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That Mussolini did, but only started on (checks wikipedia) 10th of June 1940, when France was already defeated and Germany seemed to win the whole war.
Not quite, the armistice was signed five days later, though negotiations began a day later. But Mussolini did invade only after France was obviously militarily beaten. For this reason, I would suggest that in any alternative scenario, Italy would most likely sit out a war as long as it didn't seem decided.
Getting their hands on heavy weapons might not be a fast enough or good enough solution to stop armored forces invading.
There was a disgruntled citizen in Colorado who built a home-made tank out of a bulldozer, and took it on a rampage through town. The local police and SWAT, who are basically well armed combat police, were impotent against it. They commandeered some heavy construction truck to ram into it and that didn't stop it. They were asking the governor of the state to send a national guard attack helicopter to blow it up, and were checking nearby armories for heavy weapons to use, when the operator of the tank crippled it himself by mistake by running over something too big.
I'm sure German higher authorities would react with more speed, but it would also be against real weapons of war that some guy didn't build in his garage.
The term "heavy weapons" you mention encompasses far more than just the heavy machineguns+ the occasional Hartkerngeschoss-ammo that I mentioned and could mean anything starting with heavy machineguns over mortars, rocketpropelled grenades, flamethrowers, antitankguns etc. I do not think that the latter were available outside the armed forces of Germany.
We should not imagine the czechoslovakian army using a fast armoured spearhead of a whole panzer division like Guderian pushing ahead and breaking through. Rather the czechoslovakian army in 1938 had their 298 "vz 35" tanks organized in regiments that mostly supported the infantery army and of which 2 tank platoons were detached and sent to the east of the country to protect the border in case of hungarian incursions together with the 3rd mobile division
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_35(t)#Czechoslovakia
And remember that the vz 35 had only a crew of 3 instad of 4 as later in german use, so that in czech use it reacted slower as one crewmember had to do several tasks.
And even if the whole Wehrmacht would be occupied with Poland (which is unlikely), there would still be the Sudetengerman free corps,
which were equipped by Germany with weapons from the former austrian army in addition to the german "Police" (I set that in "" because already in 1929 the police had more than just a guy with a pistol:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siche...Stärke,_Ausbildung,_Ausrüstung_und_Bewaffnung
In case of a country at war and having prepared for war for for several years and a real tank probably the National Guard would have reacted and not the normal police even in the USA.
When I think of a hypothetical war between Germany and a Czech-Polish alliance in 1938, I think of badly prepared armies using all sorts of outdated equipment, stopgap-measures and improvisations. However, I think so about BOTH sides. Just what was the state of the Wehrmacht in 1938? Only three years earlier, German re-armament had begun publicly, including the reintroduction of conscription, was this already a well-oiled war machine?
1938-3 would be 1935.
Actually it began right after WW1. Most people think that it was only after the Nazis took power that Germany rearmed, but Germany started to do so far earlier out of necessity. In 1919 for example germans and polish were still fighting where the afterwar borders should be and the treaty of Versailles 100.000 maximum on the Reichswehr would have meant that Germany would not be able to defend it’s own borders. So the democratic government of Germany started to e.g. train the police to be able to quickly reinforce the military in case of need
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_re-armament
Remember too, that the treaty of Rapallo (in which Germany and the USSR cooperate and where german armed forces are allowed to train in the USSR) was signed already in 1922.
In addition, the 100k theoretical limit meant that every NCO of the Wehrmacht was heads and shoulders above his contemporaries in the West, let alone those in the East. So the raw recruits of each side might be similar (though even then, Germany enjoyed a considerable advantage), but the squad structure those men would be slotted into was very different.
Note that Germany was doing military development and training via cooperative research and officer exchange programs in countries such as Sweden and the Soviet Union even before Hitler took power, because it couldn't do it within the national borders. Germany also built or designed a number of "dual purpose" items, such as "express mail carrier" planes (with mysterious unused bolt holes in the wings exactly where a machinegun would mount), tractors (which could move heavy artillery), and various other military support equipment that was "totally not rearming". When Hitler openly renounced the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was already well on its way toward rearmament, other than a lot of the actual weapons and the conscripts to be trained. The Czech vz35 was no Panzer III or vz38, but neither was a Panzer I or II, which together encompassed MOST of Germany's armor in '38. Note that the 37mm gun on the vz35 matched the one on the Panzer III at that point, outgunned the Panzer II's 20mm cannon by a considerably margin, and the Panzer I was only equipped with machineguns, while the Panzer IV was still not available in production quantities. The Panzer I and II didn't have the larger turret rings like the Panzer III and IV, to allow for a commander, gunner, and loader in the turret, so the Czech tanks were not at a disadvantage against them in that respect.
In 1938, the underlying command structure was there, but it hadn't been fleshed out fully, and hadn't fully incorporated the lessons learned in Spain. The big push to stockpile ammunition in quantity had only recently begun, and Germany was still at a very real risk of running low on ammo in any prolonged conflict. A war in '38 against a Czech-Polish alliance would probably have been one-sided, but not drastically, and even a modest commitment by France and/or the UK could very possibly have tipped the scales. By 1939, Germany was more-or-less ready, while France and the UK were still not.
Bottom line is, with any kind of substantial alliance arrayed against him, I don't think Hitler would have gone to war if anyone called his bluff in '38 or before. If he did, it very likely wouldn't have gone well for Germany.
In 1938, the underlying command structure was there, but it hadn't been fleshed out fully, and hadn't fully incorporated the lessons learned in Spain. The big push to stockpile ammunition in quantity had only recently begun, and Germany was still at a very real risk of running low on ammo in any prolonged conflict. A war in '38 against a Czech-Polish alliance would probably have been one-sided, but not drastically, and even a modest commitment by France and/or the UK could very possibly have tipped the scales. By 1939, Germany was more-or-less ready, while France and the UK were still not.
Bottom line is, with any kind of substantial alliance arrayed against him, I don't think Hitler would have gone to war if anyone called his bluff in '38 or before. If he did, it very likely wouldn't have gone well for Germany.
True but the Czech had no real tank doctrine and a 37mm at gun is enough to stop them.Also German tanks even if inferior outnumbered them badly. Any Czech offensive would have nowhere to go and would have worn out their toops conswidering the huge disparity in available
Also the Allies been also incredible underarmed/unprepared in 1938.
On the defense its another beast tho. The Czech had decent semi automatic rifles and a proper army in general siting in good fortifications and terrain. Also an arms industry fuel their troops.
That said on the long term if the Allies dont intervene a Czech-Polish alliance will fold too. Especially considering Hungary having to settle a score too.
I am aware that a lot of rearmament was done clandestinely before 1935 and before Hitler took power. However, I wonder how much can be done in secret. Especially the reintroduction of conscription, didn't this increase the Wehrmacht's size rather suddenly?
No. Think of the old "Krümper"-system already used in Prussia during Napoleonic times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription#In_modern_times
It allowed to train, and then phase out of service, a large number of recruits that then were available to be called upon later to have a larger army in times of need.
The Weimar Republic circumvented the 100.000 max limit by example training police forces (back then more paramilitary) to be fit for military service, which in case of a war could then be moved to the military on short notice.
A 37mm AT gun will easily take out any of the German Panzers too, and the Czechs were producing their own decent quality 37mm AT guns. Their 47mm AT gun wouldn't have been ready yet, but the Germans had nothing that the Czechs couldn't stop with their existing guns. While there was a large disparity in the number of tanks, MOST of the German tanks were Panzer I and II models, and having a large quantity of tanks isn't nearly as important while on the defensive.
Yes, defense is another beast entirely. The German AT guns are far less effective if they have to be dragged into position while under enemy fire, rather than waiting in ambush, while many of the Czech guns would be situated in bunkers or other defensive structures, with prepared lines of fire. Small arms are a wash, and the better German training at NCO level doesn't completely overmatch the prepared positions of their opponents, especially BEFORE their conscripts have gotten some combat experience. I don't see the Poles and Czechs successfully attacking Germany, but I do consider it likely that the Germans would bog down into a costly firefight, and suffer heavy losses in taking those countries, leaving a battered and depleted army to stem the French attacks on the opposite front. Yes, Germany would most likely win in the east before France/England made significant progress in the west, but it would be at a cost which Germany would struggle to bear, and another year or more before that Czech and Polish territory started paying dividends for Germany. Worse, providing sufficient garrison forces in militarily conquered Czechoslovakia would present a higher continuing cost than it did historically.
The czech defensive line of bunkers was never as impressive as the Maginot line that it tried to mimick. And it was not even halffinished in Octobre of 1938
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_border_fortifications
which is another reason that the CSR saw no sense to fight Germany alone historically.
Why? On the risk of repeating myself, Czechoslovakia was a multi-ethnic state and had the same problem as Austria-Hungary that only one of the groups of people really were ready to fight for Prague. The germans living in the CSR would gladly join Germany, the hungarians would gladly join Hungary like after the historical first award of Vienna, and the Ukrainians would rather join an independant Ukraine than fight for Prague on german ground
