I Blame Communism
Banned
No internal adjustment of Germany is of any interest to the Entente, I shouldn't think. I believe a unitary republic was proposed at Weimar, and the Entente lifted no eyebrows.
Plausibility check: A "good" treaty of Versailles
- Thread starter Typo
- Start date
You may be right, but in a lenient treaty in which Germany doesn't have to give up a lot a territories (definitely Alsace-Lorraine) and keeps a monarchy with a better constitution, it could be an idea to internally adjust Germany. In which case the post 1815 Prussian territorial gains within Germany, would be the most obvious.
On the other hand such a treaty wouldn't have been acceptable for all the victors, especially Poland; but it certainly wouldn't be the first time that senior partners within an alliance do not grant all the wishes of their junior partners. If for some reason this deal would be acceptable for the UK and France, then Poland and some others like Czechoslovakia could end up being disappointed.
Eurofed
Banned
IBC, the point here is that great powers like Germany and to a lesser degree Italy (while Rome certainly didn't have by itself the resources to be the main revisionist power, if managed any competently it would be a huge asset to any other stronger power to play that role, like Germany or Russia, and we cannot expect that in every TL Italy shall get a Mussolini at the helm to screw everything military) need to be given a deal they would perceive as just and fairly satisfactory given the circumstances in order to ensure lasting and stable peace in Europe, while doing the same to megalomanic "little nations" Slav nationalism would have done nothing good for that goal, and was often directly counterproductive.
And just to make the point more fair to Slavs at large, I eagerly argue that if Russia can be somehow kept a sane White/Pink/Green great power, extending that kind of fairness deal to it and avoiding radical dismemberment of the Tsarist Empire too would have have hugely helped. In this regard I certainly see your ideas about snuffing out the interwar Poland geopolitical sore in the eye by keeping the 1914 settlement as very sensible. Sorry but the very best that a sustainable independent Poland could be was the 1807 border with Germany, the 1945 one with Russia, more or less, and a sensible Swiss-like friendly neutral attitude towards its great power neighbors. Trying to resurrect the PLC and keep bossing around its big neighbors like 1919 was forever was a geopolitical catastrophe waiting to happen and feeding such rampant megalomania one of the worst Entente blunders at the peace table, and interwar Poland totally brought its Fourth Partition on themselves, even if no one deserves to be the victim of Nazi/Stalinist atrocities.
Regarding Yugoslavia, yeah Croat, Serbian, and Yugoslav nationalism would have been unhappy with giving Dalmatia to Italy, but so what ? They certainly wouldn't be able to destabilize the peace of Europe on their own unless Russia gets revanchist, and let's be frank, the very worst that peacetime Italian nationalism did to its minorities was to try some forceful cultural assimilation that really did not go anywhere (Italian war crimes in occupied Yugoslavia were plentiful, but another matter entirely), while do we have to mention what the Serbs, Croats, & co. eagerly did to each other when they had a chance ? One may argue that satisfying Italian claims at the expense of Yugoslav ones and preventing the success of super-Serbia is not just much better for the stability of Europe, but actually safer and more beneficial for the populations involved in the long run.
As it concerns ensuring geopolitical stability for the A-H region, yes, its evolution towards a sensible federal solution had its merits. However once the Habsburg dismally failed at their historical task of unifying Germany and Italy, the optimal geopolitical solution for the region and Europe at large was the birth of Greater Germany, Greater Italy, and a federal Greater Hungary, optimally in a confederation with Romania. This would have provided two fully satisfied, stable great powers at the center of Europe, and a regional power that could effectively do everything a federal A-H would have done, only better.
As it concerns Poland, they did not really need Upper Silesia or the Corridor to be a viable independent nation. They did have a plentiful economic base in the developed and potential resources and industries of Greater Poland and Little Poland, and interwar Czechoslovakia proves that a sea access was not anywhere necessary for a Central European independent nation to be an economic powerhouse. So they did need to do a few years of investment to build some extra industries in the unquestioned Polish territories of Krakow, Posen, and Lodz, instead of go and steal German ones with armed force in a Silesia that voted to stay in Germany ? How unfair, terrible, and unviable. Certainly building some extra factories and railways in Krakow, Posen, and Lodz would have been a far more sensible use of money than foolhardy military adventures to conquer Ukraine.
As it concerns sea access, if one looks to 1918 ethnic maps of West Prussia and makes a comparison with the outcomes of the plebiscites in East Prussia and Silesia, it is fairly sure to assume that with a whole-region plebiscite, West Prussia as a whole would have voted to stay in Germany, or with a district-by-district one, Germany would have at least kept a land corridor between Pomerania and East Prussia in southern West Prussia around Torun, where German population was most plentiful. Danzig was of course beyond question if left free to decide. An extraterritorial connection to an hypothetical Polish exclave in northern West Prussia could easily be arranged at the peace table and would not have bothered Germany at all, and in due time Gdynia could be built just as easily.
Economically, Poland only needed a sea access of its own only if it decided that its mission in life was to bully and antagonize all its neighbors with its "back to 1772" rampant nationalism. A friendly neighbor policy with Germany and Lithuania would have surely secured a favorable custom access to their ports, everything Polish economy truly needed. Those nations started to run economic wars against Poland only because Warsaw invaded them first and refused sensible territorial compromises afterwards. If need be, the Entente could have given a military guarantee on Polish custom rights on German Danzig and Memel just as effective as the one on forcibly separated Danzig, or on the Polish extraterritorial connection and exclave in northern West Prussia.
And just to make the point more fair to Slavs at large, I eagerly argue that if Russia can be somehow kept a sane White/Pink/Green great power, extending that kind of fairness deal to it and avoiding radical dismemberment of the Tsarist Empire too would have have hugely helped. In this regard I certainly see your ideas about snuffing out the interwar Poland geopolitical sore in the eye by keeping the 1914 settlement as very sensible. Sorry but the very best that a sustainable independent Poland could be was the 1807 border with Germany, the 1945 one with Russia, more or less, and a sensible Swiss-like friendly neutral attitude towards its great power neighbors. Trying to resurrect the PLC and keep bossing around its big neighbors like 1919 was forever was a geopolitical catastrophe waiting to happen and feeding such rampant megalomania one of the worst Entente blunders at the peace table, and interwar Poland totally brought its Fourth Partition on themselves, even if no one deserves to be the victim of Nazi/Stalinist atrocities.
Regarding Yugoslavia, yeah Croat, Serbian, and Yugoslav nationalism would have been unhappy with giving Dalmatia to Italy, but so what ? They certainly wouldn't be able to destabilize the peace of Europe on their own unless Russia gets revanchist, and let's be frank, the very worst that peacetime Italian nationalism did to its minorities was to try some forceful cultural assimilation that really did not go anywhere (Italian war crimes in occupied Yugoslavia were plentiful, but another matter entirely), while do we have to mention what the Serbs, Croats, & co. eagerly did to each other when they had a chance ? One may argue that satisfying Italian claims at the expense of Yugoslav ones and preventing the success of super-Serbia is not just much better for the stability of Europe, but actually safer and more beneficial for the populations involved in the long run.
As it concerns ensuring geopolitical stability for the A-H region, yes, its evolution towards a sensible federal solution had its merits. However once the Habsburg dismally failed at their historical task of unifying Germany and Italy, the optimal geopolitical solution for the region and Europe at large was the birth of Greater Germany, Greater Italy, and a federal Greater Hungary, optimally in a confederation with Romania. This would have provided two fully satisfied, stable great powers at the center of Europe, and a regional power that could effectively do everything a federal A-H would have done, only better.
As it concerns Poland, they did not really need Upper Silesia or the Corridor to be a viable independent nation. They did have a plentiful economic base in the developed and potential resources and industries of Greater Poland and Little Poland, and interwar Czechoslovakia proves that a sea access was not anywhere necessary for a Central European independent nation to be an economic powerhouse. So they did need to do a few years of investment to build some extra industries in the unquestioned Polish territories of Krakow, Posen, and Lodz, instead of go and steal German ones with armed force in a Silesia that voted to stay in Germany ? How unfair, terrible, and unviable. Certainly building some extra factories and railways in Krakow, Posen, and Lodz would have been a far more sensible use of money than foolhardy military adventures to conquer Ukraine.
As it concerns sea access, if one looks to 1918 ethnic maps of West Prussia and makes a comparison with the outcomes of the plebiscites in East Prussia and Silesia, it is fairly sure to assume that with a whole-region plebiscite, West Prussia as a whole would have voted to stay in Germany, or with a district-by-district one, Germany would have at least kept a land corridor between Pomerania and East Prussia in southern West Prussia around Torun, where German population was most plentiful. Danzig was of course beyond question if left free to decide. An extraterritorial connection to an hypothetical Polish exclave in northern West Prussia could easily be arranged at the peace table and would not have bothered Germany at all, and in due time Gdynia could be built just as easily.
Economically, Poland only needed a sea access of its own only if it decided that its mission in life was to bully and antagonize all its neighbors with its "back to 1772" rampant nationalism. A friendly neighbor policy with Germany and Lithuania would have surely secured a favorable custom access to their ports, everything Polish economy truly needed. Those nations started to run economic wars against Poland only because Warsaw invaded them first and refused sensible territorial compromises afterwards. If need be, the Entente could have given a military guarantee on Polish custom rights on German Danzig and Memel just as effective as the one on forcibly separated Danzig, or on the Polish extraterritorial connection and exclave in northern West Prussia.
Last edited:
I Blame Communism
Banned
I can understand the argument, I'm just arguing the other side (someone has to!). I must question whether just because they were contradictory to the interests of large revisionists (Germany, Italy, Russia), little-nation aspirations were necessarily "megalomaniac". The Croats, for instance, aspired only to not lose more of Dalmatia than could be avoided.
Personally, I prefer to think that interwar Poland pursued the things that where necessary to it as a state (a sound industrial base, access to the sea, and the ancient Polish centres of Lwow and Wilno), but unfortunately these demands involved hard-to-reconcile conflicts of interest with Germany and Russia. The idea is that with Poland as part of Russia, nojne of these issues comes up.
I don't regard the arrangement of 1921 as completely unsustainable, though. Germany would get Danzig back in the end, but even Jozef Beck pretty much acknowledged this, whereas even the Nazis pretty much aknowledged that that was Germany's primary demand. And once the USSR turned isolationist and increasingly Russian nationalist in the early 1930s, it became markedly leery of Ukrainian and Belarussian nationalist ideas even employed on its own behalf. The Poles would probably have pretty much Polonised their Belarussians given a bit longer (which means the Belarussian nation all but ceases to exist
), and there were Russian commentators who pointed out (correctly, in my view) that Galicia was more trouble than it was ever going to be worth already in 1914, so I think Soviets and Germans could learn to live with the Versailles borders.Lithuanians couldn't, but they're Lithuanian.
(Although I do actually think that Poland should have pursued less in the interbellum.)
What of Germany? I seem to recall Germany and Yugoslavia getting on pretty well in the intebellum, and Italy also possesing a potential object of German irredentism (and if Italy still ends up bankrolling an Austrofascist regime, that's a much target for Berlin). And of course Germany is always going to be revisionist (Anschluss was practically inevitable), so you don't want to create a small state with a major bone to pick with Italy as a potential ally for Germany when it comes knocking. Small states often make dependencies of large ones, as we saw in 1914.
Point, but then, pretty much the only thing that interwar Serbs and Croats ever agreed on was suspicion of Italy.
Although honestly, the less that interwar Yugoslavia accumulates, the better. That place was bad news for everyone in it. But I don't view Italian Dalmatia as a stabilising factor in European, even if (while obviously inferior to Hapbsurg Dalmatia
) it might be better from a humanitarian viewpoint. I still dispute calling Yugoslavia "super-Serbia". I view it as putting some money in one pocket of Serbia, and a large explosive in the other.
Serbian nationalists and radicals wanted to enforce super-Serbia, and it blew up in their faces.
I avoid value judgements about "historical tasks" and "optimal situations": I simply remark that as of 1914, Hapsburg rule in the Balkans was better than all the available alternatives.
Czechoslovakia had indirect sea access along the whole Hapsburg system (which obviously went from the industrial Czech lands to Trieste); Poland had only a few nerve-endings of this. Much of its industrial potential was actually tied into the Russian system from which it of course it was severed by the rise of the USSR. Given that, it essentially had Germany, Germany, and Germany to trade through; and Germany didn't wage trade war on CZS.
The portions of Upper Silesia Poland received weren't just industrial: they were Polish. Poland receiving was only fair, given that Germany received the analogous German bits of Posen and Westpreussen.
As I said, Upper Silesia as a whole voted German, but that ignored local majorities in the Anglo-Italian interests. Given that French interests involved ignoring the (German) majority full stop, I think the compromise reached OTL was a pretty good one. Obviously no-one can draw a fair line when there's a low-key war on, but the violence began locally and both Germany and Poland were guilty of feeding in paramilitary bands rather than asserting the LoN (quite understandably, in both cases).
This sitatuation has always struck me as requiring Germany and Poland to trust one-another implicitly, which is more than can be said for either of them. The OTL settlement may not have been so palatable to the Germans, but it was certainly more sustainable. Germany, as soon as it has its confidence back and France has retreated behind the Maginot line, can essentially do what the Poles were justifiably afraid of and cut it off, using economic blackmail to reduce it to a state of semi-dependency.
In any case, I'm not so certain about the ethnic distribution as you are. I consider the 1905 census reliable, but both sides politicised their maps (we have clear proof of that from the Silesian crisis) and I wouldn't give unqualified support to either a German map or thisee here. The essential problem is, as so often, the urban-rural split. My reading of the 1905 census gives Poland a corridor but Thorn is a German exclave. German-speaking urban exclaves (and Polish-speaking rural exclaves in Upper Silesia where the towns predominated) were unavoidable, and if Poland had had better minority rights they might not have been a problem: there were German towns across half Europe.
I don't blame Poland for wanting sea access given its history with Germany, but your missing that (by the 1905 German reckoning) the corridor was ethnically just. The Germans recorded Polish majorities in districts from Briesen to Putzig.
Thing is, Putzig was a desolate beach. The sea-access thing was Danzig, and while that arrangement wasn't sustainable when Poland built its own port (and Beck himself recognised that), it was necessary. Stresemann was no rapid imperialist, but he still waged the trade war.
As for Lithuania, it was never going to be reconciled to the present.
When? The only "Polish invasions" of Germany I can see were the mutual paramilitary excalations in Silesia and the Greater Poland Uprising, which was, well, an uprising. As for Lithuania, no borders existed, and the Polish troops were often local militia bands. Give or take a few villages, Poland enforced the ethnic border with Lithuania, which is a pretty sensible compromise.
But the Entente doesn't want to give military guarantees (Britain wouldn't even guarantee France).
Eurofed
Banned
@ Aracnid, your ideas are a good basis but need some refinement, especially as concerns the Polish border, you can't have a stable peace settlement otherwise.
1) Austria is allowed a custom union with Germany and if both sides comply with the treaties, in 15 years allow a plebiscite to decide between an independent Austria or union with Germany. If union occurs, a demilitarized zone on the border with Italy is established like in Rhineland.
2) The Sudetenland is given a Saar-like status, in 15 years allow a plebiscite to decide between union with Germany or with Czechoslovakia. If it goes to Germany the area gets demilitarized.
3) Run plebiscites for Danzig, Memel, West Prussia, Upper Silesia, and southern East Prussia. Decide beforehand if they are going to be for the whole areas or district-by-district, and stick to it. Use military as necessary to curb attempts of Slav and German militias to mess with the process. If, in all likelihood, Germany wins all the whole-region plebiscites, provide Poland and Lithuania with custom rights on Danzig and Memel ports and a military guarantee for them. If likewise Germany gains the industrial cities in southeastern Upper Silesia and a land corridor to East Prussia in southern West Prussia, provide Poland an extraterritorial connection to its exclave in northern West Prussia and Germany a narrow land corridor (or extraterritorial connection, whatever seems best) to its exclave in Upper Silesia, with a military guarantee likewise.
4) Alsace-Lorraine, Northern Schleswig, and Posen can be returned to France, Denmark, and Poland without plebiscites if the above measures are taken. Everybody can guess the results and German nationalism didn't really care about them if they can get satisfaction elsewhere.
5) Give Dalmatia to Italy, but ensure Fiume as a viable port for Croatia/Yugoslavia.
6) Let Hungary keep its majority-plurality areas in Slovakia (the First Vienna Award), and Vojvodina (Backa, more or less). About Transylvania, let Hungary keep its big exclave in eastern Northern Transylvania and a land corridor (or extraterritorial connection, whatever seems best) to it across southern Northern Transylvania, as well as western Crisana and Banat, treating German majority-plurality areas as if they were Magyars (they would prefer it that way, in all likelihood).
7) Let Bulgaria keep southeastern Vardar Macedonia.
8) Grant France a guaranteed share of all German coal production but let Germany keep Saar. Enforce the demilitarized zone in Rhineland (and Tyrol & Sudetenland) until increased Franco-German mutual trust can agree to remove them by bilateral agreement if ever, but don't let a single French soldier enter Rhineland ever.
9) Let Germany pay reparations in kind as much as possible, especially as it concerns rebuilding war-damaged areas in France and Belgium, and drop the money bill accordingly.
10) Reword the war guilt clausle so that the four Entente powers were innocent of it (a laughable lie, but politically necessary) and Germany accepts its share of guilt. It's not like A-H and Tsarist Russia are still around to be offended when they are implictly blamed their fair share of the guilt, after all. Reword the clausle so that "militarist autocracy" was the main culprit for the war.
11) As it concerns military limitations, let Germany have military parity with Poland. France shall come squarely on top of that, and Germany shall feel much more secure. In 10-15 years, as mutual trust builds up, Germany can negotiate military parity with France, which would provide a stable strategic balance in Europe (anything more would only become necessary if Soviet Russia turns aggressive).
1) Austria is allowed a custom union with Germany and if both sides comply with the treaties, in 15 years allow a plebiscite to decide between an independent Austria or union with Germany. If union occurs, a demilitarized zone on the border with Italy is established like in Rhineland.
2) The Sudetenland is given a Saar-like status, in 15 years allow a plebiscite to decide between union with Germany or with Czechoslovakia. If it goes to Germany the area gets demilitarized.
3) Run plebiscites for Danzig, Memel, West Prussia, Upper Silesia, and southern East Prussia. Decide beforehand if they are going to be for the whole areas or district-by-district, and stick to it. Use military as necessary to curb attempts of Slav and German militias to mess with the process. If, in all likelihood, Germany wins all the whole-region plebiscites, provide Poland and Lithuania with custom rights on Danzig and Memel ports and a military guarantee for them. If likewise Germany gains the industrial cities in southeastern Upper Silesia and a land corridor to East Prussia in southern West Prussia, provide Poland an extraterritorial connection to its exclave in northern West Prussia and Germany a narrow land corridor (or extraterritorial connection, whatever seems best) to its exclave in Upper Silesia, with a military guarantee likewise.
4) Alsace-Lorraine, Northern Schleswig, and Posen can be returned to France, Denmark, and Poland without plebiscites if the above measures are taken. Everybody can guess the results and German nationalism didn't really care about them if they can get satisfaction elsewhere.
5) Give Dalmatia to Italy, but ensure Fiume as a viable port for Croatia/Yugoslavia.
6) Let Hungary keep its majority-plurality areas in Slovakia (the First Vienna Award), and Vojvodina (Backa, more or less). About Transylvania, let Hungary keep its big exclave in eastern Northern Transylvania and a land corridor (or extraterritorial connection, whatever seems best) to it across southern Northern Transylvania, as well as western Crisana and Banat, treating German majority-plurality areas as if they were Magyars (they would prefer it that way, in all likelihood).
7) Let Bulgaria keep southeastern Vardar Macedonia.
8) Grant France a guaranteed share of all German coal production but let Germany keep Saar. Enforce the demilitarized zone in Rhineland (and Tyrol & Sudetenland) until increased Franco-German mutual trust can agree to remove them by bilateral agreement if ever, but don't let a single French soldier enter Rhineland ever.
9) Let Germany pay reparations in kind as much as possible, especially as it concerns rebuilding war-damaged areas in France and Belgium, and drop the money bill accordingly.
10) Reword the war guilt clausle so that the four Entente powers were innocent of it (a laughable lie, but politically necessary) and Germany accepts its share of guilt. It's not like A-H and Tsarist Russia are still around to be offended when they are implictly blamed their fair share of the guilt, after all. Reword the clausle so that "militarist autocracy" was the main culprit for the war.
11) As it concerns military limitations, let Germany have military parity with Poland. France shall come squarely on top of that, and Germany shall feel much more secure. In 10-15 years, as mutual trust builds up, Germany can negotiate military parity with France, which would provide a stable strategic balance in Europe (anything more would only become necessary if Soviet Russia turns aggressive).
Last edited:
Eurofed
Banned
My comments about and loathing of "megalomanic" little-nation nationalism are squarely focused on interwar Poles, Serbs from say 1903 to 2000, and to a lesser degree interwar Czechs, with a special mention to Greeks from say 1897 to 1974. Bulgarians made a catastrophic evaluation error on the eve of the Second Balkans War, but showed a far less consistent pattern otherwise, although they were as guilty of fostering nationalist terrorism as the Serbs at times. Croats, Slovenes, and Slovaks indeed were largely immune from such (self-)destructive madness.
I'll eagerly go and retcon a previous rushed statement of mine to state that in my best honest opinion, the "natural" sustainable eastern border of Poland was Curzon Line B, not the 1945 line, and Wilno was indeed quite a difficult mess, the natural solution was a *real* Polish-Lithuanian confederation for it.
Otherwise, I get a bitter laugh any time I hear the claim that interwar Poland needed to stole Upper Silesian German-majority industrial centers that voted agaist union with Poland to have a "sound industrial base". I wonder when ASBs swooped in and made all the plentiful industries and mineral resources in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland vanish with an handwave. I also think that if stealing another nation's economic base against the express wishes of the locals to spare oneself honest hard work to develop one's own resources was a valid argument, then Hitler was justified in invading Czechia in 1939 and Saddam Hussein in invading Kuwait in 1990.
As it concerns the sea access, again it could be provided perfectly well by giving Poland customs rights and at most extraterritorial port facilities and connection in Danzig, which the LoN could enforce just as well from the start against demilitarized Germany as the OTL settlement. The so-called "Free State" was just nationalist Polish dickery to get as close as possible to their bloody 1772 map porn, since France was not able to allow them an outright annexation.
About Beck and the Nazis, there is a sideline point to make. I won't ever deny the strength of Nazi genocidal intentions about occupied Poland, but there is sufficient historical evidence that at some critical point in the mind of the Nazi leadership there was a tipping point between it and willingness to bargain Danzig & the Corridor and Polish military assistance against the Soviets in exchange for scrapping Lebensraum for Poland and raising the nation to the status of yet another Axis vassal in good faith. Hitler was perfectly capable of granting "honorary Aryan" status to selected Slav peoples when it served his greater strategic interests, ask Slovaks and Croats, and didn't turn against a recognized vassal unless it betrayed him. One could argue that the lesser evil option for WWII Poland was to go the way of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Finland. Depending on wholly different butterflies, the outcome for Polish Jews might or might not have been different (it essentially depends on whether Plan Madagascar ever became a truly viable option; Hitler typically left the Jew minorities of his vassals alone until they betrayed him and were occupied by the Wehrmacht, but such Jew communities were magnitudes smaller and Poles much more antisemitic) as well as WWII ending in Soviet invasion and occupation of Axis Poland (which could however easily butterfly a wholly different outcome of the war). But certainly Slav Poles would have been spared an immense degree of suffering this way.
Beck & co. made such a good job of "acknowledging" the need of a compromise with Germany in one's heart while publicly turning all German requests of it, before and after 1933, that eventually the Nazi got in charge and committed to total conquest and Lebensraum for good. Such a good job of ensuring your country's best interests.
It did not take a genius to tell that the only viable geopolitical hope of Poland was to pick client status with either one of the great powers at its side (true even today if you file off "Germany" and write "EU") and 1772-redux super Poland that can bully off its big boy neighbors as a French proxy stopped being feasible with Napoleon. That much to say that interwar Poland screwed up pretty much everything in its foreign policy and sadly its citizens got to pay a terrible bill. As for the German demands, pretty much nothing less than Danzig AND a land corridor to East Prussia would have satisfied them in the end, but even early Nazis would have accepted that and getting assistance against the Soviets as a good deal.
The point could have some merit if taken in isolation, but let's look at the whole alternative settlement I've proposed. If Germany is allowed a written Saar-like guarantee that it may get the Anschluss in the long term if it behaves, and Austria a customs union with Germany in the meanwhile, it is going to have a very strong incentive to stick to the status quo and Austria shall be much more stable as well. South Tyrol always was just above Alsace-Lorraine in the pipedream bottom level of the German irredentist totem pole, all the way to the Nazis, only the lunatic fringes wanted to enforce them whatever the cost. A junior great power like Italy was always going to be much, much more useful to Germany as an ally than Yugoslavia, and if Rome isn't alienated about its vital claims, it shall always be the natural ally of Germany, their economic structures and strategic interests were (and are) otherwise complementary.
Although honestly, the less that interwar Yugoslavia accumulates, the better. That place was bad news for everyone in it. But I don't view Italian Dalmatia as a stabilising factor in European, even if (while obviously inferior to Hapbsurg Dalmatia
An Italy with no more serious irredentist claims is a strong stabilising factor in European politics, not the least because fascism has a strong chance of being butterflied away for various reasons.
As for the Hapsburg, I stand by my judgement that they were a positive force for Europe as long as they kept the Ottoman breakout at bay or rolled back and had a realistic chance of unifying Germany and Italy, a window that closed in 1848 (to think that with different choices in that year, they could have built a stable and sane imperial confederation of Germany, Italy, and Hungary
). Afterwards, they became the worst stumbling block to the selfsame unification process, which was highly beneficial to Europe if allowed to run in full, and there is nothing good they did with their domains that a federal Hungary-Croatia-Romania could not have just as well or better.Well, Serbian nationalists and their Versailles French patrons meant Yugoslavia as super-Serbia with a facepaint or didn't care. If Slovenes and Croats naively expected it could be anything different (really, picking a nation as overlord that had started the worst conflict the world had seen by being an unrepentant nationalist terrorist haven, what else they could expect to get ?
), too bad. I keep being wholly convinced that from 1848 onwards, the set of Greater Germany, Greater Italy, and a federal Hungary-Croatia optimally enlarged to Romania by far beats anything Hapsburg rule could be and do for the Balkans and Europe at large.
And one wonders why Germany treated CZS and Poland differently. Obviously, it has nothing to do with the fact that CZS, for all its manifold serious Sudetenland blunders, never was halfway the nationalist prick on Germany and Germans that Poland was to begin with, of course.
The industrial cities of Upper Silesia were German and voted for Germany.
A good and fair compromise, if the powers really wanted to arbitrate the plebiscite's returns on a district by district basis, was to hand over the Polish-opting rural areas to Poland, the Germany-opting industrial urban cluster to Germany, and then if necessary give the latter either an as reasonably narrow as possible land corridor, giving Poland slight compensations elsewhere, or at least an extraterritorial connection.
As for France, the whole issue of making a better Versailles deal politically realistic is to get a PoD that screws the French diplomatic standing at the peace table and puts the Anglo-Italians in charge, with the Americans supporting the latter or not caring.
Metaphorically speaking, the French diplomatic delegation needed to be caned ruthlessly until they admitted that getting A-L, value in kind for their war-torn areas, and military parity with Germany was only fair and good, but their chances of being the European hegemon had died with Napoleon and been buried with his nephew, Rhineland and Austria didn't exist as far as they knew, and their lamebrained attempts to resurrect their defunct continental hegemony by fostering any Slav nationalist east of Stettin and Trieste with a pipedream map and an attitude was only going to make Europe an horrible, unworkable mess.
Pardon me if I ROTFL. It was only "sustainable" as long as all the great powers were frozen in their 1919 standing for eternity. Germany was never, ever going to accept it in good faith short of having Polish infantry reaching the Rhine, Britain was wholly skeptical about the deal from the start and never going to fight for it for anything short of full-bore Nazi dickery, Italy likewise and ready to be bought anytime by Germany with support on the stuff it really cared about and economic goodness, Russia had its own lenghty grievance list against Poland if Germany was willing to broker a deal, France after a few years recovered from its Versailles nationalist binge of thinking that the other Entente armies were the Grande Armee reborn in disguise and sensibly retreated behind the Maginot line, and America rightfully soon realized that Wilson was a GWB-like mess that should have never been allowed to get anywhere near a primary, but sadly too late in the last two cases.
One seriously keeps wondering what there was so terrible in store for the Polish people with interwar Poland becoming an economic satellite of a democratic or even a sane authoritarian Germany (given that interwar Poland was no democracy to speak of) and hence getting abundant German investment for its economy and free access to German markets. It's not like going this way meant to welcome Communist crappy command economy system and its artificial poverty enforced by brutal secret police.
Whatever way one looks at the 1905 census returns, there is the fact that whenever a plebiscite was run in contested areas, all the people then registered as Germans voted to stay in Germany, and a substantial chunk of those registered as Poles voted likewise as well. Therefore, it is only only safe and sensible to assume that the same pattern would repeat for the West Prussia plebiscite, allowing Germany to claim a majority where its ethnic population clustered as a sizable presence. In all likelihood, this would have returned a German majority in a land corridor from Pomerania to East Prussia running through Thorn, which alongside with Danzig, would have made Germany satisfied for good.
German areas in Transylvania were hundreds of KMs from German borders, German areas in West Prussia and Upper Silesia touched them. The comparison is ridiculous and I daresay offensive for the reader's intelligence.
Last edited:
King Thomas
Banned
How about only a partial instead of a total blame for the war? No army allowed, but armed police are allowed as long as they have no bigger weapons then machine guns and a few armoured cars. No occupaion as long as they keep to the Treaty terms.
Maur
Banned
Wow, i guess you really don't know what are you speaking about?
Or are you just biased? Brought it on itself? Jesus.
And anyway, it's not like TOV had that much to do with WW II. The Depression, OTOH...
And also, i don't see how feeding nationalists desires is going to stop nationalists influence in politics. Au contraire.
Last edited:
Eurofed
Banned
Wow, i guess you really don't know what are you speaking about?
Or are you just biased? Brought it on itself? Jesus.
I perfectly know what I'm speaking about, thank you. According to pre-WWI census data, the Polish and German populations in West Prussia AKA the Corridor clustered in such a way that there was a close to unbroken string of German majority-plurality areas in a relatively narrow but nonetheless sizable belt in the southernmost area of the region, running from Pomerania to East Prussia across Thorn.
If one takes the historical hard fact that whenever a plebiscite about a contested border area between Germany and Poland was allowed, Germany won it, even rather better than one could expect looking at such census data, which means that all Germans and a sizable amount of Poles and the "other" minorities voted for Germany, one can only conclude that all those areas I mentioned and several nearby ones would have gone to Germany in a plebiscite, creating a continous land corridor to East Prussia that would have fulfilled German basic claims and technically speaking made the rest of Polish West Prussia an exclave. A giant one indeed, including the northern 70-80% of the region, but an exclave nonetheless.
@mailinutile2
"In Vienna it DID happen"
This is a comparison of apples with pears. The underlying principles of the Congress of Vienna could be described as "restauration and legitimacy". This means that France shouldn't be punished beyond the 1789 borders as this would mean a punishment of the reinstated Bourbon dynasty. The underlying principle of Versailles was to punish Germany.
French interests in Vienna were negotiated by Talleyrand at his best. The Germans in Versailles....we read about that already.
This thread requests a post-armistice POD. You need a lot of people to get epiphanies or visits from time-travelling-alternate-history-buffs to deal with
Germany in a much more lenient way.
"The Entente Cordiale was a factor of stability in Europe"
There was no such thing as an Entente Cordiale in the 19th century. Especially during Napoleon IIIs reign, Britain was highly critical of France and built
a whole new string of coastal defenses.
And when did Britain/France limit the losses of Austria-Hungary in Italy??? France actively supported Sardinia to make the Habsburg supremacy collapse, in
1859 as well as in 1866!
@Mikestone8
"Thankfully, the French people got the message, and since 1871 have stuck to mostly very dull and unadventurous Republics - far better for public health."
I am opening Pandora's box here - but the French would have needed a few more decades of peace after 1871 to stop preparing for a war to regain Elsaß-Lorraine. The message came home to the French in 1915-1918 but had no immediate effect on French policies.
@Janprimus e.a.
Prussia is not the main problem here. I agree with IBC on that.
a)Even in 1815 borders, it would be a behemoth. For a sensible federal reform you would have to change the whole outlook into 20-30 roughly equal Länder.
There have only been little changes during the Weimar Republic (unifying Thuringia and I think Waldeck turned into a part of Prussia, IIRC).
b)During the Weimar Republic the "Freistaat Preußen" was a stabilizing element with a stable pro-democratic majority.
@Maur
"And anyway, it's not like TOV had that much to do with WW II. The Depression, OTOH..."
You know the idea that issues can build up on each other.
"In Vienna it DID happen"
This is a comparison of apples with pears. The underlying principles of the Congress of Vienna could be described as "restauration and legitimacy". This means that France shouldn't be punished beyond the 1789 borders as this would mean a punishment of the reinstated Bourbon dynasty. The underlying principle of Versailles was to punish Germany.
French interests in Vienna were negotiated by Talleyrand at his best. The Germans in Versailles....we read about that already.
This thread requests a post-armistice POD. You need a lot of people to get epiphanies or visits from time-travelling-alternate-history-buffs to deal with
Germany in a much more lenient way.
"The Entente Cordiale was a factor of stability in Europe"
There was no such thing as an Entente Cordiale in the 19th century. Especially during Napoleon IIIs reign, Britain was highly critical of France and built
a whole new string of coastal defenses.
And when did Britain/France limit the losses of Austria-Hungary in Italy??? France actively supported Sardinia to make the Habsburg supremacy collapse, in
1859 as well as in 1866!
@Mikestone8
"Thankfully, the French people got the message, and since 1871 have stuck to mostly very dull and unadventurous Republics - far better for public health."
I am opening Pandora's box here - but the French would have needed a few more decades of peace after 1871 to stop preparing for a war to regain Elsaß-Lorraine. The message came home to the French in 1915-1918 but had no immediate effect on French policies.
@Janprimus e.a.
Prussia is not the main problem here. I agree with IBC on that.
a)Even in 1815 borders, it would be a behemoth. For a sensible federal reform you would have to change the whole outlook into 20-30 roughly equal Länder.
There have only been little changes during the Weimar Republic (unifying Thuringia and I think Waldeck turned into a part of Prussia, IIRC).
b)During the Weimar Republic the "Freistaat Preußen" was a stabilizing element with a stable pro-democratic majority.
@Maur
"And anyway, it's not like TOV had that much to do with WW II. The Depression, OTOH..."
You know the idea that issues can build up on each other.
According to franco-sardinian negotiations the 1859 war should have ended with the handling of both Lombardy and Venice to Italy.
However, N3 negotiated a peace regarding the loss of Lombardy only.
The sardinians were furious about it, and refused to have any contact with france till after 1871.
A volunteer corp lead by garibaldi tried to help the french in 1870, but they were mostly revolutionaries: from 1860 until the bosnian annection (i think 1902 or so) italy was actively anti-french and pro-german.
Regarding the Anglo-french relation, you're right whe you say that the signing of the Entente Cordiale agreement is later, but Napoleon 3 opened a politics of appeasment toward england
Last edited:
Agree entirely. The only alliance France could have made to promote stabilty would have been with Austria, and this the Third Nappy set his face against. Every move he ever made was calculated to destabilise Europe, and in the end he succeeded to his own undoing.
They certainly daydreamed a lot about regaining the lost provinces, but on what occasion did they ever make a move to start anything? None that I can think of. Had another of those wretched Bonapartes got in, the Great War (or at least a Second Franco-Prussion War) would have come a whole lot sooner.
Metternich wasn't exactly loveable, but he got one thing absolutely right, in holding that the Bonaparte family must be excluded from all thrones.
Typo
Banned
I think everyone is forgetting that the war-guilt clause was used as the basis for the reparation payments.
I can't see a guaranteed Anchluss, but I can see a no Anchluss for 25 years agreement, with the implication that the matter being settled at the end of the period.
This doesn't really solve the "German problem" but it's probably inevitable unless the allies are willing to enforce seperation
Giving Dalamtia to Italy makes sense because it's really a choice between pleasing either the Italian or the Serbs, and choosing Italy on the long run. Plus the Serbs have significant gains from the war already.
I can't see a guaranteed Anchluss, but I can see a no Anchluss for 25 years agreement, with the implication that the matter being settled at the end of the period.
This doesn't really solve the "German problem" but it's probably inevitable unless the allies are willing to enforce seperation
Giving Dalamtia to Italy makes sense because it's really a choice between pleasing either the Italian or the Serbs, and choosing Italy on the long run. Plus the Serbs have significant gains from the war already.
Last edited:
Such a settlement is not easy to reach with a post Armistice PoD. It may not even be possible. No politician on the victorious side would think like that, and any who did would be run out of office.
Your settlement is far too informed by hindsight.
While I have a soft spot for Hungary, I can't see them improving on Trianon if Bela Kun comes to power.
Versailles itself is about punishing Germany. The majority of those at the conference wanted to punish Germany. Nearly all of the public in the nations represented there demanded such punishment. Changing this mindset is very difficult.
Funny thing! Why did he do so, the unreliable Frenchman?
a) Because the French and Italians were unable to set a foot into Venetia. Under heavy casualties, they had conquered Lombardy and won the battles of Solferino. However, getting into Venetia, which was guarded by a belt of fortresses and shielded by the river Adige and the Lake Garda, would have been a protracted thing still.
b)At that point of time, Prussia had started to mobilize not only its own forces, but the joint forces of the "Deutsche Bund". Thus, Napoleon had to fear a two-front war against all German states.
It was pure self-interest to negotiate the peace as it happened. N3 had to get out of the war. It was not his desire to be moderate...
In 1866, Napoleon III was diplomatically able to hand Venetia over to the "Sardinians" (who failed miserably to conquer it, despite Austria fighting on two fronts and having united most of Italy at that point).
You mean they broke diplomatic relations? I doubt that. After all, Napoleon III brokered the return of Venetia in 1866. There were also continous negotiations about the French stance on Rome throughout the 1860s.
France and the new Italian state had more pressing issues: first of all the Papal authority in Rome, supported by French troops until 1870. Then the quesiton of control over Tunis. But also the continuous problem of riots in French against Italian workers.
1908.
You know that your wording ("appeasement") is absolutely anachronistic. Please explain how Napoleon III "appeased" the United Kingdom.
England and France had normal relations during the post-1815 period.
Interestingly, your "Entente Cordiale" only worked when both partners had common interests (Crimea, China) but failed when only one of them was in trouble (Italy, Franco-Prussian War). This alliance was not an active one and there is a string of problems concerning their relation up until the Russo-Japanese War.
Probably the two most important factors for peace in Europe after WWII were
- "evil Soviets"
- BOTH France and Germany were defeated in WWII. And quite decisively in both cases. That France ended as a victor shouldn't be overemphasized, as it should have been clear to all that France was unable to defend itself against the Germans.
If one could create the same setting in WWI, this should provide a lasting peace. But I don't see how this could be done. In particular, the Dolchstosslegende actually told that Germany was undefeated militarily, only the civilians gave up. Germany had learned nothing...
- "evil Soviets"
- BOTH France and Germany were defeated in WWII. And quite decisively in both cases. That France ended as a victor shouldn't be overemphasized, as it should have been clear to all that France was unable to defend itself against the Germans.
If one could create the same setting in WWI, this should provide a lasting peace. But I don't see how this could be done. In particular, the Dolchstosslegende actually told that Germany was undefeated militarily, only the civilians gave up. Germany had learned nothing...
Markus
Banned
There is just one LITTLE problem with equating the ToV with Brest-Litowsk:
Russia was a multi-national empire and the various national minorities were forced into that empire at gunpoint and wanted out of the it. A small polish minority aside, Germany was not multi-national and even the Bavarians very much wanted to remain a part of Germany.
And a few smaller ones:
Brest did require the Russians do demobilize her Army. I did not find any limitations like the ban of planes, tanks, 15cm guns, sub-machine guns and all the other absurd crap like 10,000 tons battleships the Entente came up with.
Well, and as pointed out upthread, the Entente powers were mostly broke and exhausted, except the United States, which was aloof and barely interested. The situation in WWII was different because the US was more involved and the Allies had the example of WWI to guide them.
Even so, Versailles could have worked with, e.g., just a little more effective French leadership.
Very astute analysis. This would have also partially short-circuited the attempt in post-war Entente intellectual circles to paint the Entente as the bully bad guys.
Hey, there was a Bonaparte on the french throne and he went on well with great britain!
You have to be a hell of a shrewd diplomat to do so
He GOT Nice and Savoy, but Pidemont did not get lombardo-veneto.
According to the treaty he should have given them back.
His "mediation" was an Austrian calculated insult to Pidemont (not that Pidemont didn't deserve it, since apart from Bezzecca they did not accomplish anything).
N3 was only too eager to settle the venetian question, since it gave it legimacy over Nice and Savoy, and Pidemont was forced by germany (who did want to settle the thing in a hurry in order to concentrate on other objectives)
There were french soldiers guarding the pope state against a possible sardininan invasion until 1870
Last edited: