Irioth
Banned
Something like that. Or perhaps a revolt against a "pro-collaborationist" French government leads the Germans, with their usual ham-handedness, to intervene to "restore order."
Indeed. But that might as well make them fatigued of dealing with France, or make them ever more vary of letting France escape their grip.
I dunno - there would be resistence to actual assimilation. The German protestant majority, including the old Prussian elite, aren't going to be happy with the idea of adding all those Catholic voters,
Bah. I've always been very very skeptical about the real force of these religious-based arguments in the largely secularized German ruling elites of the 1800s, much less the 1900s. There were very strong voices in 1848 and in 1866 for the Grossdeutchsland approach, and they weren't heeded since Prussia was not so strong then. Here Germany is the master of Europe, France and Russia are vanquished enemies, they would jump at the opportunity of completing national unification with very economically-strong areas.
and nobody is going to be enthusiastic about adding more politically active Slavs to the country.
German police never had much trouble keeping French Alsatians and Posen Polish into line. Bohemia and Moravia are too rich to pass out the opportunity, it's nothing that proper Germanization policies can't solve in a few generations, especially since no enemy is left standing to help these troublesome subjects break ranks.
And also, they've got to consider that Austria is dependent on them: a more compact Hungarian regime is less so, is _not_ German, and is probably less reliable as an ally. (Would the Hungarians really _want_ Serbia?)
True on Serbia. Then let's say Serbia gets its "nice" puppet dictatorship, with the looming threat of a combined Italo-German-Hungarian "police action" as soon as they even dream of pulling a 1903 and couping an irredentist Panslav government into power, now that the Czar is not here to shield them.
As for Hungary, they would be economically tied hand and feet to German capital, strong cultural links, grateful for having been granted the Kingdom of St. Stephen and continued assistance for keeping Romanian and Croat subjects into line. Really, by partitioning A-H, Germany has the opportunity to turn a fragile empire client into a one that has much less grief with minorities,a and win Italy forever to its side.
Hard to say. Perhaps they work to stablize their gains first, and then there's a bigger war with the Soviets in the late 20's? (Might give the French some breathing space).
As I see it, not in the late 20s, really. If the Germans don't involve themselves in the Russian Civil War, and the Reds win, there is a very slight chance of a Trotzkite "let's export revolution by force" gambit (much like the OTL Soviet-Polish war), but it's very flimsly, I don't see the Bolsheviks taking such a risk on Superpower Germany, unless they really delude themselves with their "world revolution" hype, an USSR still fresh from the Civil War and with the Brest-Litovsk losses would have its butt on a plate on the Red Square in six months.
It's much more likely in the 30s, a reamatch in parallel or cooperation with Fascist France (a reverse Molotov-Ribbentrop), when they have had time to rebuild the country and the Red Army.
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