Bandiera della Repubblica di Waimar

While the Constituent Assembly of 1919 approved the constitution of the nascent Weimar Republic, the victorious powers of World War I, enjoying strong economic growth in the 1920s, imposed extremely harsh and oppressive conditions on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles.

In addition to the obligation to cede parts of its territory to Allied occupation and the imposition of almost total disarmament, there was the punitive desire of many governments, especially France and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain, to impose sanctions and unsustainable war reparations on Germany, the amount of which was set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks, or 33 billion U.S. dollars, to be paid over 60 years at 5% interest. The potential consequences of this situation were not lost on the young economist John Keynes, who was present at the negotiations as an advisor, resigned from the British delegation, and upon his return wrote a book accusing the leaders of the victorious countries of serious short-sightedness. Keynes argued that the economic and financial problems associated with reparations had been underestimated and concluded that the imposition of such heavy reparations was neither reasonable nor realistic and would ruin not only Germany but much of Europe, whose prosperity depended on trade and commerce. Faced with the victors' intransigence, German negotiators found themselves on the defensive. After further attempts to renegotiate the terms imposed, Germany chose not to cooperate and suspended the payment of reparations in kind, in the form of coal and iron from the rich mines of the Ruhr.

While these obligations and impositions strengthened German nationalism and the spirit of revenge among the most reactionary forces, German resentment was exacerbated when French troops occupied the Ruhr, the source of coal for German industry, in January 1923. Germans in the region responded with passive resistance and work stoppages. The lack of coal and the cost of the heavy expenditures to help their compatriots, finance passive resistance, or continue to pay their salaries led the German government to authorize the printing of large quantities of paper money, with the result that the mark quickly became worthless. Inflation spiraled out of control that same year, when it took 4 trillion marks to buy one dollar, leading to exponential price increases. At the most critical moments, workers received their wages daily and rushed to spend them immediately before inflation devoured their value. With such inflation, the war debt was virtually wiped out in the public finances, but millions of families saw their savings go up in smoke, with inevitable social consequences. Unemployment reached 20% of the workforce.

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In 1935, the entire German Armed Forces, the prince subject of rearmament, took the name Wehrmacht, whose Supreme Command was called Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW); it included the Heer, the Army, whose Supreme Command was called Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), the Luftwaffe, the Air Force, whose Supreme Command was called Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) and on which the paratroopers also depended, the Kriegsmarine, the Navy, and the Waffen-SS. Unlike the staffs of other armies, both Allied and Italian, the Germans, after their experience in World War I, were very clear that the next one would not be fought in the trenches.

The Heer, the Army's ground forces.
The belief of the General Staff of the German Army (Heer) that a new war would be very different from any that had been fought up to that point began to take shape after the appearance of the tank at the end of World War I. Because of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, experience with this new weapon was gained underground and often in training camps in the Soviet Union. Preparations for World War II in the pre-war period saw the development of a program centered on close cooperation between armored forces, aviation, and mechanized infantry, with masses of tanks launched to break through enemy lines and wreak havoc in the rear under the cover of aviation. Warfare became aggressive and based on speed of movement: blitzkrieg. All of this was based on training and new tactics, as the first German tanks were qualitatively not very well armored and the armament was not so fearsome, but relied mainly on speed on the battlefield.

At the start of the war, infantry weapons were a combination of tradition, the Mauser 98 or the short Karabiner 98k version, and modernity, the Maschinenpistole 1938 or MP38, a machine gun designed by Heinrich Vollmer. The 98k was an excellent revolving bolt rifle that fired 7.92 x 57 mm ammunition, while the MP38, although expensive to produce, fired 9 x 19 mm parabellum ammunition and was suitable for close combat. When the Germans came into possession of the Tokarev semi-automatic rifle captured from the Soviets, they realized that they also needed to equip themselves with a similar weapon. The .41 rifle produced by Mauser and Walther was proposed in two different models, both of which were unreliable. In 1943, Walther proposed a new model that combined the best features of its earlier G41 model with new developments; the Gewehr 43 then entered service and from 1944 assumed the name Karabiner 43. During the war, several new weapons were produced, starting with the MP40, which had the same characteristics as the MP38, but was made of stamped and welded plates, making it less expensive to produce. Between 1941 and 1943, the Fallschirmjäger Gewehr 42 or FG42 was developed, an automatic rifle supplied to Luftwaffe paratroopers and considered by many to be the first assault rifle in history. Around the same time, development of the Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle began. Born from an early model called the MKb42, which later evolved into the MP43 and MP44, the Stg44 was a revolutionary weapon that changed the face of infantry. The Soviet AK47 was inspired by the MP44 in both design and ammunition. These weapons became indispensable in close combat on battlefields where the German army was struggling, if not retreating, on several fronts.

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