More 15mm Volkssturm - Panzerfausts

The Volkssturm was supposed to be the mobilisation of the (male) German population into a huge army to defend the Fatherland against the allies. It never really turned out that way, though.

There was a shortage of weapons and uniforms and most of the available healthy manpower was siphoned off into the new Volksgrenadier units, many of which were wasted in the abortive Ardennes Offensive of December 1944.

However, Volkssturm units were formed and equipped with whatever was available, which meant a lot of obsolete rifles and even more Panzerfausts.

These are all Peter Pig figures, some of a more martial appearance than others, due to their military-style soft caps. I've used grey-green on some of the clothing to imply either military greatcoats dished out from a store somewhere or tunics that might date back to someone's service in the Great War. You will note that only two of these figures have rifles. The rest just have a 'faust. Again, I've attempted the red/white/black Volkssturm armband on them.

My idea here is that these guys will form a resource available to the Zugführer to allocate as he sees fit. I've even got an idea how they might be used in a game of CoC. They could be allocated to individual squads or be held centrally, either to be deployed as an Ambush, using a CoC dice, or as a one-man team which will activate on a 1 on a Command Dice. Once they have fired, if deployed as a 1-man team or an Ambush they will be unarmed and should be removed from the table. Those allocated to a squad will remain with the squad and will be able to replace a rifleman casualty (but not the Gruppenführer JL).

By September 1944, the Panzerfaust 60 reached peak production but was slowly being replaced by the more powerful Panzerfaust 100. Apart from the longer range of the Model 100, both versions were of a similar size and both could knock out any Allied tanks encountered. They were most effective in urban combat situations, where tanks were vulnerable to such portable one-shot weapons.