Before the war and even during its early months, Germany neither planned nor established extensive systems of civil defense. The assumption was that victory would be achieved so quickly through vigorously offensive means that passive defense was almost unnecessary. However, with typical Teutonic thoroughness, authorities classified Germany's towns according to their value for war production. In 106 first-priority cities and towns, air raid shelters were constructed during the 1930s. In a second tier of 201 towns, the government provided nothing more than certain emergency measures. In all other towns, civil defense was regarded as an entirely local matter.

The one area in which Germany acted early, pursuant to a law of June 26, 1935, was antiaircraft defenses for all major cities, towns, and military-related installations. An all-volunteer Reich's Air Defense League (Reichsluftschutzbund) was created to help harden cities against air raids, but shelter building was grossly inadequate. Antiaircraft artillery stations were deployed by Civil Aerial Defense authorities (Ziviler Luftschutz) under the command of the Luftwaffe. As early as 1940, the Luftwaffe conscripted members of the Hitler Youth, ages 16 to 18 years, to man the guns so that troops would be freed up for the front.

German authorities, from Adolf Hitler down, were slow to give substantial priority to civil defense, because to do so might be perceived as an indication of doubt about ultimate victory. Thus, it was late in 1943 before Germany deployed a radar-based system of early warning against aerial attack, despite almost daily bombing. Construction of public shelters also lagged, even as the number and intensity of air raids increased during the Allies' Strategic Bombing of Germany.

On September 25, 1944, Hitler personally created the Deutsche Volkssturm, a formally established civil defense force, which, staffed largely by underage boys and overage men, was less a genuine civil defense organization than a last-stand army. All German males between the ages of 16 and 60 were liable for service, and Hitler anticipated pressing into service some 6 million to be drawn from the German workforce currently exempted from military service.

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