{"id":6160,"date":"2016-10-21T20:19:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-22T02:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=6160"},"modified":"2016-10-21T20:19:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T02:19:22","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-16-22-october-1944-the-volkssturm-germanys-national-militia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=6160","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 16–22 October 1944: The Volkssturm—Germany’s national militia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Two<\/a>

Two members of the Volkssturm after surrendering to the British in March 1945 [Public domain]<\/p><\/div>After so many setbacks on the Eastern Front, the Germans had realized that the quick Blitzkrieg<\/em> victories of the past would not be repeated and that henceforth an all-out effort would be required. Propaganda Minister Joseph\u00a0Goebbels introduced the concept of total war<\/em>. As part of the total war<\/em> idea, he announced the formation of the Volkssturm<\/em> this week in the war, on 18 October 1944.<\/p>\n

The Volkssturm<\/em> was essentially a militia, similar to Britain’s Home Guard, and males aged 16 to 60 years were conscripted.<\/p>\n

Training was minimal and there was a shortage of effective weapons, except for the well known panzerfaust<\/em> anti-tank bazooka that often features in photographs of Volkssturm<\/em> units. Many Volkssturm<\/em> personnel died in the last\u00a0months of the war owing to Hitler’s insistence of continuing the fight to the bitter end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After so many setbacks on the Eastern Front, the Germans had realized that the quick Blitzkrieg victories of the past would not be repeated and that henceforth an all-out effort would be required. Propaganda Minister Joseph\u00a0Goebbels introduced the concept of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1035],"class_list":["post-6160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-volkssturm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6160"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6162,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions\/6162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}