How much German settlement in Mitteleuropa would there be after a German WWI victory?

CaliGuy

Banned
How would Germany attract ethnic Germans to the region when the trend since the 1850s had been with Germans moving westward? With the proportion of Germans in the Eastern Provinces declining with every census, the general trend was for ethnic Germans and Jews to migrate to cities west of the Oder-Neisse Line. Poles from the region also migrated westward to the Rhineland and Westphalia, with some 400,000 living in cities like Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Dortmund etc. where many were coal miners. Ethnic Poles also moved to Berlin and Potsdam with their numbers in the city rising from 27,339 in 1890 to 81,369 by 1910. Meanwhile the city of Posen's ethnic German population declined from 47% in 1867 to 35% in 1910, while the Poles increased from 38% to 57%. The economic opportunities afforded in Germany led to a very lower overall emigration rate of Poles from the Reich overseas. The same trend of urbanisation held true for Austria-Hungary as German speakers declined from 40% of the population to 7% by 1910. In Vienna, the number of Czechs in the city increased to 20% of the population.
Your point about Posen's changing ethnic percentage is certainly interesting.

However, it is worth noting that German cities in the East also experienced a significant population increase between 1875 and 1910:

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1741

Indeed, this German migration to the East doesn't have to be rural; rather, it can also be urban.

Plus, it is worth noting that Russia had over a million ethnic Germans and that many--if not most--of them might have moved westward due to rising anti-German sentiment in Russia if Germany had won World War I.
 
Your point about Posen's changing ethnic percentage is certainly interesting.

However, it is worth noting that German cities in the East also experienced a significant population increase between 1875 and 1910:

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1741

Indeed, this German migration to the East doesn't have to be rural; rather, it can also be urban.

Plus, it is worth noting that Russia had over a million ethnic Germans and that many--if not most--of them might have moved westward due to rising anti-German sentiment in Russia if Germany had won World War I.

The population in the East was growing, albeit not as fast due to the migration of 4 million people from the East to the West between 1870 and 1910. Most ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire already lived in Mitteleuropa (Ukraine & Crimea) but there were around 500,000 Volga Germans in Russia and perhaps another 150,000 in the Caucasus whom could be moved to Mitteleuropa.
 
My impression is that ethnic German settlement would be encouraged for the Baltic Duchies and technically re-settlement into Posen and other areas that had seen emigration. The best candidates would be returning veterans who might be tempted by a farm and rural life in the east of Germany, perhaps the Baltics. But like all best laid plans they should unravel soon enough.

Germany is likely to see both economic upheaval as well as social and political, combined with the same wanderlust that gripped the other nations, the Roaring Twenties were not merely an Americans experience, those young men are more likely to go into the big cities, Berlin especially, but anywhere far from the farm. Combined with the arrival of mechanization and you have new pressure to create big farms not homesteads, the land barons should quickly realize that profit is in buying out and combining small plots, using tractors and migrants from Poland to the extent you need seasonal labor. The Duchies should implode first and the Junkers will see no value in carving up the East into little farms for peasants. I doubt Poland ever becomes more than a rebellious vassal and that depends most of all on how badly the Russians (or Soviets) behave in rebuilding the Empire, same for the Baltics and Ukraine. At best you see technicians and skill workers moved East with companies who seek to build there, it will hardly look like daring colonization, instead it should look like a dull corporate relocation. If anything I think Germany will have more German Poles and other Easterners wanting to move to the jobs in Germany, especially if the economy recovers, industrial jobs should grow faster than farm labor, pay better and afford more opportunity. The notions of Middle Europe will evaporate, at most it becomes a Customs Union that favors German industry, who will be buying up stuff from the East too, and at best a defense alliance if Russia looms menacing enough. I give it about one generation before it feels like a proto-EU, and riddled with petty disputes based on historic antagonisms, and teetering on falling to pieces each year that things are peaceful and prosperous. Imperial Germany was not a monolith, its reality on the ground is going to be just as chaotic as anything might see in Britain, France or the USA, there will be gross failures and lucky successes, as much rejuvenation as injustice, opportunity as well as comedy with tragedy. It might look like the American Great Plains, a lot of quaint farm houses but the land is owned by giants who run an industry not a lifestyle.
 
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