The two things that jump out to me for culture in politics is shortage of men and closer than OTL USA/German relations. Germany/AH are short millions of workers from no war TL. And the USA never had the anti-German wave.
Not necessarily, as the resulting postwar lack of trade with major prewar buyers will seriously hurt German businesses, so there will initially be a slump that will probably only recover in the 1920s. So the shortage of +1 million men (dead and crippled) may help offset the slump somewhat. As it is if there is a demand Germans could return from the US. One this is certain, German emigration to the US is over for a while while the population recovers and we probably see German men having multiple girlfriends and as a result a fairly large number of single mothers dependent on the state. By the 1930s the population of workers will have recovered.
So, this means Germany will be looking for million of new workers. Like France, I think you will have a shortage of marriage age men. So lets look at details. In the occupied French area, I think it is safe to assume that we will see net French migration to outside of the occupied area. Probably true for Belgium Luxembourg. I assume you are adding a bit of Southern Belgium to Luxembourg. While it will be a minor issue if only thing happening, the net loss of a few 100K people over a few decades will be noticeable. Now to Poles. You had net polish migration from Posen and other areas to German industrial cities. With a Poland existing and probably doing ok economically, I think this stops and probably reverses. I tend to assume a strongly self identifying Polish worker who is looking to leave Posen will find Warsaw more attractive than Essen, if both have good jobs. Gutting A-H demographics by war will mean you don't get workers from there. Same for Ethnic Russians from Russia. Now I guess you have to look at Russian and Polish treatment of Jews. If the Jews are treated badly enough, you might get a big flow. If this is true, you get a more OstJewish aspect to Germany. Or do German companies seek workers from the Ottoman empire or other Islamic lands. Not sure on this one.
Poland will take a while to recover too, so by the 1930s they will start to export labor again, as agriculture doesn't pay as well as Ruhr jobs. Of course if the Galician coal deposits are discovered, then there are going to be some jobs there that will suck up a fair amount of labor. IIRC post WW1 IOTL the Polish economy wasn't really that great and that was with Greater Poland; it had a lot of violence with minorities, not to mention war with the Soviets, which wouldn't happen here. There was a fair amount of Polish emigration to the US at this time that Germany could suck up if it needed the excess labor. The A-H economy was underdeveloped as it was, so if Germany needs labor post-war instead of the Slavic and Hungarian (and Jewish) emigrants heading to the US for opportunities, they would likely end up in Germans, as the post war A-H economy won't be able to utilize them and getting to Germany is quite a bit cheaper. IOTL they didn't head to Germany because the German economy was already labor saturated and they were exporting people to the US, which won't be the case here. I don't see that finding labor is going to be hard in the post-war if there is a demand for more than the German populace can provide, especially if Germany dominates Central Europe industrially and drives competition out of business. Anti-Semitism in Russia post war is going to be bad (just like anti-Germanism), just as it was during the war IOTL, as the Soviets won't be around to have their inclusive ideology blunt the traditional anti-semitic violence in the Russian countryside. I doubt that there will be a need to import Ottoman labor, especially as it will be badly needed in the Middle East, as huge swaths of that Empire have been destroyed and depopulated. Turkey and their subject peoples need to recover demographically for several generations before they can export labor.
Italy though might be a source of labor for France and Germany post-war, especially if things get bad politically.
Now to politics. I think Polish parties are less important. You may well have net population flows to Poland, you have a Hapsburg to speak for Polish interest and be a mediator. You have a labor shortage. This is good for unions. This is good for the Socialists. Looks like SPD will dominate the government. Army is more a militia now than the reliable conservative instrument prewar. Kaiser will make concession to keep things working, and lots of concessions.
Sounds about right to me.
Surface navy will be discredited. Can naval air service and U-boat commands separate themselves from failure of capital fleet? Looks like to me we see loss of power to naval lobby. Plus with Russia preparing for round two, and looks like France, we see strong Army lobby. Kaiser needs SPD votes, so do we see more non-noble officer commissions? People often criticize failure of harsh peace terms and harsh reparations, but here shows other case. Lack of reparations and large scale annexations of France means France can start rebuilding army immediately. I think you will have German generals saying that "We have not signed a peace deal, but a 25 year cease fire". And I tend to think they are right, in this case.
I think the navy is going to focus more on the Jeune Ecole theory after the successful examples of their small units in the war. Uboats and naval aviation are going to be the major offensive arms of the navy, while the surface fleet is going to focus primarily on coastal defense and limited power projection to Norway and the Baltic. The naval lobby pretty much was dead by 1912 IOTL and was overtaken by the army lobby, so that trend just goes into overdrive post-war. The army and air force are going to be the big ticket items in the government budget. I think tax reform is going to hit the wealthy in Germany hard postwar to be able to handle those expenses, veterans benefits, and the SPDs social agenda. I think too reform is coming to the imperial system, so we will see an independent Bavaria get absorbed into a federal system.
Culture. German excluded from British Empire. Excluded from French Empire. Only remaining choice is USA sphere of influence. Kaiser will kiss US presidents figurative ass to get trade deals. Same with whatever additional terms a place like Brazil demands. Germany needs things like Rubber that don't grow in MittelEurope or Ottoman Empire. No purging of German culture in USA. So culturally, you will see things flow from USA to Germany. So lets say Jazz still becomes huge in USA. You will see Jazz flow into Germany. And vice versa. I would not be sure that after loss, Germans are welcome at say French Riveria or British empire as tourists. So a lot more Germans travel to USA compared to OTL, among small % who travel overseas a lot.
Latin America, Holland, the US, and various other smaller nations (Persia for instance) will be getting a lot of German interest. I imagine China too will get a major German goal as far as allies go and they will certainly want German help once they have proven to be winners in Europe (to a point) and have no colonial interests left in Asia.
Important to note is that Germany won't lose her investments in the US so will be economically more important there, probably will also have a greater influence on the US military, and will not lose her patent rights ITTL, which IOTL were taken as reparations by the US and other allied powers. Also Germany is going to be the new big exporter of nitrates thanks to her investments in the Haber process production, just as she was in the 1920s, which will badly screw the Chilean economy.
The lack of suppression of German in the US will have a major impact on post-war relations and prohibition will very likely fail. So organized crime doesn't get big in the US as a result. IMHO the Great Depression doesn't happen either without WW1, though a big recession post-war is going to happen as will one in the 1930s, but it won't be as bad as the OTL one. Especially if Germany puts limits on the Kaiser and Kaiser Wilhelm sets down at some point, Germany is going to get a much better image in the US, but that depends on how pissed people get about German treatment of the conquered peoples in Poland and whatever happens in A-H. Still German immigration to the US is going to drop off especially compared to OTL, so there will be a major deficit of German ethnic influence in the US without the post-war exodus to the US and Latin America because of poor economic conditions that were faced IOTL.
As an aside then we won't see the Lindberg baby kidnapping blamed on a German immigrant, as he won't come to the US at all with a better German economy.
Also remember that Germany was always receptive to the US culture after WW1 until the rise of the Nazis IOTL, its just the US that closed itself off to Germany during and after WW1 (and WW2).
