How viable would the United Baltic Duchy have been after a German victory in WW1?

[Augenis]

If they are the most privileged 5% of the population and major landowners, they will surely, for the most part, want to stay on their estates collecting rent rather than move to Dresden so they can work in a Factory?

Only a minority of Baltic Germans were landowners. Almost half of them lived in Riga, for example. Most of them were middle class, like the aforementioned Paul Schiemann.

Germans of more humble origins will migrate to the UBD if you offer them the land that used to belong to the Russian section of the nobility.

Without forced colonization, the Baltics have to compete with the Ruhr, Berlin, and the Americas for destitute German lower class, and it's a competition they're losing each time, because they offer worse quality of life, higher risk, and less chance for societal advancement (i.e. being dominated by an entrenched landowner nobility).

 

[Wesley_Lewt]

Without forced colonization, the Baltics have to compete with the Ruhr, Berlin, and the Americas for destitute German lower class, and it's a competition they're losing each time, because they offer worse quality of life, higher risk, and less chance for societal advancement (i.e. being dominated by an entrenched landowner nobility).

If you re-read my post I was suggesting that they might be offered guaranteed social advancement in the form of the land confiscated from the Russian section of the landowner nobility. A minor baltic noble has a better quality of life than an inter-war labourer in the ruhr steel mills or the average immigrant to the US in the same era.

Move to the Ruhr, Berlin, or the Americas and you will probably toil away your life in crappy, low pay jobs with a small percentage chance of anything better. Move to the UBD and become part of a landowner nobility. A minor part, your farm will employ 10-50 Latvian/Estonian labourers (dependent on your war record). I am imagine this as a veterans only scheme as parceling out the lands of the vanquished among your veterans is a tried and true method of holding down restive recent conquests.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

I don't see the UBD lasting long, since Estonian and Latvian nationalists might disgree with German ascendency on their homelands.

And what would be the role of Russian refugees? I wonder how many of them might support Germany, if only to protect them from Communism.

 

[kham_coc]

After thinking about this a bit more, the Belgium comparison is even better - Because of Riga.
That's the biggest chevage i think, because for Estonians, dissolution of the duchy means an independent Estonia, For Latvians, it's unlikely to include Riga as the City actually was German majority at the time (I think at least, feel free to correct me) this means that for Latvian nationalists, that there is a much different tradeoff in dissolving the Duchy.

 

[Augenis]

If you re-read my post I was suggesting that they might be offered guaranteed social advancement in the form of the land confiscated from the Russian section of the landowner nobility. A minor baltic noble has a better quality of life than an inter-war labourer in the ruhr steel mills or the average immigrant to the US in the same era.

Move to the Ruhr, Berlin, or the Americas and you will probably toil away your life in crappy, low pay jobs with a small percentage chance of anything better. Move to the UBD and become part of a landowner nobility. A minor part, your farm will employ 10-50 Latvian/Estonian labourers (dependent on your war record). I am imagine this as a veterans only scheme as parceling out the lands of the vanquished among your veterans is a tried and true method of holding down restive recent conquests.

This is baseless fantasy. German settlers in the Baltics were not going to become ennobled, there is zero precedent that Imperial Germany would ever consider parceling out noble status to poor commoners en masse. Nor this idea of giving each settler a whole group of serfs (never mind that serfdom in the Baltics had been abolished over a century prior and all Baltic German estates had already shifted to land rent and wage labor well over a generation ago?) makes any sense because of simple mathematics. If your plan is to outnumber the local population, you can't give each settler ample local workers because you simply will run out of them before you manage to outnumber their population!

No, any German colonist program in the Baltic would aim to give each settler land plots to become individual farmers. And that's the precedent we see in real life German colonization programs, including in the Baltic states in WW2 - the German far right, which fantasized about colonization the most, imagined settlers as Wehrbauers, soldiers who become hardy, simple-living farmers who extol German national ideals.

 

[NoMommsen]

...
The only way to get ordinary people in the various belligerents to go along with WW1 was to tell them it would be over quickly, 'over by Christmas'. This might sound realistic if your objective is Paris. And the last time Germany fought France (Franco-Prussian war) it was over quickly, a with a decisive German Victory. So France First is something you can sell.

If you stand on the defensive in the west and focus east from the start, it becomes hard to convince people you are going to win quickly. Or Easily. Moscow/St Petersburg is much further away than Paris and history isn't exactly littered with wars against Russia which were won quickly and easily.

Besides what Germany wanted most out of the war was non-european colonies, or 'a place in the sun' as the Kaiser liked to phrase it. That and putting a permanent end to French ability to pose a meaningful threat to Germany. You get that from defeating France, not Russia.

... well .. sry ... but ...
T.H.E. first and most important narrative "convincing" esp. the german ordinary people was :

TO THE DEFENSE !!! we're attacked from all sides and the only way to secure survival is to beat the enemieS (it was well known to everybody that the enemies were everywhere at the same time (at least as perceived)​

The narrative about the 'home by X-mas' was rather wishfull thinking and even more hoping on all sides involved esp. in decision making (including the military lot behind Moltke that told the politicians only what they - the militaries as well as the politicians wanted to hear well aware THAT it was wishfull thinking)

And therefore everybody - esp. the german people - rather knew that they were working on "principle: HOPE".

The other way 'round than IOTL - defend in the west AS WELL as defending in the east but there with more ... 'mobility' of warfare (enough and LAARGE enough gaps in the fortress 'ring' compared to the western borders) - was by many seen as viable. ... and spread far enough though the public by a number of publicists.


And : NO
what 'Germany' wanted most out of a war - a perhaps rather 'french' sounding wish esp. with the interwar times in mind ;-) - was: security

from being attacked from the east (the by everyone perceived in short time really indomitable juggernaut)​

the by everyone (german public) perceived enemy danger numer one (it was Kaiser Bill - and his ... emotinal problems with king Edward VII and hus 'english family'and his lot seeing England as the No. 1 enemy being behind all the grow up on the german borders)​

from being attacked from the west​

attacking there first was ONLY seen viable as the preparation for ging finally east​

from bein attacked on the streets of globality - or sea and trading lanes​

This idea comes up a lot on this forum, but it wasn't practical.
...

... your opinion ... and far from proven or even generally agreed upon (aside maybe the questionabe 'practicalibilty of war' in general, but that is a ... lesson of us afterborne generations only and not the contemporaries we're talking about) and of many other 'western centrists'

 

[NoMommsen]

Finally someone recognises Latgale would have been part of this entity. I don't know why people keep depicting it otherwise.

... maybe because it was NOT included into the german 'gains' of the BL-treaty ?
As you might learn from this map aside Dvinsk/Dünaburg Latgale was part of the "area to be evacuated" by the german army and therefore the german hold.
But here's another map (from a rather reliable source: "Zeit" newspaper)

also showing Latgalia NOT included into the german gains.


Wee 'nitpick' on the map :

"Selonia" didn't exist anymore at least since 1561 the last time it was mentioned. ... not at least due to theSelonians as an ethnic group had vanisched in 15th century.​

Since then the region was a firm part of Semgallia as part of the Duchy of Courland and Semgallia.

edit:
Btw I would be interested in what source the english wiki page bases its allegation of Letgalia to be included.
Neiter came I across this been mentioned - aside the city of Dünaburg - nor have the sources named in the english wiki article so far produced any citable mention of.

 

[tus3]

Well there was a pretty shaky moment between a major wave of mutinies in the French Army 1917 and the arrival of large numbers of American troops. Had the Germans got Brest-Litovsk 6 months earlier than OTL and been able to deploy their whole Eastern Army to the west when the French Army was in crisis due to the wave of mutinies, I think it is more likely than not that the western front would have collapsed and France would have sued for peace.

Err, the article you linked mentioned such things as:

The term "mutiny" does not precisely describe events; soldiers remained in trenches and were willing to defend but refused orders to attack.

and

Even in regiments in which there was direct confrontation, such as the 74th Infantry Regiment, the men did not harm their officers but refused to attack.[2] Most mutineers were veterans who did not refuse to fight but wanted the military authorities to be more attentive to the realities of modern war.[8] The soldiers had come to believe that the attacks they were ordered to make were futile.

The most persistent episodes of collective indiscipline involved a relatively small number of French divisions; the mutinies did not threaten a complete military collapse.

So, I have some doubts that a collapse of the Western Front would have been likely should the Germans have attacked during those mutinies.

Maybe find a way to avoid US entry in the war whereupon the Western Front becomes a stalemate leading to a peace of exhaustion. That seems more workable to me.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

Maybe find a way to avoid US entry in the war whereupon the Western Front becomes a stalemate leading to a peace of exhaustion. That seems more workable to me.

Keep Tirpitz from enacting unrestricted naval warfare.

 

[Helmuth48]

... maybe because it was NOT included into the german 'gains' of the BL-treaty ?
As you might learn from this map aside Dvinsk/Dünaburg Latgale was part of the "area to be evacuated" by the german army and therefore the german hold.
But here's another map (from a rather reliable source: "Zeit" newspaper)

Interesting... Some nitpicking:

It seems that both maps used the existing borders of the Baltic governorates. That means that the Düna/Dvina River becomes the border between German and Russian territory. However, Dünaburg/Dvinsk is actually on the northern bank, in Latgale, and thus must be evacuated by Germany. On the map, however, Dünaburg appears to be on the southern bank.... This makes it unclear who gets control of this city?

As for Belarus, these maps conflict with each other. Which map gives the truth? Or was the Brest-Litovsk treaty formulated so vaguely that the mapmakers had to do their own interpretation?

@oofo , maybe you can shed more light on this?

 

[Wesley_Lewt]

Err, the article you linked mentioned such things as:

and


So, I have some doubts that a collapse of the Western Front would have been likely should the Germans have attacked during those mutinies.

Maybe find a way to avoid US entry in the war whereupon the Western Front becomes a stalemate leading to a peace of exhaustion. That seems more workable to me.

It also says:

the mutinies were "widespread and persistent" and involved more than half the divisions in the French army."

and

"In 1967, Guy Pedroncini examined French military archives and discovered that 49 infantry divisions were destabilised and experienced episodes of mutiny. Of the 49, nine divisions were gravely affected by mutinous behavior, 15 were seriously affected and 25 divisions were affected by isolated but repeated instances of mutinous behavior. Altogether, 43 per cent of the 113 infantry divisions of the Army had been affected by the end of 1917"

So obviously there were variations in how serious it was given how many people were involved across such a long front. Sometimes it was like the bits you cherry picked, Often it was soldiers in the rear on rotation refusing to go back to the front, sometimes it was much more serious than that. It also says:

"The mutinies were kept secret from the Germans and their full extent was not revealed until decades later. The German failure to detect the mutinies has been described as one of the most serious intelligence failures of the war."

The POD I was proposing was an earlier Brest-Litovsk, and earlier turning west of the eastern army. Meaning the Germans attack with twice the numbers they had OTL during the mutinies. Maybe we pair that with German intelligence detecting the mutinies and focusing their Schwerpunkt where the mutinies are most serious. If, during the mutinies, Germany suddenly has twice as many men, the mutinies would have become more serious than they were OTL.

So, chances are there would be a breakthrough and French soldiers refuse orders to carry out the counter-attacks necessary to re-stabilize the front. The consequences could have been really dramatic with French morale plunging further. I think a collapse was possible if the Germans found themselves with twice the men they had OTL during the mutinies and their intelligence detected them so German strategy could exploit them.

 

[Wesley_Lewt]

This is baseless fantasy. German settlers in the Baltics were not going to become ennobled, there is zero precedent that Imperial Germany would ever consider parceling out noble status to poor commoners en masse. Nor this idea of giving each settler a whole group of serfs (never mind that serfdom in the Baltics had been abolished over a century prior and all Baltic German estates had already shifted to land rent and wage labor well over a generation ago?) makes any sense because of simple mathematics. If your plan is to outnumber the local population, you can't give each settler ample local workers because you simply will run out of them before you manage to outnumber their population!

No, any German colonist program in the Baltic would aim to give each settler land plots to become individual farmers. And that's the precedent we see in real life German colonization programs, including in the Baltic states in WW2 - the German far right, which fantasized about colonization the most, imagined settlers as Wehrbauers, soldiers who become hardy, simple-living farmers who extol German national ideals.

Not serfs, employees and or tennants.

And I am not suggesting any old commoner be offered land and Noble Status. I am suggesting this be offered to War Heroes. History is full of commoners who were enobled when they distinguished themselves in war. So you can be ennobled and granted land if you have a German wife + kids and are a recipient of the Iron Cross First Class, not any old pleb. Maybe also if you had reached a certain rank.

And no, the plan would not be to outnumber the Latvians/Estonians but make the German Elite 10% rather than 5% of the population. Which is a slightly more stable situation.

Giving ordinary plebs with no exemplary war record land they work themselves would probably also be tried. But as you have pointed out the takers would probably be few.

 

[Jürgen]

After thinking about this a bit more, the Belgium comparison is even better - Because of Riga.
That's the biggest chevage i think, because for Estonians, dissolution of the duchy means an independent Estonia, For Latvians, it's unlikely to include Riga as the City actually was German majority at the time (I think at least, feel free to correct me) this means that for Latvian nationalists, that there is a much different tradeoff in dissolving the Duchy.

Riga had around 50% Latvian population, 25% German population and slightly below 10% Yiddish speaking population, the rest of the population were mostly East Slavs.

 

[Fehérvári]

... maybe because it was NOT included into the german 'gains' of the BL-treaty ?
As you might learn from this map aside Dvinsk/Dünaburg Latgale was part of the "area to be evacuated" by the german army and therefore the german hold.
But here's another map (from a rather reliable source: "Zeit" newspaper)

That's one thing, however I would like to bring attention to the arguments made in this reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Kaiserreich/comments/f9o7r7

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

If, during the mutinies, Germany suddenly has twice as many men, the mutinies would have become more serious than they were OTL.

OTOH, these mutineries might calm down if the German attack is more serious than OTL.

 

[oofo]

Interesting... Some nitpicking:

It seems that both maps used the existing borders of the Baltic governorates. That means that the Düna/Dvina River becomes the border between German and Russian territory. However, Dünaburg/Dvinsk is actually on the northern bank, in Latgale, and thus must be evacuated by Germany. On the map, however, Dünaburg appears to be on the southern bank.... This makes it unclear who gets control of this city?

As for Belarus, these maps conflict with each other. Which map gives the truth? Or was the Brest-Litovsk treaty formulated so vaguely that the mapmakers had to do their own interpretation?

@oofo , maybe you can shed more light on this?

Sure

Daugavplis was founded on and located on the northern bank of the Dvina. So with the rest of Latgale it was part of Russia's Vitebsk governorate. What is now the part of the city south of the Dvina was a town called Griva (German: Griwa). Here's a German Army map from the war.

This is the demarcation line from Brest-Litovsk. Note that where the line runs north along the Dvina River was apparently meant quite literally. Both Jekabplis (Jakobstadt) and Daugavplis north of the Dvina were on the German side of the border. If I had to guess, the Germans in the commission would have been pushing for a border one kilometer from the north/east bank of the Dvina, as well as territory in the immediate vicinity of Daugavplis economically linked to it (nothing more than a couple kilometers though). In the secret protocol to the supplementary treaty it is also stated that the protruding tip of Courland (seen below) would be "rounded off" in Russia's favor along the line Daugavplis-Drysviaty (not marked on the map but located on the southwest corner of that little lake south of Dünaburg).

As for the reasoning behind all of this, the border was made based off military considerations (were talking about the Germans here).

 

[Helmuth48]

That's one thing, however I would like to bring attention to the arguments made in this reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Kaiserreich/comments/f9o7r7

An interesting point of view indeed:

The Regent Council proclaimed itself to rule the Baltic States, including Courland, Livonia, and Estonia. At the time of this declaration Latgale was firmly entrenched as a part of Livonia, a status it did not have when Brest-Litovsk was originally being considered. For that reason, I do not think that we can say the UBD "didn't want" Latgale, moreso that the initial treaty terms simply left it out as it wasn't administratively part of the Baltics when the terms were written.
The UBD is the result of a fusion between this short lived Baltic State and the Duchy of Courland, but was never realized OTL. It's important to note that the entire area was wracked with three way conflict at this time, with battles between communists, nationalists, and German elements. The final borders of Brest-Litovsk were never realized

Summary: 1918 was a confusing time in the Baltics, with multiple parallel organizations seeking independence (Nationalists, Socialists and Baltic Germans). The people of Latgale had been striving for unification of Latgale with Livonia/Latvia since April 1917, and by the end of 1918 they considered themselves a de facto part of it. To eventually set up a stable state, cooperation between the Latvians and Baltic Germans will somehow be necessary (Which was the case in the Vereinigter Landesrat). Thus, to meet the Latvians' wishes, it would be logical to include Latgale in a unified Baltic state. However, due to the Russian civil war and because Germany lost the war in the west, it never came to the point of establishing final borders...

 

[Helmuth48]

This is the demarcation line from Brest-Litovsk. Note that where the line runs north along the Dvina River was apparently meant quite literally. Both Jekabplis (Jakobstadt) and Daugavplis north of the Dvina were on the German side of the border. If I had to guess, the Germans in the commission would have been pushing for a border one kilometer from the north/east bank of the Dvina, as well as territory in the immediate vicinity of Daugavplis economically linked to it (nothing more than a couple kilometers though). In the secret protocol to the supplementary treaty it is also stated that the protruding tip of Courland (seen below) would be "rounded off" in Russia's favor along the line Daugavplis-Drysviaty (not marked on the map but located on the southwest corner of that little lake south of Dünaburg).

As for the reasoning behind all of this, the border was made based off military considerations (were talking about the Germans here).

Thank you for these maps! Most of Estonia and Livonia are outside this demarcation line. If this line had become the final border, there would have been no United Baltic Duchy at all...