What would a Nazi 'revolutionary army' look like?

Just came to me as I work away at my dissertation. I'm well aware that Hitler rejected the SA's call for merging them with the Reichswehr and building a new army and structure for a reason, but what if, say because he becomes too uncomfortable with their reactionary conservatism, Hitler decides to radically reconstruct the army along Nazi lines, as well as the Navy and air force? Say, some time in the mid-thirties, 1935ish. So Hitler is Führer by then, and 'that oath' has been taken (IIRC?).

Do we get a Red Army-like situation where a new force is built from the ground up (with new people at its head, which is the key here), just without the advantage of being born out of a civil war that gives everyone lots of experience? Or is this simply unfeasible for the basic reason that Hitler will just wake up to find the end of a Gewehr 98 staring him in the face?

If a new force was built, what would it look like in makeup and command structure? The OTL SS? What on earth would a Nazi navy look like?
 
Well a Nazi Navy is a possibility, or at least a thorough enough purge to effectively remove any similarities with the Reichsmarine bar the name and the ships but a Nazified army is implausible imho. Hitler needed the army for his foreign policy and while he had a few screws loose he wasn't so mad as to think Rohm and his thugs or Himmler could replace the Generalstab.
 
There's an obvious answer to this one because there was such an army that's generally neglected in terms of being treated like this: the Waffen-SS, which was a rival army to the Wehrmacht and toward the end of the war was gobbling up as much of the tank production of the German economy as it was possible for it to do so.
 
Well the Waffen-SS wasn't really an army, with it's shortage of rear echelon units it couldn't have survived on its own, nor did the SS have a proper General Staff.
 
Well, how come the SS didn't have its own navy and air force branch? If they had it, then they would have had a profound effect on the Nazi Party or the German Reich as a whole.
 
Well, how come the SS didn't have its own navy and air force branch? If they had it, then they would have had a profound effect on the Nazi Party or the German Reich as a whole.

Göring, as far as I can tell from my recent reading (doing a History degree has its benefits) regularly threw hissy fits at the idea of Himmler, Raeder (or later Doenitz) or anyone else getting their hands on 'his' planes. Aircraft were the Luftwaffe's, and the Luftwaffe's only. That was to be the end of the matter. And Hitler supported that.
 
So the SS would have to contend with trying to get their own navy, and none of the Nazi Party members was in charge of the Kriegsmarine.
 
The Luftwaffe is an example of an armed force the Nazis built up out of nothing. It didn't exist before the Nazis.

I agree with Snake that with the Waffen SS we see how a Nazi army would have developed differently from the "true" army. Of course, the Waffen SS was peculiar to how Himmler wanted it developed. A rival SA force ruled by Ernst Rohm would be different.

Of course, if Hitler moved to eliminate the army and put the SA in its place, I am 99% sure that the army would move quickly to eliminate Hitler and the Nazi leadership before the SA could be mobilized to destroy the army and arrest the high command.

The SA certainly has the larger numbers in the early 1930s, but the Reichswehr would be quickly supplemented with a lot of paramilitary forces from old veterans, and the old paramilitary units of the older political parties who detested the brownshirts specifically, or the Nazis in general.
 
I think if you put together all the paramilitary groups affiliated with the NSDAP you would have an interesting nucleus for an army but despite their numerical superiority, I think they would lack the experience, especialy at the higher levels, to properly conduct a war. This would prove a problem if they dont manage to neutralise the army right away and this turn into a civil war.

Maybe one way to have a Revolutionary Army would have been through attrition: if war had been delayed by a few years regular elements could have been forced out and replaced, changing the mood enough to allow a takeover.
 
Actually an SA based nazi revolutnary army would have looked quite different from the Waffen-SS: The SS saw themselves as the elite of the Reich, which meant their units were (in the early stages) either Parade ground soldiers, fanatic amateurs or true elite units. The SA leadership in contrast dreamed of a nation in arms, meaning their army would have consisted mainly of huge numbers of reservists and weekend soldiers, but instead of the well-trained leadership of the Wehrmacht with an ideologically-pure officers corps.
 
An SA based Nazi Army would almost be more amusing then scary. They were street thugs pure and simple. Nothing more than a goon squad incapable of beating Poland not talking about France.
 
Well the Waffen-SS wasn't really an army, with it's shortage of rear echelon units it couldn't have survived on its own, nor did the SS have a proper General Staff.

Well, the OP said "Nazi revolutionary Army", not "real army able to fight a real war with real soldiers"......;)
 
Actually an SA based nazi revolutnary army would have looked quite different from the Waffen-SS: The SS saw themselves as the elite of the Reich, which meant their units were (in the early stages) either Parade ground soldiers, fanatic amateurs or true elite units. The SA leadership in contrast dreamed of a nation in arms, meaning their army would have consisted mainly of huge numbers of reservists and weekend soldiers, but instead of the well-trained leadership of the Wehrmacht with an ideologically-pure officers corps.

I'm not entirely sure, as the Nazi instinct was shaped by people who had been soldiers, and culturally you can only bend institutions so much. The SA given room to develop without the SS would in all probability start transforming into something like the SS regardless. Waffen-SS soldiers weren't all that good either, after all. They were stubborn and willing to die, but Patton was right about dying for your country.
 
Well the Waffen-SS wasn't really an army, with it's shortage of rear echelon units it couldn't have survived on its own, nor did the SS have a proper General Staff.

The Wehrmacht didnt either, it had Staff Officers but no General Staff. In any case the diehard Nazis & officers who whored themselves to Hitler would be more than willing to switch uniforms like OTL. Quite a few ''SS Generals'' started out in the Wehrmacht after all.

The Waffen-SS was formed & grew parallel with the Wehrmacht and was modeled on it, when it was given a new role outside of being Hitler's bodyguard. An SA Army would be a massively bloated joke. It would take far longer to turn the SA street-thugs into anything like a real army. Than it would to simply expand a ''Cadre Army'' like the Reicswehr/Wehrmacht, this was the main reason beyond Rohm's grandstanding that Hitler backed the existing army in the power-struggle.

However Hitler did have an outside chance of pulling a coup off against the army in favour of the SA if he wanted to...
 
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The Wehrmacht didnt either, it had Staff Officers but no General Staff. In any case the diehard Nazis & officers who whored themselves to Hitler would be more than willing to switch uniforms like OTL. Quite a few ''SS Generals'' started out in the Wehrmacht after all.

The Waffen-SS was formed & grew parallel with the Wehrmacht and was modeled on it, when it was given a new role outside of being Hitler's bodyguard. An SA Army would be a massively bloated joke. It would take far longer to turn the SA street-thugs into anything like a real army. Than it would to simply expand a ''Cadre Army'' like the Reicswehr/Wehrmacht, this was the main reason beyond Rohm's grandstanding that Hitler backed the existing army in the power-struggle.

However Hitler did have an outside chance of pulling a coup off against the army in favour of the SA if he wanted to...


Agreed, I was serious when I said I think an SA based army could not have beaten Poland. Poland had a professional army while the SA was made up of nothing but steet thugs. No way is that going to stand up to a professional army.
 
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