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Regarding the Versailles debate

Vashon

Active member
Banned
Why does no one ever suggest the obvious? Just splitting Prussia off from Germany. Not Prussia Brandenburg or all the little bits they gobbled along the way, just Prussia proper, the bit on the Baltic on top of Poland. And then arrest most of the Prussian elite and deport the rest, while lumping the remainder into Prussia. Then bump Austria into Germany, which is still united save for Prussia, and only place part of the reparations onto new Germany and the rest on Rump Prussia.

De-Prussianfication.
 
Why does no one ever suggest the obvious? Just splitting Prussia off from Germany. Not Prussia Brandenburg or all the little bits they gobbled along the way, just Prussia proper, the bit on the Baltic on top of Poland. And then arrest most of the Prussian elite and deport the rest, while lumping the remainder into Prussia. Then bump Austria into Germany, which is still united save for Prussia, and only place part of the reparations onto new Germany and the rest on Rump Prussia.

De-Prussianfication.
That is not possible, as you'll just ignite hatred on a level you haven't seen before. Prussia owned half of the Country when Imperial Germany was founded after Franco-Prussia, and Imperial Germany became a thing because of the French having the past time of fucking with the various German states for centuries.

Not only that, but you'll set a very dangerous precedent for future wars. Hell, Versailles was almost rejected by Germany as it was mind you.
 
That is not possible, as you'll just ignite hatred on a level you haven't seen before. Prussia owned half of the Country when Imperial Germany was founded after Franco-Prussia, and Imperial Germany became a thing because of the French having the past time of fucking with the various German states for centuries.

Not only that, but you'll set a very dangerous precedent for future wars. Hell, Versailles was almost rejected by Germany as it was mind you.
Germany was broken down for a few decades after WW2, and it went pretty damn well.
 
The US refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, so technically they are still at war with Germany. Maybe they can still do some trimming.

What could possibly go wrong?
 
Germany was broken down for a few decades after WW2, and it went pretty damn well.
No it wasn't in the grand scheme of things as it nearly caused WW3 to happen with the Berlin Airlift and the East/West German border was a precarious situation for both sides as the situation is likely to get out of control if it came to blows.
What could possibly go wrong?
Everything, everything can go wrong.
 
Oh, you! Stop being so pessimistic!
Given that the mere mention of breaking Germany up in WW2 caused Germany to fight like it had nothing left to lose... you would probably see Germany to throw things like, oh, utilize organic-metallic poisons at France, Britain, and other nations as a fuck you...
 
Given that the mere mention of breaking Germany up in WW2 caused Germany to fight like it had nothing left to lose... you would probably see Germany to throw things like, oh, utilize organic-metallic poisons at France, Britain, and other nations as a fuck you...
That was Old Germany. New Germany is much more mellow about these things. They might even split if you asked nicely over coffee and local pastries.
 
That was Old Germany. New Germany is much more mellow about these things. They might even split if you asked nicely over coffee and local pastries.
The thing was that Post WW2 Germany was flattened, WW1 Germany wasn't.
 
The thing was that Post WW2 Germany was flattened, WW1 Germany wasn't.
Maybe you should reread my first post. I am talking about the present day.

America, my eternal enemy, why will you not let this war end!?
 
Maybe you should reread my first post. I am talking about the present day.

America, my eternal enemy, why will you not let this war end!?
We actually did sign a treaty to end WW1, we simply didn't sign the Treaty of Versailles which was pretty much crock shit for something that started because some ideologically charged idiots decided to kill an heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Throne... and WW2 was an unconditional surrender which means basically marching to the capital.
 
We actually did sign a treaty to end WW1, we simply didn't sign the Treaty of Versailles which was pretty much crock shit for something that started because some ideologically charged idiots decided to kill an heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Throne... and WW2 was an unconditional surrender which means basically marching to the capital.
We signed that treaty because the German military was crushed in WW1. The error was to not go for keeps and actually go to the capital. Because, no, Aaron, the Kaiserreich was not something worth preserving.
 
We signed that treaty because the German military was crushed in WW1. The error was to not go for keeps and actually go to the capital. Because, no, Aaron, the Kaiserreich was not something worth preserving.

Welcome to the Balkan mindset, where every single country was Greater Something at some point in the late 19th or early 20th century before reality came crashing down and eversince the Greater Something is the Holy Rightful Border Of the Nation?

Only in Western European terms L:p
 
Germany was broken down for a few decades after WW2, and it went pretty damn well.
There were, uh, extraneous circumstances in comparison to WWI. You know this. Half of Germany being occupied, or territorially obliterated, by the Soviets, and fear of Soviet vengeance kept West Germany from contemplating a rebellion as much as Western Occupation did.
That is not possible, as you'll just ignite hatred on a level you haven't seen before. Prussia owned half of the Country when Imperial Germany was founded after Franco-Prussia, and Imperial Germany became a thing because of the French having the past time of fucking with the various German states for centuries.

Not only that, but you'll set a very dangerous precedent for future wars. Hell, Versailles was almost rejected by Germany as it was mind you.
You should remember, I'm not suggesting the Brandenburg part of Prussia and all the other little Princedoms join Prussia, I'm explicitly advocating turning Baltic Prussia into a rumpstate on the outside looking in. And as far as hatred goes? The Prussian method of "diplomacy" and geopolitical strategy began breaking down as soon as it succeeded in the goal of uniting Germany. It wouldn't have been hard, even then, to craft a narrative a poor Prussian leadership squandering a united Germany.

Letting Germany stay united, and in fact forming GrossBDeutschland minus Rump Prussia and Alsace Lorraine, lumping Austria in, would do a lot to alleviate potential revanchism. And with the biggest player in that, Prussia, being explicitly exiled from the German political scene, it might not ever get started. The only better solution is the outright arrest and seizure of as much of the Prussian aristocratic state as possible, 100,00 men I think at the upper core levels, giving Prussia, including all of the Vistula drainage basin, to Poland in exchange for the other areas of ethnic German supermajority remaining part of Germany.

We signed that treaty because the German military was crushed in WW1. The error was to not go for keeps and actually go to the capital. Because, no, Aaron, the Kaiserreich was not something worth preserving.
A United Germany where German speakers could live in relative peace was something worth preserving. A Prussian meatpuppet behaving like Poland and Sweden at their most shitheaded was not.
The thing was that Post WW2 Germany was flattened, WW1 Germany wasn't.
WW1 Germany was starving harder than WW2 Germany by the end, what with not being able to loot vast quantities of Eastern Europe and use concentration camps to reduce the number of mouths to feed for as long as Hitler's reich did. They had only just gotten started on the Ukraine when they shifted everything west. Had Germany pressed on, it faced total collapse.
 
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