No moar Germany

Lately, the thought of Germany being wiped off the maps with the end of World War II has been in my head so much that i wanted to make a map about that, but since i suck at maps i gave up. So, i will share my thoughts here, leaving map-making to another, more talented fellow AH.com member... maybe. Well... World War I saw a majorly a**-fuck*d Germany... what if the winning powers of World War II, seeing that the Germans have caused two World Wars in a row (well, not the Great War, but at the end the nation that had to pay the worst consequences was the Reich) decide to cancel Germany from existence, letting all the neighbouring nations to annex some bordering parts of Germany, including Austria (since they decided to join the Reich willingly) and dividing the spoils of the Nazi state into 2 or more states, maybe an USSR controlled state, an USA-Allies controlled state and a neutral state, none of which retains the name of Germany? For making things worse for the Reich, i'd add more enemies to Hitler's personal list of threats: for example, Mussolini epically fails in turning Italy into his own dictatorship, so the Kingdom of Italy joins the Allies after a year of neutrality. With Italy supporting the Republicans of Spain, due to the "lobbying" of some left-wing factions of the Kingdom who can't be ignored by the Savoy house (well, if they did, probably a communist coup would begin), Franco and the Nazis have more trouble in seizing Spain, and the Republicans (after a bloody and rather nightmarish civil war, who turns Spain into a wasteland) win. Maybe the invasion of Salazar's Portugal would follow? Well, these are just ideas to make the Reich's war worse, and so contributing to make Germany so alone in the war that at the end the post-war situation of Germany is rather bad, so bad that an annexation-balkanization of Germany follows. Be free to kill the German state in any way you want.
 
The simple fact is, one can't just pretend the largest nation of western Europe no longer exists. WW2 saw all German gains since WW1 permenantly undone, large chunks of Germany ethnically cleansed of Germans, and the remainder divided into two states, and that's the most that could plausibly happen. There were no credible seperatist movements (as opposed to the idological movements of communism and capitalist democracy) that could hold up an ex-German state in a way acceptable to either Cold War bloc; but then, when your half is occupied and systematically de-Nazified, why do you even need to pretend that the inhabitants aren't German?

Territorial claims larger than OTL's were never taken seriously by the important powers, America and the USSR. The Czechs had no aspirations and enough logistical problems with ethnically cleansing their local Germans as it was; the Italians weren't going to be given anything; the Swiss and Belgians are pretty much constitutionally incapable of expansion; the Dutch plans were held bya few radicals and brushed aside by America because there were enough expellees to deal with and nobody cares what radical Dutchmen think; Denmark would have refused extra territory, most likley.

The nearest thing is France. Once again, De Gaulle's dream of annexing the Rhineland (without ethnic cleansing) wasn't going to pass muster with the Americans, but it's not inconciebvable that the French keep the Saarland. That's honestly the only extra territorial loss I think German could plausibly take.

Any scenario wherein Italy remains pro-Entente butterflies away the diplomatic events of 1938 at the latest: Anschluss depended on Italian goodwill, Munich on Italian mediation. Changing the pre-war situation so drastically changes the post-war just as drastically.

And as for Italy supporting the Spanish republic, fat chance. Britain, a stable and working democracy with a strong, respected, and "ordinary" left-wing party (which a surviving Italian liberal kingdom seems rather unlikley to be) still practically supported Franco. :(
 
The nearest thing is France. Once again, De Gaulle's dream of annexing the Rhineland (without ethnic cleansing) wasn't going to pass muster with the Americans, but it's not inconciebvable that the French keep the Saarland. That's honestly the only extra territorial loss I think German could plausibly take.

I have to agree. It may be also remotely plausible for France to shear off Rhineland (everything west of the Rhine) and to try and make it a French client state, with slowly introduced bilingual education similar to Luxemburg.
They would very quickly realize that they would not be able to follow through, even if the separation would have taken place. The result would be similar to OTL, just with slightly different occupation zones and different federal state boundaries. This in itself might lead to some butterflies - but hardly major ones.
 

Al-Buraq

Banned
Britain, a stable and working democracy with a strong, respected, and "ordinary" left-wing party (which a surviving Italian liberal kingdom seems rather unlikley to be) still practically supported Franco. :(


Here's a bit of interesting info I recently stumbled across.
ONE Summer morning in 1936 a plane took off from Croydon airport, piloted by Captain Cecil Bebb, with a friend, Major Hugh Pollard as navigator. The flight log showed it was bound for the Canary Islands. Two young platinum blondes were on board to make it look like a pleasure trip.

Special Branch at Croydon monitored all international flights. They may have known that this was no joy ride. Major Pollard was an experienced MI6 officer, Spanish-speaking and with firearms expertise. He had worked under journalistic cover in Ireland, Mexico and Morocco. His superiors in the intelligence services probably had a fair idea of his object in flying to the Canary Islands. The commander of the Spanish garrison there was one General Francisco Franco, whom the Spanish Republic had sent there some months before to keep him out of the way. Franco already had a reputation for his part in suppressing the Asturian miners, and his hostility to the Republic. Had a Spanish plane landed in the Canaries the authorities might have been alerted, but the British flight didn't arouse suspicion.

The plane flew Franco and right-wing conspirator Emilio Mola to Tetuan in Spanish Morocco. On July 18, 1936, some Spanish generals announced a coup against the elected Socialist government. Franco arrived in Morocco the following day to raise support from Spain's African army
 

Al-Buraq

Banned
350px-GermanyMorgenthau.PNG


There were plenty of plans to "Wipe Germany off of the Map" (Now, that sounds familiar) mid-post WW2.
Surely the Morganthau Plan (above) is well known on this board. Perhaps less well known is the Bakker-Schut plan which involved Holland grabbing a huge chunk of bordering German territory, including the whole of lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, encompassing Cologne, Munchen-Gladbach, Aachen and several other major towns. The plan involved the expulsion or Dutchification (?) of the population and Holland actually did take some territory that they only handed back in the 1960s.
If one looks at the Morganthau map above and superimpose the Polish award and East Germany of OTL onto it, give the Dutch their chunk and give Southern Schleswig to Denmark--it doesn't leave much of a Germany.
Problem is, how do you feed 80 million people in a de-industrialised Morganthau State? (As the Allies eventually worked out in 1949) Maybe you let them die off to a supportable 15-20 million or so.
The writer Dennis Wheatley was paid during WW2 to write essays on every conceivable subject from dropping exploding chamber pots on Germany to Grand Strategy. One of his works proposed a post-war Germany carved up into medieval style city-states and principalities mirroring the 16th Century, again with the Rhineland and Silesia hived off. He also ignored the problem of a de-industrialised central Europe. (Mind you, he also proposed that Britain swop Gibraltar for Spanish Morrocco).
As IBC implies, you can draw lines on a map, but you can't ignore the largest Nation/linguistic group in Europe. If Balts and Slovenes can maintain a National Identity for half a century or more, what smouldering, resentful bunch would emerge in Europe at the end of the 20th Century?

(Q. Why do Germans sway from side-to-side when singing in the Beer Garden?
A. It's the only way they can march sitting down)
 
*sigh*

It really seems that Germany is wiped off the map at least once per week now. What is so appealing about this that you folks keep starting threads about over and over again?! :mad::p
 
Probably the wrong war, to be honest.

A World War III showdown could well lead to no more Germany--they'd be ground zero for hundreds of nuclear hits.

It might be distantly possible for Stalin to grab all of Germany and then use some of his geographic magic on it to convince Germans that Berlin was actually a Polish city, but even Stalin would probably not do away with the concept of a Germany entirely.

As for wiping Germany off the map: The ideas I've seen either involve partitioning the place into a bunch of small German States (which would be very grumpy with the whole idea and want to reunite) or perhaps implementing the Morganthau plan and turning the whole place into a potato patch.

The long and short of it is, there is a long lineage of German Culture and quite a few Germans. There is going to be a German State, even after 1945. I think OTL did a very good job of pushing this state into becoming a stable, westernized democracy, but the step of removing it from the map seems nearly impossible, and completely undesirable.
 
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