East first! Europe after a German / CP victory in 1916
- Thread starter Helmuth48
- Start date
Therein lies the problem: It's a revolutionary project. The obvious model is the French Revolution's replacement of old local polities with equally sized, "rationalized" departments. And it typically has to be a pretty radical revolution; even the American revolution and the German 1918 revolution, to take two examples, did not dispense with preexisting local polities - mostly, they merely lopped off the top levels governing them.
Germany finally *did* do something like this, but it took total and catastrophic defeat and a foreign power imposed reorganization, which basically amounted to revolution in a fundamental way. Which also entailed a much *smaller* Germany, which yours is not . . .
I could see a realistic 'Thuringia Federation' that was proposed as the Thuringia Microstate realizes they would be more powerful as an single entity but the rest is ASB, Willy II nor III would do anything to reduce the power of their Prussia
Well, just from the sake of administrative convenience, a Thuringian State would make some sense... maybe a federation within the federation?
That was the idea, alongside E-L great duchy,those proposal never happened because the war,Well, just from the sake of administrative convenience, a Thuringian State would make some sense... maybe a federation within the federation?
... only that the first was one of the many utterances without any substance and to make it a "Grand Duchy" was also far from any possibility since already on 31st of May 1911 with the law reagrding the constitution Elsaß-Lothringen WAS already an almost equal to every other memberstate of the German Realm.
(... sometime it helps to look at other language sources as well ...)
In other words : the ... "proposal" of making it a Grand Duchy not to speak of giving it to some austrians was anything but some ... dinner table boasting without any consequences (aside some later people even of today keeping on repeating it as if it was some actual policy) Willy was so well known for.
While I render the proposal of @Helmuth48 also rather ... "optimistic" to umrealistic (esp. if I look at the inequalities the german states of german union republik of today show) it might be possible that by some ... "steps in between" something similar might realize. Maybe at first the prussian provinces might be given some ... more autonomy in regulating their own things as well as within the confederation. ... somewhat as proposed for the thuringian states :
a federation within the federation
Same might then also come for Bavary.In the end one would get something between ... 24 to 28 (?) or so memberstates or ... "provinces" with only some remnants of prussian or bavarian "higher" rule over these provinces (maybe some unified trading agencies or some common ... juridical procedures or some common ... traffic administrations or similar.
In the course of time these smaler states might merger to somewhat larger and more sensible administrative units again to something between 20 and 25 more alike what Helmuth48s proposal looks like.
Last edited:
kham_coc
Banned
Yeah only way I could see this happening is if there isn't a unification as otl, but rather just prussia crushing everyone and making it a unitary state, where that is just administrative divisions.
Another way is if that's what they decide to do after the nazis turn Germany into a unitary state, but doesn't fall (until a generation later or so) or start a war.
You're probably right, although @NoMommsen 's thought is quite interesting.
This is of course the easiest shortcut, but it does mean a German civil war I think...
Making such a map is above all a fun exercise
It requires a top-down reconstruction of the German system, not merely a civil war
The opposite, the Thuringian Union was to be something to galvanize the Thuringian right, if anything the rest of Germany would remain the same, just with an united Thurigian having more seats in Bundesrat and E-L being a great duchy