With the Nazi Party in charge of organizing the "Volkssturm", each "Gauleiter", or Nazi Party District Leader, was charged with the leadership, enrollment, and organization of the "Volkssturm" in their district. The largest "Volkssturm" unit seems to have corresponded to the next smaller territorial subdivision of the Nazi Party organization—the "Kreis". The basic unit was a battalion of 642 men. Units were mostly composed of members of the Hitler Youth, invalids, the elderly, or men who had previously been considered unfit for military service. On 12 February 1945, the Nazis conscripted German women and girls into the auxiliaries of the "Volkssturm". Correspondingly, girls as young as 14 years were trained in the use of small arms, panzerfaust, machine guns, and hand grenades from December 1944 through May 1945.