Early gun control in Germany

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I do often read a story that goes like this:

"The Nazis came to power and introduced gun control to disarm the population and prevent an uprising against their dictatorship."

I understand this is a NRA propaganda myth and even Germans aren't particularly well-educated on details from that era, so it would ask much of Americans to resist such a myth based on actual knowledge.

I'll try to make this a lot easier:

The story begins in 1918 when Germany lost the First World War because its infantry failed to hold the Western frontline after losing too many young, aggressive infantrymen up to spring 1918. You cannot defend a line without counterattacks, and the German army was too bled white to live up to its performance of up to early 1918 any more.

The Versailles treaty of 1919 blamed the only losing country still capable of paying reparations for the whole war, and forced a de facto disarmament on the whole country of Germany. The army was limited to 100,000 men and 12 year volunteers, preventing a large pool of reservists with short training. Arms production and development was also restricted.

It was still possible to keep Germany defensible at least against the new Eastern neighbours such as Poland or Czechoslovakia by supporting unregulated militias (Freikorps) and generally by mobilising World War veterans and equipping them with rifles "lost" during the chaotic demobilization of 1918/1919. There were hundreds of thousands of small arms and probably hundreds of artillery pieces and aircraft unaccounted for.

The support for the Freikorps was eventually revealed and the problem of unaccounted for guns realised, and the consequence was that these unofficial means of national defence were targeted. Germany had to outlaw small arms possession in 1920. This ban on small arms was ineffective due to a lack of gun registration and merely good as an excuse to the British, French and Belgian governments.

Then there were the 20's, during which the Freikorps were dissolved, the Ruhr area was first occupied by Frenchmen and Belgians and then left alone again. The veterans aged and became ever less relevant for national defence. Germany was by the late 1920's no threat any more, nor perceived as such in London or Paris. The interpretation of the Versailles Treaty had become less harsh; the victors were by 1928 rather interested in milking Germany for reparations than concerned about its military potential.

Then came the Gesetz über Schusswaffen und Munition vom 12. April 1928, a gun control law which enforced gun registration and permitted trade with and possession of guns. Please note; this was almost five years before Hitler became Chancellor!

The reasoning behind laws is usually supposed to be written in the preamble, but this is an exception. One could hardly expect the German legislative of 1918 to write into the preamble that the registration of all rifles and carbines in private possession makes a mobilization in case of a conflict with Poland much easier! Yet exactly this was likely the greatest benefit of this law; the state finally knew how many standard calibre (7,92x57 mm) rifles would be available in the event of war.

Gun control was enacted and largely enforced in Germany before the Nazis established their dictatorship in 1933.* Gun control is nothing Nazi-ish, it's not oppression per se. It's difficult to see why driver's licenses are less controversial than gun licenses when you were not exposed to decades of NRA propaganda.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Interesting detail: The gun control law of 1928 outlawed gun possession by gypsies AND folks moving around like gypsies (circus acrobats and homeless people, for example) as well as felons (for five years after the arrest), mentally retarded people and people under age 20. So in case you hear about how gun control was used to oppress gypsies - remember this may indeed have been about crime concerns regarding nomadic people in general.

Edit: Comments closed. This blog post is meant to bust a politically motivated myth about German history that's only known in the Anglosphere. It's not about any of the many behind the times cultural wars the USA is still fighting domestically. And it was certainly not meant to ask for ignorant insults.

edit 2015: I found this piece, which explains the story similarly.

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