German land `shortage` in CP victory?

From what I understand the states Germany `liberated` had German aristocrats installed as their Kings etc, which I suppose leaves them open for later incorporation in the German Empire. The question is was there some 3-4 million hectares of farmland in these territories that the Germans could settle without too many drastic measures?

Setting a German prince on the throne of a "liberated" country was merely hoped to get a pro-German government (maybe with the exception of a Baltic state, which could rely on a native German leading class, but which most likely would be a closer vassal state rather than a member state).
It's logical that the CP would set up monarchies. Second, it's been traditional to set a German on a new throne for decades. Finally, as many other plans discussed here, I think the idea of setting up German monarchs reflect a severe loss of realism: the age of strong influence by monarchs was about to end.
 
Plonking a German monarch on a throne in 1918 doesn`t say much for what the government will be like in 1923 after 5 years of postwar regional revolution and civil war other than the constitutional head of state is tied to Germany.
 

Eurofed

Banned
The school of thought that argues the Nazis were bugfuck nuts people who ate babies for breakfast just because seems to be limited to schoolbook publishers and moviemakers, really. If you look at the policies they advocated, you can easily see they all addressed perceived problems. What I would disagree with is that all these problems were objectively real. If you accept the premises of their world-view, it all made sense, of course. But even with the greatest possible willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt you find that a lot of their decisions were based on poor data and wrong assumptions.

Exactly. As it concerned the Slavs, everything was based on the (wrong) assumption that Germany needed to become the equivalent of the USA or Britain + Dominions in order to survive. And they (correctly) noticed those successful examples became so by stealing other people's stuff. Then given post-WWI conditions, they made the (wrong) assumption that the best way to do so was to steal the Slavs' land and natural resources. Then they made the (correct) assumption that to "nation-ize" the ill-gotten gains is the best way to secure them for all time and the (correct) assumption that to kill or kick out the original owners is much "easier, simpler, quicker" than to get them speak your language and sing your anthem, if you are the by far strongest party and have no moral scruples. Then they made the (wrong) assumption they were the by far strongest party and built themselves a vast Social Darwinist racist superiority complex to put themselevs in the right mindset.

That's it. At the core of GPO there was very rational greed and "might makes right" combined with the above assumptions. No juvenile axe-crazy "kill for the Blood God" bloodlust for shits and giggles. If they could have gotten all the Slavs of Europe walk beyond the Urals on their own accord, they would have done so. Since they couldn't, send in the Eingatzgruppen.

For Jews and Roma it was different, they came to the (very wrong) assumption (as a very unpleasant side effect of their Social Darwinist racist superiority complex) those peoples were social equivalents of Thyphoid Marys or human rabid dogs, and to deal with such there was no other way than to kill them or imprison/deport them someplace isolated and remote. They planned the latter first (Madagascar Plan), then switched to the former (Final Solution).
 
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From what I understand the states Germany `liberated` had German aristocrats installed as their Kings etc, which I suppose leaves them open for later incorporation in the German Empire. The question is was there some 3-4 million hectares of farmland in these territories that the Germans could settle without too many drastic measures?

The incorporation into the German empire wouldn't happen. I doubt it was even envisioned. the idea was that a) these states are supposed to have strong monarchies based on what the Germans thought they had and b) it had to be German nobles because they could be trusted. Putting nobles on thrones of newly constituted states has a long tradition in 1918 Europe, and German families of suitablke rank proliferated.

As to incorporating their farmland, no, these countries were going through their own demographic boom. The only land you could get was what you took by force or superior liquidity.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The incorporation into the German empire wouldn't happen. I doubt it was even envisioned. the idea was that a) these states are supposed to have strong monarchies based on what the Germans thought they had and b) it had to be German nobles because they could be trusted. Putting nobles on thrones of newly constituted states has a long tradition in 1918 Europe, and German families of suitablke rank proliferated.

As to incorporating their farmland, no, these countries were going through their own demographic boom. The only land you could get was what you took by force or superior liquidity.

Incorporation was seriously considered in WW1. It was more than considered, it was the official plan for at least a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Border_Strip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Poland_(1916–1918)

There were even discussions on if to count Yiddish as a German dialect to justify even more land gains.
 
I recall Hoffmann saying that the Polish border strip was far larger than he would have preferred, he just wanted to hold enough territory to get a few railway stations that would be used for mobilisation out of artillery range.

I`m starting to think that from the purely German perspective that there wouldn`t have been a serious land shortage according to the Nazi definition within German borders in the event of a CP victory. The 1914 borders contained perhaps half of the 7-8 million hectares of farmland the Nazis thought they needed, and the Polish strip the Germans wanted in WW1 contained perhaps a quarter of the remainder. So while 2-3 million hectares is a significant shortage it probably isn`t enough to cause massive discontent with the regular re-distribution of land ownership in Germany, nor provide a political groundswell big enough for a populist movement.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I recall Hoffmann saying that the Polish border strip was far larger than he would have preferred, he just wanted to hold enough territory to get a few railway stations that would be used for mobilisation out of artillery range.

I`m starting to think that from the purely German perspective that there wouldn`t have been a serious land shortage according to the Nazi definition within German borders in the event of a CP victory. The 1914 borders contained perhaps half of the 7-8 million hectares of farmland the Nazis thought they needed, and the Polish strip the Germans wanted in WW1 contained perhaps a quarter of the remainder. So while 2-3 million hectares is a significant shortage it probably isn`t enough to cause massive discontent with the regular re-distribution of land ownership in Germany, nor provide a political groundswell big enough for a populist movement.

Agreed. I don't think it would be an issue to any major extent.

Assume (a big assumption) the execute the Border Strip as planned. The Germans deport about 2 million of the 2.5 million residents, the ones who remain are "ethnic Germans". So German needs to find 2.0 million people, or about 0.5 million men age 20-40. (This conversion is so we can compare to war deaths and cripples.)

German lost 2.0 million men out of about 14 million of military age. Assume about half the wounded are crippled and not able to resume the prewar job, this is roughly another 2.0 million. So Germany is short 4/14 of its working population, or 28%. Even without this new land, German has a shortage of workers and needs foreign workers.

Now there are food shortages going into the winter of 1918/19, and these now can partially be solved by food imports, but Germany will still want to be self sufficient, so it likely keeps some bachelors mobilized to grow food. There is also a fear of unemployment and social unrest, much like the UK and France had, so Germany will demobilize slowly. Some of these men will chose to stay in the border strip for free land,and establish families, but most will not.

There will be adds in the papers in 1919, 1920 offering free land to people who will farm it, but there will not be enough takers. Wages will be rising in cities due to lack of workers. Small holders in pre-1914 Germany will be selling their land and moving to cities.

When I look at all this, I see a lot of idle land in the Polish border strip. Now over time (30-40 years), all this land will be put back into production as tractors allow each farmer to farm more land. In the environment of all this empty land sitting around for decades, I can't see German need for land being a big issue or any perceived "shortage".

Now I don't think this is how it would really playout, due to:

1) The Reichstag's Polish and Catholic parties will not allow deportation.

2) In 1919 when it will be easiest to deport, there are food shortages. I can't see any farmers being moved off any land for any reason.

3) Poland will have a fascination interplay with this strip. This can easily be a long TL in and of itself.

4) Germany needs more, not fewer workers. They are likely to be trying to find seasonal workers, not expel people.

5) It is so much easier just to give most of the land to the Junkers, and keep the Poles as tenant farmers.
 
Incorporation was seriously considered in WW1. It was more than considered, it was the official plan for at least a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Border_Strip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Poland_(1916–1918)

There were even discussions on if to count Yiddish as a German dialect to justify even more land gains.

Yes, but these things were simply not going to be viable. German generals loved making grand plans for the ordering of postwar Europe that took little account of what was actually possible. I doubt that the government in 1918 would have been insane enough to try (though if they had, the results would have been all-around horrible, even by the standards of Eastern Europe in 1918-19).
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Yes, but these things were simply not going to be viable. German generals loved making grand plans for the ordering of postwar Europe that took little account of what was actually possible. I doubt that the government in 1918 would have been insane enough to try (though if they had, the results would have been all-around horrible, even by the standards of Eastern Europe in 1918-19).

Agreed that the mass deportation was a non-starter.

Some Annexation was possible. Part of the border strip was majority non-Poles, even majority non-Slavic. And depending on how Jews voted, using the population there in 1917, it is likely portions of the border strip would have voted to join Germany in a free and fair election. The Russians burn the land, evacuate the Poles was a God send for any German annexation plan. And considering how the Poles of the time like to write about the Jewish problem and the tendency of Slavs to do Pogrom, the Jews were likely to chose Germany over a new, weak Kingdom of Poland.


And even with mass deportations, it would have been no worse than Yugoslavia in OTL, and probably better.

Also, never underestimated the rashness or stupidity of the Kaiser.
 

KrisLok

Banned
And depending on how Jews voted, using the population there in 1917, it is likely portions of the border strip would have voted to join Germany in a free and fair election. .
You seem to forget that the Jewish minority in Polish Border Strip was to be ethnically cleansed out of the territory together with Polish majority(Jews being IIRC around 180.000 from the 2.000.000 people)

There were no free elections planned by the German government.

Technically, Germany did not gain any land at Brest-Litovsk. The treaty required Russia to give up its sovereignty over large areas of Eastern Europe (German wiki says 1.4 million square kilometres with around 60 million inhabitants), but none of this was to be annexed to Germany.
.
Germany did gain land in Brest Litovsk-mainly in Belarus, Poland and Lithuania.
Only Ukraine,Finland, Estonia and Latvia were named as countries in the treaty

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/bl34.asp#treatytext

Belarus, Poland and Lithuania were under the rule of Ober Ost and in case of Poland and Lithuania Germans planned to annex significant parts of the territory. Then turn those states into puppet regimes controlled by German military and minority and token local representation headed by a German monarch. Mostly from Poland which was to be stripped of circa 30.000 square kilometres territory from which 2-3 million Poles and Jews were to be ethnically cleansed using such methods as the ones during Destruction of Kalisz. German army planned to use several areas of Poland as training fields to drive the population out(they did a similar thing in France on lesser scale)

Agreed that the mass deportation was a non-starter.
Some Annexation was possible. Part of the border strip was majority non-Poles, even majority non-Slavic.
Which one? Do you have a source. The book about the Border Strip Plan "Polnisches Grenzstreifen" by Immanue Geiss a German historian says all of the area was majority Polish and Jews were small minority dispersed in the region.


And considering how the Poles of the time like to write about the Jewish problem and the tendency of Slavs to do Pogrom
That's might racist statement.


Yes, but these things were simply not going to be viable. German generals loved making grand plans for the ordering of postwar Europe that took little account of what was actually possible. I doubt that the government in 1918 would have been insane enough to try (though if they had, the results would have been all-around horrible, even by the standards of Eastern Europe in 1918-19).
The Polish Border Strip Plan was designed by German government, military and industry, not by military itself.
It had support across all spectrum of mainstream German politicians, including SDP.


. So Germany is short 4/14 of its working population, or 28%. Even without this new land, German has a shortage of workers and needs foreign workers.
They would be supplied by immigration of Germans from Eastern Europe. In any case the ethnic cleansing would happen anyway even if Germans would not come later. That was the idea of Polish Border Strip plan. No matter how small the number of German colonists would be, the Poles would be gone.


Now I don't think this is how it would really playout, due to:
1) The Reichstag's Polish and Catholic parties will not allow deportation.
The Poles were hardly in position to stop anything since they were a small minority group without any influence in German politics. They didn't stop the discrimination of Poles in 1871-1914. Catholic Parties didn't care about Poles since Kulturkampf ended, and in many cases had Germany nationalists in their ranks that hated Poles. Plus the Reichstag had no authority over local rule of Prussia.


5) It is so much easier just to give most of the land to the Junkers, and keep the Poles as tenant farmers.
So a massive theft of Polish property and changing free people to serfs? That will work well.

The Russians burn the land, evacuate the Poles was a God send for any German annexation plan.
You do realize that Germans did the same to Poles if not worse? The Germans were universally resented for their atrocities in Poland during WW1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Kalisz

The destruction and sacking of the city of Kalisz (Polish: zburzenie Kalisza) occurred in August 1914. It was perpetrated by the German Empire troops. From August 2 until August 22, 1914 at the beginning of World War I, one of the oldest towns in Poland (then under foreign Partitions), was shelled, bombed and burned down. The act was committed on a defenceless, open town with a rich historical tradition and monuments of mediaeval architecture; which the Russian army had left without fighting. The event is also known as Pogrom of Kalisz or Poland’s Louvain (see Schrecklichkeit atrocities).

. As a result, 95% of Kalisz was completely destroyed. Most of the houses within the mediaeval town area were levelled to the ground. Only churches and public offices survived. A significant number of citizens were shot. After the war, Kalisz which before the war had 65,000 citizens, was left with 5,000 inhabitants following the August exodus.
The Polish press in all territories of Partitions reported heavily on the event, some calling it "monstrous madness, that is unbelievable".[1]
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/poland_prussianspeech.htm

Reproduced below is the text of a speech given by a Polish member of the Prussian legislature, M. Trompczynski, in 1917. In his speech Trompczynski lambasted the German military authorities in Poland for their policy of seizing able-bodied Polish workmen for deportation to Germany to provide labour for the German war effort.
At the outbreak of the war, 250,000 Polish workmen happened to be in Germany. In accordance with military orders, they were forbidden to leave the territory of the German Empire. This order was completely illegal and contrary to the principles of international law, which admit only such aliens to be interned who might be summoned to the enemy army.
You can easily imagine the condition of these people who now for two and a half years have been separated from their families. They have simply become victims of exploitation on the part of their employers, who now that the workman cannot leave his place of employment pay only as much as they choose.
For instance, in a certain village of West Prussia a certain farmer pays the season-workman literally 30 pfennigs daily, and has kept him for the last two years!
As the need for workmen was greater than the number of those interned, attempts have been made to get a bigger number of workmen from the Kingdom of Poland. Gradually the number of workmen from the Kingdom has reached the figure of half a million.
The present Minister of the Interior has handed over the monopoly of finding new workmen to the Central German Labour Office. I am compelled to accuse that institution of choosing for its agents - and there are some 600 of them - people who grossly mislead the workmen concerning their future pay and mode of employment.
One of their special ways of attracting people is to promise in a written agreement very considerable supplies in kind, for instance, 30 pounds of potatoes a week, a litre of milk a day, etc., and they do not call attention to the postscriptum which states that instead of the supplies in kind, money will be given.
The German newspapers have raised an outcry that those workmen get so much food, whereas in reality they get very little food, and instead of a pound of potatoes they get three-and-a-half pfennigs, and for a litre of milk 4 or 5 pfennigs. It is clear that for that money they cannot buy even sufficient food.
The next way in which the workman is being exploited is the time of service to which he agrees. In the printed agreements it is usually stated that the agreement is for six months or the duration of the war.
The agents rely on it that no one reads the printed contract and persuade the workman that he is agreeing only to six months' work. I know it from hundreds of workmen that they have been cheated in that manner.
But the military authorities have twisted the matter still more to the detriment of the workmen by declaring that all workmen from the Kingdom of Poland without regard to the nature of their agreement are considered unfree, i.e., prisoners who are not allowed to go home.
I appeal to public opinion to consider in what an unworthy way these people have been attracted by lies to Germany. And thus there are many thousands of them who imagined that they agreed to a contract for six months and who have by now been kept here for more than a year and a half.
Also in this respect the employers obviously exploit the situation by dictating arbitrary conditions for the extension of the contract, because they know that the workman is unable to defend himself. It has, moreover, to be considered that even a contract extending the original conditions is now detrimental to the workmen, because it is impossible to live at the present day on the pay which was sufficient a year and a half ago.
I pillory before public opinion the orders of the Commanding General of Munster of October 16, 1915, and February 16, 1916, in which he recommends to the employers to compel unwilling workmen to accept an extension of the contract by depriving them of their bedding, of light and food.
I hope that the Minister will use his influence in order to prevent the new military authorities from continuing such a policy.
Nor can I remain silent on the point that recently the Central Labour Office has instituted with the help of the local authorities in the Kingdom of Poland a regular hunt for people.
Thus, for instance, towards the end of November, 1916, i.e., after the Manifesto of November 5th (the Proclamation of Polish "Independence"), a free entertainment was announced in the theatre. The lights were put up in the theatre, but when the public had assembled the theatre was surrounded by soldiers, men fit for work were caught and handed over to the Central Labour Office.
Further, the Minister of the Interior has issued an order that subjects of the Kingdom of Poland can be employed only in big or middling undertakings and not in small ones. The result of this order is that the police remove hairdressers, bakers, tailors, etc., from their workshops and send them to the farmers.
These orders are supposed to help the farmers who suffer from a lack of labour, whilst in reality they burden the farms with workmen, some of whom are weak and others incapable of doing the work, and who, anyhow, are unwilling to do it.
 
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