WI: A Napoleonic Greater German Empire

All valid points. However, couldn't this devastation of longer, back and forth Napoleonic Wars weaken the standing powers of the day while allowing the German empire movement to act as a rebelling, revolutionary force, attaining populist support?

The German unifiers need not push into France. They could unite only the Confederation of the Rhine, Prussia, and Austria.

The problem is making the war go long enough for something like that to actually work. Either Britain or France would give up eventually, most likely 1816 when the "Year without summer" event caused food production to fall drastically. Britain and France won't suicide just to fight each other.

If by some miracle the war does go on until 1820 or something, whatever lands that the Germans hope to take will simply be too depleted to support the new nation. More of an infrastructure thing than simply not having enough farms, but Germany will likely need to centralise pretty fast to avoid becoming the HRE 2.0, and repairing a devastated landscape while trying to reroute everything will stretch its limited resources a bit too far. Germany can be initially formed under such a scenario, but it likely won't hold together long enough to matter before collapsing.

Hmm, what if an ATL Bernadotte developed Napoleonic ego and ambitions of his own, conquering Denmark-Norway during the middle of these extended Napoleonic Wars, and recruiting Swedish and Danish manpower from the mostly intact countries to lead a Gustavus Adolphus-like campaign into the Confederation of the Rhine, but with intentions of conquest? Given the longer French campaigning into the Russian and Austrian Empires and liberal-nationalist ideas spreading, then Balts, Poles, and Czechs could be recruited en masse into the army as well, providing a large enough force for the unification.

I admit this is highly implausible. :p
Might work, but you're right about it being implausible.

- BNC
 
And now the same map some years later, including:

- Some expansion into Jutland after a war with Denmark in the 1850s.
- Some expansion into Bosnia after the fall of the Ottomans in the Balkans in the 1870s.

NapGer_1879.png
 
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