German Civil War, 1933

more "buts"

You counted members of the paramilitary, I prefer count weapons...

Well, I would have loved to count weapons....alas, I cannot find any useful hints at the situation. The only weapons we can count are the ones of the official state organs. I agree that the Reichswehr was an excellent force, and as I wrote earlier in this thread, its involvement would tip almost any balance.

But; when it comes to weapons, it was at least officially restricted to typical civil-war armament. Their air force would be improvised, they don't have heavy tanks into the streets. The situation is a bit similar to 1861 when the US (voluntarily) only had a tiny professional army.

Please note that in Europe, even in the 1930's, citizens don't have weapons at home

Only since 1928, weapons had to be registered in Germany.
I read several times that Central Europe, due to the often wild demobilization of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, was full of weapons which returning soldiers sold or brought with them in the time between the wars. (This is completely out of context, but to quote my grandmother: "Oh, a Panzerfaust. When you really need one, there is usually one available close by.")
Surely, the number of weapons will have been reduced since the early 1920s, but still.

eventually people in rural areas have hunting rifles, but no reserves of ammunitions for a long guerilla...

Once there is a civil war, there will be suppliers of ammunition. It is the law of the market.
I refer to the Austrian Civil War (the political situation in Austria was a good deal similar to the one in Germany). One side of the conflict consisted mainly of urban workers. They lost, but during the four days of the conflict, they still killed more than 100 soldiers, policeman and paramilitaries. Surely not without weapons.

I don't know what are the hunting rights in Germany in the 1930's but in France with very extended hunting rights, people don't have military type weapons...

Again I refer to the probably much more oderly French demobilization 1918/19. Besides, unless you are in the Jurassic Park, military type weapons aren't optimal for hunting.

And even if some paramilitary keep weapons from the 1919-1921 fights, it will be light weapons : mausers rifles, maybe some machines-guns with small stocks of ammunition...

What more do you need for the inital stage? Also, we shouldn't forget that contrary to other Civil War situations, most people involved, even outside the military, had war experience.

Again I refer to Austria: the SPÖ's "Republikanische Schutzbund" lost 40,000 guns and 700 machine guns to Government confiscations in the years 1927-34, yet their cadres didn't worry about the number of weapons they had at hand for their 80,000 members.
This might be far better than what German paramilitaries could accomplish, but it shows what was doable.

So a Reichwehr of 100 000 soldiers with superior training and tactics + its reserves equipped as light infantry with light artillery, 77 mm for example will be sufficient to crush any SA troops with rifles and some machines-guns...

If you have to resort to 7,7cm guns in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich or the Ruhr....well, Sir, that's what I would call a proper Civil War. :eek: Also, if you have to spread the Reichswehr across the whole of Germany, it spreads pretty thinly.

Crushing of a communist paramilitary will be even more successful because it will be the Reichwehr + the right-wing paramilitary...

Yes, absolutely. Contrary to the contemporary expectations, such a Communist uprising would be the weakest scenario.

The comparison to Spain is really misleading, but probably what anybody has in mind when talking about a "German Civil War". The February Uprising or Austrian Civil War would be closer to the German scenario. Such a major conflict would last longer than four days, probably, maybe a few weeks until order is restored, there would be a few thousand dead, probably. And I agree, this would happen through the Reichswehr and its allies.

With hindsight we can see why no side actually provoced risk a civil war, because nobody could be sure to win it, but had reason to work for a more positive political development. This paid off for the NSDAP in OTL. A German Civil War didn't occur, but it wouldn't have been an unexpected event.
 
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