The Volkssturm - A Million Men to Save The Reich? - WW2 Documentary Special
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- čas přidán 25. 03. 2024
- The Volkssturm is the last-ditch people’s army of the Third Reich. Sure, on paper, there are millions of old men and boys ready to defend Germany. But how will they be armed? Are they truly willing to die for Hitler? Will they make any difference at all?
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: Markus Linke
Research by: Markus Linke
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
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Norman Stewart - oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
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Spartacus Olsson
Source literature list: bit.ly/SourcesWW2
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
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IWM: BU 2810, BU 4893
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The Volkssturm is pretty emblematic of Germany in the second half of this war. Too little, too late, and riven by internal weaknesses. It won’t save Nazi Germany. Stay tuned as we bring you the end of the Third Reich and for our next project, Korea with Indy Neidell.
www.youtube.com/@KoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
I was hoping to see an entire serious for the aftermath of WW2. Are you doing a “between two wars” series again so we can see everything that lead to the Korean War?
It's "Volkssturm" you missed an extra S in the title just to point that out. 😂
Could someone please explain to me why we absolutely had to have UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
@@oceanhome2023World War 1 and the very short peace. The Germans were, back and we no longer wanted a Peace Treaty. We need them broken and ready to be remodeled. It worked.
@@oceanhome2023For two main reasons. One is to assure there would be no "stab in the Back" legend that the Nazis capitalized on to convince the populace that he German army was not defeated and the people at home especially the left betrayed Germany and that the Germans could reverse its defeat in another war. Another is to reassure that he Western Allies were in this to the end and they would not make a separate peace and the Soviets would not be left facing the Germans on their own. This was a way to unify the Allies war effort.
As a rather gallows-humour joke of the time put it: "The Volkssturm are the Reich's most valuable resource! They have gold in their teeth, silver in their hair, and lead in their bones."
Brutal.
German gallows humor.
Dark, but not untrue. Still brutal.
There was another one that translated as "We old monkeys (German: Affen) are the Führer's last weapons (German: Waffen)." People had to be careful telling such jokes as they could be executed for undermining the war effort.
I have never subscribed to the prejudice that Germans are humourless. They have a rather bitter sense of humour, as the jokes show.
@@stevekaczynski3793 "Wir alten Affen sind des Führers neue Waffen"
I remember reading a piece in a British newspaper a long time ago by a British veteran. Who said that every time his unit met a Volkstrum they would fire a few shots to flush them out of cover. Take their weapons away. Break the weapons by running over them with their vehicles. Then they told them to go home. And they always did.
Volkssturm members taken prisoner by the Americans, British and Canadians tended to be among the first POWs to be released from captivity. The artist Otto Dix, born 1891, had been an artilleryman and then a machine-gunner in WW1 and was conscripted into the Volkssturm, many of whom were WW1 veterans. He was captured by the French but released early in 1946, although in general the French were more likely to keep German POWs in custody longer, partly out of vengefulness.
@@stevekaczynski3793Those treated as military POW's were released quickly as interned civilians. The difference in the numbers of German military POW's taken and the smaller number of German military POW's eventually releases is about the same as the number of deaths claimed by a Canadian writer to have died under Western allied incarceration, particularly those under US control. He research was very poor and anti
American.
Makes sense. A lot of them were probably farmers or craftsmen in their home towns, and the war ended in the spring when a lot of planting is going on. The Allies were concerned about famine breaking out and one of the best ways they could lessen the risk is by sending them home to take care of their communities.
@@Raskolnikov70 On the whole they did not find the often elderly Volkssturm they held to be particularly dangerous or likely to take part in a diehard Nazi insurgency, which was a fear for a year or so after the war. So they tended to be released quicker than some other categories.
They were smart enough to know the gig was up.
My grandfather was 43 years old in East Prussia when he was drafted into the Volksturm. He told me two stories that were Monty Pythonesque in their stupidity. He told me that his job was to deliver uniforms stacked on his motorcycle sidecar so that recruits didn't get shot as partisans. My grandmother and children caught the last train West (it just occured to me watching this series how quickly they had to flee). By the time my grandfather got them to where his unit was supposed to be, it was behind the Russian lines, nobody was there, and he had to hightail out of there. I think it was on the way to the rendez-vous point that he ran low on gas and pulled into a gas station. The Russian columns could be heard rumbling to the east. He ordered the intendant to fill up the tank, but the intendant actually asked for a RATION CARD for the gas. My grandfather lost it, yelled at him that the recruits could get executed if they faught without a uniform, and that the Russians were minutes away. The attendant wouldn't budge. Finally, my grandfather pulled out his pistol, pointed it at him, "Now, are you going to fill up the tank?". The attendant still made my grandfather pump the gas himself. The other story I'll add later.
Us humans are strange lol
Dude! The gas was rationed!
@@lynnwood7205 gas and fuel of all types was rationed in nearly every combatant nation during WWII. My mom told me of how her father parked his (beloved) Packard in the family garage in like very early 1942, and it sat there till nearly Thanksgiving of 1945 (with an occasional family trip, once or twice a year on his saved up gas rations).
There have been entire books written about the psychology of military incompetence - sometimes of a bureaucratic nature. This sounds like a typical anecdote.
I have to say that's the most German story ever lol. You want fuel to save our soldiers from certain death. Do you have a document to get that fuel?
A Volkssturm Unit of elderly men (65+) was my Grandfather's last Command as Lieutenant (then 23) of the Luftwaffe. The first best chance they got he sent them all home and went into American Custody. He died 98 years old after a long and fulfilled life.
He choosed wisely. I don't want to berate your grandfather, but as a Luftwaffe officers I doubt he had any real proper combat infantry training. This kind training take time to be learned and practiced properly, and there's a reason that the Volksgrenadiers unit were suboptimal in quality compared to the standar heer infantry unit, not to mention the Volksturm one...
@@alpharius4434 oh, he had that training too, he was first with the regular heer but changed branches early, not really a pilot but a radio Operator on board of larger aircrafts and later in the war a ad hoc forward air Controller detached to armoured Divisions. You could not know this, but before that last command he suffered a bullet wound in his foot, so it was no coincidence that they gave him that formation. I personally believe he knew the war was lost and so looked for a way out. Told me allot about it and wrote down all his deployments, so we know exactly were he got deployed.
@@alpharius4434 my great uncle was also part of the luftwaffe and wasa turned into a infatrist just before the ends of the war
he had 2 engagements
first one his leutnant was shot when he tried to retrieve his bycicle from a town that they didnt know was already in russian hands
second time the russians were on a hill and raised white flags on the 8th of may
as they had no radio and were in the middle of nowhere they needed some time to figure out the war was over
He was blessed to live long by the lives he saved
this is why collective punishment really shouldn't be a thing in any war, there are good and bad people on both sides. It's a shame that whilst collective punishment is deemed a war crime it's still a common problem today worldwide.
The scenes in _Downfall_ with Volkstrum getting mowed down after running in the open streets and lying there screaming in agony and suddenly silent has always remained with me.
Finally watched it yesterday. It’s free on CZcams. Really just a tragic story from start to finish. The poor children of the Volksstrum.
"Das ist doch Wahnsinn?!"
The two soldiers wanted to call them to retreat because they knew that the charge was meaningless and that one Russian that shows sympathy to the Hitler's youth kid was heartbreaking scenes.
I recommend watching the movie "Die Brücke" (The Bridge) from 1959, based on an autobiographical novel. It's about a group of 16-year-old boys drafted into the Volkssturm who are told to defend an overall unimportant bridge from the advancing Americans. Since they grew up in the Third Reich, they believe the propaganda about the "glorious fight for the fatherland", and ignore all the civilians and retreating soldiers telling them to just go home. Once they start dying and watching their friends die, they realise they should've just gone home. The film ends with a line about how all these events were so unimportant that they were never mentioned in any official communique.
Excellent suggestion.
That movie was awesome. Cruel to the bone.
Truly a movie to watch!. Haven't seen it in years and I highly doubt that Goggle/You Tube will ever show it on their platform!. But definitely a movie that needs to be watched!.
In my homeland there is fierce debate on why do post-War German and Japanese movies by and large feel so different. The broadstrokes conclusion is that while German movies are there to be Anti-War, many Japanese movies who end up being laughing stocks for ass-covering are that way because they made Anti-LOSING-the-war films.
I watched it on CZcams last year.
there is a guy here in town who was hitler youth that was dragged into the volkssturm. he said they gave him a panzerfaust and they gave his friend a french rifle. they surrendered to the first americans they came across...who happened to speak german. he took the weapons, told them "get out of those uniforms and GO HOME there is nothing but death for you here.".
these days he is a mercedes truck repair specialist.
I am glad that this man was able to survive the horror and go on to have a successful life.
What in his 90's?
He's still working???
I read a book once by a German who described his time in the Hitler Youth. Towards the end of the war he was called up, I think into the regular army rather than the Volkssturm.
SPOILER
His column was marching along a road near Dortmund in April 1945. He saw an American spotter plane but his commander ignored him when he brought it to his attention. Shortly after they walked into an ambush by American tanks. A lot of his group were killed or wounded - he described seeing someone's intestines on the ground. Not long after he was captured by the Americans. After being released he was eventually able to study medicine and became a doctor.
A noble American soldier shows compassion that was totally lacking in Nazi ideology. Well done.
A litte story of the Volkssturm from my town: When word got out that the Americans would arrive the Mayor decided to raise the Volkssturm and to errect defences around the city. To call them inedaquate would be an understatement. Anyway a Cardinal who had seeked refuge convinced the Mayor that a defence of the city would be pointless and that the Americans would simply flatten the city. And so the defences were quickly removed. However the Volkssturm which at this point consisted of about 15 Teenagers wanted to fight the Americans so badly that they hid in a barn and attacked them on sight. The barn was burned down and they all died in it achieving absolutely nothing but griefing mothers.
Some did want to fight and did and even more ran away when confronted with the reality of combat.
A completely pointless sacrifice, which also sums up the entire German effort from January 1945 on.
@@nelsonchereta816from 1943 lol. but yea, that was the end
@@nesa1126 Wilhelm von Thoma said Hitler was mad and the war was lost in November 1942, when he defected to the Allies and revealed the V1 and V2 programmes - von Thoma was opposed to attacking civilians.
Sadly he died in 1948 of a heart attack while actual Nazis like von Braun were celebrated in the West.
Smart Cardinal
One ex-GI in my town said that they killed a great number of teenagers who tended to fight harder than the old men they ran into. He said when they get shot at they would lay down surpassing fire. They would only see fleeting glimpses of the German soldiers much less how old they looked. That came only after they saw the bodies or rounded up the soldiers who had surrendered. While in Germany he ended up being wounded by a 22 rifle though he did not realize it was only a 22 till his wounds were examined. He shot the sniper out of a tree. Upon examination the dead soldier looked to be 14 or less.
I read that in the 3rd Army, when a unit came under sniper fire from a city block, the unit put as much lead as it too to demolish that city block. Once the Germans knew this type of thing would happen, sniper fire started to not be a problem.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 I would do the same thing. You’re in Germany, you know the war is coming to and end, why take risks. At this time we are well supplied, why take it home? Send it down range.
I believe the Hitler Youth trained on .22 small-calibre rifles that resembled the 98K Mauser but fired a smaller but potentially still lethal bullet. He may have been unable to find another rifle.
So in my family we have an artifact that is passed down from the second world war. How the story goes is that my step mother's uncle was an infantryman who served in Germany in 1944/45. Apparently he killed an SS soldier in brutal hand to hand combat in a small german village east of the Rhine. He took the armband as a trophy and brought it back to the states. After looking at the still blood stained armband I realised it was actually a Hitler's youth armband and in reality he took it off some poor kid in the Volksstrum. War is hell.
It is quite possible that he did fight a Hitler youth hand-to-hand. They were quite fanatical and not afraid to fight. One of the uniforms they had were completely black and could have been mistaken as an SS uniform (although the cap would have been different). Some SS officers wore the Nazi armband, but mostly in ceremonial situations.
Your uncle may have encountered a member of the 12 SS division, the Hitler Youth. They could be very fanatical as they were brought up almost entirely during the Nazi era. They were led mostly by very experienced eastern front NCOs and officers, men like their notorious General Kurt Meyer, a war criminal. They had many such officers and NCOs. They were infamous for murdering their prisoners, often the wounded, in gruesome ways like running them over with tanks and trucks while they were stoned on Pervitin, a wartime methamphetamine more or less identical to crystal meth today. An evil lot.
Do you happen to know the name of the town or the rough area? I might live close nearby.
I can't blame him for not wanting to share the age of his enemy. That stuff will weigh on you, even if their age difference may have only been a couple of years.
A sixteen year old man would be very athletic, and even if only lightly trained in small-arms combat would be a very dangerous one-on-one opponent for a grown man. Full credit to your step-mother's uncle.
Whenever I think of the Volkssturm I think of what we saw in JoJo Rabbit. Children being sent off to die by adults who already know the war is lost, but still live under threat of punishment for speaking what everybody knows. They aren't yet free and even as liberation is a mile or a city block away, they are still forced to fight and die until that moment comes.
A heart wrenching film. Thanks for watching.
- Jake
@@WorldWarTwoJust one last Desperation for my dying party.
About 30 years ago, my across-the-street-neighbor [in Tucson] told me he had been in the Hitler Youth [it was a no-choice boy scouts] and then in '45 had been conscripted into the Volksturm. He was given an ill-fitting uniform and an MP40. They were under the charge of an old Feldwebel -- Great War vet -- and as they advanced toward the front, getting clear of any High Party Members, the Feldwebel took away their weapons and directed him and his comrade to the Swiss Border.
I assume the Feldwebel surrendered to the Amis right after.
He saved the lives of so many kids that day.
What happened at the very end, was that Hitler blamed the people for the loss of the war. He had believed that as long as his “iron will” existed, Germany would win. But at the end he refused to admit his culpability in the loss and said that it would be best if Germany and the German people were wiped out as they didn’t deserve to exist as they proved themselves to be too weak. This is a major reason he was willing to destroy everything in Germany rather than to preserve it for after the war.
"If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation. Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have all been killed."
Thank you for mentioning this historic fact. In an age of renewed fervor for extreme ideology, it’s good to show how such leaders are firstly in it for themselves. Others are just the tools. To their detriment.
@@TalyrionGood quote. It shows Hitler's strong belief in social Darwinism an incorrect application of a biological theory in the idea that the survival of the fittest could be mistakenly applied to societies and countries.
A very strong personal belief of his was social darwinism. If the Germans were weak enough to lose and die, then by rules of nature they deserved it. As always it contradicted a lot of what he said.
Hitler was thinking that if Germany remained defiant and kept on throwing bodies into the grinder like what the USSR was doing, i.e. when the Axis could see Moscow and were poking around at Kharkov, Stalingrad, then maybe Germany could do the same and save the situation. The Soviets did quite desperate things to remain in the fight in the critical years of 1941-1942.
The problem was that Russia was never alone and had powerful friends. The Axis overall in 1944, never mind 1945, were in retreat, losing lots of men and equipment. Italy was already knocked out of the war in 1943. Japan was in deep trouble in Asia and the Pacific. Germany was getting rolled up at all compass directions. There was no power within the Axis that had the capability to turn the war situation around at all.
There was no help coming to the Axis.
5:52 - Elderly recruit clutching a Mannlicher rifle, probably the 1895 model that was the Austro-Hungarian standard rifle of WW1.
I don't think anything says desperation more than "19th century" austro hungarian rifle hot damn.
@@exeggcutertimur6091 Older rifles than that one were issued.
@@exeggcutertimur6091It's not really a meaningful difference in terms of tech, but it is the same kind of "this is all we have left" as the organization itself.
@@BleedingUranium The rifles/carbines of most WW2 soldiers were bolt-action models whose basic technology went back to the late 19th century. The guy at 5:52 might have held a gun designed in 1895, but the basic design of the Mosin-Nagant went back to 1891 and the German Kar98K was a version of a gun first designed in 1898. Only the Americans fought WW2 with a semi-automatic designed in the 1930s as the main battle rifle. The Soviets wanted to make the semi-automatic SVT-40 their main battle rifle but found they could never make enough of them in wartime, and ended up reverting to the Mosin-Nagant.
At least it was a proper bolt action rifle, imagine being one of the guys issued with a Dreyse needle gun lmao
My Great Grandfather was in the Volkssturm, and was listed as killed with no known burial place in Gdansk (he was wounded in the head and was left behind when the field hospital was evacuated).
Excellent summary conclusion: “The Third Reich demonstrates its final act of cruelty and irresponsibility towards it’s own people.”
Ten points to whoever wrote that.
You can find who wrote the script in the description of our episodes! This time it appears to have been James our editorial lead, thanks for watching!
@@WorldWarTwo thanks for the tip. Well done James Newman.
Great video as usual. I have two stories to add:
My grandfather (from my fathers side) used to live around Łódź (now Polen) and flew at the end of the war. During his funeral I was told that his fater (my grandgrandfather) "stayed" in the Volkssturm. So nobody knew where and how he died. This formulation still gives me chills. It is really sad that so many people died as cannon fodder.
My grandmother (on my mothers side) lived in central Germany and told me that some people from her village wanted to blow up the bridge to prevent the Americans from crossing a river. But then they realized that it was pointless.
in one of these towns Zduńska Wola there were no resistance. germans force people to dig trenches but all forces abondont it. all forces and german civilians where heading towards wrocław or poznań. many died during retreat. about 50 german soldiers buried with about 10 soviet once in town cementary in masive grave. historicly there where 1/3 polish 1/3 german and 1/3 jewish population. lodz was a part of germany for only 5 years, before it was or russian or polish. i now this story from my grandpa who is 85 right now. i wish i helped at least a bit
Thank you for sharing your families story with us, and thank you for watching.
My grandmas brother was in the Volkssturm.
He was but a boy when he was drafted and wanted to desert but the ns terror was now in full swing and his mother told him "you have to go otherwise they will kill us all..."
So he went there, fighting the russians.
His unit got smashed quite soon and in the battlefield chaos of the late stages of the war he simply went home with two of his mates which came from the same village in Austria.
Well apparently in the last mountain pass they had to cross the local SS Administration set up a guard post and captured deserters.
So his mates got both shot standing next to him and apparently since he was the youngest he got spared and somehow made it back home.
Maybe to spread the tale and to stop other desertions (idk).
He survived the war, but it was clear the war shaped him in a way, as he was one of the most thankful people i have ever encountered.
I was a kid and never understood why he was so thankful for the smallest things, but as i reflect on him now that i am an adult i guess he was deeply thankful to be alive and saw everything that happend to him after the war as special.
Maybe some form of suvivors guilt.
He always used to say this phrase, roughly translated "May god repay you 1000 times", everytime someone did something for him, didnt matter how minor it is.
You cannot make a home guard/Volksturm/hemvärn/ or the like work as an add hoc force cobbled together in the dying days of a loosing war. You need it to work way before the war even start. You need intricate planning that is effective and easy to follow. You need preplanned staging areas. Prestocked armouries etcetera.
I think that was one of the main lessons from the Volksturm (at least for my own Sweden).
Years ago, I worked with a man who was conscripted into the Volksstrum at the age of 11. They handed him a Panzerfaust that was almost as tall as he was. He was in a group that was headed toward the eastern front when at the last minute, a Volksstrum officer pulled him and several other boys to go with a unit heading to the west front (towards the British lines). When his group encountered a British tank unit, he managed to fire his panzerfaust; the backblast knocked him on his butt, and the charge flew way wide of the British unit. He immediately threw down the spent weapon and surrendered to British troops.
This is a story that was repeated at several occasions late in WWII.
A friend of my great grandmother once told me the story of him having to defend Berlin in the last weeks of the war with his Hitler youth group. He was one of the few who had a Panzerfaust - with no ignition cap, meaning he could have never fired it and would have had to run up to the tank and hit it, blowing himself up in the process. Luckily the adult Hitler youth leader gave them all papers saying their orders are to stay home and defend it.
When going home he saw dozens of people hanged on lamp posts.
Death was near when soviets wanted to execute the men of his house but a jewish soviet officer who was born in Berlin intervened, asked what was going on and set up his head quarters in their house.
He was around 14-15 years old at that point. Probably still alive and looking no day older than 70 now.
All the volkssturm was sacrificial lambs to the slaughter.
Which was exactly what the party had in mind. They couldn't have Germany for themselves, so they decided to burn it to the ground, including the German population.
no training, no leadership, poor weapons, ammo shortage… what could go wrong?
I once knew man who was drafted into the Volksturm at sixteen. He had grown up on a farm in rural Germany, and this was his first experience far from home. He was given a couple weeks' training, then shipped off to the Netherlands over the final winter.
Im his first action, his company came under heavy bombardment, and the first enemy soldier he met - an elite Canadian paratrooper - took all of them prisoner. None of them fired a shot. They were all terrified, confused, and just wanted to get away from there.
He recovered quickly and was set free, and soon moved to Switzerland where he married and helped to run an inn with his wife. They later moved to the US. He considered himself very lucky. He said as a youth, he didn't understand what the war was for, and that he never wanted to either die or kill for it.
He may well have been typical for the Volksturm.
8:10 Techincally, it's not a Volks-sturmgewehr (people's AR), it is Volkssturm-gewehr (a volkssturm rifle)
Scrolled down to see if someone had already pointed it out.
Yup. Forgotten Weapons has done a lot of great coverage of the Volkssturm weapons over the years and this was one of them. A shame the original concept for the TimeGhost WW2 series with lots of collaboration did not pan out.
@@Arbiter099 Was the absence of collaborations the result of pandemic lockdowns?
Goebbles asking if they're ready for total war in 1943. My guy you already have it.
It is arguable that once the Western allies were committed to Total War they were much better at it, particularly America.
That's not quite the whole of the issue. He wasn't asking the German people 'should we go into a total war' because they obviously already were. All the cards were on the table by this point, the Americans were coming and the Russians were bleeding white and relying on the fact the Germans didn't have as much blood to spill, even if the casualty ratios weren't even. What Gobbels was 'Can we take away the things that make your lives more bearable'. Up until this point in the war, Germany had put the utmost emphasis on safety and security at home. Your average German was supposed to do little more than read casualty figures and propaganda in the paper and go about their day. The war never affected them. The speech was to do with the beginning of the Nazis stripping down the luxuries and freedoms of even those they had deemed Aryans, all justified by the end objective of winning the war. It should be noted of course that this point is the genesis of any sort of civilian-level resistance or noncompliance with the Nazi regime in Germany, however small. They waited so long to do it because they correctly surmised that the moment the people, the power base of Germany and Germans, began to feel threatened by the war, their days were numbered. We can debate correlation and causation on that one all we like, but in the end they were right.
My grandfather told me a funny story that happened to him when his unit came across them !
There until was near a German town and 50 to 100 old men and some kids were holding pitchforks and shovels screaming that they were not coming into that town ..... His Sargent gave him the look and checked his rifle and fired a few rounds in the air and the volkstrum all hit the ground and screamed in German don't shoot!!!!
You have to wonder why they even showed up, what did they think would happen
They were under the misaprehension that Germany could invade everyone and not get invaded themselves.
@@Adonnus100If you get captured by the enemy you don't get shot by your own side
I wonder if any Volkssturm units tried that with the Red Army. I really doubt they'd have gotten such gentle treatment.
@@Adonnus100 my grandfather said they walked around them and went into the village?
"Ah, quickly we move through the ruins that bow to the ground
The old men and children they send out to face us, they can't slow us down"
Roads to Moscow
Al Stewart
I was thinking of that song throughout the vid.
Its very depressing to me, thinking about all the children who were forced to defend Nazi Germany in Spring 1945.
They were already part of Hitler's Youth.
And also knowing they was forced at that sucks
Really is a tragedy.
One of the worst things about the Nazis was how they targeted children so ruthlessly, both to kill them and use them as child soldiers. You really have to be a next level sociopath to target children.
Even more depressing that the world hasn’t learnt
Good video to watch! Story time from my family: My great uncle was also part of the Volksturm. Since he worked as a railway technician, he was considered an "essential worker for the war-effort" and was only drafted in 1945. Me and my dad went through the records we have from him. From what we reconstructed, it looks like he was drafted in March (?) 45, quickly trained, and then oput on a train with orders to rally at a railway hub from where he would be deployed to the frontline. Taken the stamps on his military records, he did pass through various train stations, but never arrived at the final destination. From what we gathered, that railway line he was supposed to travel on was destroyed by bombing.
He never told my (now deceased) grandfather much about it, only that he deserted. With all of the information at hand, my and my dad guess that at some point in April 45, the train wasn't able to continue due to the destroyed track, which was were the whole Volksturm unit collectively deceided to desert and throw away their weapons and gear.
Hitler in 1945: "We lost because the German people didn't try hard enough".
Sad. Army leadership that doesn't take care of its own doesn't deserve allegiance.
It would get worse - the Army and Wehrmacht generals would... collude after the war. Several were asked to write "public" memoirs, and then private essays of the fighting on the Eastern Front (of which the Americans had very little knowledge) for the U S Army Historical Division. Needless to say, this was one of the main starting points of the "myth of the Clean Wehrmacht" - Where General Franz Halder would "edit" the other Nazi Generals writing to fit a narrative that it was "crazy Hitler" that lost the war, and the Army had never ever participated in atrocities or the Holocaust. Even the Eastern Front battlefield "essays" turned out to be almost nothing but rubbish.
“When logs need to be added to the fire, how many people would demolish their house for fuel? That’s what it means to be trapped in total war and stare into the darkness beyond.” -Unknown
“The furher demands all to shed their last blood in its defense of the Reich. The old, the young, the weak. They stand for Germany, they die for Germany. Building by building. Room by room. One rat at a time.” -Sgt Resznov
World War 1 Germany and Austria-Hungary both had a Landsturm, consisting of over-age and not very fit reservists. They tended to be used for occupation duties, guarding POWs etc. Franz Kafka was carried on the books of a Landsturm unit in Prague but as far as is known he was never issued a uniform or summoned to actual duty (his job as a kind of civil servant partly exempted him from military call-up). He was diagnosed as having TB in 1917, which made it even less likely he would be called up. Even so, his theoretical liability to military service continued under the Czechoslovak Republic, which took over the paperwork of the Austro-Hungarian military on its territory. Kafka finally received a formal discharge in 1925 - a year after his death.
That feels somehow like the most Kafkaesque story he never got to write.
Having to track down a draft dodger who'd been dead for over a year
@@aaronbasham6554 Some critics think the bureaucratic processes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire greatly affected Kafka's work. In the pre-computer age, it took diligent paperwork to know someone had died and the process was not always followed, so notices of one kind or another might well be sent to the dead, who lived on in bureaucracy. The Czechoslovak authorities also inherited a mountain of military documents from A-H, mostly in German which not all of them could read.
@@aaronbasham6554Sounds like a blend of a Kafka plot and that of Gogol’s “Dead Souls”.
@@stevekaczynski3793”The Castle” DEFINITELY was based on the preexisting Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy.
The defence of the Remagen Bridge is a classic example of the effectiveness of Hitler Youth, led by a school teacher with WWI experience. The engineers unit defended the bridge as they tried to blow it up while the kids held the banks, or didn’t basically. Had they sent the correct explosives this story wouldn’t have been told, but the failure to destroy the bridge exposed the defence, which collapsed because the only real combat experienced soldiers there were American.
Likewise, when given prepared fortifications to hold - as was the case along the Rhine defences, or in fortress-cities like Kustrin - the Volkssturm often held very bravely, sometimes against vastly superior enemy forces.
@@stephenwood6663 Some Volkssturm battalions in Königsberg, Küstrin, Breslau and Berlin distinguished themselves with bitter and stubborn resistance. Many fighting in the west especially put up token resistance, if that, and basically let the Allied tide roll over them.
in vienna the volkssturm was partially equipped with the austrian geweht 1895 and the wänzl gewehr . the wänzl was the first austrian hinterlader rifle ( sigle shot and blackpowder kartridges) createt after the defeat of königskrätz 1854. i found very often the cartridges in line with 8x57is (kar 98k) and cartridges from the gewehr 1895. Most of the findings was in the vienna prater.
My grandfather, who at the beginning of the war had been sent home after a few days because of a medical condition, was eventually called back into the Volkssturm in the last days before surrender. They got some wooden sticks to hold back the incoming Soviet tanks; luckily, when push came to shove, there were no fanatics around, and he and the others went home unscathed.
They could not have won with 1,000,000 more excellent soldiers because they couldn't arm and supply them.
They couldn't even arm the regulars. In Walther Model's Army Group B in March 1945 only half of the designated infantry soldiers even had a rifle.
I love listening to you while I drive. It’s like having Phillip J. Fry teach me history. That’s my mental picture anyhow lol.
Thank you for watching!
in many areas all food preparation was moved to a central kitchen and food consumption to a central cafeteria/mess hall. Persons were not allowed
to eat unless they a completed time card. Food became a controlled form of payment for work.
It was also the first time in the war significant numbers of Germans began going hungry. Generally speaking German civilians had been adequately though not luxuriously fed in WW2, often at the expense of non-Germans in occupied Europe. The Nazi authorities were worried about hunger of the kind that had undermined the home front in WW1. But as the wheels began coming off the machine, by early 1945 Germans were going hungry, though members of the armed forces had better access to food than civilians.
That story about the format of the announcement being the same as an execution was too much dramatic irony for me, it makes me want to chuckle a little and weep a little more. Indeed, execution announcements they were…
6:15 - Police sergeant on the right is almost the only one in the group who has some kind of uniform.
10:54 - well except internal rooms, its pretty deadly to its users if the exhaust is pointing indoors. Recoil doesn’t just vanish by engineering magic as any M50 Ontos loader could tell you.
Apart from the casualties in the Volkssturm itself, it has to be remebered that the overall civilian casualties doubled in the last year of the war, not to mention the losses of the regular forces. Millions of German lives could have been saved by surrendering in May 1944, at which point the war was clearly lost anyway.
There is a German movie from the 1950s called "Die Brücke", showing how six teenage boys defend a small insignificant bridge against American tanks. All but one die. Definitly worth watching.
Hitler and the Right had made a lot of noise in the 1920s about the 1918 surrender being a 'stab in the back'. There was no way they were going to surrender before they were overrun. Which is a shame because if you were not convinced the Germans were cooked at May 1944, there was no doubt after Operation Bagration and the fall of Paris.
8:10 Misstake! It wasn't the volks sturmgevehr, it was the volksturm gevehr; not an assaultrifle but a rifle for the volksturm.
A common enough mistake.
There is a 2015 movie called Land of Mine that was nominated for the best foreign movie category at the Oscars. The story is about a group of young German soldiers being forced to clean up a portion of Danish coast that was riddled with German mines! While the story is not about the Volkssturm, I feel this story may have been experienced by many people, specially German teenagers in Volkssturm.
Great video. Lots information/history I did not know about the Volksstrum. Thank you!
Thank you!
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Sometimes, when I'm playing hoi4, I'll hear Indy's voice narrating the stuff that's going on in my game. It's awesome
The more you learn about the little details of the game, fight at night vs the day, seasons, landscape, supplies ect the more you realize what a masterpiece the game is and realistic. You should spend an hr calculating the effectiveness of your attack. lol.
Thanks for the dedication to your content. I appreciate it.
And thank you for watching.
Hi Indy
Awesome special.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for your comment! -TimeGhost Ambassador
“Most have seen too many winters”
“Or too few”
Great reporting, thanks.
Thanks for watching! -TimeGhost Ambassador
That the recruitment posters are the same appearance as execution bulletins is such delicious irony considering duty in the Volkssturm was for many a death sentence.
A Freudian slip one would say
Simply amazing narration 💯💯💯💯
Great stuff again!!!
Thank you!
This was one of your best specials yet! You should cover stuff like this in depth more often. I’d be interested in having specials about certain campaigns or battles too.
We don't really do specials on battles, but we did do a map special for Stalingrad if you haven't seen it: czcams.com/video/Z0zJ0lPq1UU/video.htmlsi=0x6s3FsnvRqoEIST
@@WorldWarTwo Thanks, keep up the good work.
Imagine being a well-equipped US soldier, you've been in theater since June of 1944, being told that you're going to go up against the most fearsome SS soldiers at Germany could provide...
And you find yourself being shot at by children and old men... And you just can't wave your hands out of and say, surrender this is madness!
Let us all hope that the war end soon!
Ty for coming back love your channel......
He left?
We all know what we want after the WWII series come to end:
The 100 years war - week by week!
But you will have to supply the video.
@@caryblack5985 I have the original footage from the siege of Harfleur in the late 1415
@@parsifal6094Put it on youtube
The "volkssturmgewehr" doesn't mean "people's assault rifle", rather it's "Volkssturm rifle". It's easy to mistake it for something like the "sturmgewehr" which is an assault rifle in service at the same time, though. But this is more of a case of Germany having a kink for putting "Sturm" in every word and getting tangled in its own vocabulary.
This episode reminded me of the scene from Fury of teenage Germans firing Panzerfaust on a Sherman tank and then getting mown down in turn by Sgt War Daddy. It is a stark portrayal of the desperate attempt by the Germans to defend their country as well as the waste of young lives in that war, both as soldiers and as non-combatants.
That simplified MP-40 reminds me of the Spanish STAR Z-45 submachine gun, which was a licensed version of the MP-40 produced by the Spanish manufacturer STAR all the way into the 1970s.
Have followed ever since the beginning. I have been devouring every detail of WW2 since the '70's, when I knew many of the veterans. Loved your Pearl Harbour series, all the tie-ins to the war with Spies and Ties and countless specific topic videos. Job well done to all of you over all the years. (By the way, could we get a glance at the map behind Indy? It has been interesting to watch the red grow for a few years, and now shrinking. But, I can't see the shrinking of German territory right behind your head.)
I really like your channel, always something interesting.
Much appreciated!
Those old men and teenagers may not have slowed down the allied effort but one of those boy soldiers killed the uncle I am named after just two weeks before the war ended. He had been in the army for three years by then and had been promoted to Sargent and squad leader. By error he had not listed my aunt as his beneficiary of his GI insurance and his mother never gave my aunt a single penny. She was not known as a nice person! I was told that when she died my aunt was the only person who attended her service , her other children never attended.
One of the last German propaganda leaflets in English of WW2 called on US (and presumably also British and Canadian troops) to "watch your step". The leaflet admitted that Germany was in a bad way, the "Luftwaffe down and out" etc., but nobody wants to be killed in the last five minutes, "that's just common sense", and the leaflet obligingly showed a clock at five minutes to twelve.
Love this channel.
Thanks for watching!
Raw numbers like the Wehrmacht's 300k rifle/month deficit to their 200k/month production output are very interesting! Great inclusion!
Nice introduction....video about Wolksturm units..
Hope this channel reaches a million subscribers they are worth it 👌
Thank you!
Great episode 🎉
Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching.
You mentioned a fact that most people might not know: since the Reichstag had burned, the Gov't was using the Sportpalast for its meetings.
The Kroll Opera House was used for Reichstag sessions, to the extent any were held. The Sportpalast had the advantage of being able to hold thousands of people.
Of these 1 million troops, some 175,000 were killed. If we compare this to the Wehrmacht, we have 4.3 million killed out of a total of 18 million served. So the casualties of the Volkssturm were rather low compared to those of the Wehrmacht.
But when they were deployed on the front, many of the units were left on their own and were quickly scattered, suffered enormous losses, and achieved no noteworthy military successes. Even in the east the readiness to fight faded away when the most basic conditions for waging modern warfare were not met.
Lacking resources, the Volkssturm's military value was negligible even in eastern Germany where battalions occasionally fought with great tenacity against the Red Army.
5:47 otherwise known as the young, the old, the weak.
My great-grandmother helped spot allied planes while in the Volkssturm, only to later move to the U.S., marry a GI, and become one of the most patriotic Americans I’ve ever met.
Militia seem to be popular in mythology. It's very romantic in a terrible way that the common people can rise up and defeat a seemingly insurmountable enemy. But it's rarely ever true. So much of what makes an army is organization, training, and discipline.
Unless your Vietnamese
TY Indy.
Thanks for watching! -TimeGhost Ambassador
Thanks TG
Thank you for watching!
Regarding weaponry used, a few years ago I visited Die Unterwelten in Berlin with a few friends. Among their collection of old rusted weapons, familiar German and Soviet arms was a British Sten gun. Not the German knock off with the vertical mag, this was definitely a Sten.
Confused at the time, we wondered if it’d been lend-lease. Nope-the USSR could make PPSh cheaper.
The Sten could take German ammo, the Germans had captured loads of them, they rated them (more highly than the British and Canadians). Almost certainly this Sten had been issued to some hapless defender of Berlin.
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
Love this video and your humor 😂
This guy is cool! Liked and subscribed
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-TimeGhost Ambassador
The best units of the Volkssturm tended to have something of the regular Wehrmacht's equipment. For example I have seen a photo of a unit being issued the standard 98k carbines. Such units were often taken under the wing of the regular military as auxiliaries. Most Volkssturm battalions however were issued a motley collection of captured weapons, which complicated logistics, and did not have a close relationship with the regular armed forces.
My mother told me that the Panzerfaust was a dangerous weapon, it could destroy a tank.
I don't know if she ever witnessed that, but Panzerfausts were used in the liberation of Groningen (NL) by the Germans and Dutch SS and SD troops. She did witness the liberation of Groningen with her sister, 4 brothers and parents as they lived in the centre. They saw a big part of the city centre being destroyed by fires.
My mother was always afraid of fire.
They were especially dangerous in built-up areas that gave a user some concealment.
I always knew that The Volkssturm was utterly useless but I never realized that it was just a giant joke.
Improperly trained, poorly equipped and thrust onto frontlines that even professional soldiers would find hard to handle - a more competent leader would have utilized them as logistics support troops (like delivery drivers, MPs, etc…) or as behind-the-lines insurgents (gathering intel on enemy troop locations, sabotaging key pieces of infrastructure, etc…).
Would this have been enough for the “final victory?” No - any chance of ever achieving anything close to the initial aims of the war was smashed at Stalingrad. That said, efficient use of this resource might have frustrated Soviet advancement enough that Stalin might be willing to sue for peace. But alas we will never know since the Nazi party was full of delusional asshats that were more about marketing than either combat tactics or logistics…
@@wilberwhateley7569I doubt anything could have brought the war to anything but unconditional surrender especially with Russia America and Britain going all in. Even if the war somehow reached a standstill america would just deploy nuclear weapons as they did against Japan
As the fortunes of war had shifted, the British Home Guard, created after Dunkirk out of fear of a German invasion, was stood down and dissolved in the Fall of 1944, at about the same time the German Volkssturm was created in response to the Allied armies nearing the German borders.
I remember reading one account of Volkssturm. The men were equipped with foreign rifles, and just five rounds of ammunition each. The wide variety of foreign rifles, with many different calibers, led to all sorts of logistical problems. In some cases there were plentiful rifles, but little ammunition. In other, plentiful ammunition, but few rifles it could be used in. Given the near countless number of small arms and ammunition captured by Germany during the war, it's surprising they didn't store and make better use of it.
It's sad and tragic that so many people died fighting to defend people(Hitler and the Nazis) who were so completely undeserving of the sacrifice.
I was looking for this contrast of Home Guard and Volksturm.
Is there a weird false equivalence going on here?
@@samsonsoturian6013Not really. If you think about it, Churchill's "fight them on the beaches" speech to Parliament sounds an awful lot like the Volksturm. There are differences, of course, and really no *moral* equivalency, especially since British teens would not have been defending death camps. But Churchill in 1940 was about as desperate as Bormann in 44-45, as both were surprised by the collapse of their respective armies.
@@kennethpurscellChurchill was paying for his own mistakes but more importantly paying for the Appeasement era’s sins.
it's the fundamental problem of any organization based on propaganda and "the big lie": the true believers tend to become hysterical when reality contradicts their beliefs and react violently against scapegoats rather than face their own failures.
Very true.
@4:57, the Volkssturm notification that looks like the execution notice. Why do I have the sinking feeling that isn't entirely an accident?
Thank you.
Thanks for the thanks!
"Are you ready for total war!??"
*Rapturous applause*
Always Sunny style cut to Germany ceasing to be a real country for half a century
Thank you
How dose the volkssturm compare to the 1940 local defence volunteers/ home guard ?
State of equipment, or lack of it - about the same. Fortunately the British Home Guard was never put to the test by a ground invasion. Later in the war it was relatively well-uniformed and armed but the main danger had passed.
@stevekaczynski3793 Also, the home guard was more creative. Trebuchet that launches flaming barrels, my beloved.
Expected to work 72hrs a week and then training a few hours for military service on Sunday. Crazy.
Just a little note, if no one has said anything yet, the Volkssturmgewehr is not actually the people's assault rifle. The name means the rifle of the Volkssturm. It was not an assault rifle, it was a semiautomatic rifle meant to be produced with minimal resources.
Approximately 800 Volkssturm battalions were formed - far fewer than projected, but still amounting to perhaps 500,000+ troops.
Terminal Nazi units were a fraction the size their names implied because they often created new units rather than merged decimated ones. The militias in particular got their names from the rank of the commander and none were even half staffed from the start
Small note: The Volkssturm-Gewehr is not an assault rifle, but just a normal rifle for the Volkssturm
It's an easy mistake to make :D
One of the weapons was a semi-auto rifle with the ammo and the magazines of the STG-44. A questionable decision since the later was already in production and the even cheaper to make STG-45 (ancestor of the HK G-3) was also slated for mass production.
Is there any good film/shows or even book recommendations that the Volkstorm play a major role as I'm generally cares what's the average person who were in these units were thinking and their reaction to the horrors of the late war combat how does it affect them later on in their life.
I only remember Jojo Rabbit and Downfall, but Downfall only had a few scenes with the Volksturm.
There's an old German movie called The Bridge, which stars a small squad of teenagers who've been left to defend a tactically irrelevant bridge.
We see Volkssturm in action in Jojo Rabbit, The Bridge at Remagen, and The Captain, but The Bridge is the only one I can think of that gives them a starring role.
Richard Evans The Third Reich At War has some interesting info and it is a good read for what was happening in Germany during the war.
@@UncleBenBenniffThe extended cut of Der Untergang has more
die brücke
Very interesting video. It was somewhat expected that the Volkssturm was mostly a total waste in battle.
That being said, can we expect a special on Japan's Volunteer Fighting Corps (Kokumin Giyū Sentōtai), even though there is no known record of combat involvement? Is there something that can be told about those volunteers as to why US projections about Operation Downfall were so grim?
Nothing in the works right now for that, but I shall pass the suggestion along!
- Jake
I have seen a photo of a retired general or colonel showing a crowd of what might be Fight Corps members how to use a bamboo spear.
@@stevekaczynski3793 thank you for once again adding information to the discussion. I have also seen a couple of photos and (very) brief descriptions of the expected "Volunteer" defense forces of Imperial Japan. I think one photo I saw was of old men training to use mines attached to a bamboo pole. Scary in it's useless and dangerous to whoever might try using it.
Diving into the weeds, with the different Volkssturm formations & levies, still confuses the hell out of me. Despite owning two rather detailed books on the subject, but ofc most things run by Himmler & the Gauleiters were unnecessarily complicated. Thanks. _Heinrici had a few battalions of superior Volkssturm units which he described as fighting well. This was an Ostfront thing ofc._
While not specifically on the Volkssturm, to get a little understanding and insight on the SS and Nazi government, I would recommend Heinz Höhne's excellent book _'The Order Of The Death's Head : The History of Hitler's SS'_
@@williestyle35 Thanks, I'll get it.
@@UncleJoeLITE welcome. It covers the history, from Himmler taking power of the SS till the end.
An Osprey military series book on Nazi paramilitary formations I once read had an extensive chapter on the Volkssturm.
@@stevekaczynski3793 thanks for always contributing something of interest!
As a hoi4 player I fkn died laughing when I heard “scraping the barrel” 😭😭
A sidenote: For centuries in Germany there had been militias in addition to regular/ mercennaries. This militias had in rural areas the name contained Land ( Landwehr, Landsturm, Landfahnen, Landesdefension), in urban regions the miliias names contained either Stadt (town) or Bürger ( citizen). Those militias often had no real uniforms, and in 18th the weaponry often had been still pikes or matchlock muskets. But also good militias. In 1850 those militias no more had military importance. Most of those old militias became ordinary target shooters clubs, few still wear uniforms, but are now only keepers of tradition.
Blücher's Prussian Army of the Lower Rhine, used in the Waterloo campaign in 1815, was something of a scratch force with a lot of Landwehr among the infantry, generally marked with a large Maltese Cross on the front of their shakos or caps. Some of the cavalry were also Landwehr, many of them issued lances but apparently not actually taught how to use them properly.
@@stevekaczynski3793 : Lances became in late 17th to mid 18th century rarer and rarer in western europe, but in eastern europe the situation was different. Here polish and russian Cavallry ( ulans and cossaks) , also perhaps sustrian ,Grenzer' along Austro/ Ottoman border still had lances,. So perhaps prussian army No more had so much knowledge of good Training, because at end of HRE the lance was nearly out of use.
@@brittakriep2938 The British Army had no lancers in 1815 but created regiments of them later, after suffering severely at the hands of Napoleon's lancers at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. The longer reach of the lance did have some advantages - there was an episode, I think in 1809, where French cavalry were stalemated by Austrian infantry who were in square but unable to fire their muskets because a downpour had soaked their gunpowder. They were fending off French cavalry with their bayonets. Then some French lancers attacked them and soon broke up the square by stabbing the Austrians with their lances.
@@stevekaczynski3793 : Yes, this is the reason for a comeback of lancers in Europe after napoleonic wars. I come from former Kingdom of Württemberg. Württembergian Cavallry had four regiments, two had been Dragoner, two Ulanen ( lancers). I am not Britta herself, but her boyfriend, using the Computer too. Years ago, i was invented to a local meeting of a german weapons collectiors organisation, i am no collector, but surprisingly noticed, an elderly gentleman i knew was a boardmember of this organisation. During this meeting annother elderly gentleman hold a speech about german Cavallry lances and lanceflags of second German Empire. Was Intressting. A somehow strange fact: Prussian lancers fixed their Lance Flags often in the Reverse was, with the white Part on top. Well, prussian soldiers, Being known for disciipline fixed flags the Reverse way??. Solution: The black color of flag was often Not really waterproof, so when carried correct with black Part on top, the white Part of flag would become dirty at rainy days.