The Volkssturm was a militia summoned in virtue of a decree
of 25 September 1944 from all non-serving males aged sixteen to sixty. The
relevant lists were compiled by the local Party organisation, and the officers
were appointed (largely on grounds of political reliability) by the gauleiters
and their subordinate kreisleiters. The size of the Volkssturm ultimately
reached 1.5 million.
It is characteristic of the chaotic state of Germany at that
time that nobody can establish the precise occasion of the founding of the
Volkssturm. In September 1944 Guderian had to yield up most of the one hundred
battalions of fortress infantry with which he had intended to hold the prepared
positions behind the Eastern Front. He writes that he then fell back on a
proposal by General Adolf Heusinger's Operations Branch of the OKH, to the
effect that men should be withdrawn from hitherto reserved civilian occupations
and formed into a levee en masse. This, according to Guderian, was the origin
of the Volkssturm. In 1956 (two years after Guderian died) Guderian's account
was contested by Heusinger, who pointed out that his proposal had just been to
evacuate the population of East Prussia, for he was convinced that there was no
place for armed civilians in modern warfare.
Veterans of the Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps saw one of the
Volkssturm battalions spill into a factory yard:
Some of these troops
with Mausers on their shoulders must have been at least sixty or sixty-five, to
judge by their curved spines, bowed legs, and abundant wrinkles. But the young
boys were even more astonishing. . . . They had been hastily dressed in worn
uniforms cut for men, and were carrying guns which were often as big as they
were. They looked both comic and horrifying, and their eyes were filled with
unease, like the eyes of children at the reopening of school. Not one of them
could have imagined the impossible ordeal which lay ahead. . . . We noticed
some heart-wringing details about these children, who were beginning the first
day of their tragedy. Several of them were carrying school satchels their
mothers had packed with extra food and clothes, instead of schoolbooks. A few
of the boys were trading their saccharine sweets which the ration allowed to
children under thirteen. (Sajer, 1971, 395)
In fact, some of the baby-faced boys of the Volkssturm
turned out to be its most effective elements, when they hailed from the
Hitlerjugend and were armed with anti-tank Panzerfaust rocket launchers. The
Mausers mentioned by our soldier were the standard service rifles, which were
something of a rarity, and many of the Volkssturm had to be content with
Russian or Italian rifles or the Carl Walther Volksmaschinenpistole, (a German
version of the British Sten). Preparation was largely confined to drill, on account
of the lack of proper materials or facilities, and the allowance of practice
ammunition often consisted of a handful of cartridges.
The Volkssturm were not employed for local defence per se,
let alone as guerrillas, but were formed into battalions which (however badly
armed) found themselves holding gaps in the line, static positions and built-up
areas. Those who fought on the Eastern Front usually stood their ground much
better than those in the West, many of whom were concerned only about how to arrange
to surrender to the Americans or the British.
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