Earlier Germany?

What is the earliest time that the German states could for a cohesive centralised nation/feudal kingdom the likes of France, or England?

Or maybe, even whatever we could refer to states as during the Classical age.
 
Minor POD or three, we could get a german state of sorts during the late roman era... (decentralized state but a state nonetheless).
 
I would not go as far as the roman era.

What should be called the germanic space was just an area with tribes. It took the merovingians and carolingians to bring some supplement of romanization that made possible the organization of duchies and then kingdoms.

But you would also need an inflexion point : avoiding the Holy Roman Empire and having the royal dynasty not rule further than the germanic duchies. And then you need a long phase of decomposing/recomposing because each duchy had a (and even several) strong ethnic identity(ies).
 
The Kingdom of Germany did exist, but then Otto the Great conquered Italy and established the Holy Roman Empire instead, which lead to the title of German king losing its meaning. Before proclaiming himself emperor he had been reasonable successful about getting the German nobles under his thumb and defeated the Pagan Magyar/Hungarian at the Battle of Lechfeld, largely ending their raids into central Europe.

However while establishing the HRE was a great achievement, I do not think it did much good for Germany in the long run. The conflicts with the Pope were already flaming up at the end of Otto the Great's life, with the Pope trying to incite rebellion in North Italy.

If you can have Otto I live his life up until after the Battle of Lechfeld but then butterfly away his conquest of Italy then I think in the long run a more centralized Germany is very likely. This way there would be a King in Germany, not an Emperor. He would still have to deal with German and West Slavic nobles, have conflicts with France and Denmark, but most importantly he would not have to endure the headache that was Italy and the Pope that the Holy Roman Emperors had to deal with. He would not have to divide his focus between Germany and Italy, which would benefit him immensely.

If you want to spice it up further, give Italy to the French King somehow, have him proclaim himself Roman Emperor and let France deal with the Italian/Papal headache.
 
@ Matteo: the process of tribes merging into larger tribal confederacies and adopting things from the Romans started long before that. That process started, when the Germanic tribes came to border the Roman Empire.

Tribes like the Franks, Saxons etc. were in fact these tribal confederacies. I do however agree, that the Merovingians and Carolingians managed to bring it to another level, but the whole process of development, organization etc. had started long before that.

@Natte: so a French Holy Roman Empire, I like the idea. This will mean, that France/West Francia needs to have Burgundy/Arelat in their orbit and/or need to conquer or inherit it, since they unlike the German Kingdom/East Francia do not control passes into the Italian peninsula.
 
@ Natte : yes, the kingdom of Germany existed, the same way as the kingdom of Francia occidentalis existed at the same time.

It was a mere name with a king. But the duchies and infra-ducal entites were much more consistent than the kingdom. There was almost nothing in common between Saxony and Bavaria.
 
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