Proposals and War Aims That Didn't Happen Map Thread
- Thread starter Beedok
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Someone in that video's comments mentioned that it looked more like a health trust's flag.
Attempted to make a Qbam of the Kimberley Plan. Not sure if I made it too big, but I did my best
Interesting how so much of Lusatia was still majority Sorb even in the 40's. I assume the proportion of Sorbs fell so much after the war is that expelled Germans from the east were being settled there
The first one is what the Soviets would probably have gone with, hell it even borders the outskirts of Berlin.
On the contrary, Stalin was quite hostile towards the idea of Lusatian independence or autonomy, even ordering the main Lusatian national leader who advocated for indepedence or autonomy to be imprisoned, which he was for around 20 years, I think
It would be very interesting. I actually don't quite know why he disliked the idea so much to begin with, possibly because he wanted to make sure the East German population supported the communist regime. But an autonomous area was formed in Romania under the communist regime for the Szeklers, for instance, so it certainly wouldn't be impossible.
I actually had the Magyar autonomous region in mind as a model.
Looking at the ethnic map in that series of maps of Lusatia, is it possible that the idea of Sorbian autonomy might be more palatable to the East German and Soviet governments if two separate Sorbian autonomies were made, in Upper and Lower Lusatia, respectively, with a corridor of German land between them? That way only the municipalities with the largest percentages of Sorbs are included in these autonomous areas
Yeah, the area around Cottbus had been Prussian for a century longer than the rest of Upper and Lower Lusatia, so that would make sense...
I drew two Lusatian autonomous regions, Upper Lusatia in the south with its capital in Bautzen, and Lower Lusatia in the north with its capital in Cottbus. Each of these would be separate autonomous regions, with Upper and Lower Sorbian being the official languages, respectively, alongside German. Sorbian cultural institutions and schools would be funded and endorsed by the East German Government in each, as well.
During the Pacific War, in 1880, Peru and Bolivia considered forming a federation between them, but this never happened due to the war, as the governing Juntas in both countries suggested a plebiscite, which ended up not being held due to the war. I've made a map about said proposal and all it's Federal States:
Hmmm....not bad, but in keeping with socialist tradition at the time, whilst the corridor between them makes sense, having them so small so as to include almost all the territory with 50% of the population being Sorbian or more is just no on! The bits to the east bordering Poland (and Czechoslovakia) that have more Germans would likely be included too, inasmuch to ensure I think that you have local Germans within the autonomous areas and thus being part of the politics of the autonomous areas (makes it much easier to justify local Germans being in the local party and governing apparatus of the autonomous areas, even if local Sorbs are the main faces).
So I was thinking something like this when superimposed on the GDR's district system (using the GDR's district map from wikipedia and the Lusatia maps featured as well as using your boundary system but somewhat modified):
Since these Lusatian autonomous regions might well have been formed before the reorganization of the GDR's administrative divisions (away from Lander and towards districts), it occurred to me that the Lander border between the old GDR Lander of Saxony and Brandenburg would likely have been used as the northern boundary of Upper Lusatia. If the Lusatian autonomous regions were carried over into the district system of the 1950s then their boundaries would likely remain and the districts would be organized as in OTL but with these Lusatian borders taken into account. However Cottbus District would not be as in OTL since Cottbus would now be the capital of a Lower Lusatia Autonomous Region. Here what was OTL's Cottbus District becomes Finsterwalde District (after the second largest town in the OTL district in the 1950s).
Here is what they would look like superimposed on the original 1940s-1950s Lander of the GDR and the reconstituted Lander of the 1990s (again using a wikipedia map as the base):
and on the modern day map of Germany with its Lander and districts, where if they survived they might have been offered the prospect of becoming Lander themselves:
Here's an M-Bam for those Sorbian Autonomous Zones that developed to become German States I made
Well, then, if you're going to include nearly completely ethnically German border areas with Czechoslovakia and Poland, why make a corridor to separate Spremberg from Lusatia, or even separate the two Lusatias at all?