I have read a number of accounts, and seen a very small number of photos, about female combatants in the final days of the Third Reich. They were some BDM girls and fanatical Nazi women who apparently took up arms. I haven't, however, turned up much in the way of photos and film of their participation. Would anyone have some to share? Tangentially, in a book I read about the Volkssturm units, it mentions the training of rural German women in the use of small arms. Anyone know what this program was? Any photographic details? Thank you.
GearZ, I personally know of no source for photographs of woman Combatants, sorry. But I may have a lead for you regarding the training of Germans as clandestine freedom fighters: Werewolves. Whereas Americans tended to think of werewolves as movie monsters as played by Lon Cheney, the Germans traditionally thought of the same as traditional folk freedom fighters, in the vein of Wilhelm Tell. Late 1944 someone in Germany saw the writing on the wall and began the Werewolf programme of training partisan fighters similar to the partisans encountered in Poland and Russia (& Ukraine). To my knowledge only one effective group was organized and 'fully trained', but were never really operational. Allied counter-intelligence and PSYOPS blundered regarding Werewolves. At least a small poster campaign was done hoping to combat the German Werewolves but rather it seemed to promote them. Something in the back of my mind seems to think some female werewolves were trained.
Thanks for the notes, Interrogator#6. Indeed, from what I read and have seen in at least one documentary, there most certainly were female Werwolf members. As far as I know, though, there training was independent of the Volkssturm.
Oh, you want the Volkssturm. Nope. I can't say I have heard of a female being trained to fight in any Wehrmacht formation at all. My knowledge of 'Dolf is that he was violently opposed to allowing female warriors in combat role. There were female nurses, clerics (sometimes), but no warriors. On the other hand the Red Army incorperated females in combat roles.
I don't think that many Germans would have joined a group of resistance fighters since they had become anti-nazi very soon after Hitler had had seized control oh Germany. They considered the Allies to be Liberators. Hitler faced constant internal plots and high ranking military officers attempted assassination, narrowly missing. The NAZIs ruled by terror.
There were Nazi fanatics at the end of the war, and for years after. This sort of mirrors the Volkish movement at the end of the Great War. And there was factionalism in occupied Germany which whispered of a regathering of Volkish forces. Though there was fictional accounts, such as the Quiller Memorandum, Boys from Brazil, and the Odessa File, there were secrets whispered. I used to have a friend who knew he was a son of a Polish resistence fighter who worked with the British during the war. One day I got a phonecall from his mother, calling from a neighboring state. We chatted about her estranged (divorsed?) husband. Over the course of a half-hour she glossed over her life with her husband, and more. Details were intrengeing. After she told her tale I asked her to brace herself I told her that it was more probable that her husband was not a Pole working for MI6 or another agency, but rather he was a German, someone who worked for the Germans during the war, who was brought over to the US at the end of the war -- like Klaus Barbi (recently in the news) or the staff of Fremde Herre Ost. Some weeks later I recieved a second call from this women. She told me that for twenty-five years she had had an fixed image of her husband. But my explaination was a revelation, filled in gaps and blanks, made his story finally understandable. She was now convinced he was a Nazi with a cover-story. And my friend is no longer my friend, not by my choice.
Very true. I've read a number of accounts in print (from contemporary Time editions to unit history to general texts) that mentioned fanatical resistance by Germans towards the end. Anywho, back to the original post, I found this photo interesting. Here a Volkssturmmann trains a woman how to use a Panzerfaust:
