Fuhrers Rush In

Admiral Canaris: I'm afraid you have it backwards, my good fellow. I would have answered you sooner, but every time I began I realized I didn't know enough about one thing or another. At best the Heer is as strong as in OTL, whereas the SA is more powerful after 1934 by virtue of its continued existence, if nothing else. Let's begin with the events of OTL.

Mere Anarchy

Alternate histories dealing with the Nazis have done themselves a grave disservice by ruling out the SA. It's largely natural - the SA existed as a noteworthy force through the '20s rise of the Nazis, but was ruined almost as soon as they reached power in the '30s. It's taken for granted then that the SS would become a powerful force in Germany and the SA be forgotten. This is.... hrm.... not entirely correct.

Roehm (I’m moving to conventional spelling for the Nazi leadership) had actually created the beginnings of what would become the SA before joining the Nazi Party. Another anonymous freikorp, the SA became substantial after being officially organized within the German Workers Party as a group to protect meetings and to combat communists in the street. From 1921 to 1923 it grew steadily under his leadership, before being officially banned after the Beer Hall Putsch. Roehm was imprisoned and dishonorably discharged following the coup, was freed in 1924, and then forced to resign in 1925 in the wake of a sex scandal.

This is probably the time to deal with the Nazi position on sexuality. Icky. Deep breath. Putting aside for the moment the popular conception – which extends little beyond the word hausfrau and the claim that Hitler was gay (and Jewish, of course) – it’s a bit of a complicated subject. Unfortunately, it’s only going to become more so in this TL. The trouble is, many of the same leading Nazis (especially in the SA) who actively persecuted homosexuals, were arguably so themselves.

To a large extent, the distinction between which homosexuals were to be eliminated and which were not a threat to the state was limited to favoritism. Hitler was willing to forgive almost anything in those he had a personal connection to and were useful to him. Witness on this point the repeated occasions during the height of the Holocaust that he intervened to protect the Jewish doctor who had treated his mother while she was dying. In Hitler’s perspective homosexuality within the party only began to become a problem after the Nazis achieved power and began incorporating more mainstream elements with less open-minded attitudes toward the subject. Although he certainly didn’t have a normal sex life, the open mores of the Weimar period, and especially his own party mean that it seems very doubtful that Hitler himself could have or would have hidden his sexuality. He was rigidly puritanical in his personal life (he became conspicuous in the army and homeless shelter for never masturbating), had a disturbing fascination with bullwhips, and may well have lost his virginity after becoming head of the Nazi Party, but was apparently heterosexual for all that.

Other Nazi officials protected subordinates of unusual sexuality for their usefulness, or so that they could be readily controlled by the threat of exposure. Himmler especially practiced the latter. However, by the early ‘30s the SA to a limited extent practiced an actual ideology of homosexuality. The Nazis always sought to transform Germany into a militarized “Warrior Society”. To this end they sought to emulate the Spartans and to a lesser extent other ancient Greeks and Romans. Within the Sturmabteilung it was occasionally argued that all true warrior societies practiced widespread homosexuality and that this was fundamentally different from the modern “effeminate” form. There’s actually fair historical backing for this as it happens, which makes it stand out among the rest of Nazi ideology. :)

Though the Nazis at later points sometimes used the label of homosexuality as a catch-all to remove political rivals, it is pretty clear from his letters that this was not the case for Roehm. He was recalled by Hitler in 1931 to resume his place as head of the SA, after spending several years working with the Bolivian Army (apparently a popular destination for expatriate Wehrmacht officers during the period). He seems to have taken his regained position, which had been taken over by Heinrich Himmler in the interim, as an excuse to return to the activities that had led to his exile in the first place. He filled the leadership of the SA with men of similar proclivities to the point that it was occasionally referred to by opponents as his "harem." Of note is one Edmund Heines, Roehm's second in command, who was one seriously frelled up individual.

More importantly, he also took it as justification of his political aims. It was at this point that he began seriously working on his pet projects: ongoing revolution, nationalization of Germany's industry, and the absorption of the Wehrmacht. He returned to an SA numbering 70,000 and increased it's membership by 100,000 in only a year. From there growth only accelerated - there were over three million members when Hitler came to power.

In our TL the turning point was the Nazi assumption of power. Suddenly the former line of blaming the government for every problem was right out. Even worse, the enemies of the street gangs - communists at first, and then later criminals - quickly ceased to represent a coherent opposition. They had depended on the laxity of the government as much as the Nazis and, caught in the open, were eradicated. Both SA and SS then were faced with justifying their continued existence. Fortunately for them, the ideological arguments were easy enough to make. More usefully, the protection of law and even a veneer of respectability had been added to otherwise criminal groups. Through their places within the party hierarchy the leaders of these groups became not merely agents of the state, but parts of the administration. They were in a position to jockey for increased influence and recruit on an entirely new scale.

As head of an extremely strong group as of the Nazi accession to power, it was judged in OTL that Roehm was second in the party to Hitler in terms of power. He was also perhaps the only one with a powerbase strong enough to act independently of Hitler. Later others certainly amassed or were granted their own quasi-feudal demesnes, but Roehm possessed one when the Nazi government itself was still weak. And with its new legitimacy, it was growing....

The trouble the Nazis had was that Hitler had given the man too much freedom of action, and by the time Roehm had built Hitler his SA, he had also drifted onto a completely incompatible political path. This was complicated by the fact that the Fuhrer genuinely liked Roehm. Early on Werner von Blomberg, the minister of war, and Walther von Reichenau, who managed relations between the military and party, became hostile to Roehm's ambitions. Scenting blood, Goering and Himmler quickly became involved in an effort to implicate Roehm in various acts of treason.

Hitler's response to this was to turn on the SA before it could become a problem, wiping out its leadership and scattering its members. The extremity of his actions is an indicator of the level of threat he perceived. A fair percentage of the men executed in the Night of the Long Knives purportedly died with the words "Heil Hitler," on their lips.

Whew.

In this timeline the history of the SA is dramatically different. At the most basic level, under Paul Baumer there is no abortive attempt at a coup in 1923 and the organization remains legal. More to the point, the period Hitler and Roehm spent in prison (as the main "ringleaders" in the Putsch) was what established the friendship between the two men. Without an equivalent to this Baumer never becomes quite as close to Roehm, with whom he already has less in common.

Some things never change. As in OTL the SA becomes notorious for brutality, drunkenness, and (to a lesser extent) the exotic vices of its leadership. Unlike Hitler, however, Paul Baumer does not.... enjoy.... having the SA around to assault his enemies at speeches. Hitler liked to think of himself as something of a rabble rouser, and having dissenting voices at his meetings physically assaulted seems to have appealed to him on a visceral level. Given the current tactics the Communists used to disrupt "reactionary" party meetings, they were in fact an arguably necessary tool for the early Nazis, and it's in this way that Baumer sees them.

Combined with Baumer's sensitivity to public opinion, this sets a handicap on SA growth. It's expansion is slower than OTL, but steadier. There are no sudden reverses as after the Beer Hall Putsch, and by the end of 1924 the SA is larger than in OTL. It's then that Roehm runs into trouble. Baumer's direction has attempted to legitimize the Nazi Party and put it much more in the public eye. Unfortunately that also exposes its leadership to equal scrutiny. Despite having avoided the ignominy of a dishonorable discharge in this TL, Roehm almost inevitably gets himself involved in a public scandal.

As in OTL he leaves his place at the head of the Sturmabteilung and ships off to serve in the Bolivian Army. Without him the SA is relatively stagnant. It continues to grow slowly, but Baumer increasingly distances himself from it as his party approaches national prominence. That all changes during the second half of the decade. As the German economy begins to improve, interest in radicals of every stripe decreases and Baumer for the first time begins to consider that the Nazis may not gain the government legally.

So it is that in 1928 Roehm is recalled from Bolivia and tasked with the expansion of the SA into a mass organization capable of placing the party in power by force. On his return Baumer warns him against indulging in his.... hrm.... "peculiar tastes." Roehm (quite rightly) interprets this as an injunction that he not get caught. In response he largely takes his various debaucheries outside the leadership cadre of the SA. A few like-minded individuals are brought in, and Heines remains his second-in-command, but the effect is pronounced.

His mission statement is restated after the stock market disaster brings new prospects of political success, but by the time the Nazis take power the SA has a membership of over half a million - more than seven times its OTL strength. And it is after taking power that it really begins to grow. It quickly becomes apparent that something must be done. In the first year of Nazi rule the SA quadruples its membership. This at least is in keeping with Baumer’s plans – the SA can grow quickly in a way the conventional military, still bound by Versailles, can not. However, its leadership simultaneously begins to repeat the refrain "The Revolution is Not Yet Over." Being mostly a band of philosophically-minded thugs, it's not entirely clear what they mean by this, but some things are clear. The SA believes that it is destined to replace and absorb the regular army, becoming a right-wing parallel to the Red Army. Roehm also favors nationalization of Germany's industry and a variety of ludicrous social policies.

Baumer is more conscious of Roehm as a potential threat than Hitler ever was. For that matter, Roehm actually is more of a threat in that he has less of a personal connection with the Fuhrer. So when the SA starts to question when it will get its chance to subsume the Wehrmacht, Baumer orders a series of war games between the two organizations. Taking place partly in the Soviet Union (where the Germans did much of their interwar military exercises in OTL) and partly in Germany, the mock battles largely involve the "storm troopers" having their asses handed to them. After only a few such examples, the SA is substantially discredited and Baumer is in a position act. He forces Roehm to make a mini-purge of his organization, removing figures of debatable ideology and political liability. Of greatest note is the loss of the overtly predatory Heines, and those of his associates with questionable connections to the Hitler Jugend. Further, he calls a halt to its continued growth (never mind its more absurd ambitions) until it has turned itself into a creditable military force.

At the head of roughly two million men, Roehm sets out to do just that.

A brief note. This is clearly a major setback for Roehm's organization, but it is still in a powerful position. The chief among its rivals, the Wehrmacht, it outnumbers by roughly 20 to 1. Even the SS, enlarged in this TL as a counterbalance to the SA, only numbers eighty thousand as of 1932. Baumer aside, no one is in a better position than Ernst Roehm to direct the course of Nazi Germany. And despite the best efforts of his opponents, Baumer remains resistant to the blatantly fraudulent documents Heydrich manufactures (at Himmler's instigation), "proving" Roehm to be a French agent.

Thirties Germany is defined by political machination. Almost universally hailed as supreme leader and unquestionably correct in all things, Paul Baumer is forced to play a constant balancing act between the various forces in his regime. His ability to act directly - theoretically unlimited using "Fuhrer's Decrees" - is in practice dependent on handing the job to a subordinate, who may or may not carry out the orders in their original intent. This is perhaps the greatest obstacle to his dreams of a Futurist German state - aside from a few men like Werner von Braun - his government's priorities are not his own. I'll remind the gentle readers that men called undying devotion to Mussolini till the day they deposed him.

Counting his organization and members of the Nazi Party with sympathetic ideologies, Roehm is initially in second place. In some ways (especially in its incoherent moments) the SA vaguely matches the Fuhrer's vision. In most it is merely conventionally Fascist, in the Italian sense. While enormous, his fief is also extremely disorganized. Many SA members in the early ‘30s were men seeking advancement by token involvement in the regime. Increasingly, Roehm relies on Germany's unions as backing and as a site for proselytizing ideology.

The third faction in Nazi Germany is barely a faction. Most accurately, it could be described as "The Other Nazis." Old-time Nazis like Goebbels, Himmler, and Goering rely on their own loyal organizations, while more recent recruits - who joined the Party to enter the government - use more conventional influence. Such men have little in common beside an outspoken loyalty to Paul Baumer and a quiet hostility to Roehm. These men, especially Himmler and Goering, benefit greatly from acting as a counter to the man's ongoing influence. Until the end of the decade, however, neither even approaches the same position of power.

Lastly there is the Wehrmacht. Or, to put it somewhat differently, the Junkers. They have in common with the Nazis far-right politics, a goal of German greatness, and little else. While its interests are closely tied to those of the weaker Nazis, the Army largely disdains cooperation after 1935. With Anschluss and intensive rearmament the SA ceases to seem an immediate threat. There is a greater connection with the party than in OTL, but the high command still has a good deal of disdain for the upstart thugs and their gifted amateur. There is the odd quiet discussion of removing Baumer by coup, but as in OTL these come to nothing.

Over the course of the 1930s, the SA steadily loses ground in terms of manpower in absolute terms and relative to its rivals: the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Schutzstaffel. In practical terms, however, this isn't matched by a loss of influence. Already an enormous paramilitary organization, the SA begins reorganizing itself as a legitimate military force while maintaining its debatably legal presence as a "special police force." Unlike the SS, which in 1937 (three years ahead of OTL) creates the Waffen-SS as the military wing of the organization, members of the SA are theoretically all frontline soldiers.

Initially this is a fairly absurd claim. The vast majority of the SA is necessarily composed of part-time members. There simply are not two million men to spare for a standing military force, much less a secondary one. Over time this begins to shift. As in OTL the Nazis force a steady national merger of unions into a single body, all the better to be controlled. What's different in this TL is that Roehm is in a position to take over the job. Germany's Union becomes at least partially an SA preserve; among union workers only the Nazi Party is able to act independent of it. This allows him to plant SA men in key positions of influence throughout Germany's industrial plant. More to the point, it allows him to shuffle membership of the storm troopers so that a greater number can be mobilized in the event of war.

Driven in part by the agitation of industrial workers (who of course are being incited by Roehm) “war industries” are co-opted by the state. The Nazis also implement a policy of partial state ownership of other major industries. It’s not really what Roehm is pushing for (he’d leave German industry about as private as Russian if he had his way), but it is enough to quiet him down somewhat. As a result, by the end of the decade the German government owns between 20 and 60 percent share in all industrial companies, while retaining the right to step in and control company policy more directly in “emergencies.”

It's in response to this, the expansion of SA funding that follows its performance in the Polish war, and (nominally) the Flight of Minds that leads to the absorption of the Gestapo into the SS at the beginning of 1940. By that point Roehm's focus on winning the minds of Germany's workers while simultaneously building an army from scratch has allowed the SS a great deal of leeway assuming secret police duties that the Storm Troopers had sometimes claimed for themselves.

So just what kind of military force is the Sturmabteilung?

Roehm has been working at something of a cross purpose to himself. The large majority of his empire consists of men employed in Germany's industrial complex. In his efforts to secure a hold on said industry he has seeded SA men in essential wartime industries, even as he attempts to free more men for full-time service. By 1940 the result is an inadvertent split within the organization. The full-time military segment of the SA (which has gradually been distanced from the organization's street-gang heritage) numbers twenty-four divisions - nearly 310,000 men - and arguably does deserve the sobriquet "Storm Troopers."

A miniaturized version of the German military, it places emphasis on the heavy and mechanized end. It has access to a disproportionate number of tanks, artillery, and aircraft. More exotically, it practices a heavier use of the various untried weapons that are thick as lice in Baumerite Germany. Roehm takes pains to refer to such weapons as “revolutionary,” though the SA often focuses on them due to vested interest, or because it lacks access to more conventional ones. Its heavy use of rocketry, for example, has its roots in the limited availability of Stukas and the Heer’s lack of interest. Nor does it hurt that Roehm’s men control the factories. These include what is essentially a heavier version of the OTL American bazooka (bigger punch, but awkward and at the extreme of what can be operated by an average man), limited range rocket barrages, and something vaguely like a V-1 with shorter range and better accuracy.

Despite this, the majority of the SA's strength is in what are colloquially called "Storm Workers." These were essentially an ideological militia that could be mobilized during war. Power-politics having placed over half of these in essential war sectors, the SA could not possibly use all its forces simultaneously. For that matter, plans required rotating "shifts" of mobilization in order to achieve operational strength outside units of full-time soldiers. This lack of consistent unit cohesion is one of the group's biggest weaknesses. Another is the inclination to noble frontal assault and weak chain of command rather typical in ideological military units of the period. The advantages of these formations are more limited, but there is a single major one: mobility. Spurning the truck-mounted infantry in some use in the Heer, there is in theory a motorcycle or bicycle for every SA man who could be mobilized at any one time. By the outbreak of war, these part-time soldiers number 1.4 million, though even in theory less than half a million could be in the field at one time.

See why it took so long?
 

Hnau

Banned
Indeed! Fantastic update, Matt, really detailed stuff. You paint a chilling image of a Germany that could have been: it feels even more real than OTL, almost. Roehm as second in command is particularily interesting, as well as the brushing aside of other individuals into an anti-Roehm faction. The Other Nazis is a fitting name for a group that I believe Hitler would in this situation try to weaken, but Baumer would allow more freedom to exist in the background. Its astonishing to think of such a widespread, strong 'paramilitary' group... you know, it seems like a plausible dark caricature of what we imagine the SA or SS is. Extremely interesting!

However, I feel that Roehm has a lot of potential to launch a coup against Baumer if the going gets tough, more than Himmler or Goering or others had against Hitler. Baumer will have to play quite the balancing act, that's for sure.

Great update, worth the wait! :cool:
 
Jeeves: Thanks, and thank you for the links. There's a biography of this Baumer's early life in the works now. It'll be a while before I get to it, though. Priorities.

Alikchi: Errh.... whoops. Good catch.

Hnau: You're quite right. Baumer has rather painted himself into a corner with his treatment of Roehm. Avoiding outright confrontation by throwing the odd bone and playing games of maneuver is a viable short-term strategy. In the long run it has allowed the formation of two competing brands of Nazism, both firmly entrenched. Confrontation isn't really avoidable, the only question is whether Nazi Germany lasts long enough for the schism to take place.

And with the Storm Troopers in particular, there are.... other factors.... which will come to light shortly.

Coming soon to a thread near you: The League of (Extraordinary) Nations
 
That was a fairly detailed summery of OLT Germany....I actually learned some things too! You have a very detailed world here and I look forward to where you take this.
 
The state of the world in 1919.

Red - League of Nations Mandates
Blue - League of Nations Members and their Colonies
Brown - Nonmembers and their Colonies

League_of_Nations_A.png
 
Admiral: I'm afraid there was a misunderstanding. I supposed that the Heer would be stronger in absolute terms due to Baumer's more open remilitarisation, not that it would be stronger relative to the SA than compared to OTL. Sorry for the lack in clarity.

In its first appearance, the TTL militarised SA appeared a bit too powerful, if it essentially comprised most of the armoured corps; I still find it a bit unlikely that the Heer would allow or support this. Remember, the SA already numbered three million when Hitler and the Heer purged them; numbers was not the key, but rather armaments and professionalism.

However, your in-depth and well-researched explanation (and partial ret-con?) is more than good enough for me, combining internal political factors with the structural consequences of the POD. A smaller "Waffen-SA" and a less important popular militia isn't at all unthinkable. It's also an interesting take to give them the experimental weaponry that traditionalists in the military might eschew. Will we see them hosting the Nebelwerfers and super-heavies?
 
Admiral Canaris: I worry sometimes that we'll both start referring to each other as 'Admiral,' a third Admiral will show up, and there will be rioting in the streets. But I digress.

It's very much not a problem. The above was indeed something of a retcon, if only in my head (don't think I out-and-out contradicted the previously posted version). Your comments made me look much closer at the area, and the timeline is better for it. Still headed in the same direction, but having a bit more grounding.

Nekromans: Thanks. And yes, yes it is.

Hnau: The original POD didn't survive that link you posted. I find I can't bring myself to ignore the existence of a real Paul Baumer. The Point of Divergence is now Baumer's conception and I'll be covering the intervening years in the forthcoming biographical post. Not a retcon, per se, but a lot of blanks are going to be filled in.

As to why 1919.... Nothing's happened that didn't in OTL, but I daresay this timeline's historians will see a great deal more significance in that year.
 
Love this thread.

What if, Hitler is still the leader but had a more pragmatic control of the SS?

Heydreich was more practical than Himmler and, though a jew hater, would have used jewish Germans to help Germany in WWII (admitedly postponing the holocaust)
 

Hnau

Banned
Yeah, where is Hitler exactly in this timeline? Or is the POD that he never decided to take the path into extremist politics, and because of that, Baumer took the lead?

Baumer bump!
 
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