How much disastrous would the proposed "German wehrstaat" be?

[oberdada]

The Reichswehr was already short-staffed with just 100 000 men.
How are they supposed to also run the country?
Kapp tried a coup in 1920 and it failed.

 

[Gukpard]

The Reichswehr was already short-staffed with just 100 000 men.
How are they supposed to also run the country?
Kapp tried a coup in 1920 and it failed.

Red the Op, the idea is that Hitler doesn't purge the SA, so Blomberg can coup him

 

[oberdada]

Red the Op, the idea is that Hitler doesn't purge the SA, so Blomberg can coup him

So you have an SA militia with 4.5 million members, the entire NSDAP party organisation and likely most of the state officials including the police, against 100 000 troops with uncertain loyalty and no allies.
All hail the new Führer Ernst Röhm.

 

[Gukpard]

So you have an SA militia with 4.5 million members, the entire NSDAP party organisation and likely most of the state officials including the police, against 100 000 troops with uncertain loyalty and no allies.
All hail the new Führer Ernst Röhm.

I once held a discussion here about the SA, and many claimed that it just wouldn't be able to overcome the normal german army, as militiamen with bolt action rifles are useless when faced with machine guns

Hindenburg and Blomberg could petition the british to allow they to rearm, that could help, especially if they say "Look, do you want a new Mussolini?"

 

[Whiteshore]

I once held a discussion here about the SA, and many claimed that it just wouldn't be able to overcome the normal german army, as militiamen with bolt action rifles are useless when faced with machine guns

Hindenburg and Blomberg could petition the british to allow they to rearm, that could help, especially if they say "Look, do you want a new Mussolini?"

Where do you see von Schleicher factoring into this, I may ask, assuming he's still alive?

 

[Gukpard]

Where do you see von Schleicher factoring into this, I may ask, assuming he's still alive?

This is before the night of Long Knifes, so he's alive and kicking, but he is a failure, he might just retire

 

[marathag]

Would it be more succesfull on war than the third reich?

I don't think they would gamble like Hitler.
They would be horrified by the troubles uncovered by the unopposed rolling into Austria.
These guys would pay attention to logistics.
So they would not risk War in 1938, and not grab all of Czechoslovakia: Munich Agreement would hold with just the Sudetenland occupied

Without the look they got OTL from taking the entire country, the German Economy will be having real trouble on the Horizon

 

[Jürgen]

Not really, because the wehrstaat would seize the whole economy, different from Chile, they are not autoritarian, they are totalitarian, the whole civil society, the whole state, the whole research complex, everything in Germany will be seized by the army

I find this very unlikely, the army officer corps was closely connected to the large land owners and to the capitalist class. The army may create a command economy, but they’re unlikely to take over the means of production.

 

[Gukpard]

I find this very unlikely, the army officer corps was closely connected to the large land owners and to the capitalist class. The army may create a command economy, but they’re unlikely to take over the means of production.

I watched this video about the german general George Thomas, and according to it the army had a faction who wanted to nationalize the economy

 

[Tolkiene]

I once held a discussion here about the SA, and many claimed that it just wouldn't be able to overcome the normal german army, as militiamen with bolt action rifles are useless when faced with machine guns

This. Yes, the SA had numbers, but they weren't a professional military organisation. They were good at marching and street brawls. Moreover, by the time the Night of the Long Knives happened, they were a pretty heterogenous organisation. You had former Communists, ex-Freikorps members, people who joined during the Depression when their livelihood got destroyed (or they feared it would), plain thugs, ex-Stahlhelm members, opportunists who joined after the Nazis came to power because membership gave them advantages and was a way to ingriate themselves with the new regime etc.

Bottom line, it wasn't some kind of disciplined army that was just waiting for Röhm to initiate 'Operation Second Revolution'.

 

[Byzantion]

Apart from the nazis and the communists, there was a third group wanting to create a totalitarian state in Germany, the army. From the 1920s on, basing themselves on fascist italy and on the soviet union, some figures on the reichswehr, especially Werner Von Blomberg developed such a idea, and to quote from wikipedia

"In 1928, Blomberg visited the Soviet Union, where he was much impressed by the high status of the Red Army, and left as a convinced believer in the value of totalitarian dictatorship as the prerequisite for military power.
This was part of a broader shift on the part of the German military to the idea of a totalitarian Wehrstaat (Defence State) which, starting in the mid-1920s, had become popular with officers. The German historian Eberhard Kolb wrote that: "...from the mid-1920s onwards the Army leaders had developed and propagated new social conceptions of a militarist kind, tending towards a fusion of the military and civilian sectors and ultimately a totalitarian military state (Wehrstaat)"
and
"Blomberg's visit to the Soviet Union in 1928 had the effect of confirming his views about totalitarian powers being the greatest military powers. Blomberg believed the next world war, like the previous one, would become a total war, requiring the full mobilisation of German society and economy by the state, and that a totalitarian state would be most apt for effectively preparing society militarily and economically for war in peacetime. "

So, different from the nazis that supported a economic oligarchy controlled indirectly by the NSDAP, the Reichswehr wanted to control the whole economy on totalitarian levels and convert everything to war setting, even more than hitler did. Let's say that Hitler refuses to purge the SA for some reason, and so the wehrmacht removes him and then removes Hindenburg and creates a totalitarian dictatorship based on the Wehrstaat concept. How poorly germany goes? Does the economy implode before the war start?

The industrialists like Krupp, Flick, etc. might have something against the nationalization of their assets. So they normally support right winged militarists but would they willingly allow an army economy to take over ?

 

[Gukpard]

The industrialists like Krupp, Flick, etc. might have something against the nationalization of their assets. So they normally support right winged militarists but would they willingly allow an army economy to take over ?

Blomberg visited the USSR and was impressed with what he saw, of course he saw only the propaganda of what totalitarism could do. Blomberg could slowy but surely take over these enterprises, first he could ally with them, and then begin to seize the assets and finally take direct control.

 

[Deleted member 94680]

I always thought the wehrstaat would basically allow the “magnates” to run the economy and trample all over worker’s rights. The state would support the needs of the military first and foremost but every little thing wouldn’t necessarily be run by Army officers.

 

[Captain Homicide]

many claimed that it just wouldn't be able to overcome the normal german army, as militiamen with bolt action rifles are useless when faced with machine guns

More like untrained rabble would break and retreat when they get into their first fight with a heavily armed and trained unit of actual soldiers who can maintain cohesion and discipline even when the bullets fly and the blood spills.

Anyone too fanatical, brave or stupid to retreat would still be ineffective and would soon be defeated.

 

[Byzantion]

I always thought the wehrstaat would basically allow the “magnates” to run the economy and trample all over worker’s rights. The state would support the needs of the military first and foremost but every little thing wouldn’t necessarily be run by Army officers.

Maybe the Wehrstaat is some think akin to modern Egypt. The whole economy is run exclusively by the military state.

 

[Michel Van]

This German Wehrstaat
would have own ideology and Book to base it

In 1935 Marschall ret. Erich Ludendorff published the controversial Book Der Totale Krieg „The Total War“
Were he envisioned a State dedicated to War,
Were not Army serve the State, but State had to serve the military, in order to dominated over there enemies.
Not only the external, but also internal like Jews and communist must be destroy by military force !

that book has influence deeply the Japan military in end of 1930s

 

[Gukpard]

This German Wehrstaat
would have own ideology and Book to base it

In 1935 Marschall ret. Erich Ludendorff published the controversial Book Der Totale Krieg „The Total War“
Were he envisioned a State dedicated to War,
Were not Army serve the State, but State had to serve the military, in order to dominated over there enemies.
Not only the external, but also internal like Jews and communist must be destroy by military force !

that book has influence deeply the Japan military in end of 1930s

Ludendorff as the main ideologue, Blomberg as the War Marshall (some kind of fuhrer or vozd), who would be the other ministers?

 

[Deleted member 94680]

Ludendorff as the main ideologue, Blomberg as the War Marshall (some kind of fuhrer or vozd), who would be the other ministers?

Problem is, by the time of the PoD, Blomberg has pretty much burnt all his bridges with the “political generals” in Germany from the Weimar period. Beck, von Schleicher, von Hammerstein-Equord, Goerdeler and I’m sure von Papen would all be opposed to Blomberg owing to previous run ins. Removing Hindenburg would be difficult for any Reichwehr regime to rationalise as well.

 

[Gukpard]

Problem is, by the time of the PoD, Blomberg has pretty much burnt all his bridges with the “political generals” in Germany from the Weimar period. Beck, von Schleicher, von Hammerstein-Equord, Goerdeler and I’m sure von Papen would all be opposed to Blomberg owing to previous run ins. Removing Hindenburg would be difficult for any Reichwehr regime to rationalise as well.

Please, help us Herr Stenz to find a way to make this scenario plausible.

 

[Tolkiene]

Blomberg isn't the type who could be a Führer equivalent. By that I mean he wouldn't be the supreme leader or even a good military dictator. He was a pretty weak-willed guy who kept vacillating. His judgement was poor, to say the least. Just look at the marriage that ended his career. The guy actually running the Reichswehr/War Ministry during Blomberg's tenure was his aide Walther von Reichenau (an extremely nasty fellow, as his conduct during the campaign against the Soviet Union shows, Severity Order and all that).

Reichenau was one of the motors of building an alliance between the Nazi Party and the Reichswehr and was one of the instigators of the Night of the Long Knives. However, he was disliked by many of his colleagues. Older generals rejected him as a war minister/commander-in-chief of the Heer after Blomberg and Fritsch were dismissed. Beck and Fritsch would certainly be important figures in such a regime.

As for the policies of the hypothetical Wehrstaat itself, I don't think they'd nationalise the whole economy. The people running the place would be members of the old elites, after all. The business magnates like Krupp would have a place and get to profit handsomely, but the boardroom would be subordinate to the junta running things. Essentially, workers' rights go the way of the Dodo (there may be a Deutsche Arbeitsfront equivalent, but in any event trade unions would be crushed) and the big business owners get to be like little autocrats in their factories, but when the government says jump, they ask how high.