WI: Was German unification effectively inevitable?

You've overlooked an important part of my post. A partial unification is inevitable. There are so many small states which couldn't have survived and the German Confederation (let alone the HRE) was completely insufficient to protect these small states. Pardon the crappy map, there sadly aren't any good ones online, but this map for instance is of the proposed "Erfurt Union" (or sometimes called German Union), an attempt to unify most German states (with the definite intention of excluding Austria) in 1850. All the pink states had signed onto it but Austrian pressure put a stop to it, but it wouldn't have taken a lot of effort for it to succeed (Württemberg and Bavaria were the two genuine holdouts, Saxony and Hannover were interested).

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And don't get me started on the fact that Swiss German identity is largely based on the rejection of pan-German thought.
Please explain why you think little states cant exist but yet Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino are among the oldest and longest lasting states in Europe. No reason to believe there couldnt be even more of their size out there.
 
Please explain why you think little states cant exist but yet Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino are among the oldest and longest lasting states in Europe. No reason to believe there couldnt be even more of their size out there.
Because none of those actually fits in with what other microstates are? Micro-states don't exist because they are inherently resistant to conquest, but because for various reasons nobody wanted to annex them, each of those having its own specific reason.
All small German states sit on the middle of the German Confederation and all of those showed to be prone to integration and economic and political unions.
 
Because none of those actually fits in with what other microstates are? Micro-states don't exist because they are inherently resistant to conquest, but because for various reasons nobody wanted to annex them, each of those having its own specific reason.
All small German states sit on the middle of the German Confederation and all of those showed to be prone to integration and economic and political unions.
Bull. You'r post is basically "the fact they exist means special circumstances", and that isnt true. Any of those small states could have been "saved" for the same reason as San Marino for instance.
 
Please explain why you think little states cant exist but yet Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino are among the oldest and longest lasting states in Europe. No reason to believe there couldnt be even more of their size out there.

Liechtenstein is a fairly recent creation heavily dependent on a nearby power (originally Austria, later Switzerland). Andorra exists in a hard to reach place between two historic great powers. Monaco literally only survived thanks to France receiving Nice from Sardinia-Piedmont, otherwise it very likely would've ended up part of Italy. San Marino managed to survive due to Italian nationalists being sympathetic to it after it screened Garibaldi back in 1849 after he attempted to bring down the Papal State.

Edit: Oh and France totally wanted to eat up Monaco several times (mostly to avoid it falling to German princes) and has a treaty with Monaco to basically do that if the House of Grimaldi goes extinct in the male line.

Also literally all of these have only survived modernity due to the domination of a single outside power (only exception being Andorra with two protectors) and low economic relevance. Oh and they all were geographically cohesive. Outside of the smallest of post-1815 German states they all had economic potential and had exclaves and enclaves which posed several problems, primarily concerning trade.

Like, unless I'm mistaken, with the exceptions of Nassau, Liechtenstein, Frankfurt, Saxony, Austria and Luxembourg all German states had either enclaves or exclaves. That's six out of 42. Way too complicated of a situation.
 
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Disclaimer: Nothing is inevitable with an early enough point of divergence.

Yep, and I'm guessing this is way before the PoD you were looking for, but if you have a PoD before the Reformation you can even have two languages in OTL Germany - just puff up the Hansa a little, or maybe get one of the bigger Counts to reunite the Duchy, and "Saxon" and "German" can be totally distinct languages.
 
Liechtenstein is a fairly recent creation heavily dependent on a nearby power (originally Austria, later Switzerland). Andorra exists in a hard to reach place between two historic great powers. Monaco literally only survived thanks to France receiving Nice from Sardinia-Piedmont, otherwise it very likely would've ended up part of Italy. San Marino managed to survive due to Italian nationalists being sympathetic to it after it screened Garibaldi back in 1849 after he attempted to bring down the Papal State.

Edit: Oh and France totally wanted to eat up Monaco several times (mostly to avoid it falling to German princes) and has a treaty with Monaco to basically do that if the House of Grimaldi goes extinct in the male line.

Also literally all of these have only survived modernity due to the domination of a single outside power (only exception being Andorra with two protectors) and low economic relevance. Oh and they all were geographically cohesive. Outside of the smallest of post-1815 German states they all had economic potential and had exclaves and enclaves which posed several problems, primarily concerning trade.

Like, unless I'm mistaken, with the exceptions of Nassau, Liechtenstein, Frankfurt, Saxony, Austria and Luxembourg all German states had either enclaves or exclaves. That's six out of 42. Way too complicated of a situation.
1718 is modern? That's when Liechtenstein became soveriegn under the HRE. And that Monaco-French agreement really doesnt mean anything in modern times since now the Prince has the right to adopt and name a non-biological heir. It was only ever to simply to keep an enemy dynasty from having a seat, personal union, or annexation of Monaco, it wasnt because France actually wanted it all that badly, "better with us than someone else". And it's not the male line, since 1960s females have equal right to the throne. Please catch up if you're going to debate and post.
 
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1718 is modern? That's when Liechtenstein became soveriegn under the HRE.

It's by far the youngest out of these entities and back then it was basically just a formality to give the pro-Habsburg House of Liechtenstein a vote in the Imperial Diet. After all the first time the prince set foot there was about 100 years after his family gained that land. It was essentially the HRE equivalent of a shell corporation.

Also regarding Monaco: back when the treaty was relevant all those provisions of course didn't exist and they secure Monaco's status now, but it's a good example of how uncertain the future of Monaco was for a good chunk of its existence, especially in the phase where nationalism and territorial expansion was on the mind of every great power.
 
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Bull. You'r post is basically "the fact they exist means special circumstances", and that isnt true. Any of those small states could have been "saved" for the same reason as San Marino for instance.
No they couldn't as neither of those states was even remotely like what San Marino was, just point me at any of the states you think was most likely to be a German micro or small state.

Yep, and I'm guessing this is way before the PoD you were looking for, but if you have a PoD before the Reformation you can even have two languages in OTL Germany - just puff up the Hansa a little, or maybe get one of the bigger Counts to reunite the Duchy, and "Saxon" and "German" can be totally distinct languages.
Why Saxon? Doesn't make sense as a name.
 
Why Saxon? Doesn't make sense as a name.

Why not exactly? "Lower" Saxon if you need, but the Duchy of Saxony - which I'm imagining revived in some way - was firmly within the Low German area. The exclusive identification of the demonym "Saxon" with Upper Saxony was a long historical process, one that would certainly have been disrupted by any reasonable PoD that ends up with a distinct standardised Low German.
 
Why not exactly? "Lower" Saxon if you need, but the Duchy of Saxony - which I'm imagining revived in some way - was firmly within the Low German area. The exclusive identification of the demonym "Saxon" with Upper Saxony was a long historical process, one that would certainly have been disrupted by any reasonable PoD that ends up with a distinct standardised Low German.
By the time of the Reformation the Duchy of Saxony was in modern Saxony, a middle German area.

Saxony was up to this used for both Lower and Upper Saxony, but I imagine they would specify in this case, "Lower Saxon" in this case or possibly even Dutch(while OTL Dutch could be replaced by something else)
 
By the time of the Reformation the Duchy of Saxony was in modern Saxony, a middle German area.

Saxony was up to this used for both Lower and Upper Saxony, but I imagine they would specify in this case, "Lower Saxon" in this case or possibly even Dutch(while OTL Dutch could be replaced by something else)
The Electorate of Saxony (which was reduced to just the region around Wittenberg) indeed didn't encompass the entire historical region of Saxony, but the region of Northern Germany was too called "Saxony" hence why the Welf domains plus Holstein and Mecklemburg were assigned to the Lower Saxon Imperial Circle.
 
Interesting thoughts, everyone. I do believe, in the end, that the unification of Germany was something that would have happened at some point, to some extent, once the Reformation took place.

What if the Holy Roman Empire broke up during the Reformation, and France or Sweden annexed some of the German states that were no longer protected?
 
By the time of the Reformation the Duchy of Saxony was in modern Saxony, a middle German area.

Saxony was up to this used for both Lower and Upper Saxony, but I imagine they would specify in this case, "Lower Saxon" in this case or possibly even Dutch(while OTL Dutch could be replaced by something else)

Yes what people think of as Saxon today lies in a area colonized by the Thuringians, not the Saxons, The remnants of Saxon are spoken in eastern Netherlands, Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, North Schleswig, Mecklenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg. It was also spoken in Further Pomerania, Neumark, Prussia and among the Baltic Germans before these areas was ethnic cleansed.
 
From a historical standpoint Bohemia was a key part of the Germanic cultural and political sphere for far longer and in a much more significant way than Alsace-Lorraine IMO

It doesn't mean that Alsace-Lorraine, earlier culturally Germanic and remained so longer linguistically. As for Bohemia, that was a lot more back and forth, a Bohemian Franco-German dynasty (house of Luxembourg) even came to dominate the Empire. The loss of Lotharingian and East Francian territories to the expansionism of the kingdom of France, and later the Empire of the French, was exactly nationalists would remember. That's why the French reaction after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine can at times be met with the reaction of hypocrisy, they got the taste of their own medicine and they unsurprisingly didn't like it. That is France took territories in their expansionism, which did not exactly lead to the thought of our good French neighboor. Far from, after the Spanish Empire went into decline, France was deemed the greatest treat of the Dutch Republic, and history proved them right.
 
Best PoD would be 1815.

Say Austria cuts a deal with Prussia, allowing her to annex Saxony. The other Princes are up in arms about this, but the biggest one, Bavaria, is bought off with the greater part of the "Rhine Provinces", which OTL went to Prussia. The northeast part is perhaps hived off to provide a modest new home for the King of Saxony.

The effect is twofold. It leaves the other German states thoroughly mistrustful of Prussia, while creating a third German power close, if not quite, equal to the two big boys, and unwilling to subordinate itself to either. So this Greater Bavaria will oppose any unification schemes under either Habsburgs or Hohenzollerns, while being strong enough that, I alliance with either one, it can defeat any attempt by the other to impose unification by force.

In theory, I suppose, one could still envisage a united Germany run by a triumvirate of Austria, Prussia and Greater Bavaria; but I suspect that Protestant Prussia would strongly dislike a setup where it could be outvoted by two Catholic powers, or to place her Army under the control of a body where she was likely to be so outvoted. So at best such a union is apt to be much looser than OTL's.
 
What if in Vienna Prussia get her 1795 eastern border back? Or even better-whole Grand Duchy of Warsaw or even this + Galizia (perhaps Napoleon, instead of creating GDW allowed King od Prussia to keep his part of Poland as separate Kingdom to appease Poles). It would force Prussians in the future to create dual monarchy, northern analogue of A-H, and would distract Prussia's attention from the West.
 
Best PoD would be 1815.

Say Austria cuts a deal with Prussia, allowing her to annex Saxony. The other Princes are up in arms about this, but the biggest one, Bavaria, is bought off with the greater part of the "Rhine Provinces", which OTL went to Prussia. The northeast part is perhaps hived off to provide a modest new home for the King of Saxony.

The effect is twofold. It leaves the other German states thoroughly mistrustful of Prussia, while creating a third German power close, if not quite, equal to the two big boys, and unwilling to subordinate itself to either. So this Greater Bavaria will oppose any unification schemes under either Habsburgs or Hohenzollerns, while being strong enough that, I alliance with either one, it can defeat any attempt by the other to impose unification by force.

In theory, I suppose, one could still envisage a united Germany run by a triumvirate of Austria, Prussia and Greater Bavaria; but I suspect that Protestant Prussia would strongly dislike a setup where it could be outvoted by two Catholic powers, or to place her Army under the control of a body where she was likely to be so outvoted. So at best such a union is apt to be much looser than OTL's.
Bavaria wouldn't get compensated for what Prussia gets, I don't think it's supposed to work like that. Bavaria was a loser in this whole thing and they were lucky they got what they got.
If Saxony is ousted, I doubt they would be compensated, I thought that the whole argument for why Prussia should get Saxony was that the punishment Saxony got wasn't enough. Did we have any examples of dynastes being literally moved to new places IOTL?
 
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