WI: The Allies Blamed Bavaria for WW2 Instead of Prussia

So, IOTL, after the end of WW2, the Allies decided that "Prussian Militarism" was responsible for WW2, and officially dissolved Prussia as a geopolitical entity, complete with mass deportations of Germans from the new Polish lands (which is nothing on the Holocaust, but was still a pretty bad thing to do).

However, this doesn't really make much sense. Prussia, while still bitter and militaristic, was defeated, and was home to old German nobility who weren't very keen on listening to some upstart Austrian commoner whose buddies wear weird armbands (and hate Jews for no reason and communists for several reasons of varying legitimacy, but that didn't really matter as much to them, since a lot of them did as well).

On the other hand, the Bavarians, similarly bitter after losing the war (albeit less militaristic), were much more welcoming of weird mustache man and company. He was from Austria, whose culture, religion, and dialect was more similar to theirs than that of the Northern Germany (I'm learning about Germany in school. I know about this stuff). His lack of noble title did not mean nearly as much, and a lot of his ultraconservative ideals appealed to the Bavarians. Bavaria really was the Nazis' heart of power and support in Germany, as unpleasant as it would be for modern Bavarians to admit.

So, what if, in this timeline, the Allies blamed Bavaria instead of Prussia. They could say "Bavarian Reactionaries" were responsible for WW2 as easily as they could blame "Prussian Militarism". What if they did? What would they do to Bavaria? How would the cold war be effected? What would modern Germany be like?
 
I think that "Prussian militarism" was a good excuse in ways that "Bavarian reaction" couldn't have been. First of all, Poland is probably getting the formerly Prussian lands, or Josef Stalin has made himself look like Hitler's accomplice in splitting up Poland on the world stage, and the Warsaw Pact can't have that much of a propaganda coup against them. Given that Adenauer was to be the defining figure of the Federal Republic, and he disliked Prussia so fervently he even wanted to split from it back in the Weimar Days, well, you are going to have to butterfly either him away or his influence, and that runs deep.

It was also convenient to blame it on a part of Germany that could be dissolved or one where they could say that "You know, those damn Ruskies own the ancestral Prussian lands now, so our Germany's ok" and that sort of thing. Plus that many bavarians were still influential in post-war Germany and held positions of power in ways that former prussians did not; really, I'd say that it would be very hard to have Bavaria be blamed. I also suspect that it would turbocharge the independence feeling there, feeling themselves as separate and apart from the rest of Germany: it probably wouldn't do. Germany any good, to blame Bavaria instead of Prussia.
 
I think that "Prussian militarism" was a good excuse in ways that "Bavarian reaction" couldn't have been. First of all, Poland is probably getting the formerly Prussian lands, or Josef Stalin has made himself look like Hitler's accomplice in splitting up Poland on the world stage, and the Warsaw Pact can't have that much of a propaganda coup against them. Given that Adenauer was to be the defining figure of the Federal Republic, and he disliked Prussia so fervently he even wanted to split from it back in the Weimar Days, well, you are going to have to butterfly either him away or his influence, and that runs deep.

It was also convenient to blame it on a part of Germany that could be dissolved or one where they could say that "You know, those damn Ruskies own the ancestral Prussian lands now, so our Germany's ok" and that sort of thing. Plus that many bavarians were still influential in post-war Germany and held positions of power in ways that former Prussians did not; really, I'd say that it would be very hard to have Bavaria be blamed. I also suspect that it would turbocharge the independence feeling there, feeling themselves as separate and apart from the rest of Germany: it probably wouldn't do Germany any good, to blame Bavaria instead of Prussia.

I don't really think the allies really wanted to do Germany any good, but otherwise your points are pretty sound. Bavaria's also in a geographical position where it'd be really goddamn hard to dissolve, with only Austria (which is German enough that they probably wouldn't want to give it much) and Czechoslovakia (which is too tiny to repopulate the ex-Bavarian land after the mass deportations) bordering it.

Perhaps in this timeline, the Germans are even more utterly defeated, and the allies are really, really pissed AF, but not enough to utterly dissolve Germany. Since this is the situation they find themselves in, all these Bavarians in power simply have a massive red target painted on their backs, and it actually encourages them to blame Bavaria. Bavaria is dissolved and the majority of it is given to Czechoslovakia, with the Austrians being given a small portions and West Germany being allowed to keep another small portion (along with a much larger portion of the now homeless Bavarian populace). The new Czechoslovakian land is repopulated perhaps by Poles leaving TTL's Prussia or maybe Sorbs? Both are really unlikely, but even if they happened, it'd still probably be pretty empty. If this happened, Czechoslovakia might go full Zapadoslavia and its collapse might be a lot messier TTL - or the Czech Republic might just have more land. Either way this TL is, as you said, pretty unlikely, but it was fun. ;)
 
However, this doesn't really make much sense.

It doesn't? Given how Prussian aristocracy still was overwhelmingly represented in the German officer corps, to the point that the German officer corps was still said to be a direct descendent of the Prussian one, and the slavish devotion with which that officer corps followed Hitler and executed his will when it came to waging wars of aggression, it seems to me like it'd make perfect sense for the Allies to associate Prussian militarism with Naziism. The tensions between Prussian aristocrats and the Nazis over the more populistic aspects of Nazis ideology would largely be invisible to them whereas the parts where they were in accord (that is, the ones where Germany is the pre-eminent power which dominates Europe) would be both far more visible and far more relevant to Allied interests. Prussian militarism, via the German military institutions which were again dominated by Prussians, were also the one which concocted and perpetrated the "stab-in-the-back" legend at the end of WW1 that the Nazis happily bought into.
 
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So, IOTL, after the end of WW2, the Allies decided that "Prussian Militarism" was responsible for WW2, and officially dissolved Prussia as a geopolitical entity, complete with mass deportations of Germans from the new Polish lands (which is nothing on the Holocaust, but was still a pretty bad thing to do).

However, this doesn't really make much sense. Prussia, while still bitter and militaristic, was defeated, and was home to old German nobility who weren't very keen on listening to some upstart Austrian commoner whose buddies wear weird armbands (and hate Jews for no reason and communists for several reasons of varying legitimacy, but that didn't really matter as much to them, since a lot of them did as well).

On the other hand, the Bavarians, similarly bitter after losing the war (albeit less militaristic), were much more welcoming of weird mustache man and company. He was from Austria, whose culture, religion, and dialect was more similar to theirs than that of the Northern Germany (I'm learning about Germany in school. I know about this stuff). His lack of noble title did not mean nearly as much, and a lot of his ultraconservative ideals appealed to the Bavarians. Bavaria really was the Nazis' heart of power and support in Germany, as unpleasant as it would be for modern Bavarians to admit.

So, what if, in this timeline, the Allies blamed Bavaria instead of Prussia. They could say "Bavarian Reactionaries" were responsible for WW2 as easily as they could blame "Prussian Militarism". What if they did? What would they do to Bavaria? How would the cold war be effected? What would modern Germany be like?

This isn't really true at all. The Nazi's core voter support was overwhelmingly Protestant, and largely in Northeastern and Central Germany, most of which was Prussian (see below). The Nazi vote largely displaced other parties within the non-left / non-Catholic vote block. Mostly middle-class Protestants. The map below shows how correlated the non-Nazi vote was with Catholicism.

Moreover, Prussia formed nearly two thirds of the German population and was dominant within the federal administration and the military. The Prussian Right was extremely influential in bringing Hitler to power. It's true they thought him too southern, too Austrian, too Catholic, and a little vulgar and uncouth. But they saw that he was more popular than the more mainstream, nationalist Protestant Right, and they were happy to use him to crush the left and enact right-wing policies. In the end they were happy to facilitate his rise to power, especially once attempts to form a different nationalist, right-wing government (without Nazi support) fell apart.

The Allies also viewed "Prussian militarism" as the root cause because the unique evil of the Nazis wasn't as clear in the immediate aftermath of WWII as it would become later. German war aims in the first war -- especially those of the Prussian-dominated military clique -- were themselves fairly expansionist and aggressive (and included things like eastern puppet states and deportations of Jews and Poles). Volkisch ideas were especially common in Prussia, from which the Nazis drew.

To be clear, "abolishing" Prussia and blaming the war on Prussian militarism alone was silly. Prussia was the largest state in pre-WWII Germany and was politically diverse. It was a stronghold of both the Nazis and the left. Few in Germany truly wanted another war besides Hitler.

But the plausible alternative here is no assigning blame to Prussia, not assigning blame to Bavaria, which was not a major power within the German Empire or the Weimar Republic, and whose leaders were peripheral players in WWII. It would be like blaming the Second World War on Bulgaria.

ZjsMV-bMQNx5L0l_jbqyNXRSR_oo74vMsufzdjEIXlI.jpg

Link.
 
So, IOTL, after the end of WW2, the Allies decided that "Prussian Militarism" was responsible for WW2, and officially dissolved Prussia as a geopolitical entity, complete with mass deportations of Germans from the new Polish lands (which is nothing on the Holocaust, but was still a pretty bad thing to do).

However, this doesn't really make much sense. Prussia, while still bitter and militaristic, was defeated, and was home to old German nobility who weren't very keen on listening to some upstart Austrian commoner whose buddies wear weird armbands (and hate Jews for no reason and communists for several reasons of varying legitimacy, but that didn't really matter as much to them, since a lot of them did as well).

On the other hand, the Bavarians, similarly bitter after losing the war (albeit less militaristic), were much more welcoming of weird mustache man and company. He was from Austria, whose culture, religion, and dialect was more similar to theirs than that of the Northern Germany (I'm learning about Germany in school. I know about this stuff). His lack of noble title did not mean nearly as much, and a lot of his ultraconservative ideals appealed to the Bavarians. Bavaria really was the Nazis' heart of power and support in Germany, as unpleasant as it would be for modern Bavarians to admit.

So, what if, in this timeline, the Allies blamed Bavaria instead of Prussia. They could say "Bavarian Reactionaries" were responsible for WW2 as easily as they could blame "Prussian Militarism". What if they did? What would they do to Bavaria? How would the cold war be effected? What would modern Germany be like?
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This isn't really true at all. The Nazi's core voter support was overwhelmingly Protestant, and largely in Northeastern and Central Germany, most of which was Prussian (see below). The Nazi vote largely displaced other parties within the non-left / non-Catholic vote block. Mostly middle-class Protestants. The map below shows how correlated the non-Nazi vote was with Catholicism.

Moreover, Prussia formed nearly two thirds of the German population and was dominant within the federal administration and the military. The Prussian Right was extremely influential in bringing Hitler to power. It's true they thought him too southern, too Austrian, too Catholic, and a little vulgar and uncouth. But they saw that he was more popular than the more mainstream, nationalist Protestant Right, and they were happy to use him to crush the left and enact right-wing policies. In the end they were happy to facilitate his rise to power, especially once attempts to form a different nationalist, right-wing government (without Nazi support) fell apart.

The Allies also viewed "Prussian militarism" as the root cause because the unique evil of the Nazis wasn't as clear in the immediate aftermath of WWII as it would become later. German war aims in the first war -- especially those of the Prussian-dominated military clique -- were themselves fairly expansionist and aggressive (and included things like eastern puppet states and deportations of Jews and Poles). Volkisch ideas were especially common in Prussia, from which the Nazis drew.

To be clear, "abolishing" Prussia and blaming the war on Prussian militarism alone was silly. Prussia was the largest state in pre-WWII Germany and was politically diverse. It was a stronghold of both the Nazis and the left. Few in Germany truly wanted another war besides Hitler.

But the plausible alternative here is no assigning blame to Prussia, not assigning blame to Bavaria, which was not a major power within the German Empire or the Weimar Republic, and whose leaders were peripheral players in WWII. It would be like blaming the Second World War on Bulgaria.

ZjsMV-bMQNx5L0l_jbqyNXRSR_oo74vMsufzdjEIXlI.jpg

Link.
Lol, if I hadn’t gone for more images I wouldn’t have been ninja’d
 
What if they merged Bavaria and Austria, not because of blame per se but just because (maybe to weaken the Germanies, and to equalize the division between capitalist West, communist East, and neutral South?)
 
The breakup of Prussia was inevitable simply because it was divided between the Soviet and western (mostly British) zones--not to mention the parts that were given to Poland and the USSR.

Stalin, incidentally, rejected the idea that the Prussians were worse than other Germans: "Like us, Churchill will soon have to deal with great masses of Germans. Churchill will then see that it is not only the Prussians who are fighting in the German Army but also Germans from the other provinces of Germany. Only the Austrians, when surrendering, shout "I'm Austrian", and our soldiers accept them. As for the Germans from Germany's other provinces they fight with equal doggedness." http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/teheran.htm

As for Bavaria, the NSDAP had never really been strong there except in the Protestant areas of Franconia: http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/g/germany/weimarmaps/nsdap1930.GIF
 
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Granted, now I am wondering how this could leave to Bavaria leaving Germany and maybe joining Austria

Do you think there could be some Hapsburg-Wittelsbach monarchism as a cheesy way to promote that only these two will unite ? I can clearly see the "But we haven't restaured Hapsburg-Lothringen dynasty, they are Hapsburg-Wittelsbach you Anti-german-nobility racist ! Do we say that Roosevelts and Landons are the same ? No ! So now you ...."

Even if ASB that would be hilarious
 
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