Bavarian Raven
Banned
those extra territories might be enough to give the CC powers a victory in ww1...
those extra territories might be enough to give the CC powers a victory in ww1...
Perhaps WWI specifically would have been butterflied away, but with the entagling alliance systems a major war sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century was all but inevitable.
Or an excuse to start building a bigger navy sooner, and perhaps without the British noticing or caring right away.
Assuming they win
Or, assuming that such a war even takes place.
The Monroe doctrine only deals with the establishment of new colonies in the Americas, not the transfer of existing colonies to another European Power. Besides, as I pointed out earlier if Germany takes over Denmark during the 1864 war then the US is going to be a bit distracted by the civil war they're fighting to do much about Germany getting the Danish West Indies.
If the US did want to get rough about enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, the French invasion of Mexico and Spanish invasion of the Dominican Republic were both going on at this time, and were both very blatant violations of the Monroe doctrine that would be far more likely to provoke some sort of reaction.
What if Denmark becomes a member kingdom of the second reich like Saxony or Bavaria. When we would not need to discuss the completely trivial things like how USA would react. The qustian is how we make Denmark into a Kingdom in Germany. Most likely it would be a way for Danish king to keep Slesvig and maybe Holstein and Lauenburg.
And the US did respond... after the war had been one. Sherman and troops were moved westward, I believe, before the French withdrew. Of course, a union wouldn't be the same as a blatant violation, but...
However, later on the US might have a different opinion. South American (and Pacific) colonies, after all, weren't turned over to the Axis after the loss of Europe in WW2, for example.
Have Bismarck go for all of Denmark not just the duchies.
Germany would get her highquality navy early. That would open up for Germany in the Caribbean - West Indies and in the Indian Ocean - Nicobar Islands as well as the OTL colonies.
Could make for some interesting WWI when it occurs.
Those first two contradict each other: Bismarck wanted no part of any naval adventuring to avoid possible rivalries with Great Britain; it wasn't until after Bismarck was dismissed that the naval program began.
They don't contradict each other - one is a POD the other is a gain for Germany. If those gaining wants to use that gain is their decision. But to uphold the full package of Denmark somebody (Bismarck?) has to decide how. You don't keep an overseas colonial Empire, even a small one by a large army. Some kind of navy is needed at least before flight.
But it didn't come to that and Bismarck could follow his OTL line...
Yeah, but Bismarck was less than interested in an overseas empire; his focus was more along the lines of consolidating power on the continent. You're talking a full sea change (pardon the pun but I couldn't resist) in his entire philosophy of policies to have Bismarck condone, never mind foster, a major navy.
On the other hand, I could see him selling off former Danish overseas possessions to fund military expansion/research. That would suggest, among other things, an earlier sale of the Virgin Islands to the US (for what relatively little that might be worth).
Makes me think: what would happen to Greenland? That would come as part of the package (Greenland, at least now, is a county of Denmark), but I doubt Bismarck would be even remotely interested in keeping a large, essentially uninhabited island on the fringes of North America. It's not out of the question that he might look to unload it to the British for incorporation in Canada, particularly since Anglo-German relations weren't bad at all in those days.