Volkssturm new sense of a People’s and nazified army, distinct from the traditional Heer run by the old officer corps By 1945 some 50 Volksgrenadier divisions existed Many were little more than paper formations; few had any military virtue or value VOLKSSTURM “People’s storm.” An absurdly nazified term for the clumsy and ill-armed civil defense force established by a Führer decree on September 25, 1944, enlisting all German males aged 16–60 The first units of the new “Deutsche Volkssturm” (“German People’s Storm”) took shape from October 1944 They absorbed the traditional Prussian country militia (“Landwacht”), drafted Great War veterans and other men past their military and physical prime, and inducted boys who had yet to reach either This extreme measure was resorted to when the Red Army reached the East Prussian border and was pushing through Estonia Authority over Volkssturm formations was divided between the Wehrmacht and Nazi Party, reflecting a wider nazification of the German military after the July Plot In practice, the division of authority meant a struggle between the OKH and Martin Bormann The call-up overtly recalled the Prussian nationalist explosion in the struggle against Napoleon in 1813 It was essentially a botched attempt to rouse the “Volk” to recreate the French Revolutionary levée en masse It was already far too late to make such an appeal to national history and folk memory: many boys raised in the Hitlerjungend were still susceptible to the Nazi siren call, but older men went reluctantly back into a battle they knew was already lost Many would desert or surrender at the first opportunity The Volkssturm effort proved an abject failure, politically and militarily It provoked little national or Nazi enthusiasm and almost no voluntary enlistment into ragged, ill-armed formations marked off by black armbands worn over mufti in lieu of any uniform Some old men, semi-invalid veterans, and German boys wearing Volkssturm armbands died fighting during the conquest of Germany in 1945, especially facing the Red Army But most Volkssturm units simply melted away as soon as brownshirted Party officials or black-uniformed Schutzstaffel (SS) moved out of sight, leaving graybeard grandads to cajole young fanatics to put down their Panzerfaust and go home to their mothers That was particularly the case when Volkssturm faced the Western Allies and might expect some mercy About 200,000 Volkssturm died or went missing in battle over the last months of the war Soviet equivalent militia were the opolchentsy, employed just as recklessly and fatally in the desperate days of 1941–1942 by a regime comparably indifferent to life VONONOV, NIKOLAI N (1899–1968) Soviet marshal of artillery He was too young to fight in World War I, but fought for the “Reds” in the Russian Civil War (1918–1921) He spent much of the interwar period as an artillery officer and instructor He was part of the Soviet “volunteer” forces sent to Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) He fought also in the Finnish–Soviet War (1939–1940) He served as chief of artillery and of strategic air defenses in 1940– 1941 He served later on several Fronts as a Stavka representative, most notably at Stalingrad His most important wartime contribution was overseeing, organizing, and training of Red Army artillery forces 1146