Indeed. There’s not much left though for them to take. Greece was slightly punished and is now German leaving. Albania has a German prince. Romania is the only one left to have anything they can take without angering Germany directly. Bulgaria also won’t have any money to invest in other nations and exert influence via soft power. Can see them trying to make south Slavs = Bulgaria, I could see them spinning that
Yeah on Constantinople save for the ottomans suddenly running into a figurative brick wall and collapsing. Greece won’t let anything else go and Germany will be investing a lot into them and won’t want Bulgaria messing about there. I could see Bulgaria trying to get all Romanian territory south of the Danube save the for the condominium part there
I think if they give large plots of farm lands to people that can afford some sort of mechanized farming, they’ll produce enough to be able to invest in their own heavier industries. But that is a big if and they will be short of money. It’s hard to get away from basically serf level farming without a massive investment. Which will be hard as Bulgaria is coming off of basically 6(?) years of wars
That also raises the chance of some kind of unification movement though. Whether the Germans would think of this particularly idk, however their own experience before the Prussian/German empire may help them in that regard. In my mind the best idea would be to keep states nationally focused, but as you said, split up enough to not pose a threat. I think Croatia should get Bosnia, if for nothing else, to put a check on Serb revanchism. Romania should be expanded to its “maximum” borders, to keep Bulgaria honest in the balkans, and to check Hungary, which will be trying to maintain at least the crown of St. Stephen in the wake of any austro-Hungarian collapse. Slovenia would likely remain with Austria, Bohemia possibly as well, although that’s more likely if a German annexation of Austria happens, Bohemia would, in my opinion, come along with Austria and Slovenia in that case. Even without annexation though, I wonder about the prospects of an independent Bohemia, it will have been ruled by Germans, and considered a part of “Germany” for a long long time, but is also majority Czech, even at this time, if I’m not mistaken. The bohemian Germans will not exactly appreciate being ruled by a Slavic majority, and Germans in Germany proper will be inclined to support them over the Czechs, while at the same time, both groups would like ALL of Bohemia to be theirs, and a linguistic based partition of Bohemia is practically begging for constant war and ethnic cleansing, something that the German government would like to keep away from its direct borders, and the German people would not like their fellow German speakers to be on the receiving end of. Keeping Bohemia in Austria allows the bohemian Germans to be, if not the majority, a PART of the majority, while the Czechs would not have to be completely shut out from the electorate in order to retain German dominance, though any Czech separatists are not likely to be treated kindly. The polish and East Slavic parts are the easiest question to answer: annex to the German puppets, done, The Polish populations in some cities in Ukrainian areas could be a complication, but the fact that a number of poles remain in the German empire proper, I find it likely that the Ukrainians are preferred in that dispute. Vojvodina could be kept in Hungary or made into an independent state, depending on who makes more trouble during the A-H collapse, and who looks more likely to massacre the German populations of the region, between Hungary or Serbia. Slovakia is a tricky one. The Slovak national consciousness was not fully developed at this point, and largely tied to Czechoslovakism, while the Czechs have the bohemian Germans standing between them and full Czech-led independence, but if Hungary is particularly troublesome during the collapse, the Germans could try a little nation building in a puppet Slovakia. Of course distinguishing the Germans as “liberators of the Slovak people” in an attempt to tie Slovak nationalism itself to the acceptance of German domination. At least this is how I would do it if the German government assigned me to enforce a partition on a collapsing Austria-Hungary. It generally follows national lines, at least as close as meaningfully possible, with the notable exceptions of a few “repressed” nationalities that would or have been harmful to German interests. (the Transylvanian Magyars and the Bosnian Serbs primarily) This arrangement also keeps the various states small enough to be kept fully and unquestionably in line as long as Germany remains strong and Bulgaria remains a German ally, while being large enough to (hopefully) prevent any popular transnational unification movement aimed at throwing off the German-Bulgarian yoke. Additionally, a number of the states will be too pissed at each other for any attempt at “pan-balkanism” to be more than an entirely unrealistic, and likely socialist, pipe-dream. the Bosnian and Vojvodina Serbs will earn the anger of the Serbs in Serbia, aimed at any non-Serb state that controls their land. The Magyars will be pissed at pretty much everyone. The ethnic cleansing going in in Bulgaria will piss of the Serbs, Greeks, and Albanians. And the Romanians know that if given any opportunity to do so, the Magyars will be gunning for Transylvania.
True. And with the CP way of things at that time, make the new kingdom or principality a German one. Try at is have the ruling monarch be from a German royal family
I believe Ukraine is being set up as a political and economic satellite anyhow. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian wealth and resources are going to be sent on a train straight to Germany. The only Ukrainians with any political or financial weight to throw around meaningfully will be German collaborators. If this pisses the Ukrainians off enough it gets tricky, because if they kick out the germans, they could go it alone or accept becoming a union republic of the USSR with autonomy and certain rights. It’ll be a hell of a fight though either way because Germany has their own wealth, and that of Ukraine + the other puppets they’d have been “borrowing” from for a while at that point. Any Ukrainian separation from Germany will be starting three steps behind, and as long as Ukraine remains a puppet, it will not be able to pursue any independent foreign policy without Germany’s permission.
The thing seems to be that you let yourself be guided more by a propagandistic distorted image of Germany in your thought experiments than by a real Germany, especially if you consider the different distribution of power ITTL.
I myself agree entirely but it could however be much easier to control the total area of it if it was a couple of puppet states than one giant one, that way if one the local collaborators revolted or collapsed it won't take all of the entire region with it.
I don’t think Germany will meddle in their internal affairs. But they will absolutely get the first cut of industry and agriculture, as you said, as that, beyond getting Russia off the border, was the entire point of the puppets. And of course they won’t be allowed to ally with Germany’s enemies, but you seem to agree with that as well. I think our difference in opinion stems from what impact the German social-democrats or the elected government in general will have. History is full of liberal or left leaning governments with foreign policy that doesn’t necessarily live up to the domestic platform. At the end of the day, Ukrainians don’t vote in German elections, and if one party is promising to feed Germans with Ukrainian grain, and let German businessmen take all the contracts and factories in Ukraine, that party will find more support in Germany, if not Ukraine, obviously. The Germans are in a position to effectively do whatever they wish with Ukraine, and certainly different political parties will have different approaches, but if a particular party is seen at all as treating Ukrainians as of equal importance to Germans, or threatening the well-being of Germans via a looser grip on Ukraine, the German demographic that would be fine with that is exclusively on the fringe. If Ukraine is especially unrestful, certainly things can be loosened up as a preventative measure, and that could definitely be supported by many Germans, if it seems the alternative is losing the region in entirety. But, at least at first, I expect any German government, social-democrats included, to use Ukraine to benefit the German electorate by which they maintain their power, while allowing Ukrainians to get whatever isn’t necessary to accomplish that goal. Politically, besides some Uber-conservative and nationalist parties, the Germans will likely leave Ukrainian politics to Ukrainians, outside of explicitly anti-German or communist movements. Economically though, the Germans and German companies will dominate, British and American companies may also be included if the Germans wish to fully secure their access to the world trade, as the threat of confiscating American and British factories in Ukraine would make blockading Germany a much harder decision to make. There will surely be native Ukrainian industrialists and whatnot, but they will have to compete in a field that prioritizes foreigners, and in which foreigners already have established industry to expand in the first place, whereas Ukrainian industry will have to be built almost from the ground up. I’m not saying this system is guaranteed to collapse, there are plenty of countries today with less than mutually beneficial economic relationships with bigger powers, but this system will be a system of exploitation, in some form or another, the only way I see it not being that way is a socialist Revolution in Germany itself, but that seems increasingly unlikely as communism begins to look to the average German not as a means of liberation from capitalism, but just as “the eastern menace.”
I think so, even beyond the points you made. France will likely become obsessed with the colonies as their only way to remain relevant, and will drastically push francification + French settlement to secure them. The UK will recognize the empire as all that keeps them on equal footing with Germany, and likewise focus even more than OTL on the colonies. Germany has few colonies left but will almost definitely try and make them unconquerable so they don’t lose ALL of their colonies in the future. Belgium will be left behind if they don’t follow suit. Though I wonder how this process will be affected with Belgium becoming much more Flemish than French. Will we see Belgium fully embrace the Flemish language or will they hold onto French dominance in the hope of regaining lost territory?
