Plausibility/Implausibility of a "France-Germany Swap"?

The France/Germany swap-analogy is maybe the worst cliche of AH.com, and has been the subject of several (from what I can see) fairly awful TLs. If you want more comments, I urge you to come up with something a bit more creative!

Stumbled upon this while browsing the Map Thread, and it got me thinking. As I've had a little timeline that I've had bouncing around in my head that has, well, just that, I've been curious to see how exactly this scenario (IE, revanchist France invading CP-victory Germany) is implausible.

I understand that France, compared to Germany, is lacking in men and material; what would be necessary for France to become more on-par with Germany?
 

iddt3

Donor
Stumbled upon this while browsing the Map Thread, and it got me thinking. As I've had a little timeline that I've had bouncing around in my head that has, well, just that, I've been curious to see how exactly this scenario (IE, revanchist France invading CP-victory Germany) is implausible.

I understand that France, compared to Germany, is lacking in men and material; what would be necessary for France to become more on-par with Germany?
Having France have Belgium, or at least the Francophone bits, would help a lot. Less of a bloodletting in WWI would also help.
 

Incognito

Banned
I understand that France, compared to Germany, is lacking in men and material; what would be necessary for France to become more on-par with Germany?
I don't know about statistics for the period, but would France be "lacking in men" if colonial populations (whites and natives) are taken into consideration?
 
The fundamental problem is that one country has twice the population and industrial strength of the other, and it's not France.
 
Maybe if 1812 borders France somehow survived, or it inherits Spain. But that requires an earlier PoD.

A more prudent option would be to have a revanchist Britain and Italy (maybe even Spain) joining forces with France from the start, while A-H is too busy with some other things to join Germany.
 
Plus doesn't German simply have more coal and other industry critical resources then France? Or at least did back when it had 1914 borders?
 
I understand that France, compared to Germany, is lacking in men and material; what would be necessary for France to become more on-par with Germany?

Easy. Attach a substantial part of OTL Germany to Austria instead. For instance, assume that Frederick the Great is killed at Leuthen. Then Austria regains Silesia, and a few years later exchanges Belgium for Bavaria. Then when the great HRE shakeout comes, core Austria's border will be well to the west, and it will be practical for the Austrian Empire to keep "Hither Austria"*, and absorb the surrounding micro-states.

If everything else merges with Prussia to form "Germany", the resulting state will be much smaller than OTL's, comparable to France.

(Note however that the Bavarian territories acquired by Austria would be much smaller than OTL's Kingdom of Bavaria. The Kingdom was greatly expanded by the favor of Napoleon; then by a well-timed defection was able to keep most of the gains.)

* "Hither Austria" was the name given to several bits of land on the upper Danube between Bavaria and France, remnants of the original Hapsburg realm in that area and Switzerland. See this map. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/central_europe_1786.jpgIn 1803-1810 this area were consolidated into Baden and Wurttemberg. See this map and this map.
 
France can remilitarise I think, easily enough. The difficulty lies in invading Germany. Obviously having Belgium would help, but another idea I had always thought of was Germany collapsing into revolution on a Russia-level scale. The ensuing chaos would provide an ideal opportunity for France to invade, maybe supporting separatists in the south German states or whathaveyou.
 
You probably need a POD somewhere in the 18th century for that. Weaken Germany and strengthen France. I suggest this: the Belgian revolt ends diffently and France gain (roughly) Wallonia, the Netherlands Flanders and Prussia gains Luxemburg. This gives France already a pretty big industrial advantage. A bit later the Franco-Prussian war happens. France is better prepared and manages to convince Austria to join them. Endresult: France wins. Austria annexes Prussian Selesia, France gains the Saar region and Luxemburg and possibly even more of the Rhineland (but not all of it). Germany still forms (possibly because the Germans now fear both France and Austria and decide to band together). We now have a weakened Germany and a strengthened France. Would this level the playingfield?
 
The trouble, I think, is that any steps taken to weaken Germany to a level where France would feel justified in invading would likely prevent said Germany from emerging victorious from WW1.

I like the French allies suggestion from above. Perhaps if France has Germany surrounded by allies (Russia, etc.) then they will feel more confident.

Alternatively, you could just have a situation where the French government starts a war for reasons other than cold calculation of their chances. Perhaps a revanchist communist France invades, as their ideology leads them to believe (suppressed/persecuted) German communists will rally to their cause and their victory is destined in the historical dialectic?

Lastly, you could always try for a Militarist Japan analogy--a situation where the leadership knows victory is unlikely, but thinks that a small chance of victory now is preferable to a guaranteed loss later, and so they strike. There are few right-wing groups in late 1930's France that are crazy enough, I think, to vastly over-estimate their chances in battle, based on beliefs in French elan, and other romantic-nationalist ideas.
 
I don't know about statistics for the period, but would France be "lacking in men" if colonial populations (whites and natives) are taken into consideration?

I've always considered colonial populations to be "part of" the mother nation when it comes to questions of population.

So, I take it a hyper-militarized France isn't capable of a scale of Europe-wide conquest that Nazi Germany was? Could an earlier discovery of oil in Algeria change anything?
 
The problem, I think, is really demographic and thus not easy to get around in the long run: Europe has long had a lot more German-speakers than Francophones. That is true even if Walloons and Franco-Swiss are included. A secondary concern is also rather intractable: German speaking lands have better mineral resources for industrialization, too.

For a long time that did not matter given the deep divisions (religious, dynastic) and fragmentation of the Germans. But once nationalism kicks into high gear in the 19th century, the impulse toward linguistic/cultural consolidation becomes harder and harder to resist.

Pompejus and Rich probably have the best ideas: Shift some German territories to Austria, so that the German-speaking world is more evenly divided. There's still a long term risk of union, but a scenario where the Habsburgs have Silesia and Bavaria (and perhaps even Baden and Wurtemburg, to underline the religious division) is one where tensions between Berlin and Vienna will not go away easily, and Austria is less dependent strategically on a Prussian-led German polity.
 
The problem, I think, is really demographic and thus not easy to get around in the long run: Europe has long had a lot more German-speakers than Francophones. That is true even if Walloons and Franco-Swiss are included. A secondary concern is also rather intractable: German speaking lands have better mineral resources for industrialization, too.

For a long time that did not matter given the deep divisions (religious, dynastic) and fragmentation of the Germans. But once nationalism kicks into high gear in the 19th century, the impulse toward linguistic/cultural consolidation becomes harder and harder to resist.

Pompejus and Rich probably have the best ideas: Shift some German territories to Austria, so that the German-speaking world is more evenly divided. There's still a long term risk of union, but a scenario where the Habsburgs have Silesia and Bavaria (and perhaps even Baden and Wurtemburg, to underline the religious division) is one where tensions between Berlin and Vienna will not go away easily, and Austria is less dependent strategically on a Prussian-led German polity.

The demographic problem was actually largely a recent development. As late as 1870, Germans, even including Austria, as a total just barely reached the population of France. In fact, during the Early Modern Era, French formed a fifth of the population of West-Central Europe. However, while France's birth rate had dropped to basically zero by the mid 19th century, Germany's birth rate continued to soar, such that within forty years, the gap had widened to 2:1.
 

Incognito

Banned
For reference, here is the OTL French Colonial Empire holdings:

520px-French_Empire_1919-1939.png
 
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