WI: The Entente occupies Germany after it rejects the Treaty of Versailles

That's a very good point, there are plenty of people alive in 1918-19 who can remember the time before there was a Germany, if it breaks apart politicians and historians could simply see it as failed political experiment only held together by the wily diplomacy of Bismarck and now returning to a more natural state.
That's very unlikely, say what you will of nationalist but they had done a bang up job in uniting Germany, there was no major independence movement after ww1 and I doubt this woudnt gust make Germans more nationalistic.
 
That's very unlikely, say what you will of nationalist but they had done a bang up job in uniting Germany, there was no major independence movement after ww1 and I doubt this woudnt gust make Germans more nationalistic.

Well I wasn't talking about the Germans but the other neighbouring nations who have no great attachment to a united Germany.
 
I brought it up because people seem to be suggesting that the British and French will dash themselves against the rocks of occupation in some sort of prolonged and costly 1919 Vietnam/Iraq.

Why would they? The contiguous nation statism of the post ww2 order isn't in their wheel house at this point (as a uniquely American concept). The Franco Prussian war and Brest Litosk should be a guide to what the European powers can and will do with territory.

They have the power and freedom of action to Balkanize an intransigent Germany and I'm sure between the two of them they can find enough useful idiots to push it through at the end of a bayonet.
 

Ian_W

Banned
That's a very good point, there are plenty of people alive in 1918-19 who can remember the time before there was a Germany, if it breaks apart politicians and historians could simply see it as failed political experiment only held together by the wily diplomacy of Bismarck and now returning to a more natural state.

This got tried in OTL. See the 'Rhenish Republic'.
 
Why would they? The contiguous nation statism of the post ww2 order isn't in their wheel house at this point (as a uniquely American concept). The Franco Prussian war and Brest Litosk should be a guide to what the European powers can and will do with territory.

The Franco-Prussian War didn't involve any forced Balkanization though? It sounds like you're at once trying to conflate any annexation at all with full-on Balkanization, and by bringing up examples of Germany doing the former, implying that they'd have it coming if they were scattered to the four winds.
 
I'm not, at all, that's specious supposition. I'm in no way inferring deserve or natural justice in historical counter factual analysis.

I'm pointing out that one must contextualise the thinking of the age when looking at the options on the table. To the point where it in reality it actually manifested at a later point in at least one area and we saw activism towards it in others.

Do the French and the British have access to several thousand skilled foreign policy actors who could enact a policy to fragment the German state to make it a. Less of a threat if it refuses to come to the table with terms b. As a form of national policy revenge for the damage WW1 has caused. Of course they do and it would be a growing popular option in the face of both intransigence and partisan insurgency.

This outcome is far more likely than some form of citizen solidarity and war weariness leading to revolution in a victorious Entente.

The British and French are skilled at co-opting elites, existing state apparatus and military institution to reach their foreign policy goals. This isn't zones of occupation this is about X to fight/defend against/stop feeding Y instead of you.

They may not achieve a positive outcome long term (and I'm not arguing that) but looking at the play book of great powers it's on the table and likely the more the situation grinds on.

Moreover the various elite groups were well known to each other in the fluid European aristocratic milieui - and whilst these people were not usually the right person for the job you will see bodies of support for various regional candidates rapidly lead to active canvassing of both the legislative and executive in France, Britain, Italy and Belgium.

Again pre WW2 aristocratic elite influence and guidance of foreign policy was far more pronounced then in the shadow of American Hegemony post WW2 where the elite motivators broadly moved to within government/military industrial complex.
 
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Ian_W

Banned
the right person for the job you will see bodies of support for various regional candidates rapidly lead to active canvassing of both the legislative and executive in France, Britain, Italy and Belgium.

Again pre WW2 aristocratic elite influence and guidance of foreign policy was far more pronounced then in the shadow of American Hegemony post WW2 where the elite motivators broadly moved to within government/military industrial complex.

OTL there was an attempt to do exactly what you're calling for with the Rhenish Republic.

What could have been done differently to get a different outcome ?

The obvious carrot is 'Break off from Prussia and you don't need to pay reparations', but that is problematic for a couple of reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenish_Republic is worth a review.
 
I see your point, but again I will point out that was an attempt within the context of an over arching treaty that ended the war. Will have a think after I get back from Asia and can have a look at my Bavarian facing primary histories of the era to measure the likelihood of a decent sized governmental org with supporting militia establishing itself.
 
A Balkanized Germany would only ensure the European economy never recovers, and the US will never get its money back. They might not force the issue, but the complete disenchantment with European politics means no American aid when the New Soviet Men begin marching south and west in a couple of decades.

The US will bunker down in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific, and would tell the British and the French to fuck off until they pay back every dime they owe.
 
Germany Balkanizing on it own, is less likely than USA after being defeated harder in 1812 deciding to throw the towel in the ring and voluntary rejoining UK.
 

thorr97

Banned
I think a lot of folks here are buying into the "Isolationist" myth about the US. The OTL history pretty clearly refutes that myth even prior to WWII. The US national policy objectives were always aware of the different threats in the world and the US acted to address them appropriately. Take America's policy toward China through the 1920s and 30s. If the US was truly "isolationist" then there'd have been no interest on America's part of curtailing Japanese expansionism.

For the US, the threat of a Continental European power that combined the industrial might of Germany with the population and resource access of Russia would have been too great a threat to ignore. This, whether it was such a new force controlled out of Berlin or out of Moscow.

Yes, in this ATL the US would most likely be quite sick of the traditional "Great Game" maneuverings of the various European powers and it might thus then withdraw from the insanity of it.

That does not mean however, that the US would then turn a blind eye to the changes and threats posed by whatever eventually arose in Europe - be that a Reich menace or a Communist menace.

Doing so would not have been in America's best interest. And that's regardless of any relationship - special or otherwise - with the UK or France.
 
Yes, in this ATL the US would most likely be quite sick of the traditional "Great Game" maneuverings of the various European powers and it might thus then withdraw from the insanity of it.

That does not mean however, that the US would then turn a blind eye to the changes and threats posed by whatever eventually arose in Europe - be that a Reich menace or a Communist menace.

Doing so would not have been in America's best interest. And that's regardless of any relationship - special or otherwise - with the UK or France.


Yet it took Pearl Harbour to bring the US into WW2 - despite the fact hat Germany and Japan had done a lot of conquering before that. Whatever FDR may have hoped eventually to do, he didn't get to do it until the Axis powers did it for him.

The US could certainly be "isolationist" as far as major military action was concerned.
 
Yet it took Pearl Harbour to bring the US into WW2 - despite the fact hat Germany and Japan had done a lot of conquering before that. Whatever FDR may have hoped eventually to do, he didn't get to do it until the Axis powers did it for him.

The US could certainly be "isolationist" as far as major military action was concerned.

The US didn't officially join the war until Pearl Harbor, yes. But they did everything short of war to support the little Entente: Lend-Lease for example or extending the Pan-American Security Zone towards Iceland or the "neutrality patrols" which reported Axis ships and submarines to the Canadian and British navy.
 
The US didn't officially join the war until Pearl Harbor, yes. But they did everything short of war to support the little Entente: Lend-Lease for example or extending the Pan-American Security Zone towards Iceland or the "neutrality patrols" which reported Axis ships and submarines to the Canadian and British navy.

Not to mention the USS Kearny, USS Greer and USS Reuben James, the former two damaged and the latter sunk while engaging U-Boats months before Pearl Harbour. Roosevelt had been doing everything in his power to provoke Germany into a declaration of war and it worked. Hitler declared war on the US largely because as far as he was concerned the US was already in a de facto war with Germany and he saw nothing to be gained by postponing a formal declaration.
 
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