DBWI : The SA Purged in Night of The Long Knives instead of SS

Dolan

Banned
Of course, I'm talking about 1934 Purge of the German Army together with one of the Nazi Paramilitary unit that is the Schutzstaffel (SS).

It was said that Hitler did that to consolidate his power, and eliminating the influence of the "Old Reactionaries" within Germany. Under the urgings of the prominent Nazi leaders, Gregor Strasser, and Ernst Rohm, Hitler end up favoring the leftist Sturmabelug elements within Nazi Germany and moving in to Purge the German military in accordance with Rohm's plan to unite the armed forces under SA and ditch the "Reactionary" elements within the Nazi Party.

Of course, the cover of the purge being reactionary elements under Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler plotting an imminent coup against Hitler to install a reactionary dictatorship. And for their parts, both Goring and Himmler are basically executed extrajudicially.

But now, what if the reverse happened? That the right-wing elements of the Nazi Party ended up winning the internal power struggle and having the left-wing elements purged? How will Nazi Germany fare with Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, and the SS in charge instead of Gregor Strasser, Ernst Rohm, and the SA?
 
Well, with the actual trained officers of the German Army, they might conceivably done better and actually beat the Poles before they had to head west to try and stop the Anglo-French armies rolling up the Rhinelands. I doubt they'd still defeat the Entente - the Germans simply did not have weapons that could scratch the French tanks or the British Matilda, but they might at least put up a fight before losing their industrial heartland.

Then again, without the SA, there might be no nazi-soviet pact and thus even less resources to turn into what little materiel they could put together in a relatively short period.
 

Dolan

Banned
Then again, without the SA, there might be no nazi-soviet pact and thus even less resources to turn into what little materiel they could put together in a relatively short period.
It was said that Rohm and Strasser was Soviet plants from the very start. And Soviet Union did come to aid Germany when Franco-British-Italian force almost reached Berlin.

Now we knew that Stalin only used Germany as the screening force to let him invade the weakened Europe, but with the notoriously anti-communist SS in place, who will turn out to be Germany's Puppet Master? Italy?
 
It was said that Rohm and Strasser was Soviet plants from the very start. And Soviet Union did come to aid Germany when Franco-British-Italian force almost reached Berlin.

Now we knew that Stalin only used Germany as the screening force to let him invade the weakened Europe, but with the notoriously anti-communist SS in place, who will turn out to be Germany's Puppet Master? Italy?

Likely, Italy was stronger than Germany at the time.
 
It was said that Rohm and Strasser was Soviet plants from the very start. And Soviet Union did come to aid Germany when Franco-British-Italian force almost reached Berlin.

For all the good that has done to the Red Army, the Stalin purge basically eliminated the entire experienced officer corps and in practice put the commissar in charge, if we add the fact that the soviet air forces used obsolete tattic and was even more affected by the purge than the army, it's easy to see how after having struggled against Finland and Romania, the soviet forces give such an abysmall show against the entente armies in Germany and Poland.
Stalin move is rightly considered one of the most idiotic decision ever take, really if he have just decided to keep his gain and stay neutral he will had won big, instead...well, he is basically the reason of the 'cowardly vodka drinking bear meme'

Regarding Italy, difficult to say, Mussolini considered Hitler an idiot and many of his entourage were afraid of Germany potential but he can be tempted to use it to make Italy independent from the Anglo-French, expecially when relations temporaly gone south during the Abyssinian crisis of 35 and the brief war scare
 

Dolan

Banned
Regarding Italy, difficult to say, Mussolini considered Hitler an idiot and many of his entourage were afraid of Germany potential but he can be tempted to use it to make Italy independent from the Anglo-French, expecially when relations temporaly gone south during the Abyssinian crisis of 35 and the brief war scare
I think in case of Mussolini hypothetically backed Goring and Himmler faction of Right-Wing Nazis, the Spanish Civil War would end up as even shorter Fascist-Backed Coup instead of one and a half year of bitter civil war with Germany and Soviet Union backing the Leftist Second Republic, as I can't see Herman Goring and the Prussian militarists end up backing leftist Spain.

Well, that... And do not forget the "Reign of Sodomites" that was revealed once the uh... not-so-secret secret of Ernst Rohm and co end up surfaced thanks to British and French intelligence agencies. Even until today, there are notably draconian laws in Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary, and France against homosexuality after Papal Condemnation was issued on that matter.
 
The documentation for the pre nazi Reichwehr shows a highly trained and professional cadre, the leadership for turning a mass of raw conscripts into a far larger army. Like the small US Army of less than 150,000 at its nadir in the Depression years the old Reichwehr leaders were training their officers for wartime service several rinks higher, That is Captains for command regiments and Colonels corps. Its also well documented there was a illegal reserve, the "Black Reichwehr " of tens of thousands of trained officers, many veterans who constituted a organized reserve. A portion of these men were covertly rotated through training with the legal Reichwehr officers.

Unfortunatly the documentation for the brief existence of the professional army within the 'Wehrmacht' years after the nazi regime set in was destroyed by the SA. they wanted a clean sweep and fresh start for their "Peoples Army" All we have is patchy anecdotal evidence for where the professional cadres were taking the army growing out of the old Reichweher. Some of the surviving evidence suggests forward looking doctrines and tactics. Unfortunately we'll never know. Whatever it was it should have been better than the hundreds of thousands of the brown uniformed SA regiments slaughtered by the massed machine gun and artillery fires of the Poles and French. The bayonet charge of the SA III Grossen Standarte against the Polish tank brigade has become a synonym in the English language for military stupidity.

The innate conservatism, religious adherence, and business dominated modern Germany is a seventy-five year old reaction to the Socialist excesses & ineptitude of the nazi era.
 
I think the League of Nations would have acted quicker against a reactionary Germany that didn't have the support of the Soviet Union. Even if German-Soviet relations weren't always the friendliest, it would have been much more hostile if the more anti-Bolshevik Nazis were in power.
 
I think the League of Nations would have acted quicker against a reactionary Germany that didn't have the support of the Soviet Union. Even if German-Soviet relations weren't always the friendliest, it would have been much more hostile if the more anti-Bolshevik Nazis were in power.

Depend, the British can see an anti-communist Germany as a bulwark against Stalin ambition and so support her (to a certain degree) or at least look the other way
 
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