Prologue: The Winds of Change
Greetings.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for the sheer time it took to finally continue working on this. I had severe writer's block after my last post coupled with life getting in the way made me effectively abandon it for the time being, But I'm back, and hopefully it doesn't take nearly a year to post new chapters, although still expect some waiting between them.
But now that I have returned...
That has been the question asked since the Punic Wars of old, when the Romans had a bit too much fun in pushing down their enemies and only resulted in a future resurgence of hatred. So infamous, it coined the term “Carthaginian peace” to refer to such ‘deals’ intended to cripple the losing side involved rather than reconcile; even in fiction, this trope is common enough to become a cliché. Yet in spite of this, humanity still refuses to learn of their past mistakes, thinking that doing the same thing over and over will magically make it work, to the point where it’d be easier to list peace deals that weren’t this.
But the one we are focusing on for now is the Treaty of Versailles, signed to end Germany’s involvement in the Great War. Without going into too much detail, a combination of alliances, political tensions, and the assassination of the Austrian heir led to a war so destructive, its death toll of up to 40,000,000 makes the Thirty Years’ War count of 12,000,000 look like a complete joke by comparison. Now while the war was started by Austria-Hungary, the true pariah that came out of it was the German Empire, now the German Republic after the abdication of the Emperor (Kaiser) in the last days of the war; outside of Russia (which collapsed into civil war between ‘Whites’ and communists/’Reds’), they had mobilised the most out of anyone with 12,000,000 men.
Germany also had the self-created misfortune of being hated by just about everyone who wasn’t their allies in the war, or the Netherlands. France in particular had an irrational level of hatred for them… after they took a chunk of land from them in 1871 (because human beings will always find the pettiest reasons to hate on other human beings); oh, and because the Germans wanted Morocco to remain an independent state rather than a French-Spanish protectorate. Combined with the horrific actions of the Deutsches Heer such as the Raping of Belgium, only the Ottomans with their genocide of minorities managed to be equal with them in terms of the sheer hatred they received.
Much of the treaty was easy to decide; of course Germany was required to greatly disarm itself, of course Germany was not keeping its overseas holdings, and of course they would be paying dearly… 132 billion gold marks, to be exact. But, outside of Alsace-Lorraine, the mainland territory was the subject of debate. In particular, France was heavily pushing for the Rhineland to be split apart from the nation; the Rhineland for those unaware is a region in the west that makes up a significant chunk of the German industry, and included among that was the wartime industry. France made the rather damning argument that allowing Germany to keep it could potentially lead to remilitarization in the future. The rest of the powers eventually agreed, but then came the next part.
How the Rhineland should be governed became a great debate within the treaty. You see, France’s idea was to just annex wholesale and govern it as their own department (or, more accurately, how they governed Algeria as a ‘department’), however this was quickly shot down for multiple reasons. The first problem was that the Rhine was home to about 10 million people, equivalent to a tenth of the German population, while France had about 41 million, so simply annexing the territory would grow them by nearly 20% and force a redistribution of supplies from the French citizens to the new German populace, as well as a ton of sudden new voters to complicate the already divided government.
The second problem was that, should Germany ever become aggressive again and attain an actually strong military, defending the Rhine would be difficult. While it does run across the Rhine river, most of the actual Rhineland is either flat plains (north), or small mountains that rarely exceed one kilometre in height. And there were fears that France would use the newly acquired wartime industry to completely destroy any sense of power balance… so, basically, they didn’t want France to dominate the continent a la Napoleon.
The next idea was the Interallied Commissionary Council, which would see all major Entente powers occupy ‘regions’ separately, eternally, however this was also shot down for a few reasons. Firstly, occupation is expensive, which means less money, which means economic downturn. Secondly, Italy, Japan, and the United States weren’t interested in occupying German lands at all, especially the former two who had only briefly confronted them and were more interested about their direct gains, which means that only Britain and France would be the ones occupying the region when they needed to focus on other issues.
As a result, after weeks of debate, they came up with this:
“Article 42:
The area West of the Rhine and 50 kilometres to the East of the Rhine, including the Ruhr will be split off from Germany and become an independent democratic republic called the Rhenish Republic, under French suzerainty with occupation of all major cities. Germany is forbidden to maintain or construct any fortifications in the area specified.
Article 43:
In the area defined above the maintenance and the assembly of armed forces, either permanently or temporarily, and military manoeuvres of any kind, as well as the upkeep of all permanent works for mobilisation, are in the same way forbidden.
Article 44:
Under no circumstances are Germany nor the Rhenish Republic to engage in any actions that compromise the sovereignty of either, else it will be seen as a hostile act against the Powers signatory of the present Treaty and as calculated to disturb the peace of the world.”
…in simpler terms, the Rhineland would be split off from Germany under French influence, and that it would never be allowed to reunite with them under any circumstances. This approach too had its critics, mainly from the U.S. who felt any division of Germany would lead to bad things down the line, but the rest either didn’t object or felt it was the best option. So, on 28 June 1919, at the Palace of Versailles in France, Hermann Mueller and Johannes Bell formally ratified the Treaty of Versailles to a crowd of foreign Allied diplomats. People at the scene of the signing noted that both appeared to be emotionless and stoic.
Now you may have noticed I haven’t talked about the other members of the Central Powers, and that’s because, to put it bluntly, they really don’t do much stuff internationally from then on until the 40s; Austria, Hungary, and the Ottomans arguably got it much worse in terms of territory lost, but after that, they kinda just sat still for the next few decades. The exception is the Ottomans, which had a revolution and successfully got a better peace treaty, while at the same time also being allowed to pretend as if their genocides of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians just never happened… and people say that Turkey is a great place to live.
Note: The main artwork above was created towards the beginning of writing. As a result, it contains elements no longer present, however I feel it would be a waste to simply have it go unused. As a result, please ignore Slovakia and Japan on the right of the image.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for the sheer time it took to finally continue working on this. I had severe writer's block after my last post coupled with life getting in the way made me effectively abandon it for the time being, But I'm back, and hopefully it doesn't take nearly a year to post new chapters, although still expect some waiting between them.
But now that I have returned...
Alexander Field presents,
with help from Slender and the ATTP
What if Germany lost the Rhineland in 1919?
Prologue: The Winds of Change
“How harsh is too harsh?”with help from Slender and the ATTP
What if Germany lost the Rhineland in 1919?
Prologue: The Winds of Change
That has been the question asked since the Punic Wars of old, when the Romans had a bit too much fun in pushing down their enemies and only resulted in a future resurgence of hatred. So infamous, it coined the term “Carthaginian peace” to refer to such ‘deals’ intended to cripple the losing side involved rather than reconcile; even in fiction, this trope is common enough to become a cliché. Yet in spite of this, humanity still refuses to learn of their past mistakes, thinking that doing the same thing over and over will magically make it work, to the point where it’d be easier to list peace deals that weren’t this.
But the one we are focusing on for now is the Treaty of Versailles, signed to end Germany’s involvement in the Great War. Without going into too much detail, a combination of alliances, political tensions, and the assassination of the Austrian heir led to a war so destructive, its death toll of up to 40,000,000 makes the Thirty Years’ War count of 12,000,000 look like a complete joke by comparison. Now while the war was started by Austria-Hungary, the true pariah that came out of it was the German Empire, now the German Republic after the abdication of the Emperor (Kaiser) in the last days of the war; outside of Russia (which collapsed into civil war between ‘Whites’ and communists/’Reds’), they had mobilised the most out of anyone with 12,000,000 men.
Germany also had the self-created misfortune of being hated by just about everyone who wasn’t their allies in the war, or the Netherlands. France in particular had an irrational level of hatred for them… after they took a chunk of land from them in 1871 (because human beings will always find the pettiest reasons to hate on other human beings); oh, and because the Germans wanted Morocco to remain an independent state rather than a French-Spanish protectorate. Combined with the horrific actions of the Deutsches Heer such as the Raping of Belgium, only the Ottomans with their genocide of minorities managed to be equal with them in terms of the sheer hatred they received.
Much of the treaty was easy to decide; of course Germany was required to greatly disarm itself, of course Germany was not keeping its overseas holdings, and of course they would be paying dearly… 132 billion gold marks, to be exact. But, outside of Alsace-Lorraine, the mainland territory was the subject of debate. In particular, France was heavily pushing for the Rhineland to be split apart from the nation; the Rhineland for those unaware is a region in the west that makes up a significant chunk of the German industry, and included among that was the wartime industry. France made the rather damning argument that allowing Germany to keep it could potentially lead to remilitarization in the future. The rest of the powers eventually agreed, but then came the next part.
How the Rhineland should be governed became a great debate within the treaty. You see, France’s idea was to just annex wholesale and govern it as their own department (or, more accurately, how they governed Algeria as a ‘department’), however this was quickly shot down for multiple reasons. The first problem was that the Rhine was home to about 10 million people, equivalent to a tenth of the German population, while France had about 41 million, so simply annexing the territory would grow them by nearly 20% and force a redistribution of supplies from the French citizens to the new German populace, as well as a ton of sudden new voters to complicate the already divided government.
The second problem was that, should Germany ever become aggressive again and attain an actually strong military, defending the Rhine would be difficult. While it does run across the Rhine river, most of the actual Rhineland is either flat plains (north), or small mountains that rarely exceed one kilometre in height. And there were fears that France would use the newly acquired wartime industry to completely destroy any sense of power balance… so, basically, they didn’t want France to dominate the continent a la Napoleon.
The next idea was the Interallied Commissionary Council, which would see all major Entente powers occupy ‘regions’ separately, eternally, however this was also shot down for a few reasons. Firstly, occupation is expensive, which means less money, which means economic downturn. Secondly, Italy, Japan, and the United States weren’t interested in occupying German lands at all, especially the former two who had only briefly confronted them and were more interested about their direct gains, which means that only Britain and France would be the ones occupying the region when they needed to focus on other issues.
As a result, after weeks of debate, they came up with this:
“Article 42:
The area West of the Rhine and 50 kilometres to the East of the Rhine, including the Ruhr will be split off from Germany and become an independent democratic republic called the Rhenish Republic, under French suzerainty with occupation of all major cities. Germany is forbidden to maintain or construct any fortifications in the area specified.
Article 43:
In the area defined above the maintenance and the assembly of armed forces, either permanently or temporarily, and military manoeuvres of any kind, as well as the upkeep of all permanent works for mobilisation, are in the same way forbidden.
Article 44:
Under no circumstances are Germany nor the Rhenish Republic to engage in any actions that compromise the sovereignty of either, else it will be seen as a hostile act against the Powers signatory of the present Treaty and as calculated to disturb the peace of the world.”
…in simpler terms, the Rhineland would be split off from Germany under French influence, and that it would never be allowed to reunite with them under any circumstances. This approach too had its critics, mainly from the U.S. who felt any division of Germany would lead to bad things down the line, but the rest either didn’t object or felt it was the best option. So, on 28 June 1919, at the Palace of Versailles in France, Hermann Mueller and Johannes Bell formally ratified the Treaty of Versailles to a crowd of foreign Allied diplomats. People at the scene of the signing noted that both appeared to be emotionless and stoic.
Now you may have noticed I haven’t talked about the other members of the Central Powers, and that’s because, to put it bluntly, they really don’t do much stuff internationally from then on until the 40s; Austria, Hungary, and the Ottomans arguably got it much worse in terms of territory lost, but after that, they kinda just sat still for the next few decades. The exception is the Ottomans, which had a revolution and successfully got a better peace treaty, while at the same time also being allowed to pretend as if their genocides of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians just never happened… and people say that Turkey is a great place to live.
Note: The main artwork above was created towards the beginning of writing. As a result, it contains elements no longer present, however I feel it would be a waste to simply have it go unused. As a result, please ignore Slovakia and Japan on the right of the image.
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