Waffen-SA?

[Vuk]

What is the probability of creating an SA military organization like the Waffen SS or Luftwaffe field divisions? What captured arms and equipment would be available in both numbers and suitability in say 1943 (captured as I assume the army wouldn't be too keen to equip yet another Praetorian force)? Would Bormann be a possible instigator of this?

[Tim Smith]

Waffen-SA in 1943 would be nothing more than a Nazi name for the Volkssturm. Mainly Hitler Youth and middle-aged men with whatever obsolete weapons were available. Nearly all men of proper military age would already be in the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS.

[Carl Schwamberger]

Rather like the Italian Facist Blackshirt legions. Good at marching & intimidating shouting, but a badly mixed bag as combat effective soldiers.

[phylo_roadking]

Waffen-SA in 1943 would be nothing more than a Nazi name for the Volkssturm. Mainly Hitler Youth and middle-aged men with whatever obsolete weapons were available.

Well, what it WOULD have done is in effect give the Volksturm a year's head start; organised along the lines of the Home Guard, which was a very different animal by 1941 than it was in 1940, they could have freed up regular troops at home by taking over duties like airfield defence in Germany, POW camp guarding, vital installation proetction. I don't suppose there's a figure for this in Germany...but David Newbold's thesis notes that as early as the first half of 1940, already some thirty-five to forty thousand British Army regulars and personnel from the home defence battalions, holding battalions etc. were soaked up on duties like this...who were freed up by the LDV. The Home Guard also ended up providing up to a third of the gun crews of AA Command in the UK...

Potentially, too, with a longer period to train/exercise, it's not impossible that the Volksturm might have given a better account of themselves in late 1944/early 1945...

[Steve Hoog]

Sadly I know very little about the SA in the last years; but it still existed, so it might not have been so difficult. However I think the real issue was that a short lease was kept on the SA after the Night of the Long Knifes. Hitler even mentions the SA at least once in a speech in the late thirties in the same sentence as all other military divisions; it sounds like SR to the untrained American ear but the same it is SA.

[phylo_roadking]

Oh it certainly still existed after 1934; just the other day, watchuing a rerun of The World At War, the "Alone" epsiode, it contains footage of Hitler's triumphant return to Berlin after the fall of France...and the SA can be seen lining the kerbs and doing crowd control

[Vuk]

An early Feldherrnhalle division perhaps? BTW the 1943 date is just a suggestion as it was around that time that a lot of manpower wasting units were starting to form. Any one have stats on what captured equipment was stored in Germany/available for distribition?

[Carl Schwamberger]

Not a lot as I understand. There was still some old worn Austrian, Cezch, & Reichwehr equipment, but not a lot. Outside Germany there was still a lot of Polish, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, French, British. Yugoslav, Greek, Soviet equipment. And, of course Italian weapons after September 1943. I've been told the Wehrmacht did not waste valuable railroad space carrying captured equipment back to Germany, A few small loads for training or testing. Most of it was stashed in depots in the occupied nations, or already distributed to German occupation units. Automotive transportation had been stripped from the defeated nations back in the winter of 1940-41 in preperation for the attack on the USSR. French tanks had been distributed to occupation units, or taken by the Italians. Few tanks remained unused in depots by mid 1943.

Mostly infantry weapons and artillery sat idle.

One of the shortages the German Army contended with from 1942 was in horses. massive requisition for the 'lighting campaigns of 1940-42 disrupted agriculture and breeding of horse from 1942. The huge losses of horses on the eastern from aggrivated the problem, There were few to no automobiles for the new divisions raised from 1942. Horses for artillery and supply wagons were never available in adaquate numbers. Hence the large number of static divisions, and 'security' units that could not venture far from the rail side supply depots.

Would creating these SA field units cause any further disruption of German or skilled labor in German factories?

[Carl Schwamberger]

...and the SA can be seen lining the kerbs and doing crowd control

Still looking for a Jew to push off the sidewalk?

[phylo_roadking]

Still looking for a Jew to push off the sidewalk?

Actually, the SA that we can see in wartime newsreel footage carrying out duties like this seem far more disciplined compared to the bullyboys of the "Chaos" from February 1933 to the Night Of The Long Knives. One of the noticable things is that the standard of uniform and headgear seems to have stabilised considerably...was the supply of SA uniform items centralised by then? Prior to Feb. '33, even in black&white newsreels we can see all different cuts and shades of "brown" shirt, run up by local hands on an individual basis rather than supplied by/from somewhere.

[Vuk]

Any more suggestions?

[phylo_roadking]

Well...and earlier Volksturm would ALSO allow an earlier, better-trained and better equiped Werwolf organisation to be embedded in it, the the way the Aux Units were embedded within the Home Guard in the UK. Historically, it was an under-equiped, pretty much last-minute affair...here, with a year or so extra to prepare and a different emphasis, there could potentially have been a much greater and more effective postwar level of Werwolf activity.

[Vuk]

So 1943 is probably to late to make a viable military SA, so another plausibility check. What if Göring is re-appointed as the leader of the SA after the Röhm purge? Instead of the various Luftwaffe Field and Armoured divisions he with the help of Himmlers opponents within the party creates the Waffen SA?

[phylo_roadking]

...so another plausibility check. What if Göring is [i]re-appointed [/i]as the leader of the SA after the Röhm purge? Instead of the various Luftwaffe Field and Armoured divisions he with the help of Himmlers opponents within the party creates the Waffen SA?

As of 1934 Fat Hermann is far more important than that - he's still one of the three NSDAP really Big Time Operators politically. Not quite enough to write his own ticket...but if he hadn't wanted to devote himself full-time to the Luftwaffe/RLM he could have added another portfolio to his job description if he wanted

[Vuk]

Thanks for your answers, so what would be good names for divisions within the SA? Horst Wessel & Feldherrnhalle are almost certain but what other names?