DBWI: What if Germany was one country?

Germany is often seen as the place where nationalism failed. While the Western & Southern Slavs, Scandinavians, Italians and people of the Benelux united, Germany was to busy with internal struggles to ever become a single country. Even so many German states are quite important economic powers, Bavaria, Prussia, Hannover ect can all rival much larger nations when it comes to GDP.

This of course poses the question, what if Germany was a united country? What would need to change to make it happen? And just how powerful would such a country be?

No ASB like Germany conquering most of Europe in like a year though, keep it realistic.
 
Part of the problem is that Germany was kind of united way before those other states. Remember that all of the German states are still part of the Holy Roman League, which binds them all together. Maybe if you can get rid of the HRE it could be possible to have Germany unite the way everyone else did.
 
What about having Poland-Lithuania and France become weaker at some point in their history (maybe Poland-Lithuania gets screwed over by Russia and/or Sweden) as Warsaw and Paris both have vested interests in keeping Germany divided as it means that they could pit the German states against each other.
 
What about having Poland-Lithuania and France become weaker at some point in their history (maybe Poland-Lithuania gets screwed over by Russia and/or Sweden) as Warsaw and Paris both have vested interests in keeping Germany divided as it means that they could pit the German states against each other.
Fairly easy way to do that is to weaken the Jagiellon throne, who managed to centralize their control of their domains (way more than Poland-Lithuania, we in Warsaw call it the Intermarian Empire). Maybe you could have Louis II of Hungary lose at Mohacs, which is fairly easy to do as long as his Jagiellonian kinsmen don't support him.
 
Intermarian Empire
Who do you think was the greatest monarch of said empire? I'd say Emperor Leo the Conqueror, who at one point ruled everything from Serbia to the south to the Baltics in the North and from Saxony in the West to the Volga in the East. His Empire fell apart as soon as he died, however.
 
Who do you think was the greatest monarch of said empire? I'd say Emperor Leo the Conqueror, who at one point ruled everything from Serbia to the south to the Baltics in the North and from Saxony in the West to the Volga in the East. His Empire fell apart as soon as he died, however.
Well, you say "fell apart" but the core territory of Poland-Lithuania-Hungary-Bohemia remained. Damn shame about losing Muscovy, though; holding it was probably unsustainable thanks to all the Orthodox people there (and hell, he never fully consolidated control of Muscovy) but holding it would have saved us a hell of a lot of headaches in the German Revolutionary Wars.

Speaking of which, then, favorite monarch is probably Jadwiga II. She crushed the German Revolution (which is, of course, the most obvious POD for German unification) after the Republic had defeated the French- and, of course, her enlightenment reforms were probably the most prominent in Europe. I also like Sigismund the old, the first monarch of the Empire, who arrived to save Hungary at Mohacs and send the Ottomans packing, although he was too late to save Louis II (for which conspiracy theories abound). I always thought Leo was overrated. Yes, he pushed the Ottomans back, but his conquests were clearly unsustainable and basically set the Russians against us forever- and not that unjustifiably, he was pretty much an opportunistic dick during the Time of Troubles. Sigismund built something that lasted and Jadwiga improved on it in a way that lasted. I'd prefer that to Leo's ambition.
 
Well, for one thing their World Cup teams would be loaded. Bavaria by itself is a contender most cycles - imagine if they added Prussia and Saxony as well? This hypothetical "Germany" would probably be one of the most successful teams in football history.
 
There is a reason why it was never united. Austria and Prussia were roughly equally powerful and prevented each other from uniting Germany, while France always supported the weaker of the two in order to keep Germany as a whole weak and divided. Maybe if there was more intermarriage between the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns and one of the houses died out, leaving the other family as heirs to their lands, you would finally see a unification.
 
A way I can see this becoming a reality is Otto von Bismarck not dying so early in Russia; he had his ideas on German unification that just might've worked. France would also have to be weaker and Poland-Lithuania would have to either be weakened or just not exist at all; maybe losing the Great Nothern War in the early 1700's? A stronger Russia would be a significant counterbalance in Eastern Europe, and a potential ally to one of the two unifying powers; Austria or Prussia.

Prussia, in my opinion is the more likely victor; Austria was in disarray in the last century of its existence of an Empire, especially in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. It was really lucky it didn't collapse in the 1860s and 70s, especially with the massive Hungarian revolts. Meanwhile, Prussia was almost 100% Germanic and was especially well liked with the northern states, especially Hanover after the coronation of Queen Victoria. If the idea of a unified Germany wasn't brushed aside in the late 1700s and the death of Otto von Bismarck, then Prussia could become the leader of a new united German Empire; possibly with Otto von Bismarck as Chancellor? It was unlikely, as he wasn't especially well liked within the upper echelons of Prussian society, and was only really called on when they needed an especially radical politician.
 
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