Volkssturm in a sentence

A popular joke about the Volkssturm went "Why is the Volkssturm Germany's most precious resource?

Blitzkrieg to Defeat, p. 204. With the Nazi Party in charge of organizing the Volkssturm, each Gauleiter, or Nazi Party District Leader, was charged with the leadership, enrollment, and organization of the Volkssturm in their district.

The simple paramilitary insignia of the Volkssturm were as follows: Training and impact February or March 1945: Volkssturm members being trained to use the Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon.

At other times along the western front particularly, Volkssturm troops would cast their arms aside and disappear into the chaos.

Berlin at War, p. 351. The Volkssturm had existed, on paper, since around 1925, but it was only after Hitler ordered Martin Bormann to recruit six million men for this militia that the group became a physical reality.

Fighting at Küstrin between 30 January to 29 March 1945, militia units made up mostly of the Volkssturm resisted for nearly two months.

Further desperation showed when on 12 February 1945, the Nazis conscripted German women and girls into the auxiliaries of the Volkssturm.

Germany 1945: From War to Peace, p. 17. It was an apocalyptic goal which some of those assigned to the Volkssturm took to heart.

Hitler’s War and the War Path, p. 826. The chances of the Volkssturm making a major difference were never realistic in the face of the overwhelming Allied numbers and material superiority.

Hitler Youth, p. 238. Like many aspects of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), the organization of Germany for war was all-inclusive, reaching almost all levels of society as the establishment and expansion of the Volkssturm'' reveals.

However, armed with Panzerfausts and deeply entrenched, a unit of Volkssturm could cause serious trouble for Soviet armor.

Not eager to die what was thought a pointless death above the bunker, many older members of the Volkssturm looked for places to hide from the approaching Soviet Army.

Often Volkssturm members were only able to familiarize themselves with their weapons when in actual combat.

On 26 September 1944 Hitler ordered Himmler to create special army units, the Volkssturm ("People's Storm" or "People's Army").

Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East, p. 481. One notable and unusual Volkssturm unit in the Battle for Berlin was the 3/115 Siemensstadt Battalion.

The Germans had also developed cheap but reasonably effective Volkssturm weapons, like MP 3008 machine pistols, Volkssturmgewehr 1-5 rifles and VMG-27 light machine guns.

The intended strength of six million was never attained.sfn Joseph Goebbels and other propagandists depicted the Volkssturm as an outburst of enthusiasm and will to resist.

The largest Volkssturm unit seems to have corresponded to the next smaller territorial subdivision of the Nazi Party organization—the Kreis.

Thus many members of the Volkssturm turned their civilian clothing into makeshift paramilitary uniforms or wore uniforms from their civilian jobs (such as train conductors of the Reichsbahn ).

Unremittingly fanatical members of the Volkssturm refused to abandon the Nazi ethos unto the dying days of the Third Reich and in a number of instances, took brutal police "actions" against German civilians deemed defeatists or cowards.