The Insane Plan To Divide Europe in 1920 - The Central European Union 

Well I refuse to believe this is a serious proposal. It still seems more like a April fool's joke. So in this light you can certainly find a lot of proposals of this kind on the Internet.

2:24 it's not an alternative version. "Kehrseite" means, that it's the back of the flag.

Well, if you want me to, I will construct one very quickly... just tell me 'how' crazy you like it and I'll try my very best 😅😇

United States of Greater Austria

did they try to create a new Moscow out of Europe?))))

The loss of live would be comparable to WWII, but streched out over decades instead of condensed into half of one.

The Europeans did the borders for Africa how they are in Europe with homogeneous States reaching to geographical barriers . The problem is that Africa was far to ethnically diverse , and Africa had no concept of a state before hand. So the memes are smooth brain af as they make no sense , they would be the same.

Fr

@@micheal6898 there were quite a few formal kingdoms and states in Africa that still got colonized and lumped in with other groups because you can’t expect an entire continent that’s as diverse as you say to somehow share the exact same level of political understanding or civil development like it was a small place or something

@@RHR199X the kingdoms of africa had no concept of nationalism during colonialism while all other modern states borders where drawn up on it . its no wonder why they got it wrong they had nothing to go in , no formal borders , no religion , nobody to say what it should be.

When i heard it was austrian, i knew it would be similar to austria hungary

First thing I saw as italian and that made me lough hard af

@@MIIRBH yep 😂

@@damedikid387 esatto stessa reazione

@@Ario_111 though i did not realise it would be much worse

Worked so good when they did it abroad, why not bring it home? 😂

@@nifaso Hungary was working well within its thousand years old borders before it was cut into pieces even if the official hungarian policy was anti-hungarian pro-german, after that it didn't worked anymore because of its borders.

That's fucking bullshit. That's not what causes Africa's problems.

@@nifaso You definitely cannot compare the cases of the US and Canada borders and the Middle East and Africa ones. The US and Canada have pretty much the same culture, the natives were sadly exterminated or forced to live inside tiny reservations, while the rest of both countries were historically dominated by white anglosaxons or white germanics, which are pretty similar groups of people in a certain way. In the other hand, you have cases like the Tuareg people which historical territory is now divided between 6 countries, or like Kurdistan, a nation with a pretty different culture than turks and arabs but forced be part of their states all thanks to the french and the brits.

Not to mention no regard for geography. Yeah, just ignore all rivers and mountains and have provinces cut in half by the Alps.

Funny that you mentioned Bavaria. I always thought it should be separate country, then we would have Austria-Bavaria-Czechia. Your European ABC :D

Crazy ideas abound... The only constant in any equation is the human misery ( wars)!

@@PolecanePC they are Germanies California

So something like post-ww2 SS proposal for Federated States of Europe, where big states like Germany/France are broken into small ethnic-culture groups like bavarian or Britton or Welsh. That work under one federal goverment. I think that proposal was called "L'Europe des ethnies".

Yeah but no you aren’t splitting France

Well, Paraguay's flag too has two different-looking sides

The former Soviet Union had a two-sided flag the front was the one we know while the back was just straight red, but no one really cared about this

@@J.o.s.h.u.a. and the Soviet Union and its SSR also have a front and back side Tbf the back side is just the front side without Hammer and Sickle

Ah okay! Thank you.

Also Oregon, I think some Central American country has one too... flags are weird and beautiful 👍

Bring back? Spread them across Europe

@@cockneyse Yeah, I think someone forgot to tell Serbia that it's over.

👀

@@songcramp66 what's a Serbia?

@@DragonTheOne That's exactly what most Europeans were asking on the eve of world war one.

But we can be thankful that Austria was defeated in the war. Another insane Austrian showed what you can do with absolute power: Adolph hitler.

@@Joanna-il2ur *Adolf

@@Joanna-il2ur Actually the exact opposite is the case and this in multiple ways. The first thing is, if Austria (or more precise Austria-Hungary) would not have been defeated in WW1, this means that Germany also would not have been defeated. This means both emperors would have kept their jobs and the Nazi party would not have risen to power. In addition there would also very likely have been not communist Russia. The Central powers were like the Allies enemies of the communists and wanted to crush them if possible. In contrast to the Allies to handle this, as they not only had a direct land border but already had occupation troops in western Russia at the end of the war. No Hitler and maybe no Stalin seem to be a net positive for me. The second thing is that even if the German government would have been toppled and the Nazi would have risen to power it would have been almost impossible to start WW2 for them. The reason they could do it in the first place was because Austria and Czechoslovakia on their own had not the means to stop Germany in 1938/39. If Austria-Hungary would still have existed Germany that would have been basically impossible. Although Austria-Hungary in a direct conflict would have most probably lost (like in 1866) it would have been a much bigger enemy and the risk that France and the UK would have intervened would have been too big, that Germany would have tried something. Even in reality Hitler was prepared to back out if France and the UK would have stood their ground when Germany annexed Austria and the Sudeten. In addition only the weapons and manpower seized from Austria and Czechoslovakia made it possible to increase the strength of the Wehrmacht that it dared to go to full scale ware with Poland in 1939.

@@Joanna-il2ur Adolph? Adolph Hytler 💀

@@Pigen_ La Chute VS Le Prénom ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-12SS5fEYy54.html

Thank god for Tolkien

I see no objection

One possibility to counterweight the eastward expansion of the EU would be to move the capital as far west as possible. Porto maybe, or Galway.

@@nlpnt To be extra annoying do it like South Africa and have the parliament in one place, the supreme court in another and the President in yet another. Send the president to Ponta Delgada, the Parliament to Reykjavik and the Supreme court to Galway

We need to know more about those Titcoins.

@@nlpnt Porto. I am sure Galway is fine, but if we are implementing my delusion, it has to be Porto.

Came here to say this, thank you.

Indeed, and the French Basque and the Bretons can just get bent, amirite? 😜

@@wtrmute Like a true coloniser, the dude probably didn't even know these groups of people existed. 😂

I'm impressed they remembered the magyars

@@donpollo3154 Well he was Austrian, their conflict was quite well-known...

@@chemicalfrankie1030 and it all broke down

@@chemicalfrankie1030 And it broke apart because of that

@@chemicalfrankie1030 It would have broken apart no matter what, WW1 just ended it much quicker. And it is still bizarre and utterly stupid, no matter what

@@Dr.Leymen And what is your BETTER proposal, so we can laugh ridicule it! A marriage of 2 people cant even stay united these days, let alone nations of 100,000's or even millions of people! There are NO good solutions, simply varying degrees of BAD solutions! Name me ONE nation that wouldnt divide itself now, if it were permitted to?

@@chemicalfrankie1030 there were no "united" cultures, if you weren't german or hungarian you were considered filth.

and Norway, Sweden & Denmark, ...

except for the 'magyars'. we're alone :(

yeah, it would be super unfair

*Sad Balt, Celt, and Basque noises*

so germans

Yeah, well. That kind of thinking was pretty prominent back then. Just look at the african/middle eastern borders the french and british drew. Insane is putting it mildly.

I agree! I really hope that it was some type of satire or just a way of getting a message across by being so absurd that people would pay attention to the idea of a united Europe.

Why? This would be a Chance of overcome national identity

@@chemicalfrankie1030 guy who wrote this comment never sayd that dividing Germany was good, he just sayd that the guy who came up with plan that is talked about in the video was mentally ill + there is diffirence between dividing country that caused unimaginable suffering and started war and lost it and brtween dividing entire continent and expecting poeple to forget their national identity just beacuse of peace

@@steffenronsch8881 National identity is good thing

Balts are part of slavic language family except Estonia, who are finno ugric.

@@jhutt8002 Balts are not a part of slavic branch, we were together thousands of years ago until slavs split from balto-slavic. Now we speak completely different languages

@@LTFaust Sorry. I meant balto-slavic family, not slavic branch.

Sure. I fully believe the Dutch would have loved (is the sarcasm obvious enough?) to be lumped into one category with the Germans. Same for French and Italians, or Swiss and ... pretty much anyone else.

@@ospero7681 It's just based on main language families around Europe.

Really do explain please...its new to me

It's not just the arbitrary borders, but the complete indifference to actual geography. Even assuming that the different ethnic groups in each canton would be reconciled to each other, the map ignores problems like transport networks, rivers, valleys, mountain ranges etc... that people depended upon for their livelihoods and lives. Local governments would be impotent at managing and apportionment of these resources. The result would be a highly centralized government with dictatorial powers presiding over powerless and isolated communities. One man's Utopia is generally everyone else's Dystopia.

If I remember correctly the point is every canton have the same population. This is 1920 not 2020.

@grofvolkoren: surely not. Berlin was the biggest industrial hotspot city in Europe and had continued to be a magnet.

Oops, already mentioned in another comment. Forget mine. 🙄

Well spotted

Or Lebanon and it's a mess 😅

tbf I dont think a plan that includes a Canton with the conservative german bastion of Prussia under the name Warszawa together with a polish majority under a mixed franco- Italo-Romanian Garrison cares what the nationalities think

True, also the Germans who were living all over eastern Europe weren't displaced yet.

No, French was the most common second language in Europe.

What country are you from?

Maked no sense what you are saying

And that's where german language knowledge would come in handy... look at the map again, you might see a coloured cannon in each segment of the circle. And in the Legend in the right lower corner you can see each cannon colour meaning one of the 4 ethnicities he mentioned. And the Word "Besatzungstruppen". This word means "occupying forces". So in each segment it seems, there would be troops from a different language and culture to the segment. I would guess he intended them to be unbiased and thus able to keep peace and order between the cultures inside the segment.

Yes but there was a brick wall

What

would be a nice tv show tho

I'm often baffled as how european colonial empires divided colonial territories/settlements, some countries still fighting over disputed borders drawn during British Empire to this day (some just because the maps used to make those borders were wrong/incomplete..) but then again it reminds me that stuff like Brexit passes with little foresight because many those who voted for it had all their own ideas of how it should unfold and none agreed for how it should happen. Which is a bit of the usual "get the pitch out first, figure out the rest later".

I'd just like to know why anyone would want to go to such lengths to "save" the UK (which in this case, somehow also involves annexing Ireland and Brittany). What is the significance of all of those particular regions? Why wouldn't a union with the rest of Europe make more sense? It's like if I drew a random circle in the middle of Europe that cut through a bunch of different countries and peoples and declared it Circleland and expected everyone to be proud Circlelanders all of a sudden anbd agonised over how to save Circleland... Circleland is a silly notion because there are no such real, legitimate things as "Circlelanders", just like the UK...

@@Whelknarge Im not sure I understand your conundrum here? Do you know just how Old the UK in fact is? It wasnt just recently cut. Generations have come and gone under this unity. They have largely been separated from Europe thanks to the channel. The UK & France were mortal enemies for centuries! Having the UK be stand-alone makes more sense than a European Union! With ALL the issues facing the EU its amazing it still stands! Having Russia invade Ukraine actually seems like a uniting event for the EU, especially when most EU countries have an anti-EU party that seems to be gaining in power. Had Marine Le Pen won in France, she would have started the ball rolling for a Frexit!

Western Europeans make me anti EU with their woke BS.

this is exactly what middle east (arabic world) is and they seem to be doing well

@@bruhmcchaddeus413 i disagree with you that... why... sure borders in africa and the arabic world are mostly without any real knowledge or consideration of ethnic, culture or other differences drawn by european masters then... We can see a lot of trouble in Africa cause of this or that people are divided in three or more states, in one they are a large minority in the other a nuisance... in one state there are respected and in the other there are seen as waste... The difference between Africa and Middle East? Stability... We have in Africa less of it, Leaders and goals come and go... Middle East, where to Look? Syria? A manic Tribe is ruining the whole Country in a bloody civil war, just to make this or that on behalf of a foreign nation. Iraq, Would have goddam Bush Jr. made only one war to lose, Saddam would still block and kill any opposition (ISIS, ever heard, Kurdistan?) Iran, (Not exactly middle East but also drawn with ruler, a solid power block of religious leaders incarcerating every spark of Opposition) Saudi Arabia, didn't they war with Yemen? Israel and Palestine??? Do i need to mention that really? I forget to mention a few, did not include Turkey which is also not exactly middle east but also a country with ruler drawn borders in the east.... and then there were the Kurds, and also the Aghet... so where you see with ruler drawn Borders there is no Problem? thats just a handfull of which i just find in 5 min thinking....

I totally agree. His job is fantastic! I have learned so much over all the videos he has uploaded. One of the best channels on RU-vid by far. Haters generally speaking do nothing. Their chosen job is criticizing. I ignore them.

Wow imagine being so frail you can't handle constructive criticism. He makes horrible mistakes almost every video, when your job is informing people, it's bare minimum to not give people disinformation. He also terribly mispronounces almost any name, never tries to do a simple Google translate voice to see how he should pronounce it, and somehow 99% of videos turn into talks about Portugal. Yes, we get it, he's Portuguese

@@joschmo4497 If you don’t like his videos and or everything else, it is easy: don’t watch it. Period. It is so easy to criticize. If you think you think you can do it better, go ahead and get your RU-vid channel. Yeah, you are indeed a Jo Schmo.

No, the word state comes from french and describes more the unity of a land through common administration. It is more a question of power. It never meant nation. Why do you think in the late 19th century the concept of nation-states came out and everyone wanted each nation to be independant with its own state? Because these are different things.

That isn't a terribly helpful explanation because the word "nation" itself can mean lots of things, from "ethnicity" to "political entity with a territory and a government".

Well and the additional meaning of that is "states" as in subnational jurisdictions are supposed to be at least partially sovereign. The US has a dual sovereignty system where both the Federal and State governments are supposed to be sovereign within their own domains. FDR eroded this somewhat, and we're starting to see travesties like declaring anything horrific or apparently racist "terrorism" to justify the Federal government having a murder law (a movement that in turn was inspired by the Emmett Till case as a sneaky way to get around double jeopardy), but that is the legal theory and at least the de jure law.

@@OneSeasonMan To some extent, the European Union attempting to do something like that with the EU Human Rights Court & similar entities in the first decade of the 2000's is what lead to Brexit and other anti-EU nationalist movements.

@@alexanderfretheim5720 exactly. I considered mentioning state sovereignty when I posted but left it out because it's such a misunderstood concept. Glad you mentioned it.

Agreed.

​@@chemicalfrankie1030 have you watched the video? post-ww2, they broke up a single country into quarters, the same with austria, which reunited much earlier here they just said 'fuck it' and cut the whole continenent into slices, with no regards for culture, language, ethnic tensions (which caused ww1 in the first place) the division of the rest of europe that wasn't part of the megacountry was also dumbly divided and the flag was stupid...

@@cfgp Didn't Europe do this with Africa though?

@@Anonymous-df8it yes they did it was also dumb

@@cfgp *continent

Every single time.

Germany borders nine (9) countries. Each of these countries has has a non-German official language except Austria, but some of the countries have more than one (1) official language. How would you like to count them? 🙂

indonesia and papua new guinea have hundreds of languages

@@Cowboy-in-a-Pink-Stetson the Swiss also has German as one of their languages

@@rydhn2102 Official though? Like Africa has hundreds of languages too but only a few official languages and if you count all the languages with only a few hundred speakers than the Americas also have tons.

the uk has 6? english, scottish, welsh, irish, cornish and what else?

If you wanna see more insane shit peddled by absolute idiots, here's some: Draining the Mediterranean Sea to increase land mass, creating a pan-slavic state encompassing Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine and Belarus. Ruled by Moscow of course. Or how about the Anglo-French Union proposed during WWII? There's a reason EU-integration takes literal ages.

I really liked making this video and looking into the topic! I'll try to look for more similar ones

I've often thought it would've made more sense, after WW1, to take land instead of money from Germany. The problem with monetary reparations is they pit the government (which is collecting the reparations) against the people, thus making the state the enemy of its people and leading to its ultimate downfall, while also empowering radical candidates like Hitler who would be especially energetic and effective at bringing about such a downfall. Instead, if you took all of Germany's coastline and gave it to other nations, a landlocked Germany would be unlikely to be able to cause later trouble since it would rely on another nation to carry its sea trade. Schleswig-Holstein was conquered by Germany in a war only a little less than 100 years before WW1, so returning that to Denmark would've been easy, and then to the west, Hanover-Oldenburg (mostly conquered from Victoria's cousin around the same time) could've become the new Duchy of Hanover in the UK and a fifth continental nation of Great Britain, while to the East, Mecklenburg could be divided between Poland, Denmark and maybe (just to keep it sufficiently divided and not too big for those two to handle) a small central borderland ruled by the USSR under communism as Socialist Mecklenburg. Denmark would've used the Great Depression to entice Norwegian and Danish Americans to settle in Schleswig-Holstein, helping to offset its large German population, and also would've used various subtle punitive measures to harass and subdue its German population, gradually decreasing it. "East Prussia" could be made to become an independent country of Pomerania, while Danzig could've been given to the USSR as a socialist experiment. The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Belgium would've received the valuable Rhine Valley with its coal deposits, taking an important navigable river reasonably close to the sea away from Germany and also awarding these fighters of WW1 with territory. China would've had Tsingtao returned to it, and the US, which didn't receive any of Germany itself, would've gotten its South Pacific Islands, with the exception of German New Guinea, which would be given to the Japanese. Western Samoa would've been joined with American Samoa to become the singular US State of Samoa in the 1920's, before Hawaii and Alaska were even states, and Ford and Boeing would've built assembly plants there. Italy and Montenegro already took the coastline of Austria. Meanwhile, Japan's New Guinea would've been used as a launchpad from which to destabilize the Dutch East Indies, for the purpose of creating a Japanese-allied Indonesia, essentially a Japanese analogue of the American relationship with Saudi Arabia. German Africa would've still gone to the British, with the exception of Cameroon, which would've become French. Similarly, the traditional greek towns on the Aegean coast of Turkey would've been given to Greece.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_United_States_of_Europe,_A_Eurotopia%3F

@@Finckelstein Because western Europeans are woke cucks who make it difficult for the rest of us to wanna form any sort of union?

Yeah he was in support of it!

No, it shouldn't. There are about 27 official languages in the EU If for some reason we all had to learn a single language, just make it Spanish. It's simple, it wouldn't offend anyone and it's easy to speak. Why make up an entire language that is mostly romance anyway?

@@joschmo4497 there are 24 official languages because every memberstate was allowed one. Malta chose Maltese, Ireland chose Gaeilge, Luxemburg did not claim one. English, German and French are "more equal than the other languages", and many dozens of languages native to europe are not EU-official. Esperanto was never meant to be anybody's single language. It was meant to be people's shared SECOND language. The point is that it isn't anybody's ethnic/national language, and that it is a lot easier to learn than any national language. Esperanto is clearly not "mostly romance" if you look at the structure: no grammatical gender, no 6 finite forms per tense, no irregular verbs.. way more prefixes and suffixes than any romanic language. A nice chunk of the vocabulary stems from Germanic languages

@@ronaldonmg It simply isn't easier than say Spanish, you can tell me all about what it aims to be, but that's not what it is. It's ridiculous anyone could suggest a made up language is easier to learn than an existing language with the same level of grammar complexity, just by the virtue of existing community and materials it's easier to learn Spanish. I don't care about native speaker issue, Spanish is a major global language and in Europe it has an advantage of not having beef with pretty much anyone the way German, French and English do. The point is that Esperanto has mostly vocabulary based on Romance language, so it's a BS argument that it's not anybody's ethnic/national language. Where's the Slavic vocabulary? Sure don't see it being represented, yet Slavs are the most populous of Europeans. So there's already favoritism of Romance branch and nothing you say changes that. Dude miss me with that shit, it's mostly Romance with some Germanic. Where's Slavic representation? That's majority of Europeans ignored. Everything you argued for holds no water just by pointing that out.

@@joschmo4497 Esperanto does contain slavic words. Check out "prava" which means "right" and come from Russian. The case for esperanto as a world (or european) second language is deeper than just "it's easier" (and yes, it is easier to learn than spanish, because it works like a lego game systematically, like no other language). Using esperanto would means than every other language is equal, it would save time, it would save money, it would means standing up for any national (or even regional language), it would mean even out th differences between english natives and non-english native who have to dedicate time, money and energy to learn it. There is a very interesting study called the Grin report (does'nt exist yet on english wikipedia, but I think that it will be soon translated), made out by a french economist 20 years ago. He points out how teaching and using esperanto in Europe could save time and money, and also evening the power that english has now to being equal to any other language. I hope that I make enough sense, english is not my mother tongue :)

Its funny. As Czech we belive thet we are at the center of Europe.Base of geo location.

As an esperantist I would enjoy Fina Venko (Final Victory) of the language.

It is an actual poll of Eurobarometer though and I wouldn't question its representativeness. Poland has one of the highest pro-EU support in the union, so it'd be also logical. The foreign control in the past was forced, but a voluntary joining could be perceived in another way

@@levocetirizini This this is much nuttier than the EU though. And it was made literally only 2 years after we got our independence back

State and country are synonyms pretty much everywhere outside of like America and Mexico (and possibly some others). I.e. 'a Jewish state'

TBH the Austrian elite had transformed Pre-WW1 Vienna into a bubble of luxury that was miles above the income levels the majority of their subjects were capable of earning. The cartographer that drew up this map was highly sympathetic to the Hapsburgs and the A-H aristocracy.

no it would have not ditched it. Kalergi was a Austria Hungary citizen afterall

when the time traveller moves a chair

Nah the EU only happened because the US was tired of our bullshit and wanted us to behave.

ikr, there was a serious chance for Esperanto to be the language of the League of Nation but the reprezentant of France wanted France to be the language of the world (spoiler: it didn't). We esperantists really hate the guy xD

source: I'm german and can understand what was written there. As a sidenote german = deutsch, roman = römisch.

Correction: it's Romance not Romanesque. "Latin countries/peoples" would also work.

i would lol

I think it's a bit far to say no one is excluded. Lumping all people of Europe into 4 nations definitely excludes some people. The author themselves realizes this, just seeing from how they included bretons and latvians in the legend, but not as nations with rights. I'm sure there's many more culture groups in Europe that belong in neither of the 4 nations (Basque people for example) and were not even named by the author

@@infiniti4654 well, in the past hours I also realized that we're talking about 1920, which means the Jewish community all over Europe would have been ignored by that 😬 I just got the feeling that the creator was talking about the nations in our modern understanding of it, so like 4 dominating all 20ish other nations, which doesn't seem to be the case with the source, these 4 would have covered not all, but at least 90-99% of people. So to summarize: I'm in general not a fan of this idea, but it doesn't get any credit while I think it should at least get some

@@infiniti4654 nope, the only two peoples that wouldn’t belong to the four nations would be a tiny sliver of the Basques and the Bretons. Considering both of those groups were forced to speak French in that time already, this proposal wouldn’t have discriminated any nation.

Honestly this comment, though eloquent, comes off as a bit myopic or specious. Nationstates are not primarily desperate cries for attention by children.

@@onurbschrednei4569 lithuanian is neither slavic nor germanic, so theyd be ignored to plus some latvians to. but yeah most people would be represented by that division linguistically

It may very well be a satire; some people say that Machiavelli's _the Prince_ is also satire, since it contradicts absolutely everything else that the man ever wrote, but it was definitely taken seriously by everybody else, and that's what really counts. The same reasoning applies here. If it is satire, but everyone takes it seriously, is it still satire?

I guess all the cantons would fight each other and they would speak Japanese instead of Esperanto eventually having Japanized Esperanto words for names of places and people like Esupēro, Sutēro, Amikētso, Fratētso, Āmo or Jōyo.

Mi sciis pri la koncepto, sed mi ne sciis, ke Esperanto estas parto de ĝi, malgraŭ ke mi estas esperantisto. I knew about the concept but I didn't know Esperanto was part of it despite being an esperantist myself.

Massive govurnamental entity with a complete lack of identity? Sounds like 1984