Five and they got them because we decided not to defend them and kept them because at the end of the day we had bigger fish to fry for the entire war. We probably could have held them but at the cost of having to leave a large force tied down and under siege for the whole time from the fall of France to D-Day.
8mm to the Left: If Hitler Died in 1923
- Thread starter KaiserKatze
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Or more realistically the British knew they couldn't be held, withdrew, and were delighted to see the Germans pour in massive effort to fortify them since they had zero intention of trying to retake them. The German troops manning those defences got to watch on D-Day as the Allies bypassed them completely and landed in Normandy. Every soldier and gun sent by the Wehrmacht to the Channel Islands was one less the Allies had to fight.
Exactly and like i said the only result of trying to hold would have been the exact inverse. What else do you give up to hold a few worthless islands?
What could have been handled better was the decision. For instance the German's should have been told the British were bugging out and also a proper plan of evacuation (especially for the tiny Jewish population) worked out in advance.
The point being that even the Germans have a better track record of contesting the Channel than France does.
Question posed to the group: If you were trying to solve the issue of the language islands in Czechia or Romania, how would you go about doing it in a way which grants the majority of territory to the related ethnic "parent" nations and which is not just one nation expelling everyone into the other?
You really don't. A Checkia with the Sudetes is always going to be either a very tense country due to the germans. The only way to solve it is to either do a genocide or to get rid of the Sudetes. The Sudetes in particular is just infesiable to maintain. Romania is a strong country and cannot be sistematically defeated by it's neightbours unless they all pair up. Checkia on the other side cannot simply control a pretty large region of germans who are completly against the idea of being politically dominated by the Checks while having a european if not global superpower on it's side who hasn't gone through WW2. The arrangement is simply doomed to fail. That's my take, though I admit I'm not any kind of authority about this topic and I'm sure plenty of people here and in general have a far deeper understanding of the matter at hand. Oh and obviously I think we can all agree our perception of geopolitics is normally influenced by our personal biases and politics.
For Czechia, small corridors from the Sudetenland to the islands are an option - when the islands are that small and the national borders so "zoomed in", it's easy to make the case for a touch of border gore (especially when one nation is so much more powerful than the other). In some cases though, the islands are too far in for that to work, and so for those, exclaves or population exchanges become the only choice, assuming they can't just be left alone. But it isn't a lot of land, so the small corridors (which can easily be settled with Germans) may work.
For Romania though, if Hungary wants the Székelys within their borders then they'll either need to settle for an exclave (not happening) or go for borders similar to the 2nd Vienna Award IRL via war or diplomacy (and all that entails for the new Romanian population, functionally reversing the problem). I doubt a long corridor would work. The Ukrainian and other minorities present in Bessarabia might fall under the same idea, but I doubt those sorts of negotiations would occur between the USSR and Romania.
we go for the dutch/belgian solution lol
Baarle-Hertog - Wikipedia
I don't think its really feasible to 'solve' them by integrating them into a larger nationstate without bringing in a bunch of new minorities that are now angry that they now aren't in their parent nation like they were before. Combine that with said parent nation still existing and probably being none too happy that they lost that territory and you have a recipe for disaster. Enclaves and exclaves are always an option, but those bring in issues of territorial integration and make building a national economy a living hell. For a more feasible option, I would recommend that the parent nations (ie Germany and Hungary in these instances) put pressure on nations such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary to grant significant regional autonomy to these places use their influence to directly affect the politics of those regions.
Maybe population exchange? Czechs from Sudetes go to Czechia, Germans from small exclaves and minority areas where they were under 20-30% go to Germany, while larger enclaves with clear majority like Mahrisch and Iglau, maybe even Brunn get connected to Germany with corridors limited to just roads?
this seems the best option, though second Wien award magyarorszag is my personal favourite
For Romania, the dealings are rather easy IMO. From what I've heard, conquering Southern Dobruzja from Bulgaria was already a contentious decision back in the day, so they can hand it back and gang up on Yugoslavia. There's a fair bit of Romanians living in Northeastern Serbia, and Banat is Banat. But the Szekely Hungarians are quite differentiated from the Hungarians Propper IIRC, so you could combine them into one state with the Transylvanian Saxons and split that off from Romania. Yes, I am indeed advocating a fully enclaved country.
As others have pointed out, small road corridors may work for the Czechoslovak-German situation, but for the Romanian-Hungarian situation there doesn't really appear to be a clean answer. Autonomy, population exchanges, etc. seem to be the only plausible answers without war.
or as a weird cursed map, German enclave in Transilvania, for the saxons
I made a map of the maximalist claims of a united German state in Eastern Europe, as well as Hungary's maximum claims. I tried to stay realistic: no small exclaves, though I did grant Hungary most of the German population in Transylvania, due to the assumption they'd be friendly towards Germany anyways. Also featured is the (slightly smaller) Czechoslovakia.
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I always think a "Swiss solution" for a separated Czechia would be preferable: grant ample autonomy to German areas (and maybe also Czechs) so you would have a country 2/3 Czech and 1/3 German that will be an industrial powerhouse that can help greatly Germany but unable to be a menace. With time Czechs and Germans in Czechia/Bohemia will be used to it and maybe be an ally foe Germany.
For Romania I don't see a painless solution. Maybe to annex only the minimum necessary farther from Hungary proper and use the support of other minorities like Germans.
Not really a teaser, the Sudetenland will become a hot topic eventually and I am just curious as to how others might resolve the issue. It won't be identical to the Munich Agreement of IRL regardless.
I hadn't heard that about Southern Dobrudja, do you have any sources so I can read more on that? It is the main hot-button issue between Bulgaria and Romania, after all, and if even some in Romania were dubious about it, it might offer a resolution backed by Germany
Ooof the poor Czechs if this happened. At that point they would be better off just keeping the Sudetenland in exchange for joining Germany as an autonomous zone.
Personally, beyond the contiguous annexable Sudeten regions (and Brünn, which I feel is close enough to justify annexation with a corridor) I think that one solution is a sort of trade of border regions with a German prescence but no German majority in exchange for language islands which are too far inland to annex, such as Iglau or the islands in Slovakia. Residents from Iglau would be resettled in cities like Domažlice/Taus or Třeboň/Wittengau, which are Czech but which would be contiguous with the Sudetenland and, in the latter case, grant Germany a corridor to Budweis, while the Czechs from there would be sent to Iglau. It does not wholly avoid the barbarism of ethnic cleansing but also tries to be fair to both sides.
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