What It Means

Britain learned it first, in the black days after Dunkirk: even the old men had to be prepared to fight. Germany was deep into the fifth year before it had to dig so deep.

Old & Young. Last week, soon after Britain's famed civilian Home Guard had "stood down," Heinrich Himmler spoke of new forces arising in the Reich. The best-publicized of these is the Volkssturm or Home Army. Promulgated in Hitler's name, the Volkssturm decree summoned all "able-bodied" males between 16 and 60 except those in the Todt (construction) organization, or in police and security units. Himmler's aim was for three million Volkssturm soldiers; perhaps one million have already been mobilized.

Their weapons are rifles, carbines, tommy guns, automatic pistols, hand grenades, and a simple antitank rifle called the Panzerfaust ("tank fist"). The oldsters train in their spare time, on Sundays and in the evenings; the youngsters, mainly Hitler-Youth, get intensive four-day courses at special camps. Basic unit of the Volkssturm is the four-company battalion, but brigades and divisions may be activated when it becomes capable of disposing bigger units. It has a core of experienced officers, some of them fanatical Nazis.

Volkssturm members captured at Metz, some in regular army uniforms and others in civilian clothes, wore arm bands in scribed "Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht." They were pathetic specimens, unanimously glad to be out of the war. Their fellows in East Prussia made a dismal showing against the Reds, and Lieut. General Kurt Dittmar, Germany's top military commentator, publicly belittled them as fighting men.

Not So Funny. In the U.S., they have been the butt of easy jokes -- but the British, still full of memories of the days when the Home Guard was the backbone of home defense, are not so ready to laugh. The Volksstuermer have done an immense amount of work on Germany's border fortifications. The East Prussian Gauleiter boasted that in 100 days they had dug enough antitank ditches to reach from Koenigsberg to Lisbon. By taking over garrison duties in the rear, the Volkssturm releases better soldiers for the front lines. Whether fighting or digging, they receive Wehrmacht pay and equal allowances for dependents.

The Volksgrenadiere, as distinct from the Volkssturm, are mainly composed of experienced soldiers who would ordinarily be retired for age, disabilities or wounds. Some healthy, hard-fighting sailors and airmen have been impressed into the Volksgrenadiere, while others have been used to replenish regular Wehrmacht divisions.

The Women. The Nazis have also organized a Women's Armed Forces Auxiliary Corps, age 18 to 36, headed bv a Nazi luminary, Frau Scholtz-Klink. In Army administration, signal and antiaircraft jobs, the W.A.F.A.C., too, releases men for the sorely pressed fighting fronts. The W.A.F.A.C. council is ruled, appropriately, by that famed lover of women, Dr. Goebbels. Affecting to disdain the Russian practice of thrusting women into battle, the Voelkischer Beobachter snorted: "It is not a question of training something like the Soviet Russian Flintenweiber [rifle wenches]. We will not have any un-German amazons and everything will be done to prevent the female nature and habits from being harmed."

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