowed Germany to control the Baltic; could Germany have taken Riga, Reval, Memel, and St. Petersburg without it? I think not. It was the navy and the merchants which let Germany truly incorporate the Baltics into the nation. Hell, I think that the area wouldn't even be German! Without a strong navy to connect the Baltic properly to mainland Germany, it wouldn't have been such an attractive destination for the German surplus population.

Keeping Southern Germany from joining with Austria would have been ideal, but after the Protestant/Catholic conflict ended the short dynasty of Austrian Kaisers, there's no way they would be content to stay in the Empire anyway. Too much animosity for the Protestant dominated Empire to have a substantial number of Catholic States, one of which who had their Emperor deposed.
 
Just because Pomerania and Prussia are semi-independent as Hanseatic Republics, doesn't mean they're lost to Germany. No way the naval-orientated government wouldn't have kept the Baltic at all costs. The German navy and the strong influence of the Hansa in those lands, coupled with the importance of ensuring Germany dominated the Baltic, meant that when Germany did lose Prussia to the Poles, the Hanseatic coup in the major cities of Koenigsberg, Danzig, and Elbing during one of the Polish Civil Wars saw it returned (with greater autonomy) to the Kaiser.

And when Germany lost Pomerania to Sweden, the Navy blockaded the entire North Sea. By the time the Swedes got to Hamburg and Berlin, the blockade ruined their supply situation so much that Sweden had to retreat when faced by the admittedly ill-trained German Army. It took a long time for Sweden to admit defeat, and the Kaiser lost the First and Second Battle of Rostock, but the Third saw Sweden finally falter and surrender. The Swedish Navy was ruined, and Gotland let Germany keep the Swedes bottled up for the rest of history.
And that's why I said they got their priorities skewed. The vast majority of Pomeranian and Prussian hinterland remained at the hands of the Poles,the former conquered by Poland a few years after the Germans took it from the Swedes.All that Germany controlled were a few cities along the coast. The German intervention in the Polish Civil War also saw the Poles retaliate at the end of the civil war,with Brandenburg and Saxony briefly occupied.Germany's arse was only saved after Austria threatened to intervene in favor of the Germans,and even then,Germany had to pay the Poles off handsomely for recognizing their loss of the Pomerania and Prussian coast.
The strong navy and the merchant ties with the Empire were also what allowed Germany to control the Baltic; could Germany have taken Riga, Reval, Memel, and St. Petersburg without it? I think not. It was the navy and the merchants which let Germany truly incorporate the Baltics into the nation. Hell, I think that the area wouldn't even be German! Without a strong navy to connect the Baltic properly to mainland Germany, it wouldn't have been such an attractive destination for the German surplus population.
They could have done the same with a stronger army,and directly so through an actual land corridor.
 
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And that's why I said they got their priorities skewed. The vast majority of Pomeranian and Prussian hinterland remained at the hands of the Poles,the former conquered by Poland a few years after the Germans took it from the Swedes.All that Germany controlled were a few cities along the coast. The German intervention in the Polish Civil War also saw the Poles retaliate at the end of the civil war,with Brandenburg and Saxony briefly occupied.Germany's arse was only saved after Austria threatened to intervene in favor of the Germans,and even then,Germany had to pay the Poles off handsomely for recognizing their loss of the Pomerania and Prussian coast.
They could have done the same with a stronger army,and directly so through an actual land corridor.
Germany's better off without them.

Those Junkers are the most reactionary element in Polish politics, outflanking even the most Sarmatian magnate when it comes to topics like a genuinely representative government, legislating morality or any sort of economic policy influenced by Enlightenment ideas.
 
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