Breslau was Germanys third biggest city in 1945 and a major industrial center now it is called Wroclaw and is in Poland and went from a 98% German population to a 1% German population. The reason the Western Allies couldn't get away with such behavior was the US and their anti-colonial sentiment. By getting rid of the US influence the resulting peace changes a lot. It was the US that blocked French proposals of having the border on the Rhine in 1918.
@pdf27 In regards to the former industry of Germany. I was personally thinking that we might see some sort of autonomous zone in the Ruhr and Rhineland. So it would still be part of Germany and have German citizens, but become a demilitarised zone like after the first world war.
I'm not sure the Benelux countries will really be as gun-ho for territorial expansion as you may think.
I agree, the reason I brought it up is because they wouldn’t want France extending their territory all the way up the left bank of the Rhine. It’s not just Germany they have to deal with here, their neighbors to the north aren’t likely to be pleased with significant border changes either.
The Congress of Vienna was more than a hundred years ago at this point. While it's true that the League of Nations failed to stop German expansionism, that doesn't mean the automatic response by the Entente is to go "Hulk smash!!" on Germany as a unified nation. They're already going to be rebuilding the German political system from the ground up so they can erase "Prussian militarism" for good, which is more important than shrinking Germany's borders to look nice and digestible on a map. While the old German Empire was a rather disunified entity, the following decades of Weimar and Nazi rule solidified the concept of a singular German nationalism for most people living there. That doesn't mean regional identities are gone—the current system is a federal republic, after all—but splitting Germany up more than it was pre-WWII serves no purpose. If anything, it may be counterproductive, as a new "Prussia" could decide to unify the nation under its banner and leave the Entente with the same problems as before.
it is not an automatic response but many portions of French politics will be demanding the partition of Germany and so will the UK. France opposed the unification of the allied occupied zones into West Germany in 1949 and it only happened due to threats of removing US support in Vietnam they were also against the reunification of Germany in 1989. The UK Government also opposed German reunification. Atlee was certainly in favour of partitioning Germany as was Eden. While some of the early drafts of the Morgenthau Plan included giving France the Rhineland,
Yep no US to stop that here and well the British alone aren't enought to stop the others for grabing more german land. I don't see minor border change being realistic here. It's the third war in living memory with Germany for the french. Germany will always be a more immediate threat to France than the Soviet Union. There will be political pressure in Paris to get something out of the war. There is no US and USSR to keep Germany down. And I doubt even Britain would object after two major wars against Germany in less than a genertion. The french will certainly want their pound of flesh ou of the german corpse.
The Author of the Dutch plan was on record as saying that even if the entire Rhur Valley was given to the Dutch wouldn't be enough to compensate them for what the Germans did. One of the key supporters of the Dutch plan was Queen Wilhelmina
whilst to a modern mindset that would make sense, we have to think more as they would. In an emotionally charged and somewhat irrational way and following the long traditions of European treaties ranging back to the Treaty of Westphalia we also have to look at the vengeful ideas such as the Dutch demands that did happen and think about what would have happened without the imminent soviet threat and US influence dampening those fires. Yes, it would have almost certainly resulted in another war 30-40 years later but in this world, at the moment the idea of nuclear annihilation and the fear of war created by the Cold war doesn't exist too anywhere near the same extent. On top of that this war is much smaller and less destructive than WW1 and more in line with earlier conflicts thus the lessons of how terrible modern war are much less pronounced and people may jump to the wrong conclusions leading to the idea not too dissimilar to nowadays about having wars of choice and how technology such as smart bombs will make wars quicker and cleaner in the future so it is not going to be considered anywhere near as scary a proposition that may backfire horrifically into a much larger conflict in the 1970s-80s.
They’re already getting plenty out of the war, they have full control over Germany and will no doubt dismantle its military capabilities and strip down its surviving industrial infrastructure to replace what was destroyed in their own countries. Annexing the left bank of the Rhine doesn’t magically make Germany any less of a threat in the long term.
Case in point. "What the Germans did" doesn't amount to as much ITTL since the Dutch were able to retreat behind the Water Line, so this doesn't necessarily apply here.
Westphalia is even further back than Vienna was, so again, how are these old treaties relevant to the 20th century? Also, this dreaded US influence that stopped France and the Low Countries from putting these schemes into motion was also what allowed their economies to bounce back so quickly after the war. Consider that annexing these regions from Germany means that they'd be on the hook for rebuilding damaged infrastructure when they've already got their hands full repairing their own. And that's without taking into account the population transfers needed to make these regions productive again.
