Keep Switzerland part of Germany

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Deleted member 1487

How would the break off of Switzerland be prevented so that by the modern era German Switzerland is considered an integral part of a unified Germany by the Swiss and Germans alike in the 20th century?
 

RavenMM

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well, obviously I think you need at least a different 30 years' war. Maybe with an earlier POD, switzerland keeps catholic and sides with a winning habsburg in an alt-30yw and gets to keep it's old rights.
 
well, obviously I think you need at least a different 30 years' war. Maybe with an earlier POD, switzerland keeps catholic and sides with a winning habsburg in an alt-30yw and gets to keep it's old rights.

Frankly, you need to go earlier than that. Switzerland was acting independently and forging a separate destiny and identity by the late 15th Century. You might just be able to have it tear itself apart over religious differences during the mid 16th Century and end up becoming a series of minor states that get mediatised later on and gobbled up by the larger powers such as Baden or Austria, but the biggest problem here is that by this time Switzerland's got a lot of French and Italian speakers and a strong heritage of independence and republicanism that are quite hard to overcome.
 
Well, Switzerland won de facto independence from the HRE in the Swabian War (1500ish), which was fought in response to the Diet of Worms. De jure independence came with Westphalia.

The way I see it, we have 4 options:
1. Get the Swiss conquered some time before Swabia (or after, I guess)
2. Have the Diet of Worms turn out differently so that the the Swiss Confederation never even feels the need to revolt
3. Have the Swiss lose the Swabian War
4. Have Westphalia keep the Swiss in the HRE

1. is pretty open - nothing's particularly stopping people from conquering Switzerland aside from the fact that it's not really worth the trouble: the lands are not notably rich, and they're hard to conquer. The Old Confederacy beat the Hapsburgs back several times in the High Middle Ages. The best solution might be civil war - the Cantons did bicker amongst themselves, and occasionally even have little wars. For example, there was the Old Zurich War, where Zurich warred with the other cantons over land, and even managed to get the HRE and the King of France (!) involved...but lost horribly, and Zurich was kicked out of the Confederation for 10 years.

Generally speaking, the Swiss are hard to invade - they are mountainous and have excellent infantry in an age when the elite is usually heavy cavalry (poorly suited for the mountains). The military history of Switzerland is embarrassingly successful in this period (and less existent afterwards). Still, they didn't entirely win when trying to conquer lands off of Milan...

The only thing I can really think of is the First Kappel War, where the Catholics invite Ferdinand I in to help them vanquish the evil Protestants. OTL, the war was barely avoided - maybe something goes wrong with the peace talks, war breaks out, and the Catholics invite large numbers of Austrian/Imperial troops in, who later refuse to leave?

2. is perhaps more likely. The Diet of Worms was never really meant to be the internal-reforms-package it ended up as; basically, the Emperor was hoping to rally troops to keep France out of Italy and maybe throw back the Turks. Have the German princes be less pushy; perhaps by having the French be more successful in northern Italy instead of pushing south to Rome and Naples? Or have the Swiss Confederation somehow see it as a limitation on the Emperor's power rather than an undesired interference - though this is difficult, since the whole point of the Confederation was that they all had Imperial Immediacy.

2.5 Have some Emperor withdraw the Immediacy? Of course, this also involves a war to make it stick...(in fact, several emperors refused to renew the immediacy, but nothing came of it)

3. While the Swiss basically won this war pretty hard, they did so with French and Italian money. Maybe get the Italians to be less enthusiastic about the cooperation between the Swiss and the Three Leagues?

4. Christ, I don't know. Peace of Westphalia was so intricate that it's very difficult for me to consider. I mean, why were the Swiss even formally recognized? They were almost completely uninvolved, aside from hiring out mercenaries to every side.

After Westphalia, it's pretty rough. Several rounds of reform have bound the Cantons together as more than a mere military alliance. The Thirty Years' War showed them the advantage of sticking together, even with differences of religion and language. I feel like by this time, the Swiss Germans think of themselves as different from other Germans, just as the Dutch came to consider themselves different from other Germans, and the continued reason for the term "Swiss German" (and not just "Swiss") is to distinguish them from "Swiss French" - that is, it's the German that's the modifier, not the Swiss (unlike for example "Franconian German")
 
Have the future Philip III of Spain die before his father, as his two brothers did OTL. Then in 1598 his half-sister becomes Queen Isabella II, As she is childless, her nephew, the Duke of Savoy-Piedmont, is her heir.

This leaves Switzerland almost totally surrounded by Habsburg-Savoy territory, and makes it very hard for the Swiss to extricate themselves from the Empire, esp if Spain under the new management does better than OTL in the TYW, and later against Louis XIV.
 
Have the future Philip III of Spain die before his father, as his two brothers did OTL. Then in 1598 his half-sister becomes Queen Isabella II, As she is childless, her nephew, the Duke of Savoy-Piedmont, is her heir.

This leaves Switzerland almost totally surrounded by Habsburg-Savoy territory, and makes it very hard for the Swiss to extricate themselves from the Empire, esp if Spain under the new management does better than OTL in the TYW, and later against Louis XIV.

Considering that the Swiss had been completely surrounded by Habsburg territory no less than 4 times previously in their existence and were almost entirely surrounded after Westphalia anyway, I don't think that's going to do it.

Not to mention that the idea that France and the rest of Europe are going to allow such a behemoth to come into existence again so soon after Charles V is rather unlikely. You're looking at an empire which is going to be being sapped dry by the Dutch, possibly losing the Imperial crown to the Bavarians or so forth by an Empire concerned about how much power the Emperor could theoretically have, and is so unwieldy a state to handle administratively that even if it does survive for a while, it's going to get split as soon as there's a second son to give half the Empire to.
 
The Hapsburgs were originally from northern Switzerland (Aargau). Maybe you can have one obsessed with reconquering it?

Yeah, kind of a huge stretch there.
 
IIRC the Swiss were only able to develop their independence when a several of the major local houses, the Kyburgs and the Zahringens in particular, died out in the main line with their lands to be inherited by either distant relatives or the Holy Roman Emperor leaving them somewhat less closely run. Have them not die out or be inherited by people that will move to the lands in question and govern directly and you could stop the Swiss proto-autonomy from developing to begin with, at that point they're just another part of the Empire that depending on linguistic developments could come to be seen as a natural part of Germany.
 
IIRC the Swiss were only able to develop their independence when a several of the major local houses, the Kyburgs and the Zahringens in particular, died out in the main line with their lands to be inherited by either distant relatives or the Holy Roman Emperor leaving them somewhat less closely run. Have them not die out or be inherited by people that will move to the lands in question and govern directly and you could stop the Swiss proto-autonomy from developing to begin with, at that point they're just another part of the Empire that depending on linguistic developments could come to be seen as a natural part of Germany.

Though with a PoD in the late 13th Century to avoid the extinction of the Kyburgs the loss of Switzerland is going to be one of the less significant factors.
 
Have the future Philip III of Spain die before his father, as his two brothers did OTL. Then in 1598 his half-sister becomes Queen Isabella II, As she is childless, her nephew, the Duke of Savoy-Piedmont, is her heir.

This leaves Switzerland almost totally surrounded by Habsburg-Savoy territory, and makes it very hard for the Swiss to extricate themselves from the Empire, esp if Spain under the new management does better than OTL in the TYW, and later against Louis XIV.
The Hapsburgs were originally from northern Switzerland (Aargau). Maybe you can have one obsessed with reconquering it?

Yeah, kind of a huge stretch there.
That kind of makes it worse if anything. When you think about it, none of the Hapsburg lands ended up becoming a permanent part of Germany. Bohemia, Burgundy/Netherlands, Luxembourg Italy, and even Lorraine and Austria, were all HRE territories and yet none of which are part of unified modern Germany or considered integral territories, and only included in historical German states thanks to Nazi shenanigans.
 
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Would the Protestents in Switzerland be squashed? If so, the region might be governed with Tyrol, Breisgau, Sundgau and other areas for a while and have a group identity with them. The Swiss would still have a surplus population so might end up as Ghurkas for the Habsburgs for all we know.

I would also like a bit of clarification. Are we talking about a group that is mostly Deutsch or Germanic in general? Having the Swiss might give support to a different culture in the southern Germanies. Ahh, and would there be a WWII expy for this? Something to sweep up people who left the Germanies centuries before and putting them all in one country?
 
Frankly, you need to go earlier than that. Switzerland was acting independently and forging a separate destiny and identity by the late 15th Century. You might just be able to have it tear itself apart over religious differences during the mid 16th Century and end up becoming a series of minor states that get mediatised later on and gobbled up by the larger powers such as Baden or Austria, but the biggest problem here is that by this time Switzerland's got a lot of French and Italian speakers and a strong heritage of independence and republicanism that are quite hard to overcome.
Um, how much of the HRE was acting independently and giving lip service at best to the Emperor by the 1400s?

One idea would be including the various cantons in one or more of the Imperial Circles, with votes in the Diet.
 
The latest possible POD here would seem to me to be the Council of Constance. Up until that that point much of the Aar basin was still in Hapsburg hands, including the castle beating the family's name. Maybe the right POD is to have the Leopoldinian Line endure, or to switch the domains of the younger brothers of Rudolf IV? My thought here is that a better rooted Further Austria could well defeat at some subsequent point the nascent Swiss Confederacy as it then existed.
 
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