What if the unification of Germany never took place?

Next interesting What-IF: what if von Bismarck had never united Germany and in 1939 it was still a collection of independent kingdoms, dukedoms, etc as Napoleon found it?

1st Hesse-Darmstadt Guards Pz Regiment ?
Sächsiche Guards PzGrenadier Regiment ?
2nd Anhalt-Dessau Aufklärungsabteilung ?
Lübecks Freistadt Feldpolizei Freikompanie ?

At least Hannover would probably be guaranteed by a detachment of the Guards Armoured Division, with the Prince of Wales' 10th Hussars attached.

 

No Reich, no potato salad, no nothing, just an empty waste with some settlements here and there along the waterways, librated by the peace loving Bolsheviks.

 

An interesting proposition that goes far beyond the WW 2 period. No Franco-Prussian war, WW 1? Just looking at the WW 1 period and assuming that the various smaller 'Germanic' states are variously allied with other nations including France, Austro-Hungrary, Russia, and possibly Britain with the original cascade of alliances leading to general war. The results would likely be a disintegration of the German states being integrated into the larger nations around them.
A second world war is still possible, particularly if Russia still ends up communist. I'll have to look at this a bit more for additional commentary.

 

Aha, a tit for a tat That's fine as far as I am concerned provided we keep humour high and tempers low

FWIW, there aren't many bolsheviks left in the world, unless we count in the www.soviet-empire.com people; most of these are Yanks, otherwise why should this forum be in the language it is? (word of caution: even *I* don't go there very often, my stomach is too sensitive for the amount of cretins per square meter )

 

Yes, of course.

I just read this, and i thought you might like it.

http://artsci.shu.edu/reesp/documents/Stalin--industrialization.htm

 

No unification of Germany? Then Ottoman Empire had to find another ally to fight the WW I. Or maybe even better, no WW I, thus Ottoman keeping most of its territory (Middle East). With no WW I, Russia would not end up communist, at least not so early.

Of course neither East(Russia) nor West would not sit and watch Ottoman suck all the oil, control the Dardanelles and Bosphorus.

With no Germany to worry about west would hit Ottoman with everything they had. Turkey would probably not exist. Funny. We owe Bismack our indepence. I've never thought about that.

 

Well, on a contrary note to what else has been said, i think that the Germanic States would have eventually been unified into a unified country (and that doesnt mean it would be called Germany). I took a course last year and we looked at Napolean a good deal. I believe part of Bismarcks selling point was that all these people, speaking similiar languages, all hate the French/Napolean (having been subjugated by Napolean) so it was easier to unify them against a common hated enemy. Now, i dont know much about what happened that unified the German States, but i believe that was the first step.

I dont think that it would have been very likely for the GermanStates to remain independent going into the 20th Century. The French would have preferred that (and helped the situation by getting germans to fight other germans, preventing a unified nation that could pose threat to the French) but ultimately,'Germany' would have been formed. The Polotics and Ideology might have been different, but it still would have been there.

 

What a can of worms

Thanks for the article, IC, you may send more if you like

Yes, an Ottoman empire sitting on that oil, but that problem would have to wait a century or two, wouldn't it? I don't want to be insulting to anyone, but I suppose that until Kemal Ataturk started banging the country into shape it wasn't the most vibrant of powers, was it?

Musso, remember that by WW1 the Empire was more of a federation than a unified state, you still had the independent states paying more or less lip service to the empire. But to be frank mid 19th Cent. politics is far from my speciality...

 

Yes Za, Ottoman did not have much power, that is why I think it would be broken into pieces especially by Russia. In 1879 Russian army marched to Istanbul. They stopped in Yesilkoy, where Istanbul International Airport lies today.

West let Ottoman survive, because if Ottoman fell suddenly, Russia would be free to drive south and middle east would be overrun by anarchy. How long could Ottoman survive on this basis. I think it wouldn't take long for Ottoman to be shared by East and West.

Anyways, that is my opinion.

 

The area of central Europe currently called Germany would still be a unified nation. It would simply be called Prussia. The Prussians were inexorably expanding and taking over the rest of Germany. So, instead of a 2nd Reich with a dominant Prussia and a bunch of smaller kingdoms you would have had a huge Prussia digesting the remains of those smaller kingdoms. Nationalism was a tide sweeping over all of Europe and most of the world at that time; hard to see the Germans completely ignoring all of that.