HJ and Volkssturm: HITLER'S FINAL FORTRESS

Thursday, February 19, 2015

HITLER'S FINAL FORTRESS - BRESLAU 1945

Richard Hargreaves

In January 1945, the Red Army unleashed its long-awaited thrust into Germany with terrible fury. One by one the provinces and great cities of the German East were captured by the Soviet troops. Breslau, capital of Silesia, a city of 600,000 people stood firm and was declared a fortress by Hitler.A bitter struggle raged as the Red Army encircled Breslau, then tried to pummel it into submission while the city's Nazi leadership used brutal methods to keep the scratch German troops fighting and maintain order. Aided by supplies flown in nightly and building improvised weapons from torpedoes mounted on trolleys to an armored train, the men of Fortress Breslau held out against superior Soviet forces for three months. The price was fearful. By the time Breslau surrendered on May 6, 1945, four days after Berlin had fallen, 50,000 soldiers and civilians were dead, the city a wasteland. Breslau was pillaged, its women raped and every German inhabitant driven out of the city which became Wroclaw in post-war Poland. Based on official documents, newspapers, letters, diaries and personal testimonies, this is the bitter story of Hitler's Final Fortress.

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Deutscher Volkssturm

Of all the measures taken to mobilize speed the last manpower resources of the German nation, the most extreme was the creation of the Volkssturm designed to supplement the defense of the homeland. The Deutscher Volkssturm was constituted in September 1944. The organization may be considered a territorial militia which was formed and called to arms only for training purposes or for employment whenever a local area was threatened by the enemy. It was used to reinforce the Wehrmacht by "total commitment of all German people," as the constitution decree dictated. Although formation and training to the Volkssturm was not under the responsibility of the Wehrmacht, but rather under the auspices of the NAZI Party (NSDAP), for employment in combat all Volkssturm units came under the full operational command and control of the army. Under the status of forces as determined by the Geneva Convention, the Volkssturm was a legal irregular defense force that was neither part of the Wehrmacht nor the army, but rather an independent fighting force controlled by the Party.

Hitler Jugend

Few historical subjects are so emotional as the Nazi Third Reich, few have stimulated so much general interest, and few have been subjected to such close scrutiny. Adolf Hitler continues to fascinate and to horrify, and his barbaric regime still defies imagination. The Nazi regime is fortunately dead and buried, but the questions raised by its terrible history continue to demand explanations. Countless books have been written on the Nazi period, including many about the Hitler Youth, some of which have now become classics of their kind. In 1979, the historian James P. O’Donnell remarked that the British Library and the Library of Congress listed over 55,000 items on Hitler and World War II. Even the superficial student of that period of history is aware of why Hitler attached so much importance to the German youth, and the process of indoctrination leading to full-scale militarization is now well known