Larger German Army After Versailles

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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Deleted member 1487

I'm sure there has been something about this, but I couldn't find a discussion on the search function.
So here we go: What if at Versailles the British idea of a 300,000 man German military of short term conscripts (2 years of service for enlisted, 3 for NCOs, and 4 for officers)? This was vetoed OTL by the French, who demanded a long service, small army.
What if the Germans had to deal with this? Does the professional Reichsheer allow for an 'army of leaders' or just focuses on building up minimal training in maximal population?
 

Anderman

Donor
Good question the short term gives the Reichswehr a lot of reservist which very useful a little bit like the Krümper-System during the Napoleonic Wars.
But only 4 year terms for officers the training is longer !!

Maybe the Reichswehr would try to build something along the Swiss Army which has only professional soldiers above Brigadier iirc.
 
As nobody in Germany ever bothered to observe the rules of the Versailles Dictate - if not forced to do so by application of sheer power - the Reichswehr certainly would have found a way to get around this.
Two years for common soldiers was completely acceptable and in line with pre-war practise.
For NCOs and officers the service times would have to be prolonged by frequent new turns or extensive 'reserve' turns. - With three years of service, junior NCOs (Unteroffiziere) could have been produced in ample quantity. For senios NCOs (Feldwebel) one would have had to fiddle.
Same for officers. Four years for reserve officers is excellent; for the professionals some other solution would have been required. To my mind come staff officers serving in civilian attire. For blackening paper one must not wear uniform. - Anyway, I'm sure that Hans von Seeckt - or whoever was in charge - would have found a solution.
 
The Reichswehr actually largely ignored the Treaty. They allied with the Soviets to keep themselves ahead of the curve. And they continually updated officers through an illegal "Black military" which was essentially a secret army. And if your want to see a good TL with a pretty large Reichswehr, I suggest checking out the TL in my sig :D
 

Deleted member 1487

The Reichswehr actually largely ignored the Treaty. They allied with the Soviets to keep themselves ahead of the curve. And they continually updated officers through an illegal "Black military" which was essentially a secret army. And if your want to see a good TL with a pretty large Reichswehr, I suggest checking out the TL in my sig :D

And yet there were only 100,000 men in the Reichswehr in 1933 with perhaps up to 100,000 more barely trained and equipped (by German standards) militia. With more than that from the beginning things could very well change. Sure quality could be hidden, as could longer term service, but numbers could not.
So assuming this goes through Germany has more men trained, so it means a larger pool of manpower would be available for expansion, but assuming the Allies require a limited term of service per each man below a certain rank, could the quality really be all that much better even with 'cheats'?
 
And yet there were only 100,000 men in the Reichswehr in 1933 with perhaps up to 100,000 more barely trained and equipped (by German standards) militia. With more than that from the beginning things could very well change. Sure quality could be hidden, as could longer term service, but numbers could not.
So assuming this goes through Germany has more men trained, so it means a larger pool of manpower would be available for expansion, but assuming the Allies require a limited term of service per each man below a certain rank, could the quality really be all that much better even with 'cheats'?

I'd suggest researching the Black Reichswehr.
 

Deleted member 1487

I'd suggest researching the Black Reichswehr.

I'm very familiar with the Black Reichswehr, but the actual Reichswehr in 1933 didn't have them anymore. In fact the Freikorps was disbanded in the 1920's. There were local militias in 1933, but they were essentially untrained, poorly equipped, and non-mobile or subject to military orders except wartime.
By 1933 there were only 100,000 available to expand the army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Armed_Forces_Military_History_Research_Office
This research institute put out a series of 12 books on the German war effort in WW2, the definitive works on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_and_the_Second_World_War
Having access to all surviving German military documents, this organization has the best sources on the subject. The first several volumes are in English and I've read the first volume wherein they discuss the expansion of the German army. Utilizing and referencing German military documents, the authors cite Reichswehr internal documents of 1933-4 that talk about only having 100,000 to build an army on and that the militias and WW1 veterans were useless in building up a (IIRC) 22 division army.
 
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