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Old 03-02-2012, 12:44 PM   #11
mhd
 
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

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Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker View Post
Of course, this approach also makes a lot of optimistic assumptions, but it's pretty neat to think of non-Prussian dominant German culture.
Yes, indeed. ;)
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Old 03-02-2012, 12:54 PM   #12
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

The German Empire fared very badly in the Thirty Years' War. There were plenty of attempts at peace before the Peace of Westphalia. What if the peace left the central power strengthened rather than weakened?
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Old 03-02-2012, 01:16 PM   #13
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

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With your premise, the Prussians might seem a good approach (Can't believe I'm saying that).
Why can't you believe it? Does being born on the northeastern border of Germany somehow endow you with a magic spell of infinite wickedness?
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Old 03-02-2012, 01:25 PM   #14
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

I'm floored at how fast and detailed these replies are coming in! Thank you all so much, and, please, keep them coming!
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Old 03-02-2012, 02:13 PM   #15
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

My pet alt-history would lead to just this world.

March 1917, February Revolution in Russia, a land so backwards it wasn't yet March. Alexander Kerensky heads the Provisional Government. In our timeline, he's a total nitwit: he keeps Russia in the war to get support from England and France. In the alt-timeline, he gets a clue: he pulls Russia out of the war. Germany gets Courland and some of Poland (use the border the Nazis used for Poland proper), independent Poland and Lithuania get German kings, the Habsburgs get some of Western Ukraine.

Then it's mop up work for where things are going well for the Central Powers: Romania loses a little borderland to Hungary and Dobruja to Bulgaria but gets Bessarabia from Russia. Serbia and Montenegro are incorporated into the Triple Monarchy, the Kingdom of Jugoslavia being Montenegro, Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia other than Kosovo, which goes to Albania, and Macedonia, which goes to Bulgaria, which also gets some of Greek Macedonia. Austria gets some of Venice that it lost in the 1860s.

Now the troops rush to the Western Front. The Americans are still getting ready, so England and France get the picture after a few one-sided battles, England settling early so it keeps it's colonial empire intact. France now feels back stabbed and loses some of its colonies to Germany, and England, France and Germany decide they care about Armenia after all, carving up the Ottoman Empire.

Now you have a ticked off France, which allies with Italy and Russia to start a war 20 years later. Sound familiar? England, America and Germany win, the Habsburg Empire implodes, Germany and Russia deal with the pieces, France is divided. There might have been a Holocaust; Russia is traditionally the most anti-Jewish country in Europe. Aristocratic Germany and the Anglo-American alliance spar over France for decades.
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Old 03-02-2012, 03:30 PM   #16
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

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The problem with a late divergence post-WWI is that a lot of the uglier facets of German identity have already surfaced:

Personally I would diverge in the late 15th century. .
Yes, if I wanted to have a modern German nation-state without the sort of baggage the RW one does I would want to alter to founding conditions so that the German nation-state formed earlier and not in the wake of Prussian military victories.

So how about we fragment France after the Hundred Years' War while forestalling the Thirty Years War(s)? Religion could divide France into Catholic and Hugenot on a permanent basis whiel somehow Germany unifies into a new nation-state with a new Protestant identity.

You can fracture England during its' Civil War too if you want.

Then you make Germany focus on economics rather than militarism (giving it a character much like modern Germany actually) while French and British successor states squabble for colonies, partially because they are all playing second fiddle to Germany in Continental economics. The Indistrial Revolution acerbates all of this.
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Old 03-02-2012, 04:04 PM   #17
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

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For a secure dominant position, Prussia has to take over Russia, of course.
My advice might be to make some dynastic changes that somehow hand the Russian and Austrian crowns to the Kaiser. That could do anything from making WWI unnecessary (Germany isn't likely to declare war on Germany to prevent Germany from attacking Germany) to changing the sides around tremendously.

The ethno-religious aspects would be complicated (isn't it always?) with a Protestant German ruling Catholic Poles and Orthodox Russians.
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Old 03-02-2012, 04:08 PM   #18
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

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Why can't you believe it? Does being born on the northeastern border of Germany somehow endow you with a magic spell of infinite wickedness?
I'm Bavarian, where "Prussian" is basically the equivalent of "Yankee", and defined as anyone living above the Danube (i.e. our Mason-Dixon line). So yeah, what you've said ;)
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Old 03-02-2012, 04:26 PM   #19
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

I see basically four divergence points.

1. Charles V/I/II manages to hold his collected domains together better. Perhaps he manages to suppress the autonomy of the Lutheran princes, or he influences the Pope to permit Henry VIII's annulment thus allowing England to be a greater counterweight to France.

2. Prevent the Thirty Years war. Either by this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
So how about we fragment France after the Hundred Years' War while forestalling the Thirty Years War(s)? Religion could divide France into Catholic and Huguenot on a permanent basis while somehow Germany unifies into a new nation-state with a new Protestant identity.
[corrected slightly for typos]

Or assassinate Cardinal Richelieu, maybe at the hands of a Gascon extremist. Without the Thirty Years war, Germany (as the HRE) manages to get into the overseas colony game earlier and enters the 18th century a unified nation-state.

3. Let the Germans do better against Napoleon. Maybe an Austrian or Prussian general takes a preeminent role in the Alliance, supplanting Wellington. To go way out there, if Napoleon never invades Russia, then the Russians enter the 20th century either stronger or less-prepared for invasion. If the later, the Germans in WWI walk over the Russians and then turn their eastern army against France before the U.S. gets involved. This forces France and the U.K. to sue for peace which leaves Austria-Hungary intact and Germany much stronger (and much more stable). Alternately, the Germans never attack Russia and do better against France overall.

4. The at the end of the Franco-Prussian war, the Prussians annex large chunks of France and incorporate them into the Prussian Empire. France never really recovers or achieves Great Power status, knocking them out of WWI before it starts. WWI happens much differently (if at all), and the Prussian Empire survives to be much stronger.
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Old 03-02-2012, 05:04 PM   #20
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Default Re: [IW] Non-Nazi Germany-Dominant World?

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The problem with a late divergence post-WWI is that a lot of the uglier facets of German identity have already surfaced: Modern Anti-Semitism started in the 1870s in Berlin, Apartheid-like laws were first introduced in German Namibia, the coupling of militarism and ant culture was strengthened in the 1914 Manifesto of the 93 and of course Prussian reactionaries would be on top after the war. There would have been some reforms (universal suffrage in Prussia was promised), but it's kind of hard to justify sweeping changes in such a situation.
Problem with that assumption set is that so much of that is true elsewhere in Europe. Colonial genocide? The Belgians in the Congo. That didn't lead to European genocide. Germany was very progressive with Jews before Hitler, as opposed to France, with the Dreyfus Affair (which happened in part because Dreyfus, as an Alsatian Jew, was deemed to be someone who would thus have been a likely German spy); France wasn't the country that wiped out 5.6 million Jews. And in 1914, France was pining for war, as well as Russia, both with utterly fantastic plans for the post-war situation. None of this is unique at all to Germany. Not even the rise of fascism after the war: all nations in Europe had such movements, and quasi-fascist (at least both conservative and nationalistic) movements ruled the Baltic States (including Poland in this) at times in the 1930s.

Hence change the victor in the Great War, and there is, for once, a clear point when this could have happened. Fascism still happens, just next door. The German aristocracy (not just Prussian; none of the other sets of conservative German aristocrats were actually any better, just less powerful) takes the place of the Bolsheviks in the Cold War.
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