WW2 German Volksgrenadier

Volksgrenadier, was the name given to a type of German Army division formed in the autumn of 1944 after the double loss of Army Group Centre to the Soviets in Operation Bagration and the Fifth Panzer Army to the Western Allies in Normandy. The name itself was intended to build morale, appealing at once to nationalism (Volk) and Germany's older military traditions (Grenadier). They were organized around small cadres of hardened veteran soldiers, noncommissioned officers and officers, and then bulked out with anything the Replacement Army could supply: "jobless" personnel of the shrinking Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe, recovered wounded soldiers from broken formations returning to duty from hospitals, older men who would have been considered too old or too unfit for the peacetime army, and young men and teenagers from the latest conscription classes were all recruited into the ranks.