German economy & industry without the World Wars?

I’ve always found it interesting that despite undergoing two substantial losses of population and territory in the last century, Germany is still more-or-less the economic powerhouse of Europe. What might the economic and industrial might of Germany look like today if it had avoided the various catastrophes of the early 20th Century?
 
Best case scenario (assuming lack of major negative events): They'll be the center of industrial and scientific might, probably with the lion share of the world's technological and scientific advances. For the majority of the 20th century anyways. Reasoning given that all the scientists that were driven away OTL and all the potential that weren't killed off (either in war or purged or whatnot).

Main issue might be be as time goes on and their advantages turns against them in the long term. It's a rather common thing in history where early developers gets saddled with the high costs of developments while late comers can leapfrog over while the first developers cannot do so as easily due to the amount already invested in existing infrastructure (an example OTL is how quickly many parts of the developing world went straight to cellphone based communications network, leapfrogging over landlines and old school phones completely, with major savings in the process. Meanwhile it took a bit longer for the developed countries to do that, especially with the older generations so ingrained with the old ways).
 
(I hope this doesn't count as necro yet?)

I'd have to say, probably worse than IOTL.
@Kalga has already given a good argument for why Germany wouldn't have to stay at the forefront of technological development. After all, Britain had been there before and hasn't ever been again throughout the entire 20th and 21st centuries. And a Germany in the borders of 1914 has such a freaking lot of coal and ore reserves that when post-industrial economy comes knocking, it'd probably knock Germany right down into a decade-long depression and leave deep economic scars in the form of large areas of high unemployment.

Also, a world without both world wars may still be a world of colonial empires, with often severe stints of protectionist policy periods. Germany's colonial empire wasn't very impressive, and without the amount of global free trade we are used to, Germany is unlikely to become one of the world's largest exporters, or this may not mean a lot anyway.

And a world without WW1 may well be a world without the October revolution (or even the February revolution) in Russia, and thus without Leninism and central planning being tried out frist in Soviet Russia. By 1914, it looked as if Germany could well be the first country where socialists could become so strong as to force the elites into letting them form a socialist government. That could mean that this world learns about the disadvantages (and advantages, too, of course, but the disadvantages weigh heavier) of nationalising most industries and have the government plan how they're run from the German example.
 
I actually suspect that Germany would be less influential than in our world, at least economically (politically and militarily it would be more important admittedly). Germany historically in both world wars caused a very favorable amount of damage compared to what it itself received, courtesy of mostly fighting on other nations' soils and adding on outright genocide in the second. Its actions played an important role in the dissolution of the vast continental-imperial blocs of Britain, Russia, and to a lesser extent France. Yes, it did lose a very large amount of territory, but its competitors - Russia, Britain, and France - were all also crippled by it. Austria-Hungary simply ceased to exist. Britain has declined to a second-rate power whose only continuing claim to influence is its standing in Washington D.C. and if we use that metric than Israel should be a great power as well. France emerged the most positively of them, having restored its territory in Europe, largely maintaining much of its influence in its colonies, being part of the linchpin of Europe, and with outsized influence, but even she has had to deal with the loss of the colonies and a long secular decline there. Russia meanwhile has been the most crippled of all, being reduced to an effective rump state with a minuscule economy facing demographic disaster. Nigeria with snow as the joke goes, just Nigeria's population isn't declining. The World Wars might have led to catastrophe for the German state, but it was far more catastrophic in demographic, economic, and political terms for surrounding nations.

This was broadly recognized by the Allies after both world wars who sought to rectify the advantages which Germany had gained in wartime by the destruction it inflicted on other nations while itself being largely spared. But in both cases, they largely failed - reparations after WW1 not only failed to make Germany pay for the war, but the Germans managed to incredibly do the opposite - to manipulate the Americans into making it so that American loans paid for their reparations and economy growth, and then promptly defaulting on those loans. In effect, Germany not only managed to destroy the economies of France and Belgium and annihilate the Russian Empire, but managed as well to get the allies to pay for its own reconstruction. In the Second World War it looted huge sections of the Western European economies, forcing them to pay huge sums to the German state for its war effort, and ended the war with more productive capital than it began the war with, despite the damage inflicted on it by air raids. Poland and the Western Soviet Union were meanwhile, simply put the target of genocide with brutal effects, as were several Balkan nations. The American plan to reverse this economically via the Morgenthau plan and German deindustrialization largely got nowhere, in the context of the Cold War, and conversely the Germans were integrated on favorable terms into the Western bloc, a key part of it and one which benefited tremendously from the economic liberalization which has occurred and from the work to integrate it into the Western system. It would be unfair to say that Germany got off scot-free compared to its neighbors (particularly East Germany), but it emerged from the World Wars with much less damage than its neighbors and the attempts to rectify this both failed.

Without the two conflicts, the colonial regimes which constituted a much more important part of the Western European economies would be, if not intact, much more influential and neo-colonialism would be far stronger. Russia, even if it is caught in the middle income trap, would be a much larger and more important nation. The Balkans would not see the havoc wreaked upon them by the collapse of Austria-Hungary, and the century of turmoil in the Balkans would be avoided. The integrated European economic system which has placed Germany at the heart of a large economic bloc would either not exist or would be in a much more tenuous form. Inevitably, less economic influence, and to a lesser extent less scientific influence, would be the result.

In absolute terms, Germany, with a larger territory and economy, would be much better off. But in relative terms it would be in a much larger European and indeed world economy, one operating at a structural disadvantage compared to the big empires of France and Britain or the huge continental spaces of Russia or the United States, it would be a relatively smaller nation.
 
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Also, a world without both world wars may still be a world of colonial empires, with often severe stints of protectionist policy periods. Germany's colonial empire wasn't very impressive, and without the amount of global free trade we are used to, Germany is unlikely to become one of the world's largest exporters, or this may not mean a lot anyway.

Actually, globalization and "free trade" (quotation marks because that stuff's never truly free, but that's a whole other topic) were a thing in the pre-WWI era: http://www.americanforeignrelations...irst-era-of-modern-globalization-to-1914.html

In fact, WWI actually retarded development in international trade to a significant extent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...ath_of_World_War_I:_collapse_of_globalization

... which the world didn't really recover from until the end of the 20th century. Didn't really blame those governments either, since WWI did showed the vulnerabilities of such a system if everyone in it suddenly decided to turn on each other.

With all that being said, just because there's no world wars doesn't necessarily mean such a system was going to last. Other economic disruptions might convince certain countries that they're better off distancing themselves from the world economy.

As for colonies, most of them were money draining or not all that economically valuable.

-UK: India was the big money maker, most of the other non-dominion colonies were there to ensure that the route from Britain to India was secure. Their economic value otherwise were questionable at times (which was why most of them ended up gaining their independence within a couple of decades after India got its independence, there wasn't much reasons for the UK to keep them).
-France: they're mostly there to compete against the UK in terms of prestige and painting as much of the world in their color of choice. The bulk of their colonial empire was also pretty questionable in terms of economic value.
-Belgium: well, they did managed to extract some wealth from their colony in the Congo, though their treatment of the natives there managed to cause outrage even among other colonial powers. So basically without resorting to that they're not gonna extract enough wealth.
-Italy: they're in it for the prestige, sucks for them oil was only found in their colony of Libya after they left (for the most part)
-Netherlands: Well, the Dutch East Indies was pretty good in bring in value, though they never got around to beef up the security there as they hoped, always a lack fo money and/or bad luck.
-Spain: they didn't have much of 1 by the early 20th century
-Portugal: they seemed to have done rather well
-USA: Well, it became obvious real quick that the Philippines was worth more trouble than it's worth, and so the long term plan was made to ease them into independence.
-Japan: not sure really. I guess Korea and Taiwan worked out pretty well for them.

So even assuming the lack of world wars would mean delaying colonial independence movements by decades, it won't suddenly make them really profitable.
 
Sorry bad@logic I do not follow your reasoning. At the beginning of WWI Germany was number 2 in economic measures, only slightly behind the USA and (depending on which area you look at between 1 and 3 in science and had a vastly better education system compared to GB and the USA plus had an emperor who actively sought to improve Germany´s scientific standing. England and France were falling behing Russia was prepped up by French money. Now take WWI away why would Germany be in any other position than 2nd close to the USA instead of the second far behind the USA it was IOTL by 1939 ? The USA was the big winner in WWI, hardly loosing young educated people, getting their industry up on european expenses and profitering from a lot of emigrants. Than you have the terrible brain drain the Nazis inflicted and another war with a huge loss of life and a lot of emigration afterwards. Yes, France would be better off compared to now and Russia most likely as well but France and the GB would have to deal with the money sink the colonies had turned into, in 1914 there was already a pretty open economy so Germany would be much better off in absolute figures but I do not seem them worse in comparative fgures. I see them much closer to the USA as now, the USA smaller in absolute figures..
 
@ferdi254
You can't just take the trends of the turn of the century and prolong them into the future, that's not how economic development works.
See my above post for structural reasons why I think Germany could force serious economic problems in a 20th century without world wars.
If that isn't enough, you should also consider that Germany had been leapfrogging in the late 19th century a lot, copying technology and exporting a lot due to the lower wages of their working class. This kind of speedy growth doesn't work any longer when you've reached the top of the pile.
 
THE GB and the USA also had large amounts of coal. And sure you cannot extend trends into the future for ever but have to look at the underlying reasons. By 1914 the grwoth that had started with copying and cheap Labor was no longer the main Driver for the German growth. It was the chemical and electronical industries which were driving the growth with BASF and Bayer being most known. And spurred by that the German machine building industry had moved away big time from copying British designs but was the technological leader.

And those industries kept Germany afloat and are keeping Germany afloat up until now. Add cars (why would Germany be worse in developing cars wthout the WW´s) add an airplane industry (which was totally beaten down twice) and, most importantly, the education System. And in 1914 there was a pretty open market it was WWI that set this back.
 
@ferdi254
You can't just take the trends of the turn of the century and prolong them into the future, that's not how economic development works.
See my above post for structural reasons why I think Germany could force serious economic problems in a 20th century without world wars.
If that isn't enough, you should also consider that Germany had been leapfrogging in the late 19th century a lot, copying technology and exporting a lot due to the lower wages of their working class. This kind of speedy growth doesn't work any longer when you've reached the top of the pile.
Germany was way ahead in precision machinery, chemical science, electrical engineering and corporate rnd, some of the most important future trends in industry and commerce.

Yes trends dont have to go on indefinitely without change, but keep in mind that change is not necessarily something negative.
 
Sorry bad@logic I do not follow your reasoning. At the beginning of WWI Germany was number 2 in economic measures, only slightly behind the USA and (depending on which area you look at between 1 and 3 in science and had a vastly better education system compared to GB and the USA plus had an emperor who actively sought to improve Germany´s scientific standing. England and France were falling behing Russia was prepped up by French money. Now take WWI away why would Germany be in any other position than 2nd close to the USA instead of the second far behind the USA it was IOTL by 1939 ? The USA was the big winner in WWI, hardly loosing young educated people, getting their industry up on european expenses and profitering from a lot of emigrants. Than you have the terrible brain drain the Nazis inflicted and another war with a huge loss of life and a lot of emigration afterwards. Yes, France would be better off compared to now and Russia most likely as well but France and the GB would have to deal with the money sink the colonies had turned into, in 1914 there was already a pretty open economy so Germany would be much better off in absolute figures but I do not seem them worse in comparative fgures. I see them much closer to the USA as now, the USA smaller in absolute figures..
You know there is a quote button to start with, right?
Anyway, these are dubious assertions. "slightly behind the USA" is incorrect: the actual ratio was closer to two to one in favor of the United States. It was only very slightly better than Russia in total economic size in PPP terms. But far more important is that of late-comers advantage. Historically Germany was, through either the destruction of its rivals politically, or through outright genocide, able to effectively kneecap the growth of its European rivals, as well as destroy the political systems that underpinned their advantages. Yes, the United States won both world wars - but you're ignoring that within Europe the variations in outcomes are if anything even larger than that between the US and Germany. There is a world of difference between losing a war and taking casualties doing so, as happened to Germany in WW1 and WW2, and losing a war, falling into an extremely bloody civil war, and suffering under the negative effects of the Communist system for nearly a century, or "winning" a war with the better part of a fifth of your population dead due to genocide and mass extermination, as happened to Russia in the First and Second World Wars respectively. Russia or the Balkans, without the handicaps that they suffered under historically, have a much easier time catching up to Germany than Germany has for increasing its lead.

The problem is that in essence Germany came out of the World Wars in relative terms better than most of the engaged continental European nations, save for the United States. Removing them picks up Germany's absolute size, but it also means that everybody else does even better, and those nations are much better poised to capitalize on the advantages than Germany. Germany had already largely maxed out its productivity because it was already the leader, and it has very little room to expand. It can make gains by bringing more farmers into its industry and commercial sectors, but so can all of Europe - and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Southern Europe, have far more peasants to throw into that than Germany does. Germany would be a developed country among other developed countries, in a much more populous and less economically uneven Europe. The real benefactor of any no world war scenario is not Germany, but rather the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The economic center of Europe wouldn't be the Rhine, it would be somewhere on the Vistula, and much more southern. Germany would be like the Netherlands, surrounded by much larger markets/economic spheres, and while it may be more influential inherently than the Netherlands due to its larger size, the dreams of it being a dominating centerpiece of the European economy would show themselves to be nothing more than illusions.

I'm in addition very, very doubtful of all of the claims of the British and French colonies being money sinks, which is parroted extremely often with very little to back it up. 1/3 of French trade went to its colonies during the 1930s, and for Britain the figure was even higher. Both the British and the French imposed laws on their colonies of them being financially neutral, and never sent large (state) investments into them. Perhaps the Algerian War and the First Indochina War were expensive, but those were special events. And while the world may have been a more liberal economic system than it would be in the Interwar, inherently Germany would never be able to achieve economic domination of either French or British markets - at most, it may achieve a substantial foreign influence, just as it did originally in 1914.
 
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The real benefactor of any no world war scenario is not Germany, but rather the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
While I don't agree with every single thing you said in your last post, this sentence is clearly very true.

Germany would be a developed country among other developed countries, in a much more populous and less economically uneven Europe.
You make it sound a little as if that was something bad for Germany. I, as a German, would find that a rather pleasant perspective...
 
You make it sound a little as if that was something bad for Germany. I, as a German, would find that a rather pleasant perspective...
Oh certainly it is much better for the average German. It would in absolute terms be much better for Germany too. It is in relative terms where Germany would suffer.
 

Anchises

Banned
You know there is a quote button to start with, right?
Anyway, these are dubious assertions. "slightly behind the USA" is incorrect: the actual ratio was closer to two to one in favor of the United States. It was only very slightly better than Russia in total economic size in PPP terms. But far more important is that of late-comers advantage. Historically Germany was, through either the destruction of its rivals politically, or through outright genocide, able to effectively kneecap the growth of its European rivals, as well as destroy the political systems that underpinned their advantages. Yes, the United States won both world wars - but you're ignoring that within Europe the variations in outcomes are if anything even larger than that between the US and Germany. There is a world of difference between losing a war and taking casualties doing so, as happened to Germany in WW1 and WW2, and losing a war, falling into an extremely bloody civil war, and suffering under the negative effects of the Communist system for nearly a century, or "winning" a war with the better part of a fifth of your population dead due to genocide and mass extermination, as happened to Russia in the First and Second World Wars respectively. Russia or the Balkans, without the handicaps that they suffered under historically, have a much easier time catching up to Germany than Germany has for increasing its lead.

The problem is that in essence Germany came out of the World Wars in relative terms better than most of the engaged continental European nations, save for the United States. Removing them picks up Germany's absolute size, but it also means that everybody else does even better, and those nations are much better poised to capitalize on the advantages than Germany. Germany had already largely maxed out its productivity because it was already the leader, and it has very little room to expand. It can make gains by bringing more farmers into its industry and commercial sectors, but so can all of Europe - and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Southern Europe, have far more peasants to throw into that than Germany does. Germany would be a developed country among other developed countries, in a much more populous and less economically uneven Europe. The real benefactor of any no world war scenario is not Germany, but rather the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The economic center of Europe wouldn't be the Rhine, it would be somewhere on the Vistula, and much more southern. Germany would be like the Netherlands, surrounded by much larger markets/economic spheres, and while it may be more influential inherently than the Netherlands due to its larger size, the dreams of it being a dominating centerpiece of the European economy would show themselves to be nothing more than illusions.

I'm in addition very, very doubtful of all of the claims of the British and French colonies being money sinks, which is parroted extremely often with very little to back it up. 1/3 of French trade went to its colonies during the 1930s, and for Britain the figure was even higher. Both the British and the French imposed laws on their colonies of them being financially neutral, and never sent large investments into them. Perhaps the Algerian War and the First Indochina War were expensive, but those were special events. And while the world may have been a more liberal economic system than it would be in the Interwar, inherently Germany would never be able to achieve economic domination of either French or British markets - at most, it may achieve a substantial foreign influence, just as it did originally in 1914.

You completely lose sight of the massive drawback of colonial Empires:

They aren't going to last. Eventually self determination will triumph. India, Indochina and Africa all will turn into battlefields at some point. Sure, with stronger European nations we might talk about a bloody struggle that starts in the 1970s but it will happen. And that ignores the other indirect drawbacks that "enforced markets" tend to have.

Germany on the other hand will have several venues to expand into economically and politically. Tsarist Russia is going to collapse or at least not going to exist in its current form forever. A-H will collapse.

By 2018 Germany is probably going to enjoy the benefits of economically dominating a vastly richer Eastern Europe. France and Britain are probably still adjusting to the loss of their colonial empires.
 
bad@logic I know. You are right it was more like 2:1 but looking at the growth 1913 to 1950 Germany just went up 10% France more than 50% the USSR more than 100%... it seems that Germany had the slowest growth rate of all of Europe 1913 to 1950. So saying it came out relatively better...And yet you argue that without the world wars Germany would be comparatively even smaller. How could this be? Would Germany grow less without the wars? Hardly. What Germany loose much of its territory and industry again? Would France, Russia and the UK and more or less every state in Europe grow that much faster? A Russia without the enormous industrialization of the Soviets? And the economical heart of Europe has been the famous banana from London vie Flanders, the Rhine and down to Northern Italy for centuries, why would that suddenly change? I agree that the Balkans would be better off, Poland (well in WWi Poland was a benefactor) and Russia as well, but moving the economic center from where it had been for centuries...

And how are Russia and the Balkans better poised to capitalize on any advantages? By their good education system? The well developed and working bureacracy, the unbribabale justice system? The lack of any internal rivalries, the very good infrastructur? The already existing lead in several new technologies and industries?

Have you looked up a map where the Vistula flows? What towns will make up your economic center of Europe?
 
You completely lose sight of the massive drawback of colonial Empires:

They aren't going to last. Eventually self determination will triumph. India, Indochina and Africa all will turn into battlefields at some point. Sure, with stronger European nations we might talk about a bloody struggle that starts in the 1970s but it will happen. And that ignores the other indirect drawbacks that "enforced markets" tend to have.

Germany on the other hand will have several venues to expand into economically and politically. Tsarist Russia is going to collapse or at least not going to exist in its current form forever. A-H will collapse.

By 2018 Germany is probably going to enjoy the benefits of economically dominating a vastly richer Eastern Europe. France and Britain are probably still adjusting to the loss of their colonial empires.
And you lose sight of the mutations that an alternate world means for colonialism. The colonial aura in 1914 will not last forever, but it was the First and Second World Wars which fundamentally undermined Western colonialism's economic structures, moral superiority, ideological justification, and economic, military, and political might that made it possible. Without them, some regions are inevitably prone to collapse - British India perhaps - but the rest will either be continued parts of the metropole or closely associated with the imperial system (French North Africa, the British white dominions, various important colonies around the world and important resource zone), and the rest will be in neo-colonial statuses that different very little from that. Even India would be closely linked to the British, as any discussion of a more successful British Empire in World War II clearly indicates. It took two major world wars to destroy the imperial-colonial system, without it its appearance may mutate, but its fundamental structures will stay the same. Even two world wars simply changed French Sub-Saharan Africa's color on a map while doing very little to actually shift around French economic and political control there, in a world without world wars the colonial powers would still be very much on top.

Tsarist Russia and Austria-Hungary will both survive. It took years of constant brutal warfare to destroy them. Austria-Hungary in particular is given sorely little credit for its resiliency in surviving for four years and with continued loyalty among the governments and members of the state, despite its antiquated government system. It wasn't until 1917 that the Czech exiles for example, actually arrived at the previously unthinkable conclusion that the vast economic block of Austria-Hungary would actually crumble and that that might be allowable - that despite years of the most violent and bloody war in European history. Without that, Austria-Hungary would continue to exist, with doubtless constant political battles in parliament, but nevertheless as a unified state. Tsarist Russia showed that even in the travails of defeat in 1905 and 1906 it never came close to actual collapse, and that was only achieved in the darkest days of world war in 1917 - and even then, with armies occupying much of its Western borders and with constant ideological civil war, it only shed a tithe of its territory with Western provinces breaking off. The large land-based empires are not nearly as vulnerable as people on this board assume.

By 2018 Germany will be a small fish in a very large pond indeed, surrounded by either very large oceanic-maritime-imperial states to the West, or large continental spaces to the East, and with the advantages of neither in between. Again, in essence a very large (and highly militarized) Netherlands.

bad@logic I know. You are right it was more like 2:1 but looking at the growth 1913 to 1950 Germany just went up 10% France more than 50% the USSR more than 100%... it seems that Germany had the slowest growth rate of all of Europe 1913 to 1950. So saying it came out relatively better...And yet you argue that without the world wars Germany would be comparatively even smaller. How could this be? Would Germany grow less without the wars? Hardly. What Germany loose much of its territory and industry again? Would France, Russia and the UK and more or less every state in Europe grow that much faster? A Russia without the enormous industrialization of the Soviets? And the economical heart of Europe has been the famous banana from London vie Flanders, the Rhine and down to Northern Italy for centuries, why would that suddenly change? I agree that the Balkans would be better off, Poland (well in WWi Poland was a benefactor) and Russia as well, but moving the economic center from where it had been for centuries...

And how are Russia and the Balkans better poised to capitalize on any advantages? By their good education system? The well developed and working bureacracy, the unbribabale justice system? The lack of any internal rivalries, the very good infrastructur? The already existing lead in several new technologies and industries?

Have you looked up a map where the Vistula flows? What towns will make up your economic center of Europe?
Both France and the USSR lagged behind Germany in 1913 and were able to make it up, especially in light of the temporary post-ww2 German economic crisis. How do you think that the Russian Empire would have performed if not for the devastation of the First World War, the Russian Civil War, and then the death of tens of millions in the attempted genocide that the Germans attempted to impose upon them? The growth which the Soviet Union made was in per capita terms essentially just continuing the growth that it was making in the Tsarist era and experiencing a period of growth catch up after the devastation of the First World War: In GDP per capita terms they essentially followed the same course. And yet that also included a far larger population that died, and the population would be significantly smaller under the Tsarist regime. The low German GDP growth vis-a-vis the other European states is not a bug: it is a feature, in that Germany fundamentally has less room to grow economically than most European states, with the exception of a few Western European states that were at a similar level of development.

Russia and the Balkans don't have to match the German education system, bureaucracy, judicial system, infrastructure, etc. What you're missing is that again, this is a relative comparison. Moving from a bad education system, bureaucracy, judicial system, and infrastructure system to an average level is a far bigger relative growth than moving from an excellent system to a slightly-better excellent system. States which are less economically advanced inherently have an easier time growing and catching up to those states which are advanced. In fact, they don't even have to make much of an improvement to their economic system as a whole to still surpass Germany by a hefty margin: the population of these regions was kneecapped by the Great War and even more importantly by the Second World War, and Russia simply maintaining its historical level of being around 40% of the United States gdp per capita consistently, with the much larger population of Tsarist Russia as compared to the travails of Soviet Russia, would be enough to constantly shift the economic center of Europe in its direction.
 
I think a example of what might happen to Germany is the example of the US. Despite some huge advantages and position at the start of 1919 things went hell in less than a decade, and in some respects got worse by 1939. The reasons are complex, & I don't think entirely understood now, but the US economically and in global influence stagnated or declined 1918-1938.

The same problems may not apply to Germany, but problems would emerge, & there is no guarantee they would be dealt with correctly.
 
The US was already the world's largest economy and industrial power in 1914, and there was no realistic way Germany was going to overtake it even absent any war. Being the first to develop new technologies doesn't matter much when the world market means others quickly adopt it as well.
 
bad@logic Germany lost 36% of its territory in both wars and the eastern half was for 44 years occupied by the Red Army and of course went into socialism. No other country lost that much. Irony on: And yes, the eastern countries will surpass Germany pretty soon by cranking out hundreds of scientists and engineers out of their famous universities, there suddenly will be a large numbers of entreprenuers putting up new factories and so on and so on. The growth of Russia prior to WWI was largely spurred first by German and then French Investment, propping up their ally.

Germany in 1870 was exactly in the situation in which you describe it would be later on. Between AH, Russia, two large Empires on one side and England and France, two colonial blocks on the other. Yet it outgrew France, the UK and Russia. And care to answer my question around which towns on the Vistula you would have the new econimic center of Europe?
 
I doubt in such a world A-H or Russia would survive intact as both had major separatist movements. If democracy comes they will split.

Plus Germany would have a lot more population, not only because she does not have WW1 and WW2 losses but also as many in Eastern Europe would migrate to Germany to live. German population would be much bigger.
 
I doubt in such a world A-H or Russia would survive intact as both had major separatist movements. If democracy comes they will split.

Plus Germany would have a lot more population, not only because she does not have WW1 and WW2 losses but also as many in Eastern Europe would migrate to Germany to live. German population would be much bigger.
Democracy does not mean having the right to secede, just the right to vote representatives who dont even have to be from your own group, it's fairly easy to keep them around, just have a 5 % electoral threshold for parties to enter parliament and some basic behavior rules while in it, that forces the dozen or so agrarian parties in Austria to join together or not enter parliament at all and stops ridiculous actions like playing instruments while someone's talking.

The German population would grow but not as much as others, GB/France have vast colonial empires to draw people from and the population growth in Russia is simply huge and not stopping anytime soon. Germany and Austria-Hungary might hit 120 million each, GB/France though would go towards 150 million in the metropole and the "integrated" colonies like Algeria and whatever else they chose, and Russia could do an absolutely enormous 500 million with ease.
 
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