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To me the World Eaters seem like a bunch of raging madmen whose only concern is for personal slaughter and how to get to the next slaughter. I have a few questions, then, about how they recruit.

Why do any of them care about recruitment? Creating a Marine is a complex matter, even if the selection process is but a brutal ordeal. I can't see any World Eater with the patience for the whole thing, even if they care. Not to mention that the recruitment trials are no doubt ludicrously bloody.
How do they stay at strength? Astartes are mighty warriors, but the World Eaters are not exploiting some of their greatest strengths, that is, their tactics and ability to strike with quick accuracy. They are a hammer (Or chainaxe, rather) where Marines are likened to a scalpel. Many on the forum often say that Marines only prove their worth by combining the quality of their soldiers with masterful strategy, such as flanking that missile launcher instead of charging it. Without that strategy, how do the World Eaters last? Running the guns does not seem like anything they would mind doing, but is it not argued that that is suicide even for a Marine? Suicidal tactics, limited preference for recruitment, super-harsh selection and general belligerence, how do they remain so numerous?
It just does not make sense to me.

Go listen to the audio book about kharn the betrayer, they are not always blood mad 24/7 they interact, politic, scheme and negotiate like any other faction, it's just when they fight they lose it completely

Because Games Workshop.

World Eaters are like Orks. They're fun to model and play. But they make more sense when you don't think too hard about them.

I always thought Khorn Recycles most of them.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Because Games Workshop.

World Eaters are like Orks. They're fun to model and play. But they make more sense when you don't think too hard about them.

Ignore this, as I said they are not always blood crazed.

They basically hold bouts (like the pre heresy world eaters pit fights) any aspirants that survive are turned into space marine as normal by apothecarys, fabious biles genelabs, chaos Boons, then the butchers nails are implanted, note however not. All bezerkers are world eaters, but all world eaters are bezerkers, there are several places to find this info.

Last I check, the world eaters has broken done into tiny warbands every since Kharn had his little chat with a bunch pussy marines; and even before that, according to Galaxy in Flames, the World Eaters had already lost a majority of their strength (was it half? That escapes me ATM) during the Istvaan III affair, so I can't picture their strength ever recovered before Skalathrax.

According to the CSM codex, it seems the creation of khrone berserkers can be independent from the Legion. IRRC, Abbaddon the harmless has a few neural surgeons in his employment to implant butcher's nails so that he can field a large berserker force.

And the World Eaters Legion (or the warbands, to be precise) itself may very well be recruiting from those berserkers who sought the glory of Khrone and left Black Legion.

Formosa has it right.

Besides, you tell a blood thirsty lunatic that he can become a super human bloodthirsty lunatic and he'll take short term loss of battle for centuries of war and atrocity.

That sorts out the number of recruits, they probably use servitors or similar for the actual surgeries. I remember angron having arranged for his techmarines to hammer the butchers nails in to his warriors. If obliterators are basically the now-techmarine as has been hinted at, it's not outside the realms of possibility that they too have something to do with the recruitment and enhancement of new csm.

What Formosa said.

Depending on the writer, you can see World Eaters being dumb maniacs or a powerful, disciplined Legion dedicated to the god of War.
1- Extremely proficient and numerous Apothecaries following the berserkers and collecting gene-seed no matter the source can be found in the old background.
2- Quite proficient Devastators called the Teeth of Khorne, excelling at blasting the enemy from afar.
3- Librarians called Tally-Keepers. They can´t use their powers in battle, for that would enrage Khorne, who sees it as cheating, but they offer counsel, invoke Daemons, and many more.
4- Lots of artillery and long-ranged weapons. They excel at that. Some long-ranged units used by the WE include: Towers of Skulls, Doomblasters, Bloodreapers, Deathdealers, Brass Scorpions and Skull Cannons, among many others.
5- They were also known to use Jump Infantry units and Land Speeders to outflank the enemy during the Heresy.

Their favorite tactic includes the use of heavy artillery followed by nearly suicidal attacks by newly recruited berserkers, while the artillery keep on shooting. Power Armor helps the new guys survive. Strong points are detected and destroyed by a second wave.

This is a quote from Betrayal, the Forgeworld book: "The regime of discipline and training the XIIth Legion abided by in the past had always been noted among the harshest of any of the Legions, but this proved to be but a shadow of what came to pass under Angron´s direction." This hasn´t changed: the life of a World Eater is a constant training under severe discipline, only paused when the time for war comes.

Even more important: the high attrition rate made Angron to streamline and accelerate the recruitment process, with recruits drawn from everywhere and tested on the go. Their Apothecaries were also adepts in the use of the Grabiya´s Theorem, a procedure involving the use of the Primarch´s own material to stabilise and speed up the implantation procedures, similar to the procedure later tried by Corax. It is considered an extremely dangerous procedure not because it kills the marine, but because it can drive him mentally unstable. And they experimented in many other ways to help the Legion to keep their numbers.

One last thing: the Dominion of Fire saw Angron leading 50000 marines to battle during the 38th millennium. That gives you an idea of the size of the Legion... if it can be still considered a Legion, since it no longer operates together. But they will join again under the command of his Primarch.

 Formosa wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Because Games Workshop.

World Eaters are like Orks. They're fun to model and play. But they make more sense when you don't think too hard about them.

Ignore this, as I said they are not always blood crazed.

They basically hold bouts (like the pre heresy world eaters pit fights) any aspirants that survive are turned into space marine as normal by apothecarys, fabious biles genelabs, chaos Boons, then the butchers nails are implanted, note however not. All bezerkers are world eaters, but all world eaters are bezerkers, there are several places to find this info.

Ignore this.

Bad stories with implausible premises. Don't get fooled. Writing an explanation doesn't make it a good explanation.

And relying on Games Workshop to provide crappy explanations doesn't do well when perfectly serviceable explanations can be drummed up in a few moments. But then anything other than GW's status quo is wrong, and trying to make something unique just gets your homebrew fluff labeled Special Snowflake. Mundane and inane are the only ways to go.

I always thought they bought them cheap from fabius bile

World eaters are surprisingly well documented, as others have said they do recruit from the masses and slave stock, it surprises me that they (and other warbands/legions) are so poorly represented by the chaos dex, there should be khorne havoc squads, apothecarys and yes there are even khorne psykers, that's where blood magic came from in 40k, later known as biomancy.

And Forgeworld has a lot of stuff on them too.

Its strange that the night lords have trouble finding recruits and have to scavenge for armour but the world eaters seem to be a fully equipped and fully manned Legion.

SAHAAL wrote:
Its strange that the night lords have trouble finding recruits and have to scavenge for armour but the world eaters seem to be a fully equipped and fully manned Legion.

The Night Lords did not share a common identity until the coming of the Prophet. Krieg Acerbus and Zso Sahaal didn´t reunite the Legion. They operate outside the Eye of Terror, without forge worlds supporting them and serving as mercenaries. They can get recruits and gear only as a payment or by scavenging. However, a sizeable force of Night Lords such as the one described by Peter Fehervari in Nightfall, is perfectly able to recruit from many worlds. For the average imperial citizen, it is impossible to distinguish between a loyal Space Marine and a Night Lord.

On the other side, you have the World Eaters. As worshippers of Khrone, they have access to all kinds of gear, with full forge worlds such as Sarum, who followed the World Eaters during the Heresy and after that. You have to keep in mind that half of the Adeptus Mechanicus turned against the Imperium and followed the Legions to the Eye of Terror. The Crimson Priesthood (the armies of the Mechanicum of Sarum) or the Ember Wolves (a Legio Titanica formerly known as the Legio Audax) fight at the side of the World Eaters. And countless armies of the Lost and the Damned, full developed civilizations united by the worship of the god of War.

When a Space Marine falls, Khorne is the first option. The World Eaters have perhaps the highest rate of recruitment from undivided Legions or Chapters. And if you want to turn a young Khorne follower into a full Space Marine in a matter of months, following the techniques used by some Legions during the Crusade and now prohibited for loyalists Chapters, you have the best Apothecaries out there.

At last but not at least, while the Legion as such broke into warbands after the battle of Skalathrax, they quickly join together and in numbers under the rule of a worthy leader, as you can see in the 50000 Space Marines who joined Angron during the Dominion of Fire.

The World Eaters first appeared as a separate faction, with an army list of their own, in 1990, first edition Rogue Trader. There is lots of stuff about them. However, this army was discontinued by the GW studio, and eventually most players associate them to the "silly maniacs" internet meme they have become. If you think something about the WE sounds odd, it is usually because you just read a simplified, "flanderizated" version of them.

The fact that some studio and black library writers (Phil Kelly, Aaron Demsky-Bowden) write about them without knowing their background (or knowing it but caring nothing about it) does not help. Try to get other stuff about them.

That was really good. World Eaters have a huge industrial base dating from the Heresy.

The best part is this:

When a Space Marine falls, Khorne is the first option.

Except that the interesting thing is not the space marine half of the sentence, it is that Khorne is the first option, for everyone. Khorne is the first option for Guardsmen and for almost anyone else.

Think about it like this. The most powerful militaries in the world today are that way because they can build lots of tanks, or radios or night vision goggles. Whether they are technological powers or conscript armies, the most powerful militaries have not been powered by warrior castes or codes of honor.

That is what it means to be Khornate. If you have a special caste of samurai, that means that warfare is practiced mostly by on,y a segment of society, and if you have a code of bushido it means warfare can be done correctly or incorrectly, which means that sometimes it is bad. An actual Khornate society has a civilian government and a democratic process, that are totally consumed with bloodshed. If World Eaters were just chain-axe maniacs, they would not be marked by Khorne; they have to have machinery, have to have large industrial bases, otherwise they could not perpetuate bloodshed because bloodshed would not extend further than the lengths of their chain axes.

 Formosa wrote:
Go listen to the audio book about kharn the betrayer, they are not always blood mad 24/7 they interact, politic, scheme and negotiate like any other faction, it's just when they fight they lose it completely

Exactly! It is explained in the Chaos Space Marine Codex that warriors of Khorne can be mistaken for mindless savages when they are in combat but they still possess the majority of their intelligence when not engaged in such fighting.