There are other significant differences between Germany and Austria, like the order in which to do things.

For example, Germany asks its people about the infrastructure needs, ignores the result and then takes ages to build an airport poorly. On the other hand, Austria prefers to build stuff like a billion Euro nuclear power station and only when it's finished have a public vote that decides against turning it on.

perl -e 'use Crypt::Digest::SHA256 qw[sha256_hex]; print substr(sha256_hex("the Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything"), 6, 2), "\n";'

Oh, we Germans can do (or at least participate in) the latter, too. Currently, it looks like Nord Stream 2 might face the same fate.

Isn't it rather that they were lost? ;-)

Well, killing a good percentage of your own people for their believes doesn't go down well with the rest of humanity. Plus, invading Russia in Winter without proper winter clothing makes one look like a complete idiot.

Things like these, plus, you know "being the enemy" and "starting a global conflict the likes of which the world has never seen before" won't make you win any popularity contest. And if most of the world doesn't like you, they are probably not going to embrace your culture and your language.

That's actually something that had a huge influence in the United States from the beginning of the first World War. There was a relatively large german speaking population in the U.S. in the early 1900's. WW1 and WW2 pretty much stamped that out. WW1 was also used as an argument for Prohibition (many of the large beer brewers were of german origin and held their business meetings in german).

perl -e 'use Crypt::Digest::SHA256 qw[sha256_hex]; print substr(sha256_hex("the Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything"), 6, 2), "\n";'

> Well, killing a good percentage of your own people for their believes doesn't go down well with the rest of humanity.

Please not Godwin's law, lets concentrate on WW1

The fact that Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and so on are independent countries is due to the fact that Russia lost. (Yes the Germans recreated Poland, tho farther to the east )

It's normal strategy to weaken the looser by "liberating" parts of their territory/influence sphere as a buffer zone and installing friendly regimes. What do you think how Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia where constructed? And why they quickly deconstructed later...

So we would have seen an independent Ireland (completely), Wales and Scotland. Also Brittany and some other French areas. Northern Italy probably reunited with Piemonte.

The use of Dutch in Belgium would have been promoted. Large parts of Austria/Hungary would still be intact.

German was already first foreign language in most parts of Europe, this would have been enhanced.

10% of American school kids got their primary education in German speaking schools, 10 million Brazilians have German ancestry, 5-10 millions ethnic Germans living in Russia. Plus 5-10 million East European Jews speaking a close language.

It's hard to see how this could not have been beneficial for the spread of the German language after a victory.

> Well, killing a good percentage of your own people for their believes doesn't go down well with the rest of humanity.

No genocide in Imperial Germany and Austria, plus as usual the victor writes history.

Try to inform yourself how Russia and Turkey are still censoring their dark past.

The Americans "liberated" the Philippines only to fight for their dominance in a dirty war leading to hundreds of thousands of victims.

The Brits build an empire on piracy, slave trade, opium trade and killing Bores for diamonds and gold in so called "concentration camps".

Who really talks about this?

That's unfortunately the reality of politics ...

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

ok ok "started and lost" then :) hehe. Although I feel to say that it has nothing to do with speaking or being german (or being austrian) as the historical, political and economical circumstances have been documented widely already. Additionally, it seems that 1900-1950 has seen a statistical anomaly which is now slowly but steadily being fixed with the english-speaking wars (and losses) prevailing.

1min update: I don't care at all if I have to speak english or my "mother tongue" in public places neither if my variables are foreign-named (english expletives suit me fine). I have never added a comment in my code other than in english and I always make sure i make fun of all those who comment in their native languages polluting their code with unicode (ok other than because they are forced work-wise). That said, I believe that political correctness of names (of programs, projects, variables) relating only to the english language should be abandoned (e.g. piddle or gimp). And I truly condon Mitsubishi's choice of "Pajero" (warning, vulgar dictionary entry) to name one of their most popular 4x4 models, taking a word with a derogatory meaning in one language and elevating it to the pinnacle of four-wheel mechanical excellence. With a pinch of salt please.

bw, bliako

> Additionally, it seems that 1900-1950 has seen a statistical anomaly

I'm not sure what you mean.

> as the historical, political and economical circumstances have been documented widely already.

Again ...

I'm far from being a nationalist if it comes to German as lingua franca, and English is almost the second best choice for Germans. (Afrikaans would probably be even easier). But it was a real world language back then.

But I'm sure an alternate history where France and England loose the WWI (Russia did BTW) would have produced a very different outcome.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}