Volkssturm

The Volkssturm (in German: [ˈfɔlks.ʃtʊɐ̯m], translated into Spanish as: people's assault forces or simply People's Storm) was the German national militia, created in the last days of Nazi Germany, specifically on October 18, 1944 under the orders of Joseph Goebbels, so all males among the 16 and 60 years old were recruited and integrated into the homeland defense plan, the total war against the advance of the Red Army in the east, and the Anglo-American troops in the west and south.

History

Creation and organization

Although the idea of creating the Volkssturm originated in 1935, it was not until the second half of 1944 that German leaders seriously addressed the possibility of carrying out mass recruitment among the German civilian population, including categories of men who They had previously been exempt from military service due to their age or socioeconomic status. As the military situation of Nazi Germany worsened in the Second World War, Hitler and the Nazi leader Martin Bormann arose the idea of carrying out a generalized military levy to cover the serious casualties suffered by the Wehrmacht and establish an identification in the German civilian population. total with the fate of the Nazi regime, which would stimulate resistance to an imminent foreign invasion (a situation that the German people had not experienced since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte). Precisely, the 130th anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 was chosen as the date for Hitler to give his speech announcing the creation of the Volkssturm, in which he emphasized that this militia would be Germany's final defense against the foreign troops that threatened it. from the east and the west.

In the following days, Martin Bormann, by direct order from Hitler, recruited almost six million Germans to form a national militia, delivering the respective orders to all local Gauleiter. The basic unit of the Volkssturm was a battalion of 642 men, composed mostly of members of the Hitler Youth, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people previously considered unfit for military service. Despite Bormann's initial effort, during the final months of the war, the Volkssturm was under the command of SS chief Heinrich Himmler and participated in the defense of Berlin.

A notable feature of the Volkssturm was that, from the beginning, Hitler and Himmler insisted not only on the strictly military preparation of the recruits, but also on filling these militias with nationalist fanaticism, in order to determine them to fight until their annihilation; For this reason, the Volkssturm did not begin to operate under the direct control of the Wehrmacht, but under the direction of the NSDAP itself, through its local leaders in each city or region.

Structure

The largest division of the Volkssturm was the battalion, which consisted of three companies, in which there were three platoons, divided into three sections. At the end of the war, about 700 Volkssturm battalions were organized. All Volkssturm's were classified as soldiers who obeyed army regulations throughout their service life. All members of the SA, Hitler Youth and NSDAP retained title and position in their organizations, however, service in the Volkssturm was a priority duty. The recruits of these paramilitary units had to undergo a short training program, the instructors were instructors from the armed forces. It was hoped that such training would be enough to learn how to handle a rifle, Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck and hand grenades. The Volkssturm conscripts also swore an oath personally to Hitler.

Text of the oath:

I take this sacred oath before God that I will be unquestionably faithful and obedient to the Great German Empire and to Adolf Hitler. I solemnly promise that I will boldly fight for my homeland and die better than sacrificing freedom, thus leaving the social future of my people at the mercy of destiny.

From Hitler's decree on the creation of Volkssturm:

Fighting positions of the German Volkssturm

1. Faithfulness, obedience and courage form the basis of the state and make it irresistible. Faithful to his oath, the soldier of the Volkssturm fight fiercely in all positions, with faith in victory. Being faithful to the Fuehrer to the grave, he prefers to die in the battle before asking mercy on the enemy.
2. Being insurmountable in its firmness, dedication and association, the Volkssturm is an army of the best idealists in Germany.
3. If any commander in a desperate situation decides to stop the fight, then in this case in the Volkssturm German applies the traditional custom of our brave sailor warriors. The command is transferred to the part of the person who wants to continue the struggle, either the youngest.
4. Being educated to preserve the secret, the soldier of the Volkssturm He despises betrayal in relation to his homeland and his comrades. Neither temptation nor threat can break their secret.
5. In a cavalry way towards women, by caution towards children, sick and elderly, the soldier of the Volkssturm He is ready for the ultimate sacrifice for the love of the people, the homeland. In relation to the enemy, who threatens freedom and life and wants to dishonour our wives and kill children, he harbors passionate hatred.
6. If, following the example of our parents, we remain faithful to ourselves and our highest duty to the people, then the Lord God blesses our struggle. Called at the most difficult time to defend the homeland, we will not rest until victory and peace are won and the freedom of the empire is consolidated.

Organization

All future Volkssturm recruits were divided into four categories.

Category I: people who were not employed in production could serve within the administrative district, they should have been placed in the barracks. 1,200,000 people, 1850 battalions, of which 400 were in the border districts. This included members of the NSDAP, generals of the SS, SA, NSFK, NSKK and public officials.

Category II: people employed in production could only serve in their home district, they were established in their apartments. 2,800,000 people, 4,860 battalions, of which 1,050 were in the border districts.

Category III: young people from 16 to 20 years old. 600,000 men, 1,040 battalions.

Category IV: people with disabilities and volunteers over 60 years of age could carry out protection tasks in rear facilities, concentration camps and prisoner of war camps. 1,400,000 men, 2,430 battalions.

Ranks, uniform and insignia

The gray uniform had a red/black/red armband on the left arm with the inscription "Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht" flanked by two eagles, and silver pins were added to the collar. of the member, which designated his rank. Since the Wehrmacht could not provide uniforms to all its members, most wore civilian clothes or the uniform of their work or employment; Among them the train driver's uniform was very popular.

The brown uniform of the Hitler Youth also predominated, and Soviet soldiers sometimes did not shoot them because they thought they were from their side (some Red Army units also wore uniforms of a brown shade) and when they captured them they thought they were spies. The ranks and insignia of the Volkssturm were as follows:

Rango Volkssturm	Translation	equivalent	Insignia
Bataillonsführer	Battalion Chief	Major
Bataillonsarzt	Battalion Doctor	Captain	and Vara de Esculapio
Kompanieführer	Head of Company	Captain
Zugführer	Chief of Section	Lieutenant
Sanitätsdienstgrad	Assistant doctor	Corporal
Gruppenfuhrer	Chief of Platoon	Corporal
Volkssturmmann	People's Storm Man	Recruit/Solding

The members of the Volkssturm used a lot the weapons of the defeated Italian army, as well as old weapons that had been decommissioned by the army, and even weapons of various origins (France, Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Soviet Union) that the Wehrmacht had captured and stored for years in its warehouses. This caused serious logistical problems, as it was very difficult to obtain adequate ammunition in time for units using such different weapons. To save raw materials and speed up weapons production, they were equipped with highly simplified weapons, such as the MP 3008 submachine gun and the Volkssturmgewehr series rifles. They were also given thousands of Panzerfaust, a rocket launcher similar to the Bazooka, an easy-to-manufacture weapon with great anti-tank effectiveness, but which could only be used once (it was not possible to reload it). In addition to being poorly armed, the members of the Volkssturm did not have enough ammunition for combat, and were required to obtain uniforms, blankets, kitchen utensils, etc. at their own expense, so the final appearance of the recruited troops was extremely variegated and uneven. In reality, the disorganized appearance of the Volkssturm battalions did not constitute a factor that raised civilian morale, but on the contrary, it crudely showed the desperate military situation of Nazi Germany.

Performance

The members of the Volkssturm were recruited en masse from November 1944 to give them adequate training, as they were formed into militias in October 1944, but just four months after that (in February 1945) the Red Army entered East Prussia while on March 7, 1945, United States troops crossed the Rhine River, surpassing the last geographical barrier that defended Germany. The advance of war operations required that the Wehrmacht urgently needed all its experienced men on the combat front, and therefore the Volkssturm recruits lacked adequate instructors.

Certainly many Volkssturm recruits had been veterans of the First World War or had completed their military service when it was reinstated by Hitler in 1933, so they had fundamental notions of military discipline and handling of weapons. Despite this, many other recruits lacked that experience, and even the veterans of the First World War were unaware of the use of modern weapons, which is why they had to be retrained to be useful in the fight. Many times the few instructors available also tended to be veterans of the First World War, who did not know how to use modern weapons.

Officially it had been ordered that the militias formed through the Volkssturm would serve only to defend their hometown, but as the war situation in Nazi Germany became more desperate and casualties in the Wehrmacht increased, Nazi leaders sent militiamen of the Volkssturm directly to fight anywhere on the front where necessary, even removing the militias from their own base locations.

As a result of this very poor training, in many cases the recruits were sent to the front without even having learned to handle their own weapons well, in addition to their total inexperience in combat being evident in many cases. In this way, numerous Volkssturm soldiers died negligently during the operations, many others practiced mass desertions at the front, or in any case capitulated almost without a fight before the advance of their adversaries (as did several thousand Volkssturm recruits before American troops in the Ruhr Stock Exchange). For this reason, historians agree that the tactical value of these improvised troops was very limited, and except for the specific cases of the Battle of Berlin and the siege of Breslau, their actions did not greatly affect the enemy's advance.

In the Battle of Berlin, the Volkssturm suffered numerous casualties, many times at the hands of the German troops themselves, since without combat experience they crossed the line of fire of their own comrades, attacking each other in the midst of confusion. As it was considered the last battle against communism, and the majority of the recruits were native to the city, the members of the Volkssturm in Berlin fought hard, although they could do little to avoid final defeat. Furthermore, although they fought bravely, they lacked the weapons necessary to confront the numerically superior Red Army, against which they were ultimately unable to do anything.

In Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), the situation was different, since the city resisted the Red Army from February 13, 1945 until May 6 of the same year, when the survivors of the Volkssturm (many of them teenagers and elderly), under the command of General Hermann Niehoff, they surrendered exhausted when they ran out of ammunition, almost lacking in food and with their combat morale greatly reduced after learning of the fall of Berlin days before. However, the Volkssturm fighters in Breslau managed to destroy several Soviet tanks with Panzerfaust and cause many casualties to the Red Army.

Despite their efforts, the last four months of the war were an exercise in futility for the Volkssturm, and the Nazi leaders' insistence on continuing the fight to the end contributed to an additional 1.23 million deaths (approximately), the half of them German military personnel and the other half from the Volkssturm. The figure that historian Stephen Fritz presents does not match the observations of Richard J. Evans, who reported that 175,000 Volkssturm members died fighting. against the professional armies of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Evans' figures are based on the members listed on the card, who were officially reported killed, but Martin Sorge notes that this figure does not include the 30,000 listed as presumed missing. or dead from a 1963 report.

Interrogated members of the Volkssturm, when asked where the regular forces had gone, revealed that the German soldiers surrendered to the Americans and the British instead of the Red Army for fear of reprisals related to the atrocities they had committed in the Soviet Union.

Gallery

Notable members

• Ernst Tiburzy, decorated with the Knight Cross of the Iron Cross
• Martin Heidegger, German philosopher and NSDAP member
• Alfred Zech, child soldier, decorated with the Iron Cross, class 2.
• Heinz Schubert, German actor

In fiction

• Gregor Dorfmeister, under the pseudonym of Manfred Gregor, published in 1958 the novel Die Brücke based on your experiences in a unit of the Volkssturm. The novel has been adapted to the cinema in 1959 and a film made for television in 2008.
• The units of the Volkssturm composed of teenagers are represented in battle scenes in the 2004 film. The Hundred.