Germany could not have rearmed between world wars without the support of russia
Executive summary
Germany’s covert rearmament after World War I benefited materially and technically from secret cooperation with the Soviet Union—training facilities, weapons testing, and industrial ventures began as early as 1921 and continued into the late 1920s and early 1930s [1] [2] [3]. Available sources also show multiple other channels—domestic paramilitaries, disguised state funds, industrial planning and Western economic indifference—that made rearmament possible even while Versailles restrictions formally stood [1] [4] [5].
1. A clandestine partnership that opened space for German experiments
German military leaders used Soviet territory to evade Versailles limits: facilities in the USSR hosted training for pilots, tank and chemical-weapons experiments and prototype testing that would be ready for mass production once Berlin rearmed openly in 1933 [1] [2] [3]. Historians emphasize the scale of this shadow program—Lipetsk for aviation, tank training near Kazan, and earlier industrial joint ventures—which ran roughly through the 1920s and into 1933 [2] [1] [5].
2. But Soviet help was one of several enablers, not the sole cause
Weimar-era rearmament was a multitrack effort. The Reichswehr cultivated domestic paramilitary reserves (Freikorps, Black Reichswehr, Einwohnerwehren), secret funds (the Lohmann Affair), disguised industrial policies (Montan-Schema), and covert research through scientific institutions to rebuild capacity inside Germany [1] [6]. These domestic measures persisted alongside foreign cooperation and reduced the Wehrmacht’s dependence on any single external partner [1] [4].
3. Economics, diplomacy and Western passivity enlarged the loopholes
Western states’ uneven enforcement and business interests created political space for German recovery. Allied unwillingness to pressfully block covert programs and Western firms’ appetite for trade with Germany and the USSR limited external constraints, allowing covert programs to expand [5] [7]. The Treaty of Rapallo normalized relations with Moscow and facilitated subsequent military and industrial contacts that benefited Germany’s clandestine rebuilding [8].
4. Mutual but unequal motives: why the USSR cooperated
The Soviet Union accepted cooperation for its own aims—industrial credits, technical imports, and officer training—while seeking to break diplomatic isolation and extract economic benefits [9] [10]. Sources stress the relationship was transactional: Soviets gained technology transfers and trade; Germans gained secret testing grounds and training [9] [10].
5. Timing matters: Soviet assistance was most important in the 1920s
Direct military cooperation was concentrated in the 1920s and “lasted less than a decade,” according to analysts; by 1933 Hitler felt less need to conceal rearmament and ended many of the secret facilities in the USSR [5] [11]. By the mid-1930s Germany pursued large-scale, domestic rearmament through the Four Year Plan and increasingly independent economic mobilization [10] [12].
6. How to interpret “could not have rearmed without Russia”
The claim that Germany “could not have rearmed” without Soviet support overstates the evidence. Sources show Soviet cooperation materially accelerated technical learning and provided testing venues that were strategically valuable [2] [1]. But domestic covert measures, industrial planning, and Western political/economic enablers provided parallel and significant capacity to rebuild German military power [1] [4] [5]. Therefore, available reporting does not support an absolute “cannot” claim; it supports a stronger, more precise formulation: Soviet cooperation was a major accelerator and facilitator in the 1920s, not the sole indispensable cause [1] [2] [5].
7. Competing viewpoints in the record
Some accounts and historians highlight that Germany profited most from the bilateral arrangements and that those arrangements “laid the foundation” for later rapid rearmament [2] [11]. Other sources emphasize the multiplicity of evasive domestic measures and the role of international indifference or economic ties—meaning rearmament would likely have proceeded, perhaps more slowly or differently, even absent Soviet facilities [1] [5] [7].
8. Limitations and what sources do not say
Available sources document covert German–Soviet cooperation and many domestic workarounds [1] [2] [5]. They do not quantify precisely how much faster or to what exact degree German rearmament would have been delayed without Soviet help—no source in the provided set supplies counterfactual modeling or exact timelines comparing rearmament with and without Soviet assistance. Therefore claims about absolute necessity exceed the evidence found here (not found in current reporting).
Summary: Soviet cooperation was a decisive facilitator—providing training, testing, and tacit diplomatic cover in the 1920s—but contemporary accounts and scholarship in the provided sources show rearmament relied on a web of domestic, diplomatic and economic factors as well; portraying Moscow’s role as uniquely indispensable is not supported by the available reporting [1] [2] [5].