Hitler's Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944-1945 (review)

Although the Volkssturm failed in its immediate goals of fanaticizing the German home front and helping to stalemate the war militarily, David K. Yelton argues convincingly that a detailed study of this militia illuminates several broader issues regarding Nazi Germany in the last year of the war. Typically dismissed as an incoherent and ineffective attempt by the Nazis to delay their inevitable defeat, few scholars have taken an in-depth look at the Volkssturm, despite the fact that the final months of the war required much heavy fighting and resulted in startlingly high casualties. In part, this neglect resulted from the difficulty in researching a topic where the primary source record was fragmentary, where records existed at the national, state, and local levels, and where relevant information was often buried in the files of other agencies. Just as important, though, was the belief that this was a hastily improvised force of little consequence, and therefore unworthy of the attention of serious scholars.

After years of painstaking research in archives throughout Germany and in the United States, Yelton has put together a picture of an organization that challenges these earlier assumptions. Indeed, from the Nazi perspective, the Volkssturm formed a logical part of a larger effort. Given their extreme social Darwinian beliefs, Allied demands of unconditional surrender and talk of the Morgenthau Plan only confirmed what the Nazis thought obvious—the Allied goal was the destruction of the German people. Negotiation, then, was pointless, and the only recourse was to fight on in the hope of stalemating the war until the "unnatural" Allied coalition fell apart.

To Martin Bormann and the Nazi Party hierarchy, creation of a national militia could turn every city and town in Germany into a fortress and contribute to a military stalemate. This test of wills, however, required the fanatic determination of the German people, which Bormann saw as another compelling reason for a militia. It could serve as a vehicle to indoctrinate German men and create the type of fanaticism essential to prolong the war. This example of the nation in arms would also demonstrate that the much vaunted Volksgemeinschaft (national community) existed in reality, thus making the average German even more willing to sacrifice on its behalf. In all of this, one can see the extreme importance of ideology as a factor in Nazi decision making in the last year of the war. Nor was this effort at molding a fanatic populace a complete failure. Particularly on the eastern front, where the war more nearly corresponded with Nazi propaganda claims, but also in various areas in the west, the militia fought with some success. Volkssturm effectiveness generally correlated with good morale, which depended on proper training, adequate weapons and supplies, and close cooperation with army officials.

More often, militia units proved ineffective, victims of bad morale, poor leadership, and inadequate resources. This simple recitation of reasons for success or failure also reveals something of the nature of the Nazi system, as well as the attitudes of average Germans at the end of the war. Ineffective leadership most often resulted from petty jurisdictional disputes among various officials in the Nazi bureaucracy, who even at a time of extreme national peril could not bring themselves to cooperate. Even the examples of success undermined the original Nazi assumptions of a fanatical people's militia, since army involvement largely stemmed from the widespread German reluctance to participate in what might be seen as a guerrilla force not subject to protection by the rules of war. Public opinion, therefore, was brittle. In areas where local conditions were favorable, where party officials worked with the army to provide adequate arms and training, and where they were integrated into the...