There’s really no reason for it to exist without an empire run by the Hapsburg family, I’ve been there, it’s not meaningfully different from Bavaria

>>18732585
After WW1 they wanted to join germany, but the allies forbid them.

>>18732586
Which makes sense geopolitically, and the Warsaw pact wouldn’t allow it to get swallowed by the modern German state without responding with nuclear war or at least a siege of west Berlin

>>18732590
>Which makes sense geopolitically
Yeah, it took hitler all of one "invasion" and one sham election to reverse that. But the feeling of humiliation of not being allowed contributed to him being elected in the first place.

>>18732600
Really it’s Bismarck’s fault for crushing the Hapsburgs after Napoleon’s faggot nephew and making a real german nation state

So what you're saying is that Austria has the genes of ALL FOUNDATIONAL EUROPEANS?
Hmmm, maybe that is why the Great Humanist came from that country

>>18732603
Bismarck deliberately aimed to exclude Austria because he didn't want too many papists in his GroBPrussium Junker paradise.

>>18732607
I keep forgetting Christians outside of Ireland can be sectarian

>>18732607
It wouldn't have worked anyway, either way of doing that would have required another war and totally uprooted european balance of power.

>>18732620
You can’t have any superpower in central Europe whether it’s France, a unified German state, or the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth

>>18732624
The alliance system makes that moot anyway. A strong power can be countered by an alliance. It just has to be diplomatically isolated.
>Polish Lithuanian commonwealth
Was never a superpower. It was an economically backwards and politically fractured state, almost as fractured as the HRE (which wasn't a superpower either).

>>18732607
Pope Leo XIII helped facilitate a rapprochement between Paris and St. Petersburg the path that led to the Franco-Russian Pact of 1894

>>18732582
I found it to be Luxembourg (moreso than Switzerland even though is has Davos or whatever).

>>18732830
Luxembourg should appreciate Imperial Germany instead declining with growing Portuguese population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg_(Belgium)

I have no problem with Austria joining the rest of Germany as long as Vienna remains the country's capital.

>>18732861
>_(Belgium)
Have you been to Brussels?

>>18732582
What if Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia joined Italy instead?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria_(Lombard)
https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/austria-and-italy-end-first-world-war-and-post-war-years

>>18732585
That just tells us that Bavaria being part of Germany is an accident of history.