@CWO:
To follow up on my post from yesterday: It should be noted that Hitler did in fact carry out a Stalin-like purge of his own in 1934, when he eliminated the leadership of the SA. There had been rising tensions between the Army and the SA since Hitler had come to power in 1933 because the chief of the SA, Ernst Rohm, had been pushing to have his Stormtroopers take over the role of the regular Army.
Hitler found it easy to choose between the SA and the Army at this point because: a) the SA had already accomplished its main job, which was to help bring Hitler to power, and b) Hitler needed the professional Army – not an unruly bunch of streetfighting thugs – to carry out the next part of his program, which was to reverse the results of the First World War. So he had Rohm and his senior colleagues liquidated.
The Army was pleased to have had their SA competitors brought under control in this manner, but it turned out to be a bad bargain because the group which carried out the assassinations was the SS. Up to that point, the SS had been a relatively small specialized force within the SA. After the Rohm purge, the SS rapidly gained importance, and it played a major role in turning Germany into a police state.
If we fast-forward to a hypothetical scenario in which Germany had won the Second World War, it could be argued that the Wehrmacht at that point would have been much in the same position as the SA in 1934. It would have served its main purpose (winning the war), and its senior leadership – never liked and often mistrusted by Hitler – would have been dispensable. The SS terror apparatus would have had ten years since 1934 to grow in size and power, and would have had the resources to carry out a Stalinesque purge of the German officer corps.
Moreover, by the end of the actual war (which would also have been the case in the hypothetical one), Hitler had at his disposal a supplement to – and potential replacement for – the regular Army: the Waffen SS. The Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS got into a lot of competition for military resources in 1944 and 1945, with the Waffen SS often getting some of the prize equipment like the Tiger tanks. So it’s not inconceivable that, in this hypothetical scenario, the Army might have ended up being sidelined in favour of an expanded Waffen SS – in other words by a private army belonging to the Nazi Party. Ironically, this pretty much what Ernst Rohm had been advocating in the first place back in 1934.
Both you and Clyde have made very solid contributions to this discussion, which I appreciate. You’ve raised a very interesting possibility.
The Versailles Treaty had limited the German Army to a token size of 100,000 men. In 1934, the SA had 3,000,000 men–men who had varying degrees of armament. Roehm had become increasingly disaffected with Hitler. Members of the SA had expected to have been lavished with lucrative positions and other financial rewards. Instead, the Nazi government assigned technical and other positions on the basis of merit. Another bone of contention was that many members of the SA wanted the Nazi government to assume ownership of Germany’s large corporations. Instead, Hitler chose to leave those corporations in the hands of their owners.
Hitler feared that Roehm might use the 3,000,000 men he controlled to overthrow his own government. Roehm had increased the armed element within the SA, a point which augmented Hitler’s concerns. Hindenberg had threatened to declare martial law unless Hitler did something to check the power of the SA.
Some of Roehm’s rivals had warned Hitler of an imminent coup. Hitler responded to those warnings by flying to the SA headquarters, and personally ordering the SA men present to turn their weapons over to the SS troops Hitler had brought with him. Hitler was apparently confident that not even one armed, disaffected SA man would choose to shoot him! Had Hitler been absent, the SS officers who’d arrived at the SA headquarters would have demanded that the SA turn over their weapons. Had those demands been contradicted by the SA officers present, the result could have been a shooting confrontation. A confrontation which might have turned into a full-blown civil war, with the SA on one side and the German Army and the SS on the other. The absolute obedience of the SA men to Hitler–and Hitler’s physical presence at the SA headquarters–prevented that outcome.
A number of SA leaders were subsequently purged, as were some others who had been critical of Hitler. This purge may have been similar in kind to Stalin’s purges of his own army. But the two purges were not comparable in scale. Hitler’s purge had 85 - 200 victims. Stalin’s Great Purge claimed 680,000 - 2.1 million lives.
It’s possible that the Nazis would have expanded the Waffen SS until it had taken over the role of the army. Himmler may have wanted to do exactly that. The problem with this–at least from Hitler’s perspective–is that if this had happened, Himmler would then have had the power with which to overthrow Hitler.
Hitler may have preferred to keep the Army and the Waffen SS as separate entities. If the Army became troublesome, Hitler could always threaten to grow the Waffen SS at the Army’s expense. If the Waffen SS became uppity, Hitler could count on the Army’s support to keep it in check. By playing the two groups off against each other, Hitler would work to prevent either one from overthrowing him. Hitler’s successor would have been weaker than Hitler. Keeping power divided in this way would have been even more essential for the successor than it had been for Hitler.