WI: German conscript army from Versailles

[Carl Schwamberger]

The OTL 100,000 professional army a with service term of 25 years ...

That was the maximum service length for men other than generals or marshals. I heard Kleine-Albrandt lecture on what he learned from interviewing surviving Reichswehr officers from the 1920s. I can't recall what the initial service contract was but the turn over was fairly high. Only the top men were expected to stay on. Those discharged were encouraged to participate in the hidden reserve. The bulk of this hidden reserve were in "Police Auxiliaries" or police reserves. That gave them organization and small arms including MG. If my lecture notes are correct there were close to 300,000 men in these police auxiliaries or reserves. Part were recently discharged Reichwehr men & part Great War veterans. Another portion were employed as civilians in the administration dept for the Army. Those were doing the same jobs that uniformed quartermasters and other staff did in other armies. Gun clubs & some veterans organizations had some groups considered reserves by the Reichwehr, tho Kline-Albrandts informants indicated the numbers for that group were exaggerated. Also exaggerated were pools of hidden equipment. The Police organizations had a large amount of small arms and ammunition, but hidden reserves of artillery, transport, communications equipment, and especially ammunition were a lot less than claimed. Kleine-Albrandt stated about 500,000 trained and armed men could have been mobilized by the Reichwehr, but less than 200,000 could have been in fully armed infantry divisions. The balance would have been in battalions, regiments, ect... without significant artillery or transportation.

 

[edgeworthy]

Were the Germans to use a model emphasizing cherry picking the pool for the best quality conscripts, compensating the successful men very well, extending training time as far as practical, and keep their eye on training leaders and technicians vs cannon fodder it will pay off better than the smaller volunteer force which had no legal reserve.

Now this is quite plausible. The Heer always was very selective about how much of the conscript class it actually called up. In 1938 the Wehrmacht was rejecting about a third of the potential number, and this was after the obvious hopeless cases, medical and educational exemptions.

 

[Bad@logic]

So if it is the case that if the germans go all-out on carefully moulding this force they would be able to arrive at a force close in quality to their original army, but significantly larger, how easy would the Allies managing to monitor and deal with this be? German armaments violations were huge of course, but the Allies did impose limitations of officers, such as iirc divisional staff numbers being limited, and the Germans didn't try to exceed those (although maybe they could of, they never seriously tried). Would the Allies have any success combating such obvious breaches of the accords by the Germans, or would such a conscript army be just as easy to exploit as the original one?

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

... Would the Allies have any success combating such obvious breaches of the accords by the Germans, or would such a conscript army be just as easy to exploit as the original one?

When the French tried to enforce the Versailles Treaty in 1923 through occupation of the Ruhr only Belgium gave useful support. The Italians were miffed over being slighted by the post war settlement & Mussolini was weak on foreign policy having just taken over. The US government was isolationist towards Europe & was busy landing Marines in Latin America and China. Britain gave only the weakest support to France. France was not up to enforcing the treaty on its own. The Germans figured this out over the next few years & the Treaty was walking dead by the end of the 1920s.

 

[Creidiki]

Basic infantry skills can be taught in a couple of months and are extremely perishable if not frequently practiced. Advanced officer skills are also highly perishable, but can take years to develop by comparison in peacetime.

Basic infantry skills typically take 10 weeks and at war time has been reduced to 4 weeks. But it takes time to turn basic trained soldiers into units. US replacement system after Normandy simply replaced casualties and was consideed to be a failure. Germans instead disbanded depleted units and re-built them using a cadre of experinced leaders.

 

[Bad@logic]

When the French tried to enforce the Versailles Treaty in 1923 through occupation of the Ruhr only Belgium gave useful support. The Italians were miffed over being slighted by the post war settlement & Mussolini was weak on foreign policy having just taken over. The US government was isolationist towards Europe & was busy landing Marines in Latin America and China. Britain gave only the weakest support to France. France was not up to enforcing the treaty on its own. The Germans figured this out over the next few years & the Treaty was walking dead by the end of the 1920s.

The Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control wasn't however, abolished until 1927, and the Germans stayed loosely within the Versailles boundaries until the Nazis took over. In military terms, while the Germans breached the treaty at times in the 20s, it was never too flagrant.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

1927 is earlier than I remembered. ... the Allies did impose limitations of officers, such as iirc divisional staff numbers being limited, and the Germans didn't try to exceed those (although maybe they could of, they never seriously tried). ...[/QUOTE]

The system Seeckt built upon included staff training for all the officers and NCOs. Since the Versailles Treaty banned the old General Staff the Reichswehr leaders countered by giving everyone training in staff work. This was part of the method of training all ranks for a role several grades above their nominal rank, the goal being to make each company the cadre for a regiment. On my shelf is a translation of a Reichwehr officers (Schell) report on the US Armies officers corps. Written in the early 1920s it described how the US Regular Army officers were trained as teachers or instructors as much or more than unit leaders. This enabled the rapid expansion of he US Army from barely 100,000 in 1914 to over one million men in 1917. The Reichwehr leaders had the same curiosity about how the Brits had accomplished a similar task. Fielding a large army in two years, built mostly from men with no previous experience.