Weimar Germany in 2012

JJohnson

Banned
For a Weimar Germany, which states would you see existing by 2012? Would all those microstates still exist? Would Prussia still be the monster-sized state it was, or could it have broken off a few provinces into independent states?

Adler,

As for Germany, France, Czech, and Poland, let's say Danzig votes to rejoin, it joins East Prussia. Lithuania sees Polish agitation about this, and Germany signs a treaty in exchange for Memelland, which also rejoins East Prussia. The Poles see this as the re-emergence of the German Empire, and start agitating. France, which already has treaties with both, sends arms to Poland, which Germany asks them 'diplomatically' not to do. They do it anyway. By 1939, Weimar Germany has also unified with Austria without much word from Great Britain, while France starts prepping its forces in Alsace-Lorraine. Germans send the Landswehr to Posen-Westpreußen as a defensive measure but never cross the border. By mid-year, the Polish believe they have the upper hand with what come out as paper-thin assurances from France of support, and attack Germany. The German forces in Weimar are nowhere near OTL's level of preparation, but are more well off than they informed the allies. Czechoslovakia draws in, while France drags its feet for a few months before declaring war on Germany. Does this sound like a plausible series of events? Would you change or amend anything? How do you see such a war turning out?
 
It would probably end up with the non-existance of Poland and Alsace-Lorraine in German hands. Also you totally ignored the Soviet Union which I believe should be important.
 

JJohnson

Banned
It would probably end up with the non-existance of Poland and Alsace-Lorraine in German hands. Also you totally ignored the Soviet Union which I believe should be important.

I'm not 100% sure what the USSR would do here. Would they back Poland to eliminate a possible German rival to continental power, only to stab them in the back and absorb them? Would they partition Poland with Germany as Paulo's ASB thread postulated? How long does this last, and where does the UK come in on this, if at all? Would Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, and Greece come into the picture? Can this expand into another World War given the right pushes?

I could possibly see a non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR, much more limited than OTL, being Germany promising not to extend past its pre-WW1 borders and USSR stays out of any Polish-German War.

And what's the best post-war map of Europe if this results in a redraw of borders?
 
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That series of events sounds pretty insane unless France is led by a generalissimo who doesn't exist in OTL TBH.
 

JJohnson

Banned
That series of events sounds pretty insane unless France is led by a generalissimo who doesn't exist in OTL TBH.

That's fine. What's a better option for Poland to come out the aggressor and for Germany to in the end, regain Posen, Silesia, West Prussia?

France had groups like Action Française, Croix de Feu, led by François de La Rocque, with a youth movement Camelots du Roy. Perhaps they win the 2-6-34 coup? What would France do in that case?
 

JJohnson

Banned
Regardless of the past, what kind of present do you see for this Germany? What kind of video game systems are more popular? Cell phones, mp3 players? As for the political spectrum, how do you see that overall? This Germany overcame the extremist parties and never succumbed, so would the country as a whole have a lingering "right-wing" and perhaps be more 'classically liberal'?

Weimar Parties:

Bavarian People's Party (BVP)
Centre Party (Zentrum)
Christian Social People's Service (CSVD)
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (KPO)
Conservative People's Party (KVP)
German Democratic Party (DDP)
German National People's Party (DNVP)
German People's Party (DVP)
German Racialist Freedom Party (DVFP)
German State Party (DStP)
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD)
Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD)

Given a start with these parties, which ones remain, and where do they stand, do you think (economic policy, energy, industry, social policy, foreign policy, etc)?
 
What's a better option for Poland to come out the aggressor

Getting Poland to be the aggressor isn’t easy. If Germany doesn’t directly attack Polish territory, Poland’s leaders will not act if they are not certain that France will offer unconditional support (and even then, there are numerous other factors). Unless France’s government goes quite mad, it won’t support a Polish invasion of Germany. It seems to me that the only option that remains is some kind of misunderstanding over Danzig.

and for Germany to in the end, regain Posen

Germany would need leaders who lost touch with reality. Germany can gain something from taking the corridor (control over Poland’s trade) and Polish Upper Silesia (direct access to the industry and resources there). Although the regions had a clear Polish majority, their populations were relatively small and could probably be integrated without much trouble. But the rest of what it lost to Poland at Versailles had a very small percentage of German inhabitants, lots of restive Poles, and was of little use from an economic point of view.

As for the USSR,

If Poland is to remain intact, leaving it (and its nearby neighbors) alone is not a bad idea (as this leaves numerous independent states instead of a Mitteleuropa dominated by an overbearing Germany). But if the Franco-Polish alliance you posit is defeated, Germany’s first demand will in all likelihood be the Polish Corridor. The trouble is, it grants Germany the option of exerting tremendous economic pressure on Poland, thus calling the latter’s independence into question. Being the paranoid fiend that he was, I can’t see Stalin trusting German promises that the rump Poland will be permitted to remain independent. I would expect him to want to annex as much as possible. Alternately, Stalin could offer to trade with Poland, thus providing it with an alternative to the corridor, thus keeping a fairly large state out of German control. But I’m not sure to what extent he would trust the Poles to remain anti-German.
 

Adler

Banned
For a Weimar Germany, which states would you see existing by 2012? Would all those microstates still exist? Would Prussia still be the monster-sized state it was, or could it have broken off a few provinces into independent states?

Adler,

As for Germany, France, Czech, and Poland, let's say Danzig votes to rejoin, it joins East Prussia. Lithuania sees Polish agitation about this, and Germany signs a treaty in exchange for Memelland, which also rejoins East Prussia. The Poles see this as the re-emergence of the German Empire, and start agitating. France, which already has treaties with both, sends arms to Poland, which Germany asks them 'diplomatically' not to do. They do it anyway. By 1939, Weimar Germany has also unified with Austria without much word from Great Britain, while France starts prepping its forces in Alsace-Lorraine. Germans send the Landswehr to Posen-Westpreußen as a defensive measure but never cross the border. By mid-year, the Polish believe they have the upper hand with what come out as paper-thin assurances from France of support, and attack Germany. The German forces in Weimar are nowhere near OTL's level of preparation, but are more well off than they informed the allies. Czechoslovakia draws in, while France drags its feet for a few months before declaring war on Germany. Does this sound like a plausible series of events? Would you change or amend anything? How do you see such a war turning out?

I am just making a similar TL inspired by this. Anyway, we need to keep this in mind:

1. We assume Germany is recognized generally as great power in 1932 again, with the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The conference dies as we know it. So Germany will rearm. Now the question is, how fast. Ironically Hitler was very "defensive" in the first years. Another leader might be more bolt. Anyway, Germany will not have the forces they had in OTL. This is true for the first rate of units. But ironically the reserves might be greater.

2. Germany will absorb Austria and will at some moment reenter the Rhineland. Hitler did this in violation of the Locarno treaty as France and the USSR signed a treaty of mutual assistance in case of war. Regardless, who started it! That was a violation of Locarno before and likely something like this happened again.

3. Czechoslovakia is still existing, including all problems. One of that is the German and Slovak "minorities". This state is an ally of France and Poland. Any German government would need to try to destabilize the state.

4. Will there be a Westwall? Indeed many people think it was a waste of resources. Well, on the second view they are wrong. If the German border is fortified, France will get a bloody nose.

5. Will Lithunia declare war on Poland and Hungary on Czechoslovakia?

6. Will there be a Neurath(or any other foreign minister)-Ribbentrop Pact? If yes, I guess only Poland is mentioned in this pact.

7. What will the British do? They are against everyone to change the balance of power significantly (unless it is in their interest).

So keeping this in mind, Germany will have about 2/3rd to 3/4th of the Wehrmacht in 1939.

So Danzig joins, after a referendum, Germany in mid 1939. At the same time Poland mobilizes and starts a new persecution wave of Germans in Poland (similar like OTL). In the meantime, Stalin makes a shift and tells the Germans he might be willing to sign a non agression treaty. In a secret addendum Poland is divided.

Germany has also made alliances with Hungary and Lithunia. Furthermore Czechoslovakia was destabilized. Yougoslavia was already out of the Little Entente, as they were given guarantees against the Italians. And Rumania was also not very keen to join a war.

So war breaks out. Germany will be defensive in the west, but offensive against an attacking Poland. Poland might think to win, especially as the French shall attack. However, the French need time to prepare. Italy is indecisive, but also needs time to prepare.

In this moment the Soviets march in, too. Czechoslovakia has internal problems as well. The Germans are uprising and the Slovaks will secede.

Within a few weeks the situation for Poland becomes dramatically. But then Britain enters the war, as they fear a collapse of the balance of power (and to eliminate a rival).

But for Poland it is too late. The shiny war can't help them. East Poland becomes Soviet and rump Poland surrenders. Czechoslovakia already did.

Britain and France plan to take out Norway to stop the flow of Swedish iron into Germany. They also succeed in taking Narvik, despite the bold defense of the Norwegians.

However, soon after the Germans attack the French via the Ardennes and cut the Allied forces. The British forces have to surrender at Dunkirk. After Winston Churchill is replaced, Britain makes peace after the fall of France.

Just some ideas.

Adler
 

JJohnson

Banned
Weimar Germany in 2012 - does Prussia still exist as the largest state, or does it break up at some point?
 
France had groups like Action Française, Croix de Feu, led by François de La Rocque, with a youth movement Camelots du Roy. Perhaps they win the 2-6-34 coup? What would France do in that case?

Depends. Since none of these groups were major advocates of war in 1938, who knows?

It's possible La Rocque would be more inclined to promote Franco-Italian rapproachment, tossing Italy to the wolves and doing more to aid the Little Entente.

But again, the Germans probably still end up firebombed by the UK if they declare that Poland must be destroyed.
 
Any part of Poland (or France), yes that will require a war (and I am still not sure about Danzig, but many say Poland won't go to war over Danzig). Eupen-Malmedy is a different story. At least I can remember reading somewhere that Belgium actualy wanted to return it to Germany, but they where stopped by France. If France takes a different course towards Germany, which seems possible without the nazi's coming topower, I think Eupen-Malmedy could become German again. Ity would also help defuse any Danzig situation. I doubt Poland will go to war over it without French support.
I never heard of us wanting to give it back to Germany I don't know where did you find that I can't find any belgian source on it. I can't see why we would give it up after having endured four years of occupation there is no way any government would stay in power if they did that. Anti-german sentiment was still strong.
 
I never heard of us wanting to give it back to Germany I don't know where did you find that I can't find any belgian source on it. I can't see why we would give it up after having endured four years of occupation there is no way any government would stay in power if they did that. Anti-german sentiment was still strong.
I must admit that when I say "I remember reading somewhere", I mean that the source might be unreliable, or else I would have mentioned the source. I can't remember where I read it, so it can be anywhere. I know I thought it rather smart from the Belgians giving up those German speaking areas that didn't realy want to be Belgian at the time*, so they could make their already quite complicated linguistic situation a bit easier.

*I can remember reading at the same source that a large part of the German speaking Belgians at the time prefered to be German. Which, of course, is curently not true anymore.

BTW After checking wikipedia I found the source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eupen-Malmedy
wikipedia said:
1925-1940 Integration into Belgium

Hence it was no actual plebiscite, and in the event, only 271 people out of 33,726 voted for the communes to remain in Germany.
In 1925, the area around Eupen, Malmedy, and Sankt Vith, together with the former Neutral Moresnet (Kelmis) was finally included in the Belgian state. However, in 1926 Belgium and the Weimar Republic conducted secret negotiations which would have led to the return of the East Cantons to Germany in return for 200 million gold marks - but the fury of the French Government on hearing about the plan led to the break-up of the talks.
After the inhabitants of the East Cantons finally received full Belgian nationality and the vote, parties who favoured a return of the East Cantons to the German Reich got between 44% and 57% of the vote in the East Cantons, achieving high scores even in predominantly French-speaking Malmedy. After the accession to power of Adolf Hitler, the socialist party of the East Cantons stopped agitating for a return to Germany. This caused a drop in the irredentist vote but also meant that the pro-Germany vote was now dominated by the openly Nazi "Heimattreue Front".
 

JJohnson

Banned
If Weimar were surviving, do you think that Prussia would still be the dominant state taking up the northern half of the country? Is there any method by which it could break up into its constituents without external allied force?
 

MSZ

Banned
If Weimar were surviving, do you think that Prussia would still be the dominant state taking up the northern half of the country? Is there any method by which it could break up into its constituents without external allied force?

A simple constitutional reform (either German or Prussian) could do that, and given that the OTL Weimar Constitution wasn't exactly a great piece of legislation, I'd say such a constitutional reform would occur. At best Prussia is terminated, replaced with it's individual provinces as Reichslanders; a more moderate aproach would be to "federalize" the Free State of Prussia, or just give the Provinces more powers/autonomy. Federal entities or even just some entity with a autonomus unit under it within federations are quite difficult to manage, as they require three levels of "supreme law" to cooperate and not infringe on each other, which is tough, but Germany has proven capable of managing that to a large extent OTL, so it is not impossible (any Bavaria - FRG conflict regarding EU law is that essentially; the FRG having its powers derived from the Landers means it cannot surrender more than that to the EU, any time that does happen, it causes clashes in Germany, Bavaria usually being most vocal). Since Prussia is so large and dominant, I'd assume Weimar and Prussian constitutional reform would occur simultaneously to eliminate conflict, the other Landers probably joining in. IMHO, it would happen once the great war generation is dead and liberalism kicks in like in 1968 in France.
 

Anderman

Donor
If Weimar were surviving, do you think that Prussia would still be the dominant state taking up the northern half of the country? Is there any method by which it could break up into its constituents without external allied force?

There was the independent movement (from Prussia) in the province of Hannover (our days Lower Saxony) and perhabs Frankfurt wants to be a free city again. The junkers could try get away from the Socialdemocrats in Brandenburg by making Pommern and East Prussia Länder etc....
So there is enough splitting potential.
 
Weimar..

An interesting idea - it probably wouldn't be called "Weimar" but something like the German Republic.

I'll be controversial and offer the thought that it probably wouldn't be much different to today's Germany albeit larger.

Conflict between states and ideologies is a catalyst for change but it's not the only catalyst. Social and technological developments create the climate for change.

In the 1920s, the "new" central and east European states born out of the wrckage of the autarchies struggled with their own legitimacy and identity. The ethnic issues which bedevilled the large political entities also affected the smaller ones. The fragility of imposed democratic structures was exposed by economic malaise and ethnic tension and the outcome was authoritarian structures which enabled these new nations to survive.

Apart from Czechosolvakia, most of central and eastern Europe had abandoned democracy long before the Wall Street Crash, the impact of which was further to undermine the ideals of democracy and replace them with the context that "strength" and "order" were the new ideals - strong leadership and an ordered population. Individuality was anathema to the new modernity in which all parts of the population were subordinate to the State and the leader (in OTL, the same philosophy permeated Naziism, Fascism and Communism).

This sense of modernity was shattered by war and by the post-war economic transformation led by America. Instead, a new modernity developed based on individuality, consumption and aspiration.

Could this have happened without a global conflict?

We can see from OTL that totalitarian states do not survive in perpetuity. Their rigidity and inflexibility creates internal tension which eventually can no longer be suppressed by the control mechanisms available.

It's possible therefore to argue a timeline in which, instead of wars between states, the mid-20th Century would follow the pattern of the 18th and 19th centuries in being a time of internal upheaval in which the prevailing orthodoxy is challenged and confronted by new ways of thinking and by new generations desiring something better or different.

In the 1950s, the centralising states of eastern and central Europe are, one after another, brought down by internal revolution culminating in the Second Russian Revolution which sees the Communists ousted and the Constituent Assembly, closed by Lenin in 1918, triumphantly re-established.

Yes, there is bloodshed but the cities are not ruined by air or ground assault - there is no Belsen or Buchenwald - and far fewer than 55 million lose their lives.

The great Imperial powers of Europe stagger on but with a growing sense that their time is passing. In Britain, Empire becomes Dominion - for France, Empire becomes Commonwealth. For the smaller European states, the end of Empire is more traumatic and bloody as the Dutch and Portugese discover.

America has had a difficult time in the middle of the 20th Century but under first Roosevelt and then a series of reforming Presidents in the 1950s and 1960s including Roosevelt's son, the country begins to assert its rightful place as a key player in a multi-polar world.

China too has found stability after its decades-long civil war has come to an end.

Europe in the 1980s is growing closer - the Economic Community, first started with a trade agreement on coal and steel between France and Germany in 1937, has grown and will become a new United European Federation on January 1st 2000. Well-meaning but not very well organised, the UEF will be one of the global players along with the USA and the alliance between Russia and Japan.

Germany in 2012 is an integral part of the UEF and Hanover, the administrative centre of the UEF, sits close to Berlin, the capital of the German Republic. Tourists from all over the world flock to see the splendour of Germany's great mediaeval cities such as Hamburg and Rostock.
 

MSZ

Banned
An interesting idea - it probably wouldn't be called "Weimar" but something like the German Republic.

Nitpick: "Weimar Republic" is just a customary name used by historians, it never was official. The official name was "German Reich" (Deutsches Reich), and was used since 1871 till 1944, "Weimar" is just used to depict the time during which the "Weimar constitution" was in force. If a constitutional change was to occur, then depending on its character it might maintain the name "Deutsches Reich" or perhaps change to "Deutscher Bund" - "Bundesrepublik" is kind of awkward as it is, the term "republik" being rather uncommon in German (as it is "too French",the German term for "republic" being "freistaat"). The common name for a "reformed Weimar Germany" might ironically be "Third Reich" - the first Reich being the German Empire, the second Reich being Weimar Germany, the third Reich being the reformed one. Kind of like the French Republics - they were are all called "French Republic", the present number "Fifth French Republic" just meaning the fifth constitution, distinguishing it from the pre-deGaulle/post-WW2 one.
 
PoD anyone?

Perhaps Germany would become more vocal in the league of nations, which would add an interesting spin on the Abyssinian crisis.
Maybe Germany would threaten to arm Halle Selassie's forces unless the League unless Britain and France agreet to a total embargo
including oil.

IOTL, Nazi Germany armed the Negus, giving him almost all of his tiny and outdated armor. So, Weimar probably would as well. No reason to get along with Fascist, especially since reunification with Austria would still sort of a goal for a democratic Germany too.
 

Anderman

Donor
Europe in the 1980s is growing closer - the Economic Community, first started with a trade agreement on coal and steel between France and Germany in 1937, has grown and will become a new United European Federation on January 1st 2000. Well-meaning but not very well organised, the UEF will be one of the global players along with the USA and the alliance between Russia and Japan.

Germany in 2012 is an integral part of the UEF and Hanover, the administrative centre of the UEF, sits close to Berlin, the capital of the German Republic..

Some kind of free trade agreement or something like the common market is highly possible but i do not see a UEF or EU as in OTL. Weimar Germany with Austria would be larger than France and this would lead to German dominated UEF which of course the French don´t want.
 
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