Are Germany's Borders Wrong?

A few weeks ago, a senior board member of the youth wing of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party caused some international controversy after posting a greater Germany map online. The post featured a map depicting a unified German state that absorbed Austria, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, even parts of France including the historically disputed Alsace and Lorraine. Also parts of Poland, even Italy and other neighboring European countries. Strauß accompanied the map Nationalist caption, German unity means a Germany that unites the entire German people in one state. He was apparently removed from his position in the party because of this. AfD, like any other far-right party, likes to hide their true motives and ideology until they reach power. But the logic behind the map made many go back to discussing whether Germany's borders are wrong or not. In the context of this series of videos that I've been making, it made sense to approach this topic too. A lot of people were returning to the debate of the lands they lost after WWI and WWII, as well as the discussion regarding the presence of German-speaking people in many of the modern surrounding countries. So are Germany's borders wrong today? I don't think so. I think Strauß's logic, if there is any present other than the wish to be controversial and talked about, relies on outdated maps, wrong statistics, and most of all, an ancient and wrong perception of what nationality consists of. People who claim Germany's borders are wrong will often pull out some old map and present it as proof of something having gone wrong or unfairly that cost Germany its true territory. Many want to get lost land back and while their loss back when it happened is debatable Millions of Germans outside their nation's borders and forcing them to relocate, the argument of this should be German because Germans live there is no longer valid today. Some others point to areas right next door, to the modern borders, where local populations speak German, like Austria, parts of Switzerland and Luxembourg, even a little bit of Belgium, and argue that these places naturally belong under one single country. At first glance, these ideas can sound convincing to anyone who enjoys neat lines on a linguistic map. However, the story usually goes that every country ought to match its language or that old imperial boundaries carry some eternal right that modern peace treaties had no business erasing. But when you look at the real history of how Europe developed, why those lands were never grouped together in the first place or why they were lost and how modern nations actually Actually, function the whole worldview. I would argue that modern Germany's borders are not a mistake, they are the direct outcome of centuries of political choice, devastating wars started by the German regimes and legal settlements designed to prevent Europe from tearing itself apart ever again. And while they may have been a little unfair to the people that lived in the regions back then, the truth is, Europe has enjoyed what is arguably the longest lasting peace of its history since World War II. Whenever we dive into a Complex. Historical or geographical issue. I think there's always an added layer of deeper context that is waiting to be sort of unpacked. But whether you're trying to learn more about something you already know a little about, if you're trying to learn a new language, maybe get into math or prepare for a test or an evaluation that you have coming up, doing it by yourself can be And that's where the sponsor of today's video, Wyzant, comes in. Wyzant is the largest tutoring marketplace in the US. 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Plus, they offer a good fit guarantee if your first hour with a new tutor isn't the right match. If you're looking to invest in yourself, investing in learning is the best option and one-on-one guidance is the best way to do it. So if you're interested, visit wyzant.com through the link in the description and find your perfect tutor today. To break down why this idea of expanding Germany is wrong, at least today, we first need to look at what these people are actually claiming and what reasoning they use. The claims usually fall into two main categories. The first one is based on language and culture, and the argument is pretty simple, if people speak German, they should be a part of a German state. This is the old pan-German idea that started gaining steam in around the 19th century. Under this logic, Austria is usually the primary target. Proponents argue that Austrians share a common culture, they speak German dialects, and were a part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation for hundreds of years. So, the claim goes... Keeping Austria separate is artificial. Of course this is a bit of picking and choosing, because language is being used as the defining factor. One could very easily use, for instance, religion, and make the opposite argument that Austria should be able to annex all of southern Germany because All Catholics should be united under one nation. Using that same linguistic logic, some go even further. They look at German-speaking cantons of Switzerland, the tiny Principality of Liechtenstein, the German-speaking community in East Belgium around Eupen and Malmedy, and the autonomous province of South Tyrol in Northern Italy. In the most extreme versions of this line of thought, people even reach into Alsace and parts of Lorraine in France, pointing out that regional dialects there, like Alsatian and Moselle-Franconian, developed from Germanic roots. The justification offered in all these cases is ethnic and linguistic. The belief that state borders must follow the boundaries of the language, but the interpretation of what constitutes language proximity seems to be conveniently bent to recover specifically desired territories. The second category of the claims doesn't rely on language today, but on history and lost territory. And before we counter the first one, I want to look at this too. These claims look to the east, across the Oder and Neisse rivers. Before 1945, a large chunk of what is now West and North Poland, along with the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, was a part of Germany. This included East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, parts of Brandenburg, people who They point out that Germany, having been united under Prussian leadership, was actually born in these areas, that Konigsberg was the seat of early German power and that the nation's birthplace rightfully belongs to them today. They also state that these territories were recognized as a part of Germany under international law for generations, particularly before World War II. For them, the loss of these lands at the end of the war is seen as an historic injustice or temporary occupation that ought to be set right. A smaller related claim also targets lands that were lost after World War I under the Treaty of Versailles. That treaty transferred areas like the Polish Corridor and already parts of Upper Silesia to the newly reborn Poland it returned Alsace-Lorraine to France, handed northern Schleswig to Denmark after a vote, and also put the port of Danzig and Memel region under special international set-ups. People who make these arguments claim that Versailles, especially, was purely punitive, a dictated peace designed to weaken Germany rather than reflect fair boundaries. While there may be some truth to that, even though I disagree with the generalization, It was still a consequence of Germany's actions and A result of local choices. And also the argument of weakening Germany might be valid for after WWI, but after WWII, definitely not. There were many proposals, like the Morgenthau plan proposed by one of the US's government figures that would have severely weakened Germany even further. And it becomes clear that that wasn't the point of the allies, it was to preserve peace in Europe. So now let's go back to the first argument of the places they want to annex today. Even though they never had them. Why were these places never part of a single German nation in the first place? Or the ones that they had, why were they lost? Because while the argument for lost lands has a little bit of logic, the one for linguistic unity fails when presented with the fact that these lands evolved into different nations throughout history, and the question being made now by some radical politicians has been made for centuries already. To understand why places like Austria and Switzerland were never permanently bundled into modern Germany. We can go back to how Germany was actually united, because for most of European history there was no single German country, there was the Holy Roman Empire which was a loose grouping of hundreds of different princes, dukes, free cities, stretching across central Europe. The Swiss cantons broke away early and built their own confederation, developing a strong tradition of local self-rule and neutrality that had nothing to do with building an imperial German monarchy, and they set off on their own course. cultural identity. By the 19th century, when nationalism started pushing people to unify, two rival powers dominated the German-speaking world. Catholic Austria, led by the Habsburg dynasty, and Protestant Prussia, led by the Hohenzollerns. This rivalry created what was famous back then, too. It was called the German question. Should a unified Germany include Austria, the greater German solution, or should they Should they leave them out? The lesser German solution. Austria had a vast empire that stretched far beyond its German-speaking core. It included millions of Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Croats, Italians. If Austria joined Germany it either had to bring all those non-German lands with it, which Prussian leaders did not want, or it had to break its own empire apart, which of course the Habsburgs flatly refused to do. And this was settled back then. In 1866, Prussia and Austria fought a short, decisive war. Prussia won and pushed Austria out of German political affairs for good. When Otto von Bismarck finally unified Germany in 1871, he deliberately built the new German empire around Prussian dominance, leaving Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg outside of it. When Austria's multi-ethnic empire finally collapsed at the end of World War I in 1918, A rump Austrian state did try to join Germany, but the Allies forbade it in the peace treaties because they didn't want Germany grown even larger after losing the war. It was only in 1938 that Nazi Germany forced an annexation, the Anschluss, but there wasn't a peaceful coming together, it was a takeover, backed by military threats, but it wasn't Propaganda, internal agitation, and authoritarian force. When the Nazis fell in 1945, the Allies separated Austria again, and the 1955 Austrian State Treaty legally bound them to remain independent and neutral, forever barred from reuniting with Germany. And, sure. You can argue that there was outside action to prevent this from happening, but I'm fairly certain that if a referendum was held today, Austria's century-old culture prior to that temporary unification with Germany would triumph and Austrian people today would choose to keep their sovereignty. The story of lost eastern territories is, I would say, even more direct. They were lost because Germany launched brutal wars of aggression and total conquest. It might have been unfair to the German people that live there, sure, but the German state can't complain of something that is the result of their own actions. Plus, it's not like these areas were permanently and forever inhabited by the German people. They were at that time, but previously they were inhabited mostly by Slavic people. It was only at the time of the German migration east that German people moved in, one could argue, also temporarily. In the 1930s and 40s, the regime used the existence of German minorities in neighbouring states as an excuse to break treaties and grab more land. They claimed that the German people were also a people without space who needed Lebensraum or living space in Eastern Europe. This wasn't just a tiny border adjustment, the regime planned to seize the lands of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus And even Russia all the way up to the Urals. Wipe out or expel tens of millions of Slavic people and replace them with German settlers. It's quite interesting, honestly, how it went from we need this land because there are Germans there to we need this land so that Germans can move there to whoops we lost the original land we had because we were completely insane and tried to conquer all of Europe so now we ended up with even less. I think maybe the radicals who propose further annexations today should remember where the end result might be and reconsider. Because of the German regime's actions during World War II, upon their defeat, the Allies decided that Germany's eastern border would be moved back to the Oder-Neisse line. This decision shrank Germany by roughly 25% compared to its 1937 borders. The Soviet Union took northern-east Prussia, turning the city of Königsberg into Kaliningrad. The rest of East Prussia, along with Silesia, Pomerania and East Brandenburg was handed over to Poland to compensate for their losses to the USSR in the east. To prevent future minority disputes and eliminate any future German pretext for invasion, millions of ethnic Germans living in these eastern provinces, as well as Czechoslovakia and Hungary, were expelled and moved into post-war Germany. And so, why is the logic of modern revanchists and border revisionists wrong? I think we already understood why German-speaking countries or regions didn't join Germany in the first place, but here's why I don't think they should join it today either. I think the fundamental assumption that language must define state borders is deeply flawed. Language doesn't equal national identity. Just because two people speak the same language does not mean they want to share a government, pay taxes to the same capital, or belong to the same state. Look at Austria and Switzerland. Austrians have spent The decades since 1945 developing a very proud national identity that is completely separate from Germany and they had spent centuries doing it before 1938. They're Austrian, not German. Switzerland is a multilingual confederation where German speakers exist, sure, but alongside French, Italian and Romansh under institutions also built for over hundreds of years. Swiss German speakers have, I think, zero desire to dissolve their country and join Berlin. Their political loyalty is to the Swiss federal state The same applies to the regions of Alsace, in France, South Tyrol, in Italy. While people in Alsace may speak, maybe they even understand German dialects, they're French citizens with deep ties to the French Republic. In South Tyrol, a pretty robust system of local autonomy guarantees the German-speaking population their cultural and linguistic rights within Italy, meaning there's no practical reason to upend peaceful borders, not to mention the fact they're more connected with Austria than they are to Germany, even. Treating every German speaker across Europe as someone who secretly wants to be ruled by Berlin is pure fantasy that completely ignores what those people actually want. Plus, the historical claim to the Eastern Territories is blind to the consequences of war. You can't launch an unprovoked war of annihilation, murder millions of people, try to erase your neighbors from the map, lose that war completely, and then turn around decades later and complain that the peace settlement was unfair. The loss of East Prussia, Silesia and other territories was the direct result of their aggression, and those borders were redrawn specifically to break Prussian militarism and provide security for Poland and Central Europe. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, the demographic reality on the ground has changed completely. When the German populations were expelled after 1945, these lands were repopulated by millions of Polish and Soviet citizens, many of whom had themselves been displaced too from territories further east. Finally, the entire premise of needing larger borders now misses how Europe works in the modern world. The old imperial mindset assumed that a nation nation could only be strong, prosperous, and secure if If it physically owned vast farmland and natural resources within its own military perimeter, that was the logic behind 19th century imperialism and that dark insanity of Lebensraum. Today, Germany is one of the most prosperous and influential economies on earth already, without controlling a single piece of land beyond its borders. It achieved that wealth through open trade, advanced manufacturing, peaceful diplomacy, and European integration. Within the European Union and the Schengen area, European borders are open for people, goods, and ideas to move freely. A German citizen can travel, work, even buy property and live in Austria or those lost lands in Poland or Alsace, anywhere else in the European Union, really, without needing a passport or firing a single shot to claim it for his country.