> You mean the colonies? That wasn't really sustainable, notice how everyone decolonized regardless of their status after WW2, except for Russia, whose colonies were adjacent to the heartland and much more sparsely populated.

Germany didn't have colonies worth mentioning.

Germany had a population going on 68 million while the US had a population of 92 million. That is pretty close. Much, much, much closer then the US is to current China.

Germany didn't have as much growth opportunity as the US but they would be one of the most densely populated most urban countries in the world.

> The German heartland was much smaller than the continental US is: 540k sqm versus 8 million sqkm for the continental US.

Lets be real here, this doesn't matter. The waste amount of economic power does not come from the empty land in the middle.

Yes producing a lot of corn is nice, but its not actually that important.

Germany had a much more important thing, developed trade power near by. I rather have Nordics close then Iowa.

And being denser actually helps in many way, better for trains and transportation. Its much easier to turn the country into a tightly integrated economic unit, specially before mass air travel.

> Imperial Germany for sure couldn't have scaled to 350 million people, which is where the US is in 2024.

Population isn't the end all be all of global power projection. It matters of course. But Germany with say 150-200 million people and non of the world wars would be a very powerful.

Additionally it was already pretty clear around 1914 that Germany would start to lead some sort of European block. Austria-Hungary was basically a German satellite already, this would have just become tighter. Together they have more population then the US.

Sweden and Denmark were strongly in the German economic orbit to. Forming some sort of economic central European block would have been inevitable.

> For the rest of the comment, you're focusing just on energy. Oil and gas are used for everything. Materials, medicine, etc.

As I pointed out, energy can be converted to chemical energy and with high temperature nuclear the process could be quite efficient and cheap as well. Nuclear becomes quite efficient when you mass produce reactors, as the fuel cost is basically zero. You have higher investment cost for a reactor and chemical plant then for a derrick and a refinery to be sure. But that is an investment worth making.

Germany today has a powerful chemical industry even without having their own supply. Doing this would give you very powerful chemical processing industry. And it would make you the globally best power in nuclear innovations (things like medical isotopes, nuclear batteries, nuclear satellites and so on).

Not to mention going the nuclear and electric route would be a major benefit for the health of the population. Going away from oil and coal quite would be a major economic benefit.

The initial investment is bigger, but the long term payoff is way better. And Germany certainty would have had the ability to do that level of investment (again, even Post-WW2 France managed about 1/3 of it and they stopped for political reasons).

> Also, relying on food imports for potentially hundreds of millions of people is stupid. That's how you end up with people starving at the first major catastrophe.

Imperial Germany had a lot of further potential in terms of food production if they really wanted to push it. But in my opinion its not actually that big a deal. The claim that people will starve the first major catastrophe simply doesn't line up with reality.

Unless you are in a war, with multiple super powers at the same time (really only Russia and Britain/US), there is essentially 0 scenarios where a rich developed country can run out of food. Specially one like Germany that has excellent access to Atlanic and Eurasian trade networks.

Germany in the absence of being an really dumb political actor would have been a major global power. Maybe not quite on the US level but certainty the US could never have influenced Europe in the same way they did after WW2. And Germany would have been strong enough to continually counter balance Russia. Imperial Russia had a much, much worse long term growth perspective.