Would a Großdeutschland be inevitable given a CP victory in WWI? Also................

So the question really should be, is the Grossdeutschland inevitable given an Austro-Hungarian collapse in WW1, and the answer is a resounding, "Pretty much."

IMO this would require a German victory in the war, or at least a stalemate. If Germany is defeated, why would the Entente allow it to retain any of its conquests?

EDIT: Yes, the thread concerns a CP victory, I'm simply curious why TheInfiniteApe believes a Grossdeutschland could survive a German defeat, as he has stated several posts before.
 
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IMO this would require a German victory in the war, or at least a stalemate. If Germany is defeated, why would the Entente allow it to retain any of its conquests?

EDIT: Yes, the thread concerns a CP victory, I'm simply curious why TheInfiniteApe believes a Grossdeutschland could survive a German defeat, as he has stated several posts before.

The Entente didn't carve up Germany into its former parts after it lost IOTL and if Austria collapsed it would be more of a merger than a conquest. Only if Germany had declared war on AH would they naturally be required to give it up post-defeat.

Besides, Austrians throughout history have at various times seemed perfectly interested in being a part of Germany or even being German...

Basically you're making a larger Weimar Republic not the Utopian Grossdeutschland that was at first presented...

But Hitler being able to actively engage in Nationalism (seeing as Austria is German) and getting more popular sooner is almost as tantalizing as the added head start of re-Industrializing and re-Militarizing Germany with the help of devastated and oppressed regions of former AH.

EDIT: Zaius, did I satisfy your curiosity a bit?
 
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What about African colonies? Would victorious Germany have collected a large contiguous southern/central African bloc of colonies and integrated them economically? Belgian Congo and French Equatorial Africa would have fit nicely.


They certainly hoped to. Much depends on the completeness of their victory. However, if Germany makes a clean sweep on the continent, I don't see Britain fighting on indefinitely for the sake of a few bits of tropical Africa. This is particularly true if the German win comes in 1917/18 rather than 1914, since in that event three years of carnage on the Western Front, and some half-million deaths, will all have gone for nought, and British morale will probably have hit rock bottom.

One interesting point. The Belgian Congo was later a prime source of Uranium. Could this have repurcussions for the development of the A-bomb, whenever that happens on this TL?
 
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while largely ignoring for example German war aims.

That's not what he's doing. He's saying that Germany didn't really have any aims. What we now know as the German war aims was hastily drafted after the war had begun. IMO, Ferguson claims that Germany was more interested in creating a customs union in continental Europe which would have secured its economic dominance on the continent. Since Germany has managed to do exactly that 70 years and 2 world wars later, Ferguson believes WW1 was a giant waste of lives and effort and that Britain is responsible for it. Not for the war itself, but for turning what could have been a rather short affair into the tragedy we know as World War 1.

The Czechs, the only major Slavic group other than the Poles with a well developed middle and upper classes with heavy industry and the means to have a successful independent nation, while displeased with having to compromise with the Bohemian Germans, where not thinking about independence, besides a few individuals, until Austria had suffered several severe defeats and started becoming a German satellite through incompetent leadership.

Exactly. Czechs never wanted a complete dissolution of the empire, they just wanted an equal say in it - given that the areas belonging to the Czech Crown made up for about 75% of A-H industry, I don't think it was such an outlandish demand.

Even some in the Habsburg family realized that reforms were necessary, see this link.
 
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