Volksgrenadiers in CMBB: Just boys and old men?

[JasonC]

Actually less than half of the VG divisions were formed from cadres of existing divisions that had been destroyed in combat in Russia. About 15 were of that sort. Usually the fighting elements of the division in its earlier, non-VG form had been annihilated, but some staff, command, and supply elements had survived, along with some personnel in hospital or otherwise left out of battle when the division was destroyed. These were redesignated VG if their later rebuild was late enough in the war, pretty much.

But the bulk of the VG were fresh divisions formed in response to the simultaneous collapse of France in the west and white Russia in the east. (A few were ordered in July while those battles were still in progress and were still forming, and redesignated while in the pipeline). This crisis resulted in all of the remaining stops being pulled on the German manpower pool, and in an acceleration of the training cycle to squeeze out more men as rapidly as possible.

Concretely, that meant personnel were swept out of the navy, out of the Luftwaffe ground personnel manning understrength bases in Germany or the huge Flak park defending the country, rear echelon units; it meant draft deferments for work in critical war plant and similar occupations were pulled; it meant the draft class was brought forward a year, a process repeated again at the start of the winter to get enough men for the Bulge; it meant age limits were raised as well, and recuperation times for the previously wounded were cut short.

As a result, you got some units with average age 16 or 17, others with half the men over 40, others filled almost exclusively with former naval personnel, and the like. The cadres for these units were typically understrength in NCOs and officers, often deploying with only half of the TOE positions filled, and many of those with very recent promotions. These formations did go through training - unlike the Volksturm which was a pure conscript militia - but it was deliberately shorter than normal. The TOE then gave them more automatic weapons and more teeth-to-tail, to allow quite modest trench strengths of men so obtained, to hold sections of the line.

Some then gave a good account of themselves anyway, and some were hopelessly inexpert in attack and got lots of men shot rapidly. Wide range, centered on green.

And no, that isn't "the German army". The German army at the time was a layer cake of draft and weapon selectivity. The German SS got first call on everything, but had its own poor relations in the non-German formations. The Luftwaffe ran an infantry army as "FJ" who never parachuted, and poor relations in deep rear area Flak formations. The Heer sent the best to the mobile divisions, the panzer formations especially, who had the best cadres in the whole force and the most rigorous merit and training systems. The older standard infantry divisions were poorer than all of the above, but still had experienced men - to the extent they weren't already dead in Russia. Below even the new forming VG formations there were security divisions of older WW I veterans meant for less strenous work guarding stuff rather than living in the open field continuously, and below even those, the fortress formations expected to man MGs and artillery in nearly static positions. The personnel in those frequently had medical ailments that would have disqualified them for service in any western army. And below all of that in the Heer, the Volksturm, which drafted boys of 14 and men of 80 when the war reached their village.

In that layer cake, the VG occupied a place below the average. And the average quality was falling rapidly, because the veterans of 1940-2 died in 1943 and the first half of 1944.