Berlin's Full Mobilization, 1944

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 279-280:

But [Heinrich] George did not have to worry. He was one of the very few to be put on a special list of national geniuses (Gottbegnadetenliste), along with Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Heinz Rühmann, who were exempt from wartime mobilization.

Women, too, were ordered to take on the jobs of absent men. Sabine Alenfeld, whose Jewish husband, Erich, was becoming a nervous wreck, worked from 6:45 p.m. till 4:45 in the morning, sewing military uniforms. She was terrified that things would get worse. She heard rumors that parents in mixed marriages would be separated from their children and put into camps. This didn’t happen. Mischlinge and Jewish husbands were forced instead to labor in the most dangerous construction jobs, or clear out the rubble after bombings. Sixty hours a week was the norm. Sabine wrote to her sister on November 13, “Our lives are turning more and more into a race, a race against…well, what. A race against death, of course, but also against the possibility of living.”

The words fanatisch, used in an entirely positive sense, and Volksgemeinschaft dominated the newspaper headlines. Such words were uttered, often without making any sense. The Völkischer Beobachter on September 25: “Fanatically we will stand together. Leadership that is harder than fate will always win in the end.” On October 16, Hitler announced that all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty in every province (Gau) of the Great German Reich had to join the people’s militia (Volkssturm). Sabine Alenfeld was terrified that her frail husband would be called up. But Mischlinge and Jews were exempted. They were given a “certificate of exclusion.” How could they possibly be included in this great fanatical enterprise?

The Volkssturm army would “defend the Heimat soil with every suitable weapon.” Many of the men were not able-bodied, but fragile and sometimes even invalids. Since suitable weapons for fighting a modern war were now in short supply, the old men and young boys, some in ragged civilian clothes, some in Hitler Youth uniforms, and some in their everyday clothes, were handed primitive weapons, occasionally dating to the last war, and given minimal instruction how to use them. The main weapon was the Panzerfaust, a portable grenade launcher to fire at tanks at close range. Many of the instructors were elderly veterans, whose knowledge of modern warfare was limited. But that didn’t matter. It was the fighting spirit of the Volksgemeinschaft that would surely be enough to defeat Germany’s enemies.

Goebbels wrote in his diary how pleased he was with the enthusiasm of Berliners who signed up willingly: “I will pay special attention to the Volkssturm and make sure that in this respect, too, Berlin will outdo every other Gau.” The hope was to raise an army of millions. The papers reported that long lines of men waited patiently to file into the recruiting centers, decorated with swastikas and busts of Hitler, their eyes shining with the requisite fanaticism.

That many people were perhaps less than keen might be gathered from a joke that did the rounds at the time: “Why is the Volkssturm Germany’s most precious resource? Because its members have silver in their hair, gold in their mouths, and lead in their bones.”