The Hegemony of Germany — What Defeat Would Cost
I forget where I came across this French propaganda map, but it's quite interesting. It's from early in the war, Turkey does not seem to have received any spoils of war, while Italy — still presumed part of the Triple Alliance — has received some of the territory it was yearning for.
A few interesting details.
1. Austria-Hungary gets Ireland and Moscow. Why would they want either of them?
2. It is assumed that the victorious Central Powers would respect the sovereignty of the neutrals. (I wonder?)
3. France is left a bit of the Pyrenees to chew on, and the Romanovs get to keep a re-shaped Crimea.
4. Germany gets to colonize Great Britain and, apparently, fold Finland into Greater Germany
5. I really wish the cartographer had shown the rest of Russia out to Siberia. Imagine the tottering Dual-Monarchy trying to manage the entire Asian land mass.
An interesting map. Seeing that Germany would demand not Britain itself, but most of her colonies was a German demand if they won the war and perhaps the Royal Navy. Would Austria really want Ireland in light of the troubles Britain had governing it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a map of MittelEuropa the setting up of which remained a war aim for the Germans from September 1914 to October 1918.It would have a shared common currency, be border free and run for the benefit of German and Austro-Hungarian industry, that of the Allies being destroyed and the populations of those countries which had opposed the Central Powers living under subjugation.
ReplyDelete( The African colonies of Great Britain, France and Belgium were to form a similar African super state, to be called MittelAfrika.)
This idea was the seed from which, sixty years later, the European Union would grow!
See See: Fritz Fisher, "Germanys aims in the First World War".