How large can Germany get?

machine3589

machine3589

After going through the older map treads, I noticed that a lot of maps have Germany absorb lands and territories in all directions by the beggining of the 20th century. Now I know the map tread isnt subject to the scrutiny that scenarios in the "Before/After 1900" are subject to, but it would appear that people tend to simply treat territories they dont know what to do with as a natural extension to the adjacent Great Power. Although this is true for every Great Power in the map treads, in the case of Germany it can get bizzare at times with it completly consuming places that not even (or only) Hitler wanted to annex or Germanise.

So what Im asking is what would be the absolute plausible limits of Germany before 1900. The PoD can be as far as the beggining of the Völkerwanderung.
 

Mikestone8

Well, if the Visigoths defeat the Franks at Vouillé, so the that Frankish Kingdom stops at the Loire, then (if it still expands eastward similar to OTL) we could end up with a "Germany", that includes most of the northern half of France!

Curiously, in his provisional partition of the Empire between his three sons, Charlemagne gave the eldest roughly the same area - Germany (minus Bavaria) plus Neustria (ie northern France) - but two of the sons died and the partition was never carried out. Had they lived (and all three gone on to have sons of their own) there might have been a similar result.

A couple of others. If Philip Augustus dies young (or maybe if King John does) the Angevin Empire survives and France never becomes a major power. In that case, the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire might stay on the Rhone and Meuse. Alternatively, either have the Habsburgs win the Thirty Years War, or have Louis XIV die young and his conquests never get made. Then France doesn't acquire Artois or Franch-Comté, and probably not Lorraine either. Alsace is either never acquired or remains a detached possession liable to be lost again in some future war.

Any of these produces a signifcantly bigger Germany.
 

Susano

Banned
machine3589 said:
After going through the older map treads, I noticed that a lot of maps have Germany absorb lands and territories in all directions by the beggining of the 20th century. Now I know the map tread isnt subject to the scrutiny that scenarios in the "Before/After 1900" are subject to, but it would appear that people tend to simply treat territories they dont know what to do with as a natural extension to the adjacent Great Power. Although this is true for every Great Power in the map treads, in the case of Germany it can get bizzare at times with it completly consuming places that not even (or only) Hitler wanted to annex or Germanise.

So what Im asking is what would be the absolute plausible limits of Germany before 1900. The PoD can be as far as the beggining of the Völkerwanderung.
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Well that would be a few centuries before there was a Germany, so such early PoDs would de fatco be kinda dsiqualified by th ebutterfly effect, wont they?

But with such early PoDs - basically, the earlier the PoD, the larger a germany is plausible. Of course, thats always the case, that the earlier a PoD is, the more potent it is. Look at the medieval HRE - there definitly was a German-Italian split in it, but contrary to popular imagination, Italy wasnt in revolution 24/7 ;) Then add in some wildly more successful East Settlement, and you might well have a reaqlms tretching from the Pannonian plain to the Low Counties, from Denmark to Tuscany, from the Rhone Valley to the Baltic states.

Of course, a successful HRE would most likely uphold its universalist claim, so how much "Germany" that is is open to discussion. It would most likely be based on German noblesm German troops and German settlement, so in important aspects it would be Germany. Of course, early PoDs are always a bit iffy (at least IMO), but later PoDs work, too. Basically, germany/the HRE shrank constantly over the centuries, which is also a reason why later PoDs work less well, but, well, just look at the extension of the HRE in 1500 or even still 1648 after the Westphalian Peace - that is at least in the west often even more than standard Germany-wank maps show in the map threads. Of course, getting such a HRE to pull together and centralise is not easy, but it should not be completly impossible, either...
 

Valdemar II

Banned
The problem are with such a early POD you could easily end up with Germany from Brittany to Belarussia, through it would likely be named Frankreich rather than Deutschland.
 

Monty Burns

Susano said:
Well that would be a few centuries before there was a Germany, so such early PoDs would de fatco be kinda dsiqualified by the ebutterfly effect, wont they?
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Definitely. And it's rather easy to come up with such proposals:

1. The Romans hold Germania Magna for longer, effectively delaying Teutoburg by say a generation or two. In the meantime, technological transfer takes place to a much larger scale, making Germanic population significantly higher - and more civilized. In particular, there is a tradition of towns with Germanics.
2. Charlemagne in its fights with the Saxons wants to ensure that they get no supply from the east, thus he conquers the region between the Elbe and the Oder, takes a similar aproach as with the Saxons lateron, killing the Slav leaders, taking many Slavs into the proper Empire and resettling Franks between Elbe and Oder, thus Eastern-Colonization starts around 200 km further East.
3. The Eastern Frankish Empire keeps its hold on Pannonia and keeps colonizing it. Magyar invasions are defeated, the Magyars retreat over the Karpathians and follow the Huns into obscurity. With time passing by, Germans settle throughout Hungary.
4. As a defence of Northern Italy, a law is enacted which requires Germanic soldiers to be hired and settled throughout Venice and Friaul. This law becomes tradition, and in particular is taken over by the republic of Venice, resulting in gradual "Germanization" of the Terra ferma and some of teh Venetian colonies throughout the Med.
5. The great Slavic uprising is crushed decisively, many Slavs are killed and the area is colonized.
6. The Teutonic order manages to defeat the Lithuanians and colonizes not only Prussia, but the whole Baltics with German settlers.
7. Henry the Lion has a better relation with Barbarossa, and conquers Denmark, which ends in the HRE.

To conclude, it's rather easy to build a massive Germany with an early POD and liberal usage of conquest, cultural superiority and ethnic cleansing - the way large Empires evolve.
 
Lord Insane

Lord Insane

Kelenas said:
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...

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What?

I'm sorry, but I think you just broke my mind...

- Kelenas
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From Valdemar's post. Although it might not be German, exactly, it would be a sort of Germanic which might well resemble OTL German more than any other given Germanic language, and if it is called Frankreich (or Frankriek, or... well, you get the idea), well, France in German is Frankreich...
 
machine3589

machine3589

Susano said:
Well that would be a few centuries before there was a Germany, so such early PoDs would de fatco be kinda dsiqualified by th ebutterfly effect, wont they?
Click to expand...

Well then dont use such an early PoD. My only condition was that it cant be sooner then the Völkerwanderung. That doesnt prevent anyone from using later PoDs.;)
 

Kvasir

The POD doesn't have to be that early. French Comte, Alsace, Lorraine, Flanders, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Switzerland could push the German border east with PODs in the 18th or even 19th century and have these areas speaking German today without ethnic cleansing or anything that brutal. Look at the French language in Alsace Lorraine today.

But the earlier the POD the more integrated they would likely be,

If you want to have Northern Italy like Lombardy or Venetia part of Germany you probably need to go further back but HRE held these areas. Slavic areas in the east are also possible, the Prussian Kingdom held large parts of what we would consider Poland and Austria held land all the way to Lviv (Lemberg) in Galicia. After the 3rd Partition large parts of Poland were under German control. An interesting POD during the Napoleonic Wars could result in both countries holding their respective parts and upon unification having polish provinces part of Grossdeutschland including Bialystock.

An early POD could lead to Jutland being incorporated into Germany but that isn't a very common event in timelines here. But the Teutonic Order and Livonian Order held large parts of the Baltic. PODs in the 16th and 17th could lead to surviving Baltic German presence or you could go for the post WWI united Baltic Duchy. I doubt you could push it all the way to Ingria (St Petersberg) but you could try.

Think also about how far you want to go into Hungary. Bratislava (Pressburg) and Sopron (Odenburg) are obvious cities on the border to take, but German "protection of Slovakia is possible if you want to go down that route. An early POD could see a stronger Danube Swabian presence and Hungary could even be in play. That would probably require knowledge of Ottoman history and that's not something I'm familiar with.

Remember to a large part of Eastern Europe had a strong Yiddish population which is very close to German. If anti-Semitism is weak and Yiddish is thought of as a strong dialect of German that could have an effect on what it means to be German.
 

Susano

Banned
Valdemar II said:
The problem are with such a early POD you could easily end up with Germany from Brittany to Belarussia, through it would likely be named Frankreich rather than Deutschland.
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Depends. If that Germany (which by the definjition of the term Germany has to be the East Frankish Realm) immidatly suceeds in the struggles among the successors of Charles the Great, then yes, probably. But when the Carolingians have already died out in every sucessor realm its still not too late for that result, and yet this realm wouldnt be called Frankreich, but rather Deutschland, as it was beginning with Henry the Fowler IOTL.

Monty Burns said:
Definitely. And it's rather easy to come up with such proposals:

1. The Romans hold Germania Magna for longer, effectively delaying Teutoburg by say a generation or two. In the meantime, technological transfer takes place to a much larger scale, making Germanic population significantly higher - and more civilized. In particular, there is a tradition of towns with Germanics.
Click to expand...
Yeah well, Germanics, not Germans. Theres a difference ;) I mean starting from your 2nd PoD on a Germany (=East Frankish Realm) would still be there, but here I think butterflies would really totally change everything. or at least, wed have to nitpick in what constitutes a "Germany analogue", wether that counts, and how likely one would be to rise, heh.
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Monty Burns

Susano said:
Yeah well, Germanics, not Germans. Theres a difference ;) I mean starting from your 2nd PoD on a Germany (=East Frankish Realm) would still be there, but here I think butterflies would really totally change everything. or at least, wed have to nitpick in what constitutes a "Germany analogue", wether that counts, and how likely one would be to rise, heh.
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Well, the pint is that butterflies can work in any direction. You can start with a POD in the 1930s and get a current date Germany which is barely recognizeable - and you could start in the 1th century and try to limit butterfly effects to the minimum, which would be a higher number of Germanics and a higher cultural level of those. Starting with the East-Frankish kingdom and assuming "Germany" and "Germans" evolve is quite a strong assumption by itself...
 

Susano

Banned
Monty Burns said:
Well, the pint is that butterflies can work in any direction. You can start with a POD in the 1930s and get a current date Germany which is barely recognizeable - and you could start in the 1th century and try to limit butterfly effects to the minimum, which would be a higher number of Germanics and a higher cultural level of those. Starting with the East-Frankish kingdom and assuming "Germany" and "Germans" evolve is quite a strong assumption by itself...
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Well, I dont think it needs evolving (aside from the name, but whats in a name?). The East Frankish Realm WAS Germany, IMO, simple as said. Though Id accept as "Germany equivalent" any union of smaller Germanic tribes that remained in the original West Germanic lands while others went out to anywhere in Europe ;)
 

shillinger

A centralized HRE would make German Eastward expansion even more successful. We might end up with a completly Germanized Western Poland, and quite possibly Slovakia and most of Southern Lithuania. Germany's boundary at Warsaw, Blyastok and Kaunas, say.
 

Eurofed

Banned
If the HRE centralization efforts of the Hohenstaufen pay up, "Germany" (actually a binational German-Italian state) would end up to include the Low Countries, Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia (no doubt Germanized over time), Italy (northern Italy was part of the HRE, southern Italy got in dynastic union and would be absorbed). Moreover, no doubt the Germanization of Poland and Hungary (actually, quite likely it would be mixed Germanization/Italianization for Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia) would be much more successful than OTL. We could easily end up with the eastern borders of the HRE on the Vistula and the Carpathians.

Moreover, as it concerns the western border, a strong unified HRE would at the very least put a mighty check on the eastern expansion of France. The Franco-German border would remain on the Maas/Meuse and the HRE would keep Alsace, Lorraine, and the Franche Comte.
 
machine3589

machine3589

Kvasir said:
But the Teutonic Order and Livonian Order held large parts of the Baltic. PODs in the 16th and 17th could lead to surviving Baltic German presence or you could go for the post WWI united Baltic Duchy.
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Well, the Balctic Germans never made more then 10% of the population in the Balctic states, so I dont know if it could be considered a part of "Germany".
 
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