The home guard.

[Amrit]

I’ve often been confused by the way that the British Home Guard and the Volkssturm have been perceived differently. Most depictions of the Home Guard seem to be of a group who would have bravely tried to defend their homes. On the other hand the Volkssturm seem to be ridiculed as a last ditch and desperate attempt.

Am I missing something, or were the two not the same sort of organsiation? Whether the Home Guard would have made any difference at all is, of course, open to question.

I hope people don’t mind me asking such an open-ended question - and I’m not insinuating anything negative about those who served in the Home Guard :neutral:

[alephh]

@Amrit

I’ve often been confused by the way that the British Home Guard and the Volkssturm have been perceived differently. Most depictions of the Home Guard seem to be of a group who would have bravely tried to defend their homes. On the other hand the Volkssturm seem to be ridiculed as a last ditch and desperate attempt.

Excellent point - It’s the same old truth: Winners write the history :-/

And you can take number of topics, several levels of eugenics was ok by U.S. laws until 1967 - all the blame for eugenics goes to… germany. Canadian ja U.S. troops murdered POWs, “hey it was perfectly ok, it was wartime after all, and men were tired and overpsyched” - if german troops did the same after days of fighting without sleep and food, “shame on those murderers”. letting out friday night steam here

One major difference of course is that Home Guard never faced massive (hopeless) battles - it’s a different thing to see old men die in vain, than just form a army out of them.

@Amrit

Am I missing something, or were the two not the same sort of organsiation?

Of course there are differences, but the basic idea is the same.

_

[Walther]

@Amrit

I’ve often been confused by the way that the British Home Guard and the Volkssturm have been perceived differently. Most depictions of the Home Guard seem to be of a group who would have bravely tried to defend their homes. On the other hand the Volkssturm seem to be ridiculed as a last ditch and desperate attempt.

Am I missing something, or were the two not the same sort of organsiation? Whether the Home Guard would have made any difference at all is, of course, open to question.

I hope people don’t mind me asking such an open-ended question - and I’m not insinuating anything negative about those who served in the Home Guard :neutral:

One difference is that the British homeguard was strictly voluntary, while the members of the Volksturm were “volunteered” (often against their will, by a simple order by the local NSDAP functionaries to appear at a certain time at a certain place to be enroled and issued a rifle, panzerfaust etc.).
The Volksturm was under the command of the local Nazi hierarchy the infamous “Goldfasane” (Golden pheasants), who in many cases left the old men and the boys to defend some impossible position, while they themselves f*cked off with the accumulated loot of 12 years corruption. Discipline was enforced by some summary hangings of “deserters” through SS troops, who stayed out of danger behind the frontline, but made sure that nobody else would leave his assigned position and would fight to the last bullet.

My history teacher in 9 / 10th grade was a Volksturm soldier at the ripe age of 15. As most German boys back then he was a member of the Hitler youth and got drafted into the Volksturm when the Soviets encircled Berlin. He got issued a Panzerfaust and ordered to take on Chuikov’s army in the streets of Berlin. The last thing he ever saw was a T-34 coming around a street corner firing. The shell exploded near my teacher. A fragment went in in one temple, and out through the other, cutting the nerves to both eyes. He was the youngest German soldier who lost his sight in WW2. After recovery he was quite disillusioned by the Nazis, later he went to university and earned a PhD in history.

Jan

[pdf27]

@Amrit

I’ve often been confused by the way that the British Home Guard and the Volkssturm have been perceived differently. Most depictions of the Home Guard seem to be of a group who would have bravely tried to defend their homes. On the other hand the Volkssturm seem to be ridiculed as a last ditch and desperate attempt.

Another big difference is that the Germans were clearly fighting a lost battle, while the British (as they later demonstrated) were not. It is also worth noting that the majority of the Home Guard were the very same men who had thrashed the Germans in Flanders, 20 years before. German conscription was much more rigorous towards the end of the war, picking up boys and substantially older men.