1938 Coup succeeds

[La Rouge Beret]

Inspired by reading Munich by Robert Harris and seeing the Netflix movie.

I wondered if the Oster conspiracy - which was a plot by several high ranking Wehrmacht officers and Abwehr members to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime. In the event that Nazi Germany declared war on Czechoslovakia, they would have apparently launched a coup.

My question is in the event that the pre - requisites occur such as Britain and France remaining firm leading to Nazi Germany invading Czechoslovakia. Precipitating the coup - what happens if it is successful.

How does the new government 'clean house,' would the international order accept events & how would it play out in Germany? I also wonder if this is enough to prevent the world having a second world war.

 

[Gar48]

You don't even need the UK or France to be more aggressive. OTL Adolf Hitler was actually upset they backed down as he actually hoped his actions in Czechoslovakia would have started a new war against Germany's old enemies.

ITTL Adolf may simply decide to skip the tractative parts and invade Czechoslovakia directly.

Anyway I immagine the 1938 coup has more chances than succeding than its OTL counterpart of 1944 as the Nazi regime has no way to gain its OTL popularity among the Germans without its military victories.

Basically the German army wastes precious time and resources in invading Czechoslovakia (Hungary may decide to assist but this is unlikely ) and France is at least able to properly reinforce its borders before attacking Germany.

With no allies and an already overstretched army, most of the German High Comand realises the war is lost and quetly moves to supports the cospirators.

Germany is probably forced to give up its ambitions in Czechoslovakia and to pay even more reparations but i can see the Allies allowing Berlin to keep Vienna.

So the end result is a military dictatorship[1] where the "Stab in the back" myth is now even stronger

[1] I doubt the cospirators would be able to bring back the Kaiser. For starters only a few of them wanted this and it is unlikely France or Britain would be okay with this

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

My take is they attempt a return to a Republic. With the support of the wealthy who hope to dominate & control it, and the Middle Class who hope it secures their petty wealth. Not a direct return to the Weimar organization, but modified from that with the electoral structure intended to restrict working class voting influence and marginalize voting blocks on the radical fringe both right and left.

If things remain quiet for a year, few SA riots ect... then halting the military expansion and the other preparations for war gives the economy some breathing space. I'm not educated enough here to understand if that can last or the German economy is still in trouble from say 1940.

 

[Amadeus]

Inspired by reading Munich by Robert Harris and seeing the Netflix movie.

I wondered if the Oster conspiracy - which was a plot by several high ranking Wehrmacht officers and Abwehr members to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime. In the event that Nazi Germany declared war on Czechoslovakia, they would have apparently launched a coup.

My question is in the event that the pre - requisites occur such as Britain and France remaining firm leading to Nazi Germany invading Czechoslovakia. Precipitating the coup - what happens if it is successful.

How does the new government 'clean house,' would the international order accept events & how would it play out in Germany? I also wonder if this is enough to prevent the world having a second world war.

How strong were the conspirators within the military establishment? Was the Oster conspiracy supported by most of the military leadership? In any case it would have been easy for Hitler to brand them as traitors to the Fatherland. However, if the war with the Czechs goes poorly (or at least does not see early success), it will be easier for the conspirators to overthrow Hitler.

 

[Ditzy Vixen (RossN)]

Germany immediately collapses into a multi-year long civil war.

In 1938 Hitler wasn't quite at the apex of his popularity but by all accounts he still enjoyed a lot of support across Germany and could point to considerable success - the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the creation of both an air force and navy with the acquiescence of the other Great Powers and above all the Anschluss. Unless Germany is very visibly losing the war I can't see the plotters carrying the public, especially if (as was apparently the plan) they intended to straight out murder Hitler.

With Hitler gone (and a martyr to Nazi supporters) and the military dictatorship government fighting both Nazi loyalists and 'rebel' soldiers I imagine German communists will start a rebellion of their own turning this into a three front civil war.

 

[NolanFoster]

You don't even need the UK or France to be more aggressive. OTL Adolf Hitler was actually upset they backed down as he actually hoped his actions in Czechoslovakia would have started a new war against Germany's old enemies.

Hitler's motivations were a little more complex than that. He wouldn't have backed down from a war with the western powers, but his focus was on Czechoslovakia. That was to be his splendid little war than would consolidate his power and provide the political capital for further aggression. He was shocked when the allies caved in the way they did and the Czechs followed them, true, but I think everyone has been done a disservice with the thesis implying for many that Hitler wanted WW2 to start in fall 1938 rather than a smaller scale conflict in which he would dictate the terms to everyone from the battlefield. Going to war with the west was not even Hitler's intention with Poland in fall 1939, but he welcomed it all the same. He believed he could force the main allied powers to the negotiating table even after the war had started. The problem was, by that point he had changed the allies' geopolitical calculus in ways he failed to recognize.

Both Germany and Japan fell into the trap of thinking one more decisive blow would reduce their enemies to a mindset like that of Munich and they would be handed the world on a platter. But they chased that victory into territory where further deals were impossible.

It's one of the tragedies of history that although the Czechoslovak military was capable of winning this war, based on the possibility of a coup in Germany if the war did not result in a swift victory, there was a surreal political climate that made the survival of the nation impossible. The west did not want to fight, and Czechoslovakia did not want to lead. And the craziest part is, Beck's resignation from the German command was public knowledge, but didn't spark an awareness of this possibility in Prague or anywhere else.

If the 1938 coup succeeds, Germany will still have to deal with the limitations of its economic situation. That demands war, eventually.