Why did antique guns and swords from the Franco-Prussian War make part of the demilitarization program to which Germany was subjected?
Upvote:3
It was a bureaucratic requirement with a psychological basis that was exploited to provide a looting opportunity for American soldiers.
Firstly, you have to understand that the Occupation authorities did not see peace as the complete objective. They wanted to "re-educate" the entire German population to become peaceful and non-warlike, the opposite of what was perceived as Prussian "militarism" responsible for the war. Millions of German survivors were forced into "re-education" and "de-nazification" programs of various types.
Part of the mentality of this effort was to outlaw all weapons of any kind to prevent even the thought of war. Just to give you a sense for it, English-speaking allied soldiers literally went through German libraries (the few that were not burnt down), removed any book they could find that had the word "krieg" in it, collected the books in piles and destroyed them1.
Allied soldiers who were participating in the occupation enthusiastically enforced these "no-weapons" rules, because antique firearms were interesting to them, and in many cases very valuable. The rule gave them the excuse to loot museums and private homes and seize antiques for their own collections. Many German antiques you see auctioned by Sotheby's or Christie's even today, including guns, are items looted from Germany during the war.
1. Read No Evil - Time Magazine
Upvote:5
Consider the value that Allied strategists placed on the insurgent movements in Europe. While Germany occupied territories like France the Allies saw great value in providing the people with even rudimentary firearms like the FP-45.
Once the position is reversed and now the Allies are acting as occupiers on foreign soil the logic would be obvious. Particularly obvious to the Americans, whose founding doctrine saw "the right to keep and bear arms" as a core element of preserving an equality between ruled and ruler.
Next consider that these "antique" weapons had seen instances of effective use in WW1 and weren't far from what some of the Russian defense forces had used on the Eastern Front to stop the German invaders.
Finally... I know that this parallel has a very limited application, but I find it interesting that arms left over from the Franco-Prussian war would have been 70 years old at that time, and we're approximately 70 years past WW2. It seems a vast strategic mistake for a modern occupying power to say "let them keep their old tech weapons, what good are AK-47s in this day and age?"
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