Constantinople was like ethnically half Greek too before WW1 and had been historically Greek for many centuries before the Ottomans stole the city, ofc many agree it’s rightfully Greek
Truly to say I'm kinda sad that everyone forgets Bulgaria during WW1, when the country mobilized between 12% and 20% of its population, which for a country of 4.8 million people, at that time, was quite the achievement.
It is because it draws attention to Serbia and its role in instigating the conflict and supporting terrorist groups, and also to Greece, the narrative that the entente fought for the rights of smaller states does not hold up, it becomes hypocritical when we see all that the French and British did to bring Greece into the war.
I for one always remember about Bulgaria in WW1. In my opinion, it's the country that showed the most competence in waging war and Bulgaria's impact on the war was way bigger than its small size would suggest.
@@Melnek1while the part on Greece is true as far as my knowledge goes, I’m pretty sure the assassination of the archduke wasn’t supported by the Serbian Government
@@Melnek1 Woodrow: I respect every nations right to democracy and self-determination. European Colonies: What about us? -Weasal- Wilson: *_NOO YOUR BLACK RAAAAHHHHHHH-_* _has a stroke_
the team of assassins were trained by the black hand, an anti austro-hungarian separatist movement. they used the facilities of the serbian secret service
Love this experiment. I feel like this would have absolutely infuriated the French. Seeing Germany be more or less the same size after a French victory would have given the same sentiment as the Italian “mutilated victory”. Would we have seen the rise of a fascist France??
@DeutschlandMapping It may not be perfect but it's the best we have as far as predicting what a country might have done, rather than just describing why it did what it did.
"Germany Loses War - Gets Bigger Than Ever!" Also, fun fact, Woodrow Wilson actually intended to put Armenia under U.S. administration as a League of Nations mandate; it never happened, obviously, although it would make me wonder what would happen to it when the Soviets came around, as they'd effectively be going to war with America.
God a 1920s war of close to depression US vs Civil War crippled USSR would be just insane and honestly I could see Japan jumping in too, it would be a bull run on Siberia at the least
One of two things would happen. Either America would remobilize and go to war with the Soviets, which would most likely end in a US victory, assuming the American public is willing to foot the butcher bill for the war, or the US makes a fuss diplomatically and doesn't do anything more than that, thus leaving Armenia to its fate.
@@ro.m.6432 actually what the biggest objection of the treaty was Article 231 which forced Germany to take sole responsibility for the war and the more than insane war reparation that fallowed (33 Billion USD which is around 581 Trillion in today money 25 time the gdp of the US, war reparation that Germany ended paying in 2010)
@@ro.m.6432 That's completely wrong. They're even against to attack Poland... even Göring and some other big shots were against it. Hitler & Co had to use a lot of propaganda about polish people killing germans in Poland (what was true 15 years before) to get the Support of the people. Like the other one said, the biggest problems with the Treaty were the blame for the war (although everyone in Europe wanted the war and it was Serbia and Russia) and the money... and without the american Stock market crash in 1929 Hitler was still preventable. NSDAP: ~ 3 % in 1928 ~ 18 % in 1930 ~ 37 % in 1932 Thanks to the former Leaders it went better in 1932/33... sadly perfect time for the NSDAP...
this reminds me of the Entente telling Denmark to grab more land and the Danes are like "thanks for the offer but we are not contemplating suicide atm"
@@Infidi fun fact: if Denmark capitulated earlier this would have been the border proposed by Bismarck in the first place. After that nobody ever touched this border again. Hitler occupied Denmark, but didn’t change the border
@@piekay7285 Fun fact: most "fun facts" are copied and repeated so often than they are now just "common sense" amongst the people who frequently watch this type of videos.
This was super fun to participate in. I think it’d be cool if you continued doing stuff like this. Maybe something for the congress of Vienna or the end of WW2.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 I mean, that’s probably more of an issue on RUclips’s end. If people are subscribed and have the bell set for all notifications and aren’t getting them, RUclips must not be notifying people correctly
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714RUclips has been pushing community posts lately, they at least appear on the start page now and on mobile in the subscription box, as well as through notifications once turned on. But yeah, a simple poll announcement video which is deleted after a week would probably boost engagement quite significantly.
The French would NEVER accept a larger Germany, gaining Austria is like giving defeated Germany rocket fuel. Interesting experiment but it would be fun to see someone trying to sell this idea to the French.
@@arthurbordet8754 So either Francois de la Rocque or Jacques Doriot teams up with Mussolini against Weimar Germany aka the world's haven for democracy. Britain and France then go back to their old ways of butting heads. And now, I got a new Great War...what have I done?!
Honestly it came off as I predicted. The "historical map" community has a heavy pro-Germany bias because they make the maps move the most so giga-germany was definitely not unexpected.
@@TheRenegade... One can argue that it is reparations for the Ottoman occupation of Greece, with Constantinople being an important symbolic piece as well as reuniting the Religious head of the Greek Orthodox Church with the Greek nation, but it would definitely cause more than a little chaos and lots of conflict, as what is now Istanbul is predominantly Turkish ethnically So while Greece would probably love it, the Turks would probably hate it more than giving up Smyrna
8:07 its not a question of feeling sorry. I can almost guarantee you not a single person in france felt sorry for germany. The question is are they militarily capable of fighting germany, and the allies didn't think they were.
People did legit see Austria and the Sudetenland as reasonable and not worth fighting for. It was only after Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and then asked for more in Poland people realized their ambitions weren’t limited to German majority land
2:27; Germany’s Treaty of Versailles 5:20; Austria’s Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye 8:12; Hungary’s Treaty of Trianon 8:40; Bulgaria’s Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine 9:43; Ottomans’ Treaty of Sèvres 10:22; Voted map of the Middle East in 1920 11:42; Voted map of Europe in 1921
Hungary has undergone the greatest occupation of her territories and her wealth. This poor great country, which saved both civilization and Christianity, has been treated with a bitterness which nothing can explain except the desire of greed of those surrounding her, and the fact that the weaker people, seeing the stronger overcome, wish and insist that she shall be reduced to impotence. Nothing, in fact, can justify the measures of violence and the depredations committed in Magyar territory. What was the Rumanian occupation of Hungary: a systematic rapine and the systematic destruction for a long time hidden, and the stern reproach which Lloyd George addressed in London to the Premier of Rumania was perfectly justified. After the War everyone wanted some sacrifice from Hungary, and no one dared to say a word of peace or goodwill for her. When I tried it was too late. The victors hated Hungary for her proud defence. The adherents of Socialism do not love her because she had to resist, under more than difficult conditions, internal and external Bolshevism. The international financiers hate her because of the violences committed against the Jews. So Hungary suffers all the injustices without defence, all the miseries without help, and all the intrigues without resistance. Before the War Hungary had an area almost equal to that of Italy, 282,870 square kilometres, with a population of 18,264,533 inhabitants. The Treaty of Trianon reduced her territory to 91,114 kilometres -- that is, 32.3%. -- and the population to 7,481,954, or 41%. It was not sufficient to cut off from Hungary the populations which were not ethnically Magyar. Without any reason 1,084,447 Magyars have been handed over to Czeko-Slovakia, 457,597 to Jugo-Slavia, 1,704,851 to Rumania. Also other nuclei of population have been detached without reason. - Francesco Saverio Nitti: Peaceless Europe
The choice for Hungary in Transylvania is odd. The intention was probably to include Székelyland, but the map only manages to include half of it, with most of it being in the southeastern corner of Transylvania. In the shown scenario, you include a lot of non-Hungarians in Hungary, while still leaving the Székelys in the wrong country.
Yeah, i would have to agree. Including Szeklerland into Hungary is just more trouble than it's worth. It would just include a bunch of romanians for no reason, unless you wanted to make an enclave in Romania. Pluss they oddly streched Hungary into serbia for no reason. I'd just give Hungary the hungarian border poulation in Slovakia and Serbia and leave everything else like the original treaty.
@@goese868 Including Székelyland would be fine. Not including Székelyland, but stretching deep into ethnically Romanian territory nevertheless, as shown in the video, makes no sense at all.
@@marcellkiss-redey8451 okay so 1. What do you mean? It clearly includes Szeklerland. And 2. There is a big romanian poulation between Hungary and Szeklerland so i don't think they should include it unless they wanted to make an enclave, which i think is a bad idea.
@@goese868 It clearly doesn't include Székelyland. I did my best to overlay the video map on an ethnic map of historical Hungary here: i.imgur.com/JzTHOk0.png You can see that the border drawn in the video excludes most of Székelyland (all of Csík, Háromszék, as well as a large portion of Udvarhely), while including the ethnically Romanian corridor to Székelyland. It makes absolutely no sense this way... For #2, well, there only would have been bad and less bad solutions. A corridor would have left many Romanians in Hungary. An exclave could have made Hungarian irredentism even stronger (see Germany's case with East Prussia). Including it in Romania is what eventually happened, but I wouldn't call putting more than a million Hungarians in the wrong country a good solution, either...
The difference is that Germans truly felt the impact of losing at the end of WWII, but were not abandoned by the Allies, whereas the Germans at the end of WWI never saw the war reach their doorstep.
Does anyone argue otherwise? The critics of Versailles (or atleast everyone ive seen) argues thay it was too lenient to prevent the threat of germany again but too harsh to effectively bring them successfully into a post war cooperative europe
@@IdrinkSoup-phrog- More like new comintern - the communists are proven right in this timeline, going to war was utterly useless. I don't see the government of Italy to last long enough for Mussolini to gather enough support to launch his bid; the country would fall to civil war and IMHO the communists will win. France, probably would face a communist Revolution as well. I also speculate that this timeline latin communism would be very nationalistic, maybe even Strasseman-y.
@@IdrinkSoup-phrog- That would be interesting. Land war between Germany and France while Britain has to keep the goods flowing trough the North Sea. I suspect Germany should be able to beat France and Italy back with the help of Britain. Now the question is, what are Russia and Japan going to do?
I feel like this will probably lead to a communist/socialist takeover in Europe, imagine the French Commune gaining more reason to take power, Republican Spain winning the Civil War, Socialist Italy possible with Socialism on the rise, the USSR, and possibly Yugoslavia (pressuming it would have close ties with Russia and Italy), Romania (presuming it would have been fueled anger with transylvania not being given), Greece (Fueled by hate with the Hellenic republics inability to control the Bosphorus) and Portugal (was kinda ruled by a dictator, and people might look over to their brother for a new ideology) siding with the communists, and given the close Russo-French alliance would definitely make an interesting alternate history.
@@tortenschachtel9498 i feel like a heavily militarizing France would prove quite a challenge, especially since they'd have more of a reason to fight. although i feel france wouldn't want direct warfare at first, likely going an economic route to annex countries in the lowlands. seems like something they might do
This has a lot of potential. Wars of Spanish Succession, Quadruple Alliance, Polish Succession, Austrian Succession, Seven Years, Napoleonic Wars, WW2, Crimean War, Austro-Russo-Turkish Wars!
without even starting the video, i knew exactly what this map would look like knowing the community of map-loving 20th century history nerds. i’m honestly just a little shocked that they weren’t able to vote to somehow give all of France to Germany and turn Anatolia into a new Byzantium lmao
@@jamesdillon5976 I think that was the problem since I exclusively use RUclips on Pc & mostly check my subscriptions page, never channel community pages.
It absolutely feels like a lot of the German and Austrian changes were motivated by avoiding WWII (Sudentenland, Gdańsk, Allowing Unification, other Ethno-linguistic appeasements) with little consequence for the atrocities for WWI. Frankly, the outcome of the poll would have led to probably an even worse WWII if Hitler or another like him decided to go nuts anyway, which would be an inevitability with the other (admittedly mild) punishments levied against the empires. Germany would still see an economic downturn assuming they had the same financial punishments, but with all the important land they lost after WWI, they'd bounce back *much* more impressively than they did with the real-world outcome. Germany would just be significantly more powerful. Honestly, it proves just how difficult it is to handle situations like peace treaties.
@@Gustav_Kuriga I fail to see the relevance of that to what I said. It's not an either-or. The Entente and the Central Powers both committed terrible acts, but only one side lost.
The most economically significant land they lost was the Alsace, which they,d still lose here. Them bouncing back had more to do with capable policy than land. People always downplay 1929, without knowing if a global economic crash like that happens again you can’t make any predictions. As the Weimar Republic was actually doing well until then. After Stresemann had stabilized the effects of hyperinflation
@@Geegs You seem to be of the mistaken belief that punishing one side actually solves anything. It doesn't. It just builds up resentment and reduces the legitimacy of the peace in the eyes of the most important population regarding that peace: the common citizen. The only reason Germany even gained land was because Austria's citizens (and this is important, its CITIZENS, not its government) was given the choice of whether to remain independent or merge with Germany. If you had any knowledge of Germany, you'd welcome this because this would drastically reduce the influence of Prussia on the nation as a whole.
@@Gustav_Kuriga Yeesh, calm down. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Yes, punishments should be levied against the losers of a war. Not to solve things, but to come to a sensible agreement to end a war. That's how terms of peace work. The losing side could always just keep fighting and risk being taken off the map if they disagree with the terms. That's how war works. Did the original treaties go too far? Definitely. Is the community's idea based on the notion that the original treaties caused too much resentment? Probably. The community's treaties here are basically preemptive appeasement. Be civil, pal. And, just for the sake of anyone else you talk at, be a little less presumptuous.
Not true, Constantinople was actually a pretty minor city at the time and without the European Powers leaving Turkey nothing but a shell around Ankara the Turks would be pretty satisfied. I’m sure there would be some people pushing for regaining Constantinople but without the British just giving it away it could have easily been defended.
Our demands remain the same after our recent victory as they were before. We ask for Asia Minor, Thrace up to the river Maritsa and Constantinople... We must have our capital and I should in that case be obliged to march on Constantinople with my army, which will be an affair of only a few days. I much prefer to obtain possession by negotiation, though naturally I cannot wait indefinitely. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in an interview for the Daily Mail
Would love to see more of these, for example: - The Concert of Europe - The Paris Peace Treaties - The Peace of Westphalia and the Peace of Münster - The Berlin Conference - The Treaty of Versailles (1871) - The Division of Carolingian Empire - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - Treaties of Versailles, Trianon, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and Sèvres again, but all previous chosen options are removed
If discord intention was to prevent WWII they failed entirely considering that Italy got even less than irl and so do you know the "vittoria mutilata" was the main point that the fascists used to have the coup and Mussolini directly inspired Hitler with his ideology.
@@belittekleiner1 To my knowledge (through Austrian history class) they only managed to get a little bit of southern Tyrol at the end of the war and basically no progress in the Balkan, so tell me where I'm wrong
Not out of fear, as much as not wanting to have majority-ethnic-German enclaves stuck outside Germany. Reasons for voting this way may vary: Some people may feel that Germany was treated unfairly, while others just don't want to give Hitler an excuse to demand land back from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Well, appeasement policy wasnt a mistake from a lots of standpoints. First of all Czechoslovakia was indeed a failed state, Austrians genuniely wanted to merge with the Germans, but the most important is neither the Brits nor the French had the military power to force anything on the Germans, especially not in Eastern Europe.
@@danielbishop1863 "Land back from Poland and Czechoslovakia" With Poland sure, but with Czechoslovakia? I mean, Sudetenland was never part of Germany. Sure, Bohemia was part of HRE, but at that point Czechoslovakia could have claimed land from Germany on the basis that their lands were the ruling ones a few times. With Hitler, being the manchild that he was, he would find another reason to invade others even if Germany kept their eastern territories.
@@gaborrajnai6213 They absolutely did though. In 1938, the French military alone was larger and better equipped than the German military, and alone could have invaded Nazi Germany. The issue was that neither the French nor British had any particular desire to fight the Nazis because a. it's far more profitable to stay at peace and sell the Germans consumer goods, and b. who cares about Czechoslovakia or Austria anyway, it's not like they're major trading partners for France or Britain. They only drew the line at Poland, because Poland had major investment from both France and Britain that would be lost if the Nazis took over. The reason the French surrendered so quickly was because the Maginot line had completely crumbled, and the French army effectively cut off from immediate British reinforcements, and on top of that, the French lost the majority of their tanks and heavy weaponry in the first outing in the same manner as the Soviets. But whereas the Soviets managed to regroup and fight back the Germans, the French gave up early rather than be drawn into another long war, even though they still could've won if they pulled back and regrouped, as French casualties were not very heavy and the Germans had also suffered large equipment losses (particularly aircraft, around 1/3 of the Luftwaffe was obliterated, as a prelude for the rest of the war).
Worth noting, the map-making community has certain very heavy biases, namely in favour of Germany, Greece, Armenia and Kurdistan, as seen here Honestly might be the HOI4 effect
the Greece favorism is likely more due to EU4. Byzantium is a popular starting country due to the Rome LARP and the underdog difficulty. Also the Armenians and Greeks would have recently went through a genocide so it could be the voters wanting to address by creating a new state/ceding land. After all Israel was created after the Holocaust so to the modern mind it would not be that strange. Finally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a similar thing happen to it where new states were created out of ethnic minorities. As for the Germany bias? Honestly I can't explain it, I think the HOI4 theory is spot on with "haha beeg Germany" being the mindset.
@@squirtleawesome1064 I think it's more the historical community having a big portion of kaiserboos and wehraboos, you can see it just by scrolling down any reddits about maps or alternate history, around 60% of the time they have big Germany, even if he doesn't make any sense
@@raphym.3666 I honestly disagree. Making sure that as little Germans as possible remain outside of German borders and let Austria join Germany would probably prevent WW2. And it's not like there was any reason apart from strategic or economic ones to give German-settled areas to the Czechs, Belgians or Poles. It was the majority population that counted. That's why Memel wasn't given to Germany, as there were more Lithuanians living than Germans (about 10-20k more, if I remember right) and the Schleswig-Holstein split still happened.
@@adrien3019 How is that appeasement ? There weren't any real war goals of the allies apart from "not let Germany defeat everyone and dictate its own terms". Since it was militarily defeated, the goal then, theoretically, was "let's get back to trade and peaceful relations forever after".
@@AFGuidesHD UK wanted the colonies and the War Fleet of Germany. France wanted a weak Germany that couldn't come back for round 3. Some French even wanted the Rhinelands. With Versailles, Germany was not made weak (even more so that France was the only one trying to make the country pay the reparations, while the UK and US were indeed more interested in trades, because they were not destroyed unlike France). This treaty is just making Germany stronger, and WW2 would not be prevented. The myth of the undefeated German army, that started even before the armistice, is what guaranteed that it would happen again. Yay let's leave a disgruntled, but still strong Germany, who thinks it didn't actually loose the war, next to a destroyed country where 1/4 of young men died and which has to repay American war debts. This policy is indeed, as said original commenter, appeasement. The Allies should have marched in Berlin and make a tougher treaty, while re-including Germany in the democracies clubs. Simple as'
Why was so much of northern Slovenia given to Germany? Germans were not an ethnic majority there. In fact, the area of the Slovene population actually spilled into modern day Austria rather than the other way around. Also, a majority of ethnic Slovenes voted to join Yugoslavia instead of Austria in the plebiscite in southern Austria that happened in 1920, but because of the way the plebiscite borders were drawn, their will to join Yugoslavia was struck down. Also, in South Tyrol, I think the option to let Ladins vote to join Italy should've been given as they are an Italian Romance ethnic group, not a Germanic one. A final interesting idea would be to let the Sorbs vote to join Czechslovakia as it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to let them join, especially since German lost and their Sorb homeland is close to the Czechslovak border..
@@JarinCOD The goal is to stop Germany from having any reason to fight WW2 to begin with. The bargain here is to give Germany less reason to be angry before radicals like Hitler take power and make appeasement impossible.
I wish I'd known about this survey when it happened. But the Middle East outcome was remarkably similar to what I would have done. Instead of giving the bulk to Hejaz I would have created a new Kingdom of Greater Syria under Faisal, made the Hejaz Railway the eastern border of Palestine instead of the Jordan River, and subjected Smyrna to a plebiscite.
Hi Sam! that is very interesting. What is your incentive for placing Palestine's border on the railway instead of the natural border? Also, what do you believe would have been the result of Smyrna's plebiscite?
@@nadavsagir8354 1. The Hejaz Railway was the border agreed to in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919, which was contingent on the existence of the Kingdom of Syria. In fact the entire Transjordan was technically part of Mandatory Palestine until 1923, when it was set aside as a refuge for the Hashemites fleeing the French. Jabotinsky saw this as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and founded Hatzohar in response. 2. Smyrna probably would have _narrowly_ agreed to join Greece.
@@Aetherguy-cb9bu Most of them same stuff as here, but German Bohemia joins Czechoslovakia, southern East Prussia stays with Germany, and Austria has to stay independent.
I actually did my final project on this for my Nationalism in Europe course in College. My map did not look the same, but it was such a fun thought experiment.
This is much less of a re-examination of history as it is an examination of the viewer base. The Entente powers might have some of their own radical sympathies as a result...
I’m sure someone else has commented this, but the board game “Versailles 1919” is very similar to this concept, with players taking the roles of the great powers and dividing up territory to suit their goals. Similarly, there are a few options for most treaty points reflecting what some of the competing proposals were. Worth checking out if you’re a history nerd.
What were people's reasons behind their votes? Preventing WWII? Imposing reasonable, fair punishments without being blinded by vengeance? Making the most ridiculous map imaginable?
@@cosmosyn2514 it depends, what you want in the end... I believe the balanced treaty would be the best. 1. Alsace- Lorraine goes to France 2. Saar goes to France 3. Eupen- Malmedy divided between Germany and Belgium 4. Shleiswig- Holstein stays German. 5. Danzig stays German. 6.Poland receives Poznan, Katowice. Western Prussia is divided between Germany and Poland. 7. Austria is free to join Germany, Sudetenland gets a right of plebiscite. 8. Italy receives same territory as IRL plus city of Fiume. 9. Slovenia and Croatia are free to create their own country. 10. Serbia receives Bosnia- Herzegovina, Montenegro plus 1/3 of Dalmatia and Macedonia. ( saving Bulgaria- Serbian border of 1912) 11.Dobruja goes to Bulgaria. 12. Vojvodina divided between Hungary and Serbia. 13. Slovakia divided between Czechia and Hungary ( south and Ruthenia to Hungary) 14. Transylvania goes to Romania. With population swap. 15. Greece receives all Turkish land in Europe plus all islands including Cyprus, excluding Constantinople which would become international zone under control by League of Nations.
@@alexzero3736I noticed you skipped Britain. What would they get because without a doubt this treaty would be dead in the water without their signature.
@@Prxypad Its was the only reasonable choice. Germany was still in a far worse position then before the War. People are just looking braindead at a map and think "It got bigger so stronger, hehe".The real treaty pretty much created a Nation which could not survive on its own (Austria).
@@Mizzurani In the real World Austria survived 20 years and would have many more if it wouldn't have been annexed by Germany. The fictional treaty gave Austria even more industry than in the real world. People only *thought* it couldn't survive
@@Prxypad It struggled enormously especially feeding the gigantic Urban Population in Vienna, while it stabilized with great Effort it was absolutely not needed. Industry on Country Level yes, but geopolitical they would be completely isolated. Losing the only Ally and only getting the rump state of them is not winning or growing. People need to understand that owning Land is not always everything and its way more complicated then that. Preventing the Unification pretty much was self harming for the Allies. Because no Frenchman or Englishmen would be able to enforce that or even would want to die for that. The Problem of the Versailes Treaty was it was not realistically enforceable.
@@Prxypadhat actually almost happened irl, and was desired by the Austrians. It is one of the less ridiculous elements. Providing you don’t count the French and British never allowing it (as they did irl) And when Germany and Austria united in 1938, they wanted to join Germant again lol
Problem with this treaty is that no one would have accepted it at the time. If they knew what was to come in the future maybe, but with no knowledge of Hitler, this would be seen as going easy. That is why, given the circumstances, Versailles otl was actually easy on the Germans
Boys: let's not punish Germany and hopefully they won't try to invade their neighbors again for the millionth time. Men: let's permanently disband Germany and keep the newly independent states divided and harmless, sandwiched between a powerful France and powerful Poland that will see any attempt at reunification as a declaration of war.
for the second time... this was quite litteraly the first european war of a united germany France invaded germany several times before and during the napoleonic age. Do you want them dismembered? that was imbossible anyways. Most likely results is a communist europe and a france that pushes its people past breaking point
One big problem: Poland without Gdansk/Danzig would suffocate economically without it. Each neighbour was in some kind of territorial conflict with Poland, international trade would really suffer. That's why when problems with trade in Gdansk arose in 20s, Poland builds entirely new port in Gdynia. I'm not sure if Poland almost without international trade would have enough economical strength to do it.
@@washingmachine6485 That makes no sense but ok. By that logic most of northern europe belongs to Germany because they are related to germanic tribes...
@@washingmachine6485es and older Pommeranian tribes are different to Poles. But more directly, it makes no sense because in 1900 Danzig was 90% German, not Pommeranian. If you want to reduce who should own what down to “we or people we are related to owned it at some point” then you can literally justify any claim. European borders and ethnic groups have shifted a million times Just say you want it for nationalist reasons instead of making up vague connection lol
@@washingmachine6485 They aren’t, the city was German and ethnically cleansed and then just resettled with Poles. But I think you are aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed
I wasn't aware of the existence of this Survey and tbh Kinda wish I did because I would've loved to vote and participate on it. Pretty interesting results and would've definitely changed geopolitics at the time. I gotta say I hope you do more stuff like this in the future, I.E. votes on changing the maps of the world/territory partions in treaties. Perhaps a bit controversial but maybe you should do one where we get to determine the borders of post WW2 europe, that would be quite the interesting endeavor.
1. Treaties were not only about terriorials switches, but also about recompensations - mainly resources. So France occupied Rhineland with other Allies. Then Ruhr Area. Austria could (in this scenario) join Germany, but both need to pay recompenastions. Allies could antagonize German states. For example little recompensations from Bavaria, Hamburg etc. and still harsh from Prussia. Even partition it - revive of Hannover State, creation of Rhine Republic, Silesia and going on. 2. Poland need access to port - in this case Gdańsk. So Gdańsk could stay in Germany ( since 1871 / 1792 ), but trade would be unresctricted like zero tariffs. 3. What about different scenario of Russian Civil War ? :)
@@NorthPoleSun They build - from 0. It was just a village - 1,268 citizens in 1921. Other coastal countries had developed ports. And not only 1. With normal port Poland would have much better trade and would be far better developed. This made hudge cost leaving other part of country in low development for ~15 years. The country did not really start to develop until several years before the WW II. War in which the Germans murdered 16% of Poles. Civilians. Children and women. It must be also mentioned that Prussia / Germany simple STOLE city in 1793. So it was less than 126 years.
If my private situation wasn’t as horrible as it is now then I probably would have been online enough to see you telling us to vote for outcomes, but still it was an great video with good information and hopefully this will get done for other wars too 💜
@@chinesetaxevader German reparations didn't even come close to making up for the actual material damage they did to France and Belgium, let be the human suffering.
Even though I know a lot of Austrians wanted to join Germany after ww1, I find it funny that a country that was basically formed in 1156, so 369 years older than the founding of Prussia, not even the unification where it would have been 715 years older, is questioned for it's independence. The main two factors for joining were that Austria was tiny and broke and the that they wanted to join their German brothers.I don't doubt that the majority of Austrians would have voted to join, but as a region in Germany I'm sure we would've developed an even stronger independence movement compared to Bavaria, since we would have been the only region in Germany that had one of the largest empires in Europe at the time. Also us Austrians are closer to Bavarians than the northern germans, like how the German Swiss are closer to Vorarlberg and Baden-Wüttemberg than the rest. Also last thing, over the last 100+ years, we Austrians have developed a more independent identity, not in the sense that there wasn't on before, just that it got massively weakened by both world wars and a huge economic crisis. Austria joining Germany would be like saying Norway and Sweden should join. Ps: Funny that the smaller country had a long lasting empire and not the big one.
Germany is still split away from Prussia, Slovenia got annexed by Germany, czechoslovakia is in a miserable situation, Italy got even less territory. I think if germany was to start ww2 again, they would have even more allies and be more powerful thanks to this treaty.
@@trauko1388 Yeah totally, if instead it was Slovakoczechia everything would be different. Or just divide 'em up, not like they are so small they can't stand on their own against their foes. Italy literally chose the fate of the war on their own by switching sides for the entente at the very start, France wouldn't be able to defend against 2 fronts of both German and Italian hordes, they barely held against just Germans in 1918, and that was with the support of Italian distraction against Austria Hungary.
@@prohacker5086 See 1940 to appreciate what Italy could have done against France in 1914... I am pretty sure the "you are too small" was often used by the large powers to swallow up small nations...
Would like a new round of votes relating to alt history. Maybe a "i asked my youtube audience to decide imperial Japanese military policy" and see if Japan still ends up at war with the us
I would be interesting to see this done again, but with large modern audiences from each of the treaty nations voting in blocks on the terms. Would be an interesting experiment to see what modern history and geography minded viewers from each involved country think now about the terms.
It’s interesting that a lot of the underlying tension that our WW1 treaties created is still present. There is still a massive global power vacuum and self-determinism as a political principle is still taking a backseat to the Allies creating their own “concert of Europe”. (For example, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia’s existences are still purely arbitrary political constructs designed for European stability, despite their inherent internal instability.) Some trivia: the League of Nations mandates were a result of negotiation between Wilson and Smuts (iirc). Smuts, being a colonial administrator in South Africa, wanted colonial annexation, while Wilson wanted League of Nations trusteeships (similar to Danzig). In OTL these mandates were supposed to be transitional governments until self-governance could be established (like the allied occupation of Korea post-WW2 or the occupation of Austria). I balk a bit at Hejaz being given independence while German colonial holdings were mostly annexed-in OTL it’d be one way or another. /nerd rant over
According to the map at 8:36, the vast majority of ethnic Hungarian territories of the Szekely Land region within Romania are not given to Hungary, which effectively means that out of Romania the only territories granted are artificial ethnically Romanian borders right outside of the irredentist claim.
Maybe WWII would be started by the Allies in this timeline because of brewing resentment. Imagine going through all the fighting and Germany expands its territory by losing
@@ilect1690 it was so perfect that it started breaking down 15 years later while causing a surge of unrest in Central Europe. all because the monarchs deciding the borders didn't give a damn about nations and anyone who wasn't a monarch, noble or clergyman (for a pretty good reason though)
Giving the economically vital area of southern Silesia to Poland is rather cringe though, especially if Germany was to pay reparations in a timely manner. It's like burning your own money.
Would be cool and interesting to see the end of WW2 decided by the community. It's so interesting to me seeing what could have possibly happened back then.
I'm Czech and one thing I believe should have been changed, in hindsight, is splitting Czechia from Slovakia there and then. Despite the similar language these are two separate countries, the only reason they were ever united is because some people thought they would each be too small on their own. As for the border regions, splitting them off is sort of justifiable, but Austria now having that mess of exklaves seems inconvenient. Either leave it Czech or unite the whole of Czechia with Austria.
@@albertpolak786You're genious. As a proud moravian (other part of czechia), i can say, that it would be nice to be independent from bohemians, even if we would be under slovakia
@albertpolak786 The idea would be to create a some what larger Austria-Czechia then? Which would I guess ideally due to that treat both peoples equally.
@@anveryperson7329 the actual irl treaty was rejected by us, and we soundly beat our enemies to cement it, do you really think this reality would be any different?
@@Yanate1991 Actually yes, Constantinople is way more Defendable then Smyrni, so the Greeks have a better chance here, no matter how ''clever or how tactical'' Kemal was.
Not having South Tyrol would have angered the italians, but having it given to Germany would have scared the hell out of them: a powerful Germany with a foot in Italy, with no buffer state (like Austria) and no natural defense (like the Alps of South Tyrol) in between. Also what happened to the port city of Fiume?
The Hungary one is cursed. Why wouldn't people vote to get back Szeklerland, the most Hungarian area. It would be even more plausibble because it would have a direct connection to Hungary
The thing about WWI is that it was a meaningless war of imperialism justified with nationalism, so no country, victorious or defeated, _should_ morally have been punished, but they all should've replaced their governments. Unfortunately, most of them had both the cruelty and cunning to keep mutinies and, honestly, humanity in general suppressed. Just look at the Christmas Truce, and how officers on both sides made sure it never happened again, knowing that if the troops saw each other for the people they were. the illusion would break.
I’m a ‘Byzantiboo’ but even I know that this is fan fiction, this didn’t happen when UK wanted to make Istanbul into a Hong Kong city, it’s not going to happen in this scenario. The Kurdistan and Armenia borders are definitely not going to happen. And if this did somehow occur, wait until a decade or two and then you’ll get the return of the Central Powers with a vengeful Turkey. It’s like they forget that it’s not HOI4 where territory is automatically given up and has to be accepted.
Proof that people who watch history videos do not really understand history and fall into misconceptions, the reason WW2 alliances were shaped that way was the broken promises of Entente to Italy and the appeasement towards German re-armament and territorial expansionism. So to solve this, people decided to make Germany even stronger and deprive Italy of its few gains, also creating a very ugly Hungary. That will surely work well.
even though Italy definitely did deserve way more than this scenario gave them, I feel like Germany would have far less revanchism and thus be less likely to initiate conflict after this alternate end of WW1
If Hungary would have looked like this it would have been far more peaceful and would have made more of an effort to remain peaceful. A big part of Hungarian revanchism and one of the reasons why the communists came into power and started a war against Romania and Slovakia was fuelled by the large Hungarian populations lost to the emerging states. There would have still remained a bitterness over territory, but without the Casus Belli of Liberation motivation for reconquest would have been low. These borders resemble the agreements made with Germany during WW2, giving us historical precedent that the Hungary of back then would have been willing to live with that compromise.
@@bunniifangz Lmao No Hitler is almost certainly still coming to power, because "Revanchism" was only a tiny part of what fueled their takeover, which was in reality the economic and political turmoil which followed, which were unavoidable especially with an incompetent liberal free market government, the only thing this does is give the Germans a stronger economic base and a springboard headstart in to ww2 which in this world they would likely win or at least extend the war by a couple of years
@@bunniifangz Why can't you understand that revanchism was not the main reason for WW2 but appeasement, the treaty of Versailles was actually very reasonable, Germany lost but its colonies and populations were Germans constituted a minority, compare it with the terms of WW2 or even the Franco-Prussian war, it was not harsh at all. The reason WW2 started was that France and mainly Britain had no wish to enforce the terms of the treaty and allowed not only for Germany's re-armament but territorial expansion.
@@boomerix Hungary is pretty peaceful as it is today, although the Trianon treaty was a true butchering, I don't see how doubling the size of a small central European country would benefit peace in the area, if we are to give some concessions to Hungary, that would mainly be southern Slovakia and maybe parts of Transylvania, I don't see how reaching Belgrade would help that.
I will never understand why people wanted so bad to let Austria join Germany. This decision made the whole treaty unrealistic in my opinion. Also Hungary keeping North Transylvania except for the Szekely Land is funny
Giving constantinople to Greece just shows our current day blind spots. People love thinking about a new Byzantine empire but realistically Istanbul is a huge city that is mostly Turkish, even back then. I doubt Greece would’ve even wanted it without expelling most of its population. Smyrna makes way more sense to give to Greece, it’s odd that people didn’t support that. And I’m also very surprised people still supported British and French imperial interests in the Middle East, considering the mess they create.
Istanbul was 50% Turkish at the time, with the Greeks forming an important minority in the city. Regardless, I'd doubt the Allies would allow a strategically important city like that to give to Greece. Source: Mango, Andrew. Ataturk.
Also the whole thing about german austria: Not france, not britain, not poland would've accepted giving austria to germany. They lost, why should they get bigger than before? If you want to give austria to germany so bad, then just remove bavaria from the rest of germany and unite it with austria. This would've weakened germany severly. This might have been a more culturally accepted outcome, as to this day, autrians share more with bavarians than with germany per se.
Love this. Gotta do stuff like this with other wars. OR maybe we can remake American states or something like that. It’s very cool and fun that you did this though.
I am absolutely not surprised that Greece was given Constantinople. I know the map-drawing community, they always want Byzantium back.
Of course the Roman Empire is peak map-painter fantasy. Its the bloody Roman Empire!
Even tho they’d be given it, like with eastern Anatolia I don’t think they’d be able to hold it against a resurgent Turkey under attaturk
even though by this time, I'm pretty sure that Istanbul was more turkish than greek
@@seanmcloughlin5983 Possibly not, though at the same time it's a far more defensible position, so taking it sure wouldn't be easy either.
Constantinople was like ethnically half Greek too before WW1 and had been historically Greek for many centuries before the Ottomans stole the city, ofc many agree it’s rightfully Greek
Truly to say I'm kinda sad that everyone forgets Bulgaria during WW1, when the country mobilized between 12% and 20% of its population, which for a country of 4.8 million people, at that time, was quite the achievement.
It is because it draws attention to Serbia and its role in instigating the conflict and supporting terrorist groups, and also to Greece, the narrative that the entente fought for the rights of smaller states does not hold up, it becomes hypocritical when we see all that the French and British did to bring Greece into the war.
I for one always remember about Bulgaria in WW1. In my opinion, it's the country that showed the most competence in waging war and Bulgaria's impact on the war was way bigger than its small size would suggest.
@@Melnek1while the part on Greece is true as far as my knowledge goes, I’m pretty sure the assassination of the archduke wasn’t supported by the Serbian Government
@@Melnek1
Woodrow: I respect every nations right to democracy and self-determination.
European Colonies: What about us?
-Weasal- Wilson: *_NOO YOUR BLACK RAAAAHHHHHHH-_*
_has a stroke_
the team of assassins were trained by the black hand, an anti austro-hungarian separatist movement. they used the facilities of the serbian secret service
Please do more things like this
yes
Agreed
Yes again
Yes, for sure!
Yep
Love this experiment.
I feel like this would have absolutely infuriated the French. Seeing Germany be more or less the same size after a French victory would have given the same sentiment as the Italian “mutilated victory”. Would we have seen the rise of a fascist France??
@@ObscureGun Geodeterministic thinking is heavily outdated and has been severely critisized since the 70's so I would advice not to use it.
@@ObscureGun It is general consesus in scientific geography. There basically no more professional advocates.
@@DeutschlandMappingDoes this apply to historical or modern geography?
@@jackeinessontjader5291 Both. It is hard if not impossible to seperate the two
@DeutschlandMapping It may not be perfect but it's the best we have as far as predicting what a country might have done, rather than just describing why it did what it did.
"Germany Loses War - Gets Bigger Than Ever!"
Also, fun fact, Woodrow Wilson actually intended to put Armenia under U.S. administration as a League of Nations mandate; it never happened, obviously, although it would make me wonder what would happen to it when the Soviets came around, as they'd effectively be going to war with America.
Considering allied troops were in Russia to back the whites perhaps it could've led to full allied intervention in Russia.
God a 1920s war of close to depression US vs Civil War crippled USSR would be just insane and honestly I could see Japan jumping in too, it would be a bull run on Siberia at the least
One of two things would happen. Either America would remobilize and go to war with the Soviets, which would most likely end in a US victory, assuming the American public is willing to foot the butcher bill for the war, or the US makes a fuss diplomatically and doesn't do anything more than that, thus leaving Armenia to its fate.
Yeah, giving, literally everyone, what they want, so they have nothing to complain definitely raises the chances of a future war.
The U.S didn't join the League of Nation though.
Germany: loses ww1
Germany: gains more land then lost
Germany: visible confusion
wehraboos, byzaboos and virgins on a circle diagram would be a single circle
The task has been failed successfully!
they still lost polish corridor though, what made them most angry
@@ro.m.6432 actually what the biggest objection of the treaty was Article 231 which forced Germany to take sole responsibility for the war and the more than insane war reparation that fallowed (33 Billion USD which is around 581 Trillion in today money 25 time the gdp of the US, war reparation that Germany ended paying in 2010)
@@ro.m.6432
That's completely wrong. They're even against to attack Poland... even Göring and some other big shots were against it. Hitler & Co had to use a lot of propaganda about polish people killing germans in Poland (what was true 15 years before) to get the Support of the people.
Like the other one said, the biggest problems with the Treaty were the blame for the war (although everyone in Europe wanted the war and it was Serbia and Russia) and the money... and without the american Stock market crash in 1929 Hitler was still preventable.
NSDAP:
~ 3 % in 1928
~ 18 % in 1930
~ 37 % in 1932
Thanks to the former Leaders it went better in 1932/33... sadly perfect time for the NSDAP...
The thing about Eupen-Malmedy: not even Belgium wanted it. They even offered to sell it for a very fair price after WW1, but it never went through
*Sad Eupen-Malmedy noises*
tbh even today it just weakens belgium
this reminds me of the Entente telling Denmark to grab more land and the Danes are like "thanks for the offer but we are not contemplating suicide atm"
@@Infidi fun fact: if Denmark capitulated earlier this would have been the border proposed by Bismarck in the first place. After that nobody ever touched this border again. Hitler occupied Denmark, but didn’t change the border
@@piekay7285 Fun fact: most "fun facts" are copied and repeated so often than they are now just "common sense" amongst the people who frequently watch this type of videos.
This was super fun to participate in. I think it’d be cool if you continued doing stuff like this. Maybe something for the congress of Vienna or the end of WW2.
Id also love to participate but the man doesnt know that most of his audiance only gets notified of video releases.
Yes Vienna would be very interesting to see
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 I mean, that’s probably more of an issue on RUclips’s end. If people are subscribed and have the bell set for all notifications and aren’t getting them, RUclips must not be notifying people correctly
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714RUclips has been pushing community posts lately, they at least appear on the start page now and on mobile in the subscription box, as well as through notifications once turned on. But yeah, a simple poll announcement video which is deleted after a week would probably boost engagement quite significantly.
Yeah this was so cool
Someone should take these border changes and make a HOI IV mod called Tigerreich.
Absolutely amazing title.
Yes, that would be great.
Good idea. I’m currently learning how to mod HOI4 so I’ll see if I could develop it.
Edit: life is too dense atm so maybe in the future
@@czarsalad101good luck
only problem is this borders going to change in a second after the treaty.
The French would NEVER accept a larger Germany, gaining Austria is like giving defeated Germany rocket fuel. Interesting experiment but it would be fun to see someone trying to sell this idea to the French.
@@ObscureGun calm down adolph
@@HSE331least racist map community member
@@LOLquendoTV What about what I said is racist?
@@HSE331We all know you meant that Paris is filled with minorities you don't like.
@@HSE331 Confirmation bias to fuel your bigotry.
Petition for EmperorTigerstar to do more surveys like this (Like to Sign)
Edit: Thank you for 400 Likes
Pettion to get him to do video announcements of when they start.
Agreed
Signed both
Yes maybe even continuing the history of this map.
A great thought experiment... but that proposed map would've had France IMMEDIATELY leave the negotiating room
But then, who'd be the French Hitler equivalent? Petain?
@@jeffreygao3956Maybe Jacques Doriot.
@@jeffreygao3956 I can't give a name for sure, but we could expect a military man taking on the legacy of Boulanger, maybe de la rocque?
@@arthurbordet8754 So either Francois de la Rocque or Jacques Doriot teams up with Mussolini against Weimar Germany aka the world's haven for democracy. Britain and France then go back to their old ways of butting heads. And now, I got a new Great War...what have I done?!
@@jeffreygao3956No one because a peace treaty without France in the room doesn’t exist
Honestly it came off as I predicted. The "historical map" community has a heavy pro-Germany bias because they make the maps move the most so giga-germany was definitely not unexpected.
Not just that but the good old "Greece Armenia Kurdistan" ordeal is in here as well
I don't mind Wilsonian Armenia or Independent Kurdistan, but I don't think Greece taking parts of Turkey is a good idea
@@TheRenegade... The Turks are trespassers on Greek land
@@TheRenegade... alot of that area was majority greek before the genocide.
@@TheRenegade... One can argue that it is reparations for the Ottoman occupation of Greece, with Constantinople being an important symbolic piece as well as reuniting the Religious head of the Greek Orthodox Church with the Greek nation,
but it would definitely cause more than a little chaos and lots of conflict, as what is now Istanbul is predominantly Turkish ethnically
So while Greece would probably love it,
the Turks would probably hate it more than giving up Smyrna
it doesnt surprise me even slightly that they decided to give every central power except turkey more land
it's just blatant racism
Austria Hungary ceasing to exist in the background
8:07 its not a question of feeling sorry. I can almost guarantee you not a single person in france felt sorry for germany. The question is are they militarily capable of fighting germany, and the allies didn't think they were.
Indeed, the British thought their empire might die after a war with Germany, which turned out to be true.
WW1 was the twilight of Britain and France as superpowers as it was.
If WW1 was the twilight, WW2 was midnight.
People did legit see Austria and the Sudetenland as reasonable and not worth fighting for. It was only after Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and then asked for more in Poland people realized their ambitions weren’t limited to German majority land
and this is why france deserved everything they got in ww2
@@marley7868 Lol.
2:27; Germany’s Treaty of Versailles
5:20; Austria’s Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
8:12; Hungary’s Treaty of Trianon
8:40; Bulgaria’s Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
9:43; Ottomans’ Treaty of Sèvres
10:22; Voted map of the Middle East in 1920
11:42; Voted map of Europe in 1921
Hungary has undergone the greatest occupation of her territories and her wealth. This poor great country, which saved both civilization and Christianity, has been treated with a bitterness which nothing can explain except the desire of greed of those surrounding her, and the fact that the weaker people, seeing the stronger overcome, wish and insist that she shall be reduced to impotence. Nothing, in fact, can justify the measures of violence and the depredations committed in Magyar territory. What was the Rumanian occupation of Hungary: a systematic rapine and the systematic destruction for a long time hidden, and the stern reproach which Lloyd George addressed in London to the Premier of Rumania was perfectly justified. After the War everyone wanted some sacrifice from Hungary, and no one dared to say a word of peace or goodwill for her. When I tried it was too late. The victors hated Hungary for her proud defence. The adherents of Socialism do not love her because she had to resist, under more than difficult conditions, internal and external Bolshevism. The international financiers hate her because of the violences committed against the Jews. So Hungary suffers all the injustices without defence, all the miseries without help, and all the intrigues without resistance. Before the War Hungary had an area almost equal to that of Italy, 282,870 square kilometres, with a population of 18,264,533 inhabitants. The Treaty of Trianon reduced her territory to 91,114 kilometres -- that is, 32.3%. -- and the population to 7,481,954, or 41%. It was not sufficient to cut off from Hungary the populations which were not ethnically Magyar. Without any reason 1,084,447 Magyars have been handed over to Czeko-Slovakia, 457,597 to Jugo-Slavia, 1,704,851 to Rumania. Also other nuclei of population have been detached without reason.
- Francesco Saverio Nitti: Peaceless Europe
I'd love to see more of this, tbh, for other wars and treaties.
I personally voted primarily for entirely self-determination, dividing based off ethnic lines.
Likewise. It was fun uniting the entire middle east without colonialism in play
@AzureWolf168 Agreed, but imperialism and vendettas are not conducive to self-determination.
@@derserthefoxxo3873 OH, hey, Derser. Yeah, I basically gave everything but Kurdish areas to Hejaz to rectify the betrayal that is Sykes-Picot, LOL
I was thinking Mongol Empire.
The choice for Hungary in Transylvania is odd. The intention was probably to include Székelyland, but the map only manages to include half of it, with most of it being in the southeastern corner of Transylvania. In the shown scenario, you include a lot of non-Hungarians in Hungary, while still leaving the Székelys in the wrong country.
Yeah, i would have to agree. Including Szeklerland into Hungary is just more trouble than it's worth. It would just include a bunch of romanians for no reason, unless you wanted to make an enclave in Romania. Pluss they oddly streched Hungary into serbia for no reason. I'd just give Hungary the hungarian border poulation in Slovakia and Serbia and leave everything else like the original treaty.
@@goese868 Including Székelyland would be fine. Not including Székelyland, but stretching deep into ethnically Romanian territory nevertheless, as shown in the video, makes no sense at all.
@@marcellkiss-redey8451 okay so 1. What do you mean? It clearly includes Szeklerland. And 2. There is a big romanian poulation between Hungary and Szeklerland so i don't think they should include it unless they wanted to make an enclave, which i think is a bad idea.
@@goese868 It clearly doesn't include Székelyland.
I did my best to overlay the video map on an ethnic map of historical Hungary here: i.imgur.com/JzTHOk0.png
You can see that the border drawn in the video excludes most of Székelyland (all of Csík, Háromszék, as well as a large portion of Udvarhely), while including the ethnically Romanian corridor to Székelyland. It makes absolutely no sense this way...
For #2, well, there only would have been bad and less bad solutions. A corridor would have left many Romanians in Hungary. An exclave could have made Hungarian irredentism even stronger (see Germany's case with East Prussia). Including it in Romania is what eventually happened, but I wouldn't call putting more than a million Hungarians in the wrong country a good solution, either...
@@marcellkiss-redey8451 It would not be fine because it would create a Hungarian bantustan in the heart of Romania and lead to war within 5-10 years.
Casual reminder that the Potsdam agreement at the end of WWII was significantly harsher to Germany than Versailles was
Duh
The difference is that Germans truly felt the impact of losing at the end of WWII, but were not abandoned by the Allies, whereas the Germans at the end of WWI never saw the war reach their doorstep.
Well, if you kick someone on the knee, he will kick back. If you broke his legs and separate his body on four, he can't kick back
deservedly so! do bad stuff twice you get punished harder!
Does anyone argue otherwise? The critics of Versailles (or atleast everyone ive seen) argues thay it was too lenient to prevent the threat of germany again but too harsh to effectively bring them successfully into a post war cooperative europe
Well, France and Italy are gonna be absolutely thrilled to have fought a war for nothing, and Romania won't casually march to Budapest.
New axis would be France and Italy, maybe even Spain considering the Latin heritage
@@IdrinkSoup-phrog- More like new comintern - the communists are proven right in this timeline, going to war was utterly useless. I don't see the government of Italy to last long enough for Mussolini to gather enough support to launch his bid; the country would fall to civil war and IMHO the communists will win. France, probably would face a communist Revolution as well. I also speculate that this timeline latin communism would be very nationalistic, maybe even Strasseman-y.
@@IdrinkSoup-phrog- That would be interesting. Land war between Germany and France while Britain has to keep the goods flowing trough the North Sea. I suspect Germany should be able to beat France and Italy back with the help of Britain. Now the question is, what are Russia and Japan going to do?
I feel like this will probably lead to a communist/socialist takeover in Europe, imagine the French Commune gaining more reason to take power, Republican Spain winning the Civil War, Socialist Italy possible with Socialism on the rise, the USSR, and possibly Yugoslavia (pressuming it would have close ties with Russia and Italy), Romania (presuming it would have been fueled anger with transylvania not being given), Greece (Fueled by hate with the Hellenic republics inability to control the Bosphorus) and Portugal (was kinda ruled by a dictator, and people might look over to their brother for a new ideology) siding with the communists, and given the close Russo-French alliance would definitely make an interesting alternate history.
@@tortenschachtel9498 i feel like a heavily militarizing France would prove quite a challenge, especially since they'd have more of a reason to fight. although i feel france wouldn't want direct warfare at first, likely going an economic route to annex countries in the lowlands. seems like something they might do
This has a lot of potential. Wars of Spanish Succession, Quadruple Alliance, Polish Succession, Austrian Succession, Seven Years, Napoleonic Wars, WW2, Crimean War, Austro-Russo-Turkish Wars!
without even starting the video, i knew exactly what this map would look like knowing the community of map-loving 20th century history nerds. i’m honestly just a little shocked that they weren’t able to vote to somehow give all of France to Germany and turn Anatolia into a new Byzantium lmao
Well, there was no option to give all of France to Germany on the poll. That, of course, was unrealistic.
Would be cool to have more stuff like this, but I was completely unaware that it even happened.
Bro he talked about this 2 times in the last 4 days
On mobile, community posts go on your feed/homepage of RUclips. On the computer, you have to directly go to that tab on the channel page.
@@jamesdillon5976 I think that was the problem since I exclusively use RUclips on Pc & mostly check my subscriptions page, never channel community pages.
@@jamesdillon5976 no you dont? community posts still show up on pc for me
Same
It absolutely feels like a lot of the German and Austrian changes were motivated by avoiding WWII (Sudentenland, Gdańsk, Allowing Unification, other Ethno-linguistic appeasements) with little consequence for the atrocities for WWI.
Frankly, the outcome of the poll would have led to probably an even worse WWII if Hitler or another like him decided to go nuts anyway, which would be an inevitability with the other (admittedly mild) punishments levied against the empires.
Germany would still see an economic downturn assuming they had the same financial punishments, but with all the important land they lost after WWI, they'd bounce back *much* more impressively than they did with the real-world outcome. Germany would just be significantly more powerful. Honestly, it proves just how difficult it is to handle situations like peace treaties.
Ah yes, because the Allies totally didn't commit atrocities themselves. *cough* starving Greece to force them into the war *cough*
@@Gustav_Kuriga I fail to see the relevance of that to what I said. It's not an either-or. The Entente and the Central Powers both committed terrible acts, but only one side lost.
The most economically significant land they lost was the Alsace, which they,d still lose here. Them bouncing back had more to do with capable policy than land.
People always downplay 1929, without knowing if a global economic crash like that happens again you can’t make any predictions. As the Weimar Republic was actually doing well until then. After Stresemann had stabilized the effects of hyperinflation
@@Geegs You seem to be of the mistaken belief that punishing one side actually solves anything. It doesn't. It just builds up resentment and reduces the legitimacy of the peace in the eyes of the most important population regarding that peace: the common citizen. The only reason Germany even gained land was because Austria's citizens (and this is important, its CITIZENS, not its government) was given the choice of whether to remain independent or merge with Germany. If you had any knowledge of Germany, you'd welcome this because this would drastically reduce the influence of Prussia on the nation as a whole.
@@Gustav_Kuriga Yeesh, calm down. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Yes, punishments should be levied against the losers of a war. Not to solve things, but to come to a sensible agreement to end a war. That's how terms of peace work. The losing side could always just keep fighting and risk being taken off the map if they disagree with the terms. That's how war works. Did the original treaties go too far? Definitely. Is the community's idea based on the notion that the original treaties caused too much resentment? Probably. The community's treaties here are basically preemptive appeasement.
Be civil, pal. And, just for the sake of anyone else you talk at, be a little less presumptuous.
In this scenario, it is obvious that the Treaty of Sevres would be rejected just as it actually was. Treaty of Lausanne would be implemented
that sucks
@@bunniifangz cope lol. most clever greek. still claiming istanbul after 100 years lmfao. go get a life.
Not necessarily. It was not as mutilating as our own timeline. Most ethnic Turks remain in Turkey
Not true, Constantinople was actually a pretty minor city at the time and without the European Powers leaving Turkey nothing but a shell around Ankara the Turks would be pretty satisfied. I’m sure there would be some people pushing for regaining Constantinople but without the British just giving it away it could have easily been defended.
Our demands remain the same after our recent victory as they were before. We ask for Asia Minor, Thrace up to the river Maritsa and Constantinople... We must have our capital and I should in that case be obliged to march on Constantinople with my army, which will be an affair of only a few days. I much prefer to obtain possession by negotiation, though naturally I cannot wait indefinitely.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in an interview for the Daily Mail
Would love to see more of these, for example:
- The Concert of Europe
- The Paris Peace Treaties
- The Peace of Westphalia and the Peace of Münster
- The Berlin Conference
- The Treaty of Versailles (1871)
- The Division of Carolingian Empire
- The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
- Treaties of Versailles, Trianon, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and Sèvres again, but all previous chosen options are removed
If discord intention was to prevent WWII they failed entirely considering that Italy got even less than irl and so do you know the "vittoria mutilata" was the main point that the fascists used to have the coup and Mussolini directly inspired Hitler with his ideology.
No matter how much territory Italy got, fascists would likely take over Italy. The problems had much more to do with post-war economy and veterans.
They got more than enough for what they did, because they managed to do nothing
@@Prxypad (You have absolutely no idea about WW1 and studied it through memes)
@@belittekleiner1 To my knowledge (through Austrian history class) they only managed to get a little bit of southern Tyrol at the end of the war and basically no progress in the Balkan, so tell me where I'm wrong
italy military is a joke anyway, ww 2 will end quicker
This video proves that even though appeasement policy is considered a mistake today, most of us would just do what Chamberlain did out of fear.
unmentioned is a new clause that these random two specific privates are executed by being thrown into a Woodchipper.
Not out of fear, as much as not wanting to have majority-ethnic-German enclaves stuck outside Germany. Reasons for voting this way may vary: Some people may feel that Germany was treated unfairly, while others just don't want to give Hitler an excuse to demand land back from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Well, appeasement policy wasnt a mistake from a lots of standpoints. First of all Czechoslovakia was indeed a failed state, Austrians genuniely wanted to merge with the Germans, but the most important is neither the Brits nor the French had the military power to force anything on the Germans, especially not in Eastern Europe.
@@danielbishop1863 "Land back from Poland and Czechoslovakia" With Poland sure, but with Czechoslovakia? I mean, Sudetenland was never part of Germany. Sure, Bohemia was part of HRE, but at that point Czechoslovakia could have claimed land from Germany on the basis that their lands were the ruling ones a few times.
With Hitler, being the manchild that he was, he would find another reason to invade others even if Germany kept their eastern territories.
@@gaborrajnai6213 They absolutely did though. In 1938, the French military alone was larger and better equipped than the German military, and alone could have invaded Nazi Germany. The issue was that neither the French nor British had any particular desire to fight the Nazis because a. it's far more profitable to stay at peace and sell the Germans consumer goods, and b. who cares about Czechoslovakia or Austria anyway, it's not like they're major trading partners for France or Britain. They only drew the line at Poland, because Poland had major investment from both France and Britain that would be lost if the Nazis took over. The reason the French surrendered so quickly was because the Maginot line had completely crumbled, and the French army effectively cut off from immediate British reinforcements, and on top of that, the French lost the majority of their tanks and heavy weaponry in the first outing in the same manner as the Soviets. But whereas the Soviets managed to regroup and fight back the Germans, the French gave up early rather than be drawn into another long war, even though they still could've won if they pulled back and regrouped, as French casualties were not very heavy and the Germans had also suffered large equipment losses (particularly aircraft, around 1/3 of the Luftwaffe was obliterated, as a prelude for the rest of the war).
Germany: Loses the war.
Also Germany: Gets considerably larger.
France: Bruh i thought they lost they got more lands then i did.
That's what happens when you let wehraboos vote on something.
4D chess to placate the Germans pre-emptively.
Ethnic groups are ethnic groups
@@space__idklmao Ethnic groups are ethnic groups... till they get Germanized:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation
I assume we all know what nationality voted the most in these pools...
Worth noting, the map-making community has certain very heavy biases, namely in favour of Germany, Greece, Armenia and Kurdistan, as seen here
Honestly might be the HOI4 effect
the Greece favorism is likely more due to EU4. Byzantium is a popular starting country due to the Rome LARP and the underdog difficulty.
Also the Armenians and Greeks would have recently went through a genocide so it could be the voters wanting to address by creating a new state/ceding land. After all Israel was created after the Holocaust so to the modern mind it would not be that strange.
Finally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a similar thing happen to it where new states were created out of ethnic minorities.
As for the Germany bias? Honestly I can't explain it, I think the HOI4 theory is spot on with "haha beeg Germany" being the mindset.
@@squirtleawesome1064 I think it's more the historical community having a big portion of kaiserboos and wehraboos, you can see it just by scrolling down any reddits about maps or alternate history, around 60% of the time they have big Germany, even if he doesn't make any sense
@@raphym.3666 I honestly disagree. Making sure that as little Germans as possible remain outside of German borders and let Austria join Germany would probably prevent WW2.
And it's not like there was any reason apart from strategic or economic ones to give German-settled areas to the Czechs, Belgians or Poles. It was the majority population that counted. That's why Memel wasn't given to Germany, as there were more Lithuanians living than Germans (about 10-20k more, if I remember right) and the Schleswig-Holstein split still happened.
This feels less like a division that could prevent WW2 and more like an appeasement policy speedrun
appeasement is when people are actually in countries they want to be in.
@@AFGuidesHDappeasement is when there is a gigantic Germany in the middle of the map with intact industry when all of Europe is devastated.
@@adrien3019 How is that appeasement ?
There weren't any real war goals of the allies apart from "not let Germany defeat everyone and dictate its own terms". Since it was militarily defeated, the goal then, theoretically, was "let's get back to trade and peaceful relations forever after".
@@AFGuidesHD UK wanted the colonies and the War Fleet of Germany. France wanted a weak Germany that couldn't come back for round 3. Some French even wanted the Rhinelands.
With Versailles, Germany was not made weak (even more so that France was the only one trying to make the country pay the reparations, while the UK and US were indeed more interested in trades, because they were not destroyed unlike France).
This treaty is just making Germany stronger, and WW2 would not be prevented. The myth of the undefeated German army, that started even before the armistice, is what guaranteed that it would happen again.
Yay let's leave a disgruntled, but still strong Germany, who thinks it didn't actually loose the war, next to a destroyed country where 1/4 of young men died and which has to repay American war debts.
This policy is indeed, as said original commenter, appeasement. The Allies should have marched in Berlin and make a tougher treaty, while re-including Germany in the democracies clubs. Simple as'
@@BlackCrafte Was the Treaty of Frankfurt appeasement ?
Why was so much of northern Slovenia given to Germany? Germans were not an ethnic majority there. In fact, the area of the Slovene population actually spilled into modern day Austria rather than the other way around. Also, a majority of ethnic Slovenes voted to join Yugoslavia instead of Austria in the plebiscite in southern Austria that happened in 1920, but because of the way the plebiscite borders were drawn, their will to join Yugoslavia was struck down.
Also, in South Tyrol, I think the option to let Ladins vote to join Italy should've been given as they are an Italian Romance ethnic group, not a Germanic one.
A final interesting idea would be to let the Sorbs vote to join Czechslovakia as it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to let them join, especially since German lost and their Sorb homeland is close to the Czechslovak border..
because majority votes suck ass lmao. Voting produces some good ideas and some terrible ideas
I wouldn't mind seeing a Congress of Vienna survey and your thoughts on the potential ramifications on our changes to the map
Unsurprisingly the internet managed to cook up an even worse and more illogical settlement.
As always right?
Nah it makes sense, someone just let a German diplomat into the room. And a greek one
worse by what margin? Actually putting up borders alongside ethnic groups? Fk off
@@anon_148 It would make Germany much stronger and they'd win WW2.
@@JarinCOD The goal is to stop Germany from having any reason to fight WW2 to begin with. The bargain here is to give Germany less reason to be angry before radicals like Hitler take power and make appeasement impossible.
I missed the poll but I like the video, I’d love to see more “crowdsourced peace treaties” in the future
I wish I'd known about this survey when it happened. But the Middle East outcome was remarkably similar to what I would have done. Instead of giving the bulk to Hejaz I would have created a new Kingdom of Greater Syria under Faisal, made the Hejaz Railway the eastern border of Palestine instead of the Jordan River, and subjected Smyrna to a plebiscite.
Hi Sam! that is very interesting. What is your incentive for placing Palestine's border on the railway instead of the natural border? Also, what do you believe would have been the result of Smyrna's plebiscite?
Interesting, what would you have chosen for Europe?
@@nadavsagir8354 1. The Hejaz Railway was the border agreed to in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919, which was contingent on the existence of the Kingdom of Syria. In fact the entire Transjordan was technically part of Mandatory Palestine until 1923, when it was set aside as a refuge for the Hashemites fleeing the French. Jabotinsky saw this as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and founded Hatzohar in response.
2. Smyrna probably would have _narrowly_ agreed to join Greece.
@@Aetherguy-cb9bu Most of them same stuff as here, but German Bohemia joins Czechoslovakia, southern East Prussia stays with Germany, and Austria has to stay independent.
@@SamAronow Appreciate the answer and love your content!
I actually did my final project on this for my Nationalism in Europe course in College. My map did not look the same, but it was such a fun thought experiment.
I would love to see this become a recurring thing! A fun little experiment to see alternate outcomes for other wars and treaties.
This is much less of a re-examination of history as it is an examination of the viewer base.
The Entente powers might have some of their own radical sympathies as a result...
I’m sure someone else has commented this, but the board game “Versailles 1919” is very similar to this concept, with players taking the roles of the great powers and dividing up territory to suit their goals. Similarly, there are a few options for most treaty points reflecting what some of the competing proposals were. Worth checking out if you’re a history nerd.
8:57 poor Czechoslovakia with bitten-off borders
I think it would be better looking if the northern parts weren’t taken from it, but anyway
Yeah man, basically same after Munich Agreement-Czechoslovakia wasn't even invited.
@@Husicka_ yeah and these borders were terrible, yet they didn't last for long
They would have looked even better if all of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia were retained by an independent Austria
Maybe but it does make it less likely for war to happen (maybe make the borders more defensive lines with culture has main priorities
Screw some line on a map honestly, if the people there want to be part of Austria then why force them to be a part of Czechoslovakia?
What were people's reasons behind their votes? Preventing WWII? Imposing reasonable, fair punishments without being blinded by vengeance? Making the most ridiculous map imaginable?
I think it's the third
I was hoping to delay war and avoid too much vengeance and...what have I done?!
not prventing ww2, but make ww2 end quicker, fascist france < nazi
probably all 3 lol
I ll tell you, it is the Myth that Germany started WW2 because of Versailles humiliation. So the guys are doing everything to appease Germany.
This was amazing, not the treaty I think it’s literal dogshit, but the video idea was amazing
Not trying to be antagonistic, but I'd like to ask you what a better treaty would be?
@@cosmosyn2514The one we actually got
@@cosmosyn2514 it depends, what you want in the end...
I believe the balanced treaty would be the best.
1. Alsace- Lorraine goes to France
2. Saar goes to France
3. Eupen- Malmedy divided between Germany and Belgium
4. Shleiswig- Holstein stays German.
5. Danzig stays German.
6.Poland receives Poznan, Katowice. Western Prussia is divided between Germany and Poland.
7. Austria is free to join Germany, Sudetenland gets a right of plebiscite.
8. Italy receives same territory as IRL plus city of Fiume.
9. Slovenia and Croatia are free to create their own country.
10. Serbia receives Bosnia- Herzegovina, Montenegro plus 1/3 of Dalmatia and Macedonia. ( saving Bulgaria- Serbian border of 1912)
11.Dobruja goes to Bulgaria.
12. Vojvodina divided between Hungary and Serbia. 13. Slovakia divided between Czechia and Hungary ( south and Ruthenia to Hungary)
14. Transylvania goes to Romania. With population swap.
15. Greece receives all Turkish land in Europe plus all islands including Cyprus, excluding Constantinople which would become international zone under control by League of Nations.
@@alexzero3736I noticed you skipped Britain. What would they get because without a doubt this treaty would be dead in the water without their signature.
@@doodlebug4360 oh. I just wrote what I would change, everything else same as IRL. Britain would still receive German colonies and middle East
its kind of crazy how awful some of the choices the voters picked were lol
Especially Austria uniting with Germany
@@Prxypad Its was the only reasonable choice. Germany was still in a far worse position then before the War. People are just looking braindead at a map and think "It got bigger so stronger, hehe".The real treaty pretty much created a Nation which could not survive on its own (Austria).
@@Mizzurani In the real World Austria survived 20 years and would have many more if it wouldn't have been annexed by Germany. The fictional treaty gave Austria even more industry than in the real world. People only *thought* it couldn't survive
@@Prxypad It struggled enormously especially feeding the gigantic Urban Population in Vienna, while it stabilized with great Effort it was absolutely not needed. Industry on Country Level yes, but geopolitical they would be completely isolated. Losing the only Ally and only getting the rump state of them is not winning or growing. People need to understand that owning Land is not always everything and its way more complicated then that. Preventing the Unification pretty much was self harming for the Allies. Because no Frenchman or Englishmen would be able to enforce that or even would want to die for that. The Problem of the Versailes Treaty was it was not realistically enforceable.
@@Prxypadhat actually almost happened irl, and was desired by the Austrians. It is one of the less ridiculous elements. Providing you don’t count the French and British never allowing it (as they did irl)
And when Germany and Austria united in 1938, they wanted to join Germant again lol
Problem with this treaty is that no one would have accepted it at the time. If they knew what was to come in the future maybe, but with no knowledge of Hitler, this would be seen as going easy. That is why, given the circumstances, Versailles otl was actually easy on the Germans
The Turkish - Tigerstarian War of Independence. Every 20 minutes
Boys: let's not punish Germany and hopefully they won't try to invade their neighbors again for the millionth time.
Men: let's permanently disband Germany and keep the newly independent states divided and harmless, sandwiched between a powerful France and powerful Poland that will see any attempt at reunification as a declaration of war.
the good timeline
The 'Vengeful Peace' ending.
based af
honestly if it'd happen then it'd be like the end of WWII was. Can't fight back if you're crippled beyond repair.
for the second time...
this was quite litteraly the first european war of a united germany
France invaded germany several times before and during the napoleonic age.
Do you want them dismembered?
that was imbossible anyways. Most likely results is a communist europe and a france that pushes its people past breaking point
But Germany rules!
One big problem: Poland without Gdansk/Danzig would suffocate economically without it. Each neighbour was in some kind of territorial conflict with Poland, international trade would really suffer. That's why when problems with trade in Gdansk arose in 20s, Poland builds entirely new port in Gdynia. I'm not sure if Poland almost without international trade would have enough economical strength to do it.
Poland did build it's own port on the Baltic during the interwar period though.
@@washingmachine6485 That makes no sense but ok. By that logic most of northern europe belongs to Germany because they are related to germanic tribes...
@@washingmachine6485es and older Pommeranian tribes are different to Poles.
But more directly, it makes no sense because in 1900 Danzig was 90% German, not Pommeranian. If you want to reduce who should own what down to “we or people we are related to owned it at some point” then you can literally justify any claim. European borders and ethnic groups have shifted a million times
Just say you want it for nationalist reasons instead of making up vague connection lol
@@washingmachine6485 well you do own Danzig so stop whining
@@washingmachine6485 They aren’t, the city was German and ethnically cleansed and then just resettled with Poles.
But I think you are aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed
idk why but the german border with czechoslovakia is making me cry
🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿
Because giving Hitler what he wants literally caused ww2.
Gotta love the isthmus of Moravia connecting Bohemia to Slovakia. Really makes Czechoslovakia look even more threatened than usual.
Basically every "Ugh, big Germany" map on r/imaginarymaps ever.
Not sure if the community likes Germany, or just really hates France.
I really like the concept although I wished the timeframe to vote was longer and an announcement video was made
I wasn't aware of the existence of this Survey and tbh Kinda wish I did because I would've loved to vote and participate on it. Pretty interesting results and would've definitely changed geopolitics at the time. I gotta say I hope you do more stuff like this in the future, I.E. votes on changing the maps of the world/territory partions in treaties. Perhaps a bit controversial but maybe you should do one where we get to determine the borders of post WW2 europe, that would be quite the interesting endeavor.
"Germany lost ww1 so it's obvious that they should gain more european territory than the entirety of the entente"
the map painters are at it again ...
1.
Treaties were not only about terriorials switches, but also about recompensations - mainly resources.
So France occupied Rhineland with other Allies. Then Ruhr Area.
Austria could (in this scenario) join Germany, but both need to pay recompenastions.
Allies could antagonize German states.
For example little recompensations from Bavaria, Hamburg etc.
and still harsh from Prussia.
Even partition it - revive of Hannover State, creation of Rhine Republic, Silesia and going on.
2.
Poland need access to port - in this case Gdańsk.
So Gdańsk could stay in Germany ( since 1871 / 1792 ),
but trade would be unresctricted like zero tariffs.
3.
What about different scenario of Russian Civil War ? :)
Why don't Poles just build their own port next to Danzig along the tip of their corridor?
@@NorthPoleSun
They build - from 0. It was just a village - 1,268 citizens in 1921.
Other coastal countries had developed ports. And not only 1.
With normal port Poland would have much better trade and would be far better developed.
This made hudge cost leaving other part of country in low development for ~15 years.
The country did not really start to develop until several years before the WW II.
War in which the Germans murdered 16% of Poles. Civilians. Children and women.
It must be also mentioned that Prussia / Germany simple STOLE city in 1793.
So it was less than 126 years.
I would love to see more videos like this where we get to vote on treaties.
If my private situation wasn’t as horrible as it is now then I probably would have been online enough to see you telling us to vote for outcomes, but still it was an great video with good information and hopefully this will get done for other wars too 💜
Are we surprised the internet chose to re-establish Greek Constantinople? 😄
Nope.
I’m happy that for once, a history youtuber say that Versailles treaty wasn’t that harsh
God that hungarian banat and suddetenland is really bordergore
land loss wise i agree, everything else.. too far
@@chinesetaxevader German reparations didn't even come close to making up for the actual material damage they did to France and Belgium, let be the human suffering.
@@asuka7309 the french shouldnt have gone to war then?
@@asuka7309really? so how come the German economy was so much more crippled than the French economy after the war?
Even though I know a lot of Austrians wanted to join Germany after ww1, I find it funny that a country that was basically formed in 1156, so 369 years older than the founding of Prussia, not even the unification where it would have been 715 years older, is questioned for it's independence. The main two factors for joining were that Austria was tiny and broke and the that they wanted to join their German brothers.I don't doubt that the majority of Austrians would have voted to join, but as a region in Germany I'm sure we would've developed an even stronger independence movement compared to Bavaria, since we would have been the only region in Germany that had one of the largest empires in Europe at the time.
Also us Austrians are closer to Bavarians than the northern germans, like how the German Swiss are closer to Vorarlberg and Baden-Wüttemberg than the rest. Also last thing, over the last 100+ years, we Austrians have developed a more independent identity, not in the sense that there wasn't on before, just that it got massively weakened by both world wars and a huge economic crisis. Austria joining Germany would be like saying Norway and Sweden should join.
Ps: Funny that the smaller country had a long lasting empire and not the big one.
Clinging on to past glory beyond what you were able to maintain is definitely something Germanic people tend to do
@@anon_148 true, but it is the first true unified German state after east Francia, and Germany is a result of Prussia.
@@sebe2255 Empires by themselves are the opposite of glory I agree, I was just looking at it historically. ps:ofc I have biases
@@Leo-gi7bg They could have shifted the capital to a more central city like Frankfurt that has no Prussian relation.
Germany is still split away from Prussia, Slovenia got annexed by Germany, czechoslovakia is in a miserable situation, Italy got even less territory. I think if germany was to start ww2 again, they would have even more allies and be more powerful thanks to this treaty.
Remember that when Czechoslovakia was created... no one asked the Slovaks... they got taken over by the Czechs.
Italy didnt deserve a thing.
@@trauko1388 Yeah totally, if instead it was Slovakoczechia everything would be different. Or just divide 'em up, not like they are so small they can't stand on their own against their foes.
Italy literally chose the fate of the war on their own by switching sides for the entente at the very start, France wouldn't be able to defend against 2 fronts of both German and Italian hordes, they barely held against just Germans in 1918, and that was with the support of Italian distraction against Austria Hungary.
@@prohacker5086 See 1940 to appreciate what Italy could have done against France in 1914...
I am pretty sure the "you are too small" was often used by the large powers to swallow up small nations...
@@anon_148bullshit, read a history book
@@trauko1388bs, read a history book
We need more like this! Great video! Keep it up!
Guys, you just causally gave away half of Slovenia (South Styria). And I thought we were friends 😭
Would like a new round of votes relating to alt history. Maybe a "i asked my youtube audience to decide imperial Japanese military policy" and see if Japan still ends up at war with the us
I did something like this in my Freshman history class
Britain annexed half of Germany and we made Germany pay 32 billion USD
Looking at the food those Brits eat, I'm not sure which is the worse outcome.
-(We all know it's the first one.)-
It would be very interesting to see someone continue this scenario to the end of an alternate WW2
Northeastern slovenia or (štajerska) was fought over in our timeline to stay slovenian so i'm surprised the same didnt happen here
I would be interesting to see this done again, but with large modern audiences from each of the treaty nations voting in blocks on the terms. Would be an interesting experiment to see what modern history and geography minded viewers from each involved country think now about the terms.
bro i love seeing the notification of your videos, the second i see them my day has been made. thank you for so many amazing videos
Great video! If you plan on doing something like this again it would be great if you showed the results of the vote in like a pie chart or something
It’s interesting that a lot of the underlying tension that our WW1 treaties created is still present. There is still a massive global power vacuum and self-determinism as a political principle is still taking a backseat to the Allies creating their own “concert of Europe”. (For example, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia’s existences are still purely arbitrary political constructs designed for European stability, despite their inherent internal instability.)
Some trivia: the League of Nations mandates were a result of negotiation between Wilson and Smuts (iirc). Smuts, being a colonial administrator in South Africa, wanted colonial annexation, while Wilson wanted League of Nations trusteeships (similar to Danzig). In OTL these mandates were supposed to be transitional governments until self-governance could be established (like the allied occupation of Korea post-WW2 or the occupation of Austria). I balk a bit at Hejaz being given independence while German colonial holdings were mostly annexed-in OTL it’d be one way or another.
/nerd rant over
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were absolutely logical.
According to the map at 8:36, the vast majority of ethnic Hungarian territories of the Szekely Land region within Romania are not given to Hungary, which effectively means that out of Romania the only territories granted are artificial ethnically Romanian borders right outside of the irredentist claim.
This was pretty cool, hope you'll do more. Either specifically expanding on this one or other post-war partitions
Maybe WWII would be started by the Allies in this timeline because of brewing resentment. Imagine going through all the fighting and Germany expands its territory by losing
I'd give all of Germany and Austria-Hungary to Poland
I'd just go for reinstating the commonwealth borders
Civil war speedrun
Most based Versialles treaty
thats prob not even that bad for the germans/austrians, they get to keep their people and borders united and dont have to pay war reperations
Poland can into space
Next we need a viewer decided Vienna Congress.
vienna was already perfect as could be, theres a reason it was called the "concert of europe"
@@ilect1690 I know but we must ruin it in another video like thus
@@ilect1690 it was so perfect that it started breaking down 15 years later while causing a surge of unrest in Central Europe.
all because the monarchs deciding the borders didn't give a damn about nations and anyone who wasn't a monarch, noble or clergyman (for a pretty good reason though)
Why though? Vienna Congress was very successful at maintaining peace for a long time.
@@wp9746 There was no major war until WW1, it was literally perfect for the time.
I like it, Poland got even more land ❤ Although Gdańsk was treated as a free city it was mostly under German control anyways so no loss here.
Giving the economically vital area of southern Silesia to Poland is rather cringe though, especially if Germany was to pay reparations in a timely manner. It's like burning your own money.
RUclips needs to improve its community feature
I hate always knowing about surveys when they're over ages ago
Would be cool and interesting to see the end of WW2 decided by the community. It's so interesting to me seeing what could have possibly happened back then.
“Somehow, Germany won the war.”
I'm proud to participate in this historical moment!
I'm Czech and one thing I believe should have been changed, in hindsight, is splitting Czechia from Slovakia there and then. Despite the similar language these are two separate countries, the only reason they were ever united is because some people thought they would each be too small on their own. As for the border regions, splitting them off is sort of justifiable, but Austria now having that mess of exklaves seems inconvenient. Either leave it Czech or unite the whole of Czechia with Austria.
It would even give cause for re-establishing Bohemia as an independent state. Hell even Bavaria has reasons for not unifying with Northern Germans.
That’s why Austria and Germany got to unite in this alternate history. Look at the map
@@TheRestedOne You know what let's just unite Bohemia and Bavaria and call it Beerland how about that!
@@albertpolak786You're genious. As a proud moravian (other part of czechia), i can say, that it would be nice to be independent from bohemians, even if we would be under slovakia
@albertpolak786 The idea would be to create a some what larger Austria-Czechia then? Which would I guess ideally due to that treat both peoples equally.
As a Turkish person I definitely, 100% enjoyed the part where people voted to do whatever that was to turkey and give my home İstanbul to the greeks❤
@@anveryperson7329 the actual irl treaty was rejected by us, and we soundly beat our enemies to cement it, do you really think this reality would be any different?
@@anveryperson7329 honestly it would shock me more if a turkophobe had a hint of intelligence, carry on
@@Yanate1991 Actually yes, Constantinople is way more Defendable then Smyrni, so the Greeks have a better chance here, no matter how ''clever or how tactical'' Kemal was.
@@yazovgaming aint gonna happen turkish national movement would easily defeat greeks in 3 years
Not having South Tyrol would have angered the italians, but having it given to Germany would have scared the hell out of them: a powerful Germany with a foot in Italy, with no buffer state (like Austria) and no natural defense (like the Alps of South Tyrol) in between.
Also what happened to the port city of Fiume?
6:27 This was a terrible horrible absolutely completely utterly cursed idea for a video. I love it.
Great video as always
yes
There’s no way you saw the whole thing yet🤔
The Hungary one is cursed. Why wouldn't people vote to get back Szeklerland, the most Hungarian area. It would be even more plausibble because it would have a direct connection to Hungary
Haha I remember doing this form a week ago.. super Hejaz was my favorite thing lol
8:37 That Northern Transylvania looks so weird without all of Szeklerland
The thing about WWI is that it was a meaningless war of imperialism justified with nationalism, so no country, victorious or defeated, _should_ morally have been punished, but they all should've replaced their governments. Unfortunately, most of them had both the cruelty and cunning to keep mutinies and, honestly, humanity in general suppressed. Just look at the Christmas Truce, and how officers on both sides made sure it never happened again, knowing that if the troops saw each other for the people they were. the illusion would break.
FUN ACTIVITY: Send that picture of Ottomans in 1920 to turkish nationalists for a very interesting reaction!
Their reaction en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence
FUN ACTIVITY: Send a picture of actual Turkish borders in reality to a cringe neckbeard for a very interesting reaction!
I’m a ‘Byzantiboo’ but even I know that this is fan fiction, this didn’t happen when UK wanted to make Istanbul into a Hong Kong city, it’s not going to happen in this scenario. The Kurdistan and Armenia borders are definitely not going to happen.
And if this did somehow occur, wait until a decade or two and then you’ll get the return of the Central Powers with a vengeful Turkey.
It’s like they forget that it’s not HOI4 where territory is automatically given up and has to be accepted.
Proof that people who watch history videos do not really understand history and fall into misconceptions, the reason WW2 alliances were shaped that way was the broken promises of Entente to Italy and the appeasement towards German re-armament and territorial expansionism. So to solve this, people decided to make Germany even stronger and deprive Italy of its few gains, also creating a very ugly Hungary. That will surely work well.
even though Italy definitely did deserve way more than this scenario gave them, I feel like Germany would have far less revanchism and thus be less likely to initiate conflict after this alternate end of WW1
If Hungary would have looked like this it would have been far more peaceful and would have made more of an effort to remain peaceful. A big part of Hungarian revanchism and one of the reasons why the communists came into power and started a war against Romania and Slovakia was fuelled by the large Hungarian populations lost to the emerging states.
There would have still remained a bitterness over territory, but without the Casus Belli of Liberation motivation for reconquest would have been low.
These borders resemble the agreements made with Germany during WW2, giving us historical precedent that the Hungary of back then would have been willing to live with that compromise.
@@bunniifangz Lmao No Hitler is almost certainly still coming to power, because "Revanchism" was only a tiny part of what fueled their takeover, which was in reality the economic and political turmoil which followed, which were unavoidable especially with an incompetent liberal free market government, the only thing this does is give the Germans a stronger economic base and a springboard headstart in to ww2 which in this world they would likely win or at least extend the war by a couple of years
@@bunniifangz Why can't you understand that revanchism was not the main reason for WW2 but appeasement, the treaty of Versailles was actually very reasonable, Germany lost but its colonies and populations were Germans constituted a minority, compare it with the terms of WW2 or even the Franco-Prussian war, it was not harsh at all. The reason WW2 started was that France and mainly Britain had no wish to enforce the terms of the treaty and allowed not only for Germany's re-armament but territorial expansion.
@@boomerix Hungary is pretty peaceful as it is today, although the Trianon treaty was a true butchering, I don't see how doubling the size of a small central European country would benefit peace in the area, if we are to give some concessions to Hungary, that would mainly be southern Slovakia and maybe parts of Transylvania, I don't see how reaching Belgrade would help that.
I will never understand why people wanted so bad to let Austria join Germany. This decision made the whole treaty unrealistic in my opinion. Also Hungary keeping North Transylvania except for the Szekely Land is funny
general kaiserbooism and wehrabooism in the historical community, that's just it really.
Very fun video and I liked that you gave the actual history and then what the alternative was voted for
This is probably my favorite video of yours that you’ve released in a hot sec, thanks for the awesome content!
Now let me decide the end of WW2!
Man, you need to post videos for people to answer forms. Community announcements are a terrible way to reach subscribers. I at least never see them.
Giving constantinople to Greece just shows our current day blind spots. People love thinking about a new Byzantine empire but realistically Istanbul is a huge city that is mostly Turkish, even back then. I doubt Greece would’ve even wanted it without expelling most of its population. Smyrna makes way more sense to give to Greece, it’s odd that people didn’t support that. And I’m also very surprised people still supported British and French imperial interests in the Middle East, considering the mess they create.
false, the Orthodox population was nearly as large as the Muslim population before WW1
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Istanbul
Istanbul was 50% Turkish at the time, with the Greeks forming an important minority in the city. Regardless, I'd doubt the Allies would allow a strategically important city like that to give to Greece.
Source: Mango, Andrew. Ataturk.
Also the whole thing about german austria: Not france, not britain, not poland would've accepted giving austria to germany. They lost, why should they get bigger than before? If you want to give austria to germany so bad, then just remove bavaria from the rest of germany and unite it with austria. This would've weakened germany severly. This might have been a more culturally accepted outcome, as to this day, autrians share more with bavarians than with germany per se.
@@bunniifangz Orthodox does not equal Greek
We need Cody to continue the story on this that would be such a fun video
Love this. Gotta do stuff like this with other wars. OR maybe we can remake American states or something like that. It’s very cool and fun that you did this though.