DESPERATE MEASURES

The last-ditch weapons of the German Volkssturm. Initial attempts to organise and equip these citizen-soldiers with Volkswaffen or "People's Weapons" saw the six million old men and boys of the Volkssturm issued with the relatively few shotguns, drillings, hunting rifles, military training rifles and handguns which could be scrounged from the German populace, bolstered by foreign military rifles and carbines captured during Germany's early wartime advances. Many collectors and historians may be surprised to learn that the rifle issued in the greatest numbers - the "true Volksgewehr" - was the Italian Carcano, some numbers of which were converted to fire the powerful German 7.92x57 mm rifle cartridge! In addition, seven types of Volksgewehr were specifically designed for manufacture by German industry during the last months of the war, and all are covered in detail. Much of the information on these weapon types and variations, manufacturer identification and production estimates has never been available before, and the book includes many previously unpublished photographs of original Volkssturm weapons, including prototypes and rare presentation examples. Other weapons intended for the Heer (Army) were grudgingly shared with the Volkssturm. These included the anti-tank Panzerfaust ("tank fist", a single-shot, rocket-propelled shaped-charge device capable of defeating any Allied tank then in existence, and the Panzerschreck ("tank terror"), an improvised copy of the US M1 Bazooka. Literally millions of these highly effective devices reached the front lines, but for the unfortunate Volkssturmmanner, organised at least on paper into 10,180 battalions, the authorisation for the Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck was the same: only six each per Volkssturm battalion. The Germans had captured large numbers of British Sten guns which had been intended for the French Resistance, and as the situation worsened their originally low opinion of this pragmatic weapon improved to the point where they were dusted off and put to use, and Sten "clones" were manufactured by a considerable number of German firms (a memorandum speaks of "thirty sub-contractors and fourteen assembly points"), for issue to both the Heer and the Volkssturm. Programmes were also begun to provide special Volkspistolen, made largely from stamped sheet metal, and although Walther and Mauser both produced several interesting prototypes, the war ended before any quantities were produced. No Volksmaschinengewehre ("People's Machine Guns") were specifically designed or produced, but some MG13s and a few MG34s and MG42s were issued, and numbers of rifle-calibre Luftwaffe machine guns, made obsolete for air combat use earlier in the war by the improved armour protection on Allied aircraft, were converted for ground use. Some quantities of captured foreign automatic weapons were also distributed, but in general machine guns - the very weapons that might have made a difference for the Volkssturm - were in short supply. In summing up, the author notes that even if the Volkssturm had been fully trained, well-equipped and armed with the best weapons in the world - which they decidedly were not - they could have done no more than delay the inevitable, which in many cases, documented here, they actually did.