[Freedom]

Prince uncovers 19th-century plot to make Texas German

ALLAN HALL IN BERLIN


AN EXTRAORDINARY 19th- century plot by German nobility to take over Texas and turn it into a German country has been uncovered by a historian looking through old records of some of Germany’s oldest families.

Prince Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg discovered that in the 1840s, when Texas was still a republic, the nobles managed to raise a small fortune from the state of Prussia under cover of an economic club known as the Adelsverein, or Association of Nobility.

The association used the money to send almost 8,000 members to Texas on the pretext they were fleeing political persecution or poverty. But, according to the historian, many were wealthy aristocrats and military officers planning to take control of the republic.

"They used the clichéd image of impoverished immigrants flooding into the New World as cover to send thousands of their nobles, generals, and soldiers to Texas, to put their scheme into action," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg.

He claims the man who hatched the plan to turn Texas Teutonic was Prince Carl von Solms-Braunfels, a German field marshal - and a blood relation of Queen Victoria - who had been hardened by European wars.

At the time, the bankrupt republic was protected by only a few hundred Texas rangers and had fewer than 40,000 people on its land.

As part of plans to win logistical aid from Britain, Prince Solms-Braunfels courted Victoria’s favour for a new "Germany in the West", claiming British economic interests in California and Mexico were threatened by a westward- moving United States.

According to the historian, the solution was to establish a German state of Texas.

From Europe, the Adelsverein had purchased more than three million acres of Texan land. But the group soon discovered it was unsuitable for farming and was occupied by some 10,000 warring Comanche Indians.

Under Prince Solms-Braunfels’s direction, the Germans established a series of forts such as Nassau, New Braunfels and Carlshafen - cities that still bear their German names.

To complement weaponry brought with them, correspondence sent back to Germany by Prince Solms-Braunfels in 1844 urgently called for more heavy artillery and rifles.

"Arms were sent over labelled only as ‘personal baggage’," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg. "Hence it was not always documented at the US end."

The prince added that Britain considered sending military equipment overland from California. Messages between Lord Aberdeen, the foreign secretary, and the new German community were handled by William Kennedy, the British consul in Galveston.

"Unfortunately for the venture, it was this course of communication that ultimately proved their undoing and forced the US to speed up its annexation of Texas," the prince said.

"The government messenger was instructed to hand over the correspondence personally to the British consul. But instead of that, he was met by a US spy who drank him under the table and intercepted the information that was then sent to the White House."

Within weeks, James Polk, the US president, sent forces to the Texas border and Congress voted to annex the republic.

While Adelsverein diehards still aspired to establish a colony, financial and logistical support was largely withdrawn and the venture foundered several years later.

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I found this article a while ago...did anyone know about this before hand?

[Nox]

Prince uncovers 19th-century plot to make Texas German I found this article a while ago...did anyone know about this before hand?

Nooooooooooox

[arcis]

Another nice example, what damage can be caused to the human brain by hundreds of years of inbreeding. The last and most fatal case was Wilhelm II, last emperor of Germany.

[Gustav Fluffy]

Just think ... George Bushes grandad could have been a Nazi if it had all gone to plan.

[Truth-a-naut]

Just think ... George Bushes grandad could have been a Nazi if it had all gone to plan.

There would have been no Nazis if this happened.

[Gustav Fluffy]

There would have been no Nazis if this happened

It is possible that another front would have been established when the Americans entered WWI (late as usual!) on the Texas border. Of course, with the blockades on Germany by the British navy preventing her sending or co-ordinating supplies to and from Texas, Texas would soon have been overrun, simply through lack of manpower.
The subsequent treaty of Versailles and the reparations it involved would have caused all of Germany's colonies to be handed over to the Allies, yet because America was the country most in favour of forgiving Germany and making only minimal demands in the Treaty (France wished to impose strict sanctions), she would probably have allowed Texas to become an independent country.
With the rise of Hitler and his quest to reunite all German people under Bismarck’s Germany, it is possible that he would have argued for self determination of the German speaking people of Texas. The policy of appeasement that Britain and France were following would have done little to prevent this, and America was of course going through its period of Isolationism and therefore would not have interfered. Texas would have then become part of the thousand year Reich.

[Smith 2.0]

A good read:

"What if?: Military historians imagine what might have been", Edited by Robert Cowley, 2001 (Pan books; London)

[CasX]

It that the book with Hitler riding triumphantly through London, swastikas hanging from Big Ben, on the cover?

[Demosthenes]

I had heard something about this but was unfamilier with the details...

[Jesse]

There would be Nazis, but in a different country. America would've entered into the First World War on the side of the Triple Alliance, and that would've been it for the British and French. SocNats, maybe (Socialistes Nationales) in France, as they'd feel defeat the worst.

I HIGHLY recommend the works of Harry Turtledove. They propose the Confederate States re-succeed during the First World War, and that the Northern States ally with Germany, winning the war. The crushed South is brough to heel, like the British and French Empires. A bitter ex-Sergeant in the CSA army creates the Freedom Party, claiming they were stabbed in the back by the negroes in the south. Reminscent, eh? Brilliant books. I can't recommend 'em highly enough.

[Demosthenes]

I read the first of Turtledove's books but I couldn't get into it. I decided not to read the rest.

Here let me sum it up for anyone who hasn't read it: The North is evil, The South is good. There is no inbetween.

He also saw the south purchasing Chihuhua (or however you spell that) and Sonora from Mexico and incorporating those former Meixcan states into the confederation...

This, of course before WWII, during the period preceeding the American civil war.

[Locke]

This somewhat reminds me of the Zimmerman telegram...

[Jing]

I heard about that too- I did not give a damn since then though so like demothenes I don't remember the details- what was it about?

[Vander]

Harry Turtledove, eh? I am sure he is an entertaining author, but it sounds like he tells stories about America splitting into two warring factions again. Just another "the South will rise again" dude with a penchant for fiction. I just can't be interested in anything that brings up civil war divisions again.

[Jesse]

Oho, there's no doubt in my mind he's a bit of a sympathiser to the "Good Ol' Days", although nothing in his works lets me draw the conclusion he's of a racist persuasion. He simply adores a part of history that had unsavoury elements.

I'd compare it to people who write revisionist history regarding the Third Reich. They'd, quite understandably, be accused of having Nazi sympathies or politics.

There is, however, another series of books written by him that don't mention the South. They are called the Worldwar series. They suppose that an alien race, called "The Race" invades Earth in 1941. Normally I'd scoff at this ridiculous and far too fanticiful concept, but the aliens are well-developped and not too sci-fi at all. I rather enjoy them, as they offer an "outside-looking-in" perspective of our tendencies to make war on one another.

[Demosthenes]

Yeah maybe I painted the wrong picture...i didn't get the feeling he was overly sympathetic to the south...just that...I don't know, Is he a socialist or something? The thing I found hardest to accept was that when the slaves were emancipated by the south after the first civial war (yea there was a second, I forgot to mention that. The purchase of the two mexican states was after the first civil war but was the event that caused the second, I was mistaken earlier) they all magically became strong socialists due to Abraham Lincoln's influence. This seemed like a Communist fantasy to me and the rest of the politics just seemed hard to accept from there.

I never got the impression that he was wanting to revive the lil' ole' south, just that he painted them in a very good light while painting the north as simply imperialist bastards. Hey where have I heard stuff like that before??? Oh never mind...

Some of you might enjoy his books, I am very luke-warm on his works.