Hitler's Volkssturm by David K. Yelton

Hitler's Volkssturm by David K. Yelton

Author:David K. Yelton [David K. Yelton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700627332
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2018-09-20T00:00:00+00:00


Conclusion

When World War II ended in Europe in May 1945, the German Volkssturm perished along with the Nazi regime that had created it. The militia had existed as part of a strategy intended to save Nazi Germany by creating a bloody and prolonged defense of the Fatherland that would sap Allied morale. The Volkssturm’s role in this strategy was both to mobilize more men and to fanaticize the German home front. Clearly, the Volkssturm failed to achieve either goal. This failure sprang from many causes: poor planning, political infighting, conflicting and contradictory objectives, weapons and equipment shortages, lack of training, poor morale, and a whole host of other problems.

Given that the German Volkssturm was so clearly a failure, just what historical value does examining its brief and unsuccessful existence yield? This study has sought to illuminate the Volkssturm’s purpose, structure, composition, preparation, and performance, but it has also sought to use the militia as a source of insight into four significant broader issues concerning Nazi Germany’s last chaotic year. First, the Volkssturm helps clarify why the Third Reich’s leaders continued fighting—without any serious contemplation of negotiations—a war they had clearly lost by late 1944. Second, the Volkssturm also illuminates how the Third Reich’s complex and tangled power structure reached and implemented policy decisions (i.e., the intentionalist-functionalist debate) during the twilight of its existence. Third, the Volkssturm reveals average Germans’ attitudes and behavior during the war’s concluding months and how their opinions and actions influenced Nazi decision making. Finally, the Volkssturm provides a very clear view of why the Nazi leadership’s plans failed.

In grasping why Nazi leaders insisted on continuing the war, one must begin with a simple point: they believed Germany could still win. One might assume that by late 1944 rational statesmen would have reassessed their desperate situation with an eye toward immediately pursuing negotiations. But when one factors the Nazi leadership’s worldview into the assessment—as historical accuracy demands—one can see that Hitler and his associates did begin reassessing their situation, but they rejected the idea of negotiations. By agreeing to create a militia, a step top Nazis had vehemently opposed earlier, the Reich leaders showed their willingness to recognize and adapt to unfavorable circumstances. Although negotiations seem logical to us, Nazis did not consider them a viable option. One of the most basic National Socialist beliefs was that human existence was a social Darwinian struggle between peoples. Wars were winner-take-all affairs; losers ceased to exist as a nation. Allied demands for unconditional surrender and the Morgenthau Plan merely confirmed what the Nazis thought obvious about Allied war aims—they wanted to destroy the German Volk completely. In such a conflict, requesting negotiations—particularly from a position of weakness—seemed tantamount to surrender. If anyone needed concrete proof of this, Versailles provided the perfect example to many Nazis.

The “stab in the back” legend also heavily influenced Nazi thinking in late summer 1944. Nazis viewed the July 20 Plot as a narrowly averted attempt by a new generation of traitors to repeat the dastardly acts of 1918.



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