Word: volkssturmer
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Last week the citizens were part of the Army. The Volkssturm men who felled trees, dug trenches and fashioned barricades from bomb rubble were simply civilians with red arm bands. Women rode on the antiaircraft guns pulling out for the Oder front. The "mayor," this time, was clubfooted Paul Joseph Goebbels (Gauleiter of Berlin), who screamed defiance over the radio: "Factories will be blown up and the whole capital scorched...
...German people heard that industrial Silesia was lost; that the "Bolsheviks" had pierced Brandenburg, Berlin's home province; that the enemy had cut off East Prussia (see below). The lowly Volkssturm was called out to help stem the tide. The westward flood of refugees hampered the movement of army units to the front, forcing Heinrich Himmler to use his SS men as traffic controllers...
...depth of forts and trench works. It had zigzagged dugouts, trenches, minefields, concrete fire points. Rokossovsky's forces worked for two days on Mlawa, then painfully hacked through. Perhaps Mlawa was a symbol. For all its outer strength, it leaned on slender reeds of reserves - units of the Volkssturm, inhabitants of the town...
...Volksstürmer have done an immense amount of work on Germany's border fortifications. The East Prussian Gauleiter boasted that in 100 days they had dug enough antitank ditches to reach from Königsberg to Lisbon. By taking over garrison duties in the rear, the Volkssturm releases better soldiers for the front lines. Whether fighting or digging, they receive Wehrmacht pay and equal allowances for dependents...
...Volksgrenadiere, as distinct from the Volkssturm, are mainly composed of experienced soldiers who would ordinarily be retired for age, disabilities or wounds. Some healthy, hard-fighting sailors and airmen have been impressed into the Volksgrenadiere, while others have been used to replenish regular Wehrmacht divisions...