Holding onto population centers in the last months of WWII was built not only around their importance to Germany’s crumbling transportation infrastructure, but also their role as communications hubs; in this sense every town and village was vital to a coordinated defense.

A US XXI Corps report observed, “Army telephone and telegraph traffic flowed through local civilian switchboards. Accordingly, when a town was seized by us, military communications in the vicinity was severely disrupted.”

The reliance upon a fragile civilian communications network, the fluid nature of the evolving battle east of the Rhine, troop and supply shortages, and the crumbling state of civilian morale, all complicated the work of local commanders.

Defensive preparations east of the Rhine began in earnest at the beginning of February 1945. Engineers in charge of Volkssturm oversaw the erection of tank obstacles on roads and at town entrances, as well as the destruction of bridges, overpasses, and rail lines, etc.

An appointed “Battle” or “Defense” Commander (both words exist in OKW orders) would be responsible for gathering up stragglers to comprise “alarm units” to supplement the orderly reporting of retiring units to the local commander.

Supply preparations were the responsibility of each Wehrkreis (military district). Once a town or city was threatened by the enemy, the command and control of its defense passed to the army corps HQ responsible for that sector of the front.

The paltry state of communications often relegated such orderly transitions of authority farcical. The local Defense Commander was ultimately the key determining factor in the quality of resistance offered Allied troops. Upon his shoulders rested the battle.

This was spelled out in an OKW directive from early April 1945 that reiterated that all designated centers or resistance be held “to the utmost, no matter what promises or threats are carried by intermediaries or radio transmissions by the enemy.”

In the event the Defense Commander should “fail his soldierly duty and task, they will be sentenced to death.” The authority to dispense the same punishment to anyone, military or civilian, who interfered with his mission, was explicitly authorized.

The decision of where to defend rested on troop availability, ammunition stockpiles, the quality of defensive preparations, and the morale of the local population. This last factor was of supreme importance. The Defense Commander had to contend with and reinforce civilian morale.

A US Army report notes that the city of Schweinfurt saw four Defense Cdrs at a rapid clip. The last commander’s job was aided by Allied bombing that mooted arguments concerning an early surrender to save the city. However, such bombings worked in the opposite direction elsewhere.

In instances where Heer (army) officials were themselves the obstacles to a vigorous defense, they could be overcome by local party officials and the Gauleiter (party boss) appointed in their place, as was the case in Nurnberg.

Additional cases of the interplay among army, SS, and party officials coordinating city/town defenses are described in the attached report. It makes for interesting reading.

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