Everything about Helmuth Weidling totally explained
Helmuth Otto Ludwig Weidling (
2 November 1891 –
17 November 1955) was an officer in the
German Army (
Wehrmacht Heer) during
World War II. Weidling was the last commander of the
Berlin Defense Area during the
Battle of Berlin, defending the city against
Soviet forces and finally surrendering just before the
end of World War II in Europe.
During Weidling's military career he was awarded the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (see also
Knight's Cross).
Early life
Weidling was born in
Halberstadt,
Province of Saxony. He entered the military in 1911.
Poland, France, and Russia
In November 1938, Weidling became a
Colonel (
Oberst) of the 56th
Artillery Regiment. He fought with this regiment in the
Polish Campaign of 1939. In April 1940, Weidling was appointed Artillery Commander of the
XL Tank Corps (
XL Panzer Korps). He fought with this corps during the
Battle of France and during the early stages of
Operation Barbarossa.
On
1 January 1942, still on the
Eastern Front, Weidling was appointed to command the 86th
Infantry Division. One month later he was promoted to the rank of
Major-General (
Generalmajor). On
1 January 1943, Weidling was promoted to the rank of
Lieutenant-General (
Generalleutnant).
XLI tank corps
On
15 October 1943, Weidling became the Commanding General of the
XLI Tank Corps (
XLI Panzer Korps). He was to hold this command to
10 April 1945. There was a short break from
19 June 1944 to
1 July 1944 when Lieutenant-General (
Generalleutnant)
Edmund Hoffmeister commanded the tank corps. Weidling was given command of the XLI Tank Corps after the unit took part in the
Battle of Kursk (
4 July to
20 July). Two months after being given command of the XLI Tank Corps, Weidling was promoted to rank of
Artillery General (
General der Artillerie).
On
10 April 1945, Weidling was relieved of his command and transferred to the Officer Reserve (
Führerreserve) of the Army High Command (
Oberkommando des Heeres or
OKH). Two days later, he was appointed as commander of the
LVI Tank Corps (
LVI Panzer Korps). The LVI Tank Corps was part of
Gotthard Heinrici's
Army Group Vistula. As commander of this tank corps, Weidling began his involvement in the
Battle of Berlin.
LVI tank corps
On
16 April, Weidling prepared to take part in the
Battle of the Seelow Heights which was part of the broader
Battle of the Oder-Neisse. Weidling's LVI Tank Corps was in the center with the CI Army Corps to his left and the XI
SS Tank Corps to his right. All three corps were part of General
Theodor Busse's
9th Army which was defending the heights above the
Oder River. While all three corps were in generally good defensive positions, all three were conspicuously short of tanks. Weidling's commander, Heinrici, had seen that earlier in the day, Hitler had transferred three tank divisions from Army Group Vistula to the command of recently promoted
Field Marshal (
Generalfeldmarschall)
Ferdinand Schörner.
Colonel (
Oberst)
Theodor von Dufving was Weidling's Chief-of-Staff and Colonel (
Oberst)
Hans-Oscar Wöhlermann was his Artillery Officer during the time that Weidling commanded the LVI Tank Corps.
By
19 April, Schörner's
Army Group Centre was collapsing and the position of Army Group Vistula was becoming untenable. Heinrici was forced to pull back what was left of his forces, including Weidling's LVI Tank Corps. The defensive line on the Seelow Heights was the last major defensive line outside of Berlin. With the loss of this position, the road to Berlin lay wide open. To escape envelopment and total annihilation, Weidling pulled his corps back with the rest of Army Group Vistula.
Commander of the Berlin Defense Area
On
22 April, German dictator
Adolf Hitler ordered that Weidling be
executed by
firing squad. Hitler believed that, as commander of the LVI Tank Corps, Weidling had ordered his tank corps to retreat in the face of advancing Soviet forces. Ordering a retreat would be in defiance of Hitler's standing orders to the contrary. As such, Weidling's actions required a death sentence. This situation turned out to be a misunderstanding and it was cleared up before Weidling's execution could take place.
On
23 April, Hitler appointed Weidling as the commander of the
Berlin Defense Area. He replaced Lieutenant General (
Generalleutnant)
Helmuth Reymann, Colonel (
Oberst)
Ernst Kaether, and Hitler himself. Reymann had only held the position since
6 March. Starting
22 April, Kaether had held the position for less than one day. For a short period of time, Hitler took personal control of Berlin's defenses with Major General
Erich Bärenfänger as his deputy. Weidling was ordered by Hitler to defend the city of Berlin. Specifically, he was ordered not to surrender and to fight to the last man.
The defenders
The forces available to Weidling for the city's defence included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely depleted German Army (
Wehrmacht Heer) and Armed
SS (
Waffen-SS) divisions. These depleted divisions were supplemented by the Berlin
police force,
boys in the compulsory
Hitler Youth, and about 40,000 elderly men of the Home Guard (
Volkssturm). The commander of the central district was Protective Squadron (
Schutzstaffel,
SS) Brigade Leader (
SS Brigadeführer)
Wilhelm Mohnke. Mohnke had been appointed to his position by Hitler himself and he'd over 2,000 men under his direct command. The Soviets were to later estimate the number of defenders in Berlin at 180,000. But this was based on the number of prisoners that they took. The prisoners included many unarmed men in uniform, such as railway officials and members of the Reich Labour Service (
Reichsarbeitsdienst).
Weidling organized the defences into eight sectors designated "A" through to "H". Each sector was commanded by a colonel or a general. But most of the colonels and generals had no combat experience. To the west of the city was the
20th Motorized Infantry Division. To the north of the city was the
9th Parachute Division. To the north-east of the city was the "Müncheberg" Tank Division (
Panzer Division Müncheberg). To the south-east of the city and to the east of
Tempelhof Airport was the 11th SS Volunteer Armored Infantry Division "Nordland" (
SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division). Weidling's reserve, the 18th Armored Infantry Division (
18th Panzergrenadier Division), was in Berlin's central district.
On
25 April, Weidling ordered
Major-General of the Reserve (
Generalmajor der Reserve)
Werner Mummert, commander of "Müncheberg" to take command of the German LVI Army Corps. Weidling ordered that the command of "Müncheberg" be handed over to Colonel (
Oberst)
Hans-Oscar Wöhlermann. Wöhlermann was the artillery commander for the city.
On
26 April, Weildling ordered "Müncheberg" and "Nordland" to attack towards
Tempelhof Airport and
Neukölln. At first, with its last ten tanks, "Müncheberg" made good progress against a surprised Soviet foe. However, the surprise wore off and was replaced with fierce defensive fire and several local counter-attacks. These soon halted the tank division's advance.
Bendlerblock headquarters
Sometime around
26 April 1945, Weidling chose as his headquarters the old army headquarters on the Bendlestrasse, the "
Bendlerblock." It possessed well-equipped air-raid shelters and it was close to the
Reich Chancellery. In the depths of the Bendlerblock, his staff didn't know whether it was day or night.
Flooding of the Berlin underground
Around noon on
26 April, Weidling relieved Wöhlermann of command and Mummert was reinstated as commander of the "Müncheberg" Tank Division. The following is from the diary of an officer with "Müncheberg" and describes the evening of
26 April.
"Scarlet night. Heavy artillery fire. Uncanny silence. We get shot at from many houses. Foreign workers, no doubt. From the Air Ministry comes news that Major General Erich Bärenfänger has been relieved of his post of commander of the Berlin garrison. One hour later we hear that General Weidling is our new commander. General Mummert takes charge of the Tank Corps . . ."
Late in the evening of
26 April, Weidling presented Hitler with a detailed proposal for a breakout from Berlin. When Weidling finished, Hitler shook his head and said: "Your proposal is perfectly all right. But what is the point of it all? I've no intentions of wandering around in the woods. I'm staying here and I'll fall at the head of my troops. You, for your part, will carry on with your defence."
When Weidling discovered that a major part of the last line of the German defenses in Berlin were "manned" by Hitler Youth, he ordered German Youth Leader (
Reichsjugendführer)
Artur Axmann to disband the Hitler Youth combat formations in the city. But, in the confusion, his order was never carried out. In the end, many German youths did die defending Berlin. The following is from an account of an interview with a member of the Hitler Youth who was preparing to defend a bridge over the
Havel. The interview took place on either
28 April or
29 April. When the Hitler Youth was asked how it was that he was fighting at this bridge when he was only thirteen years old, he pointed at his comrades (many of them from
Oranienburg) and said:
"The Head Banner Leader (Hauptbannfuehrer, or district leader), Frischefskly, had all of us fetched from our homes by policemen and ordered us to report to the SS barracks and on the Castle Square. Then we were divided into two separate squads and attached to various SS and Volkssturm units. We were detailed to fight north and east of the town. Most of us were killed by rifle fire, when we were ordered to attack across an open field. Later the fighting shifted to the center of the town. This lasted for two days. During these two days and nights, Oranienburg changed hands several times. Nearly all of us died. Then the Russians started to hammer us with their Stalin Organs. And, when we called it a day and headed for home, we were stopped and had to go along to Eden, across the canal. My Youth-Group Leader, who refused, was hanged on the nearest tree by a few Protective Squad (Schutzstaffel, SS) men and one Storm Division (Sturmabteilung, SA, "Brownshirts") man. He was fifteen. Then the rest of our squad —- eight of the original one-hundred-and-twenty —- decided to do as we were told. Soon after the bridge across the canal was blown up, and they left us in peace. I met a few schoolmates who told me that the Hauptbannfuehrer himself, his girlfriend, and Hitler Youth Leader Schiller of the Aerotechnical School had made off to the West two days earlier on bicycles. I then walked to Velten and tried to make for Henningsdorf, where I've an aunt. But, just before I got there, I was picked up. Then I'd to fight in Reinickendorf, on the Spandau road. Then we pulled out. This morning we were picked up again and ordered to fight right here."
Relentless advance
On
29 April, the Soviet Information Bureau announced that troops of the 1st Belorussian Front continued to clear the streets of Berlin, occupied the northwest sector of
Charlottenburg as far as Bismark Street, the west half of
Moabit, and the east part of Schoeneberg. Troops of the
1st Ukrainian Front occupied
Friedenau and
Grunewald in northwest Berlin.
During the evening of
29 April, Weidling's headquarters in the
Bendlerblock was now within metres of the front line. Weidling discussed with his divisional commanders the possibility of breaking out to the southwest to link up with the Wenck's Army. Wenck's spearhead had reached the village of Ferch on the banks of the
Schwielowsee near Potsdam. The breakout was planned to start the next night at 22:00.
On
30 April, the Soviet Information Bureau announced that troops of the 1st Belorussian Front captured Moabit, Anhalter Railway Station,
Joachimsthal to the north of Berlin, and
Neukölln,
Marienwerder, and
Liebenwalde. Troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front occupied the southern part of
Wilmersdorf, Hohenzollerndamm, and Halensee Railway Station.
Hitler and Braun committed
suicide, Braun by taking
cyanide and Hitler by simultaneously taking cyanide and shooting himself. Some witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30. Per instructions, their bodies were burned.
Afterwards, when Weidling reached the Führerbunker, he was met by Goebbels, Bormann, and Krebs. They took him to Hitler's room, where the couple had committed suicide. They told him that their bodies had been burned and buried in a shell crater in the garden above. Weidling was forced to swear that he wouldn't repeat this news to anybody. The only person in the outside world who was to be informed was
Joseph Stalin. An attempt would be made that night to arrange an armistice, and General Krebs would inform the Soviet commander so that he could inform the
Kremlin.
A rather dazed Weidling rang Colonel
Hans Refior, his civil Chief of Staff, in the
Bendlerblock headquarters soon afterward. Weidling said that he couldn't tell him what had happened, but he needed various members of his staff to join him immediately, including Colonel
Theodor von Dufving, his military Chief-of-Staff.
The meeting between Krebs and Chuikov ended with no agreement. According to Hitler's personal private secretary Traudl Junge, Krebs returned to the bunker looking "worn out, exhausted". The surrender of Berlin was thus delayed until Goebbels himself committed suicide.
Per
Chuikov's and
Sokolovsky's direction, Weidling put his order to surrender in writing. The document written by Weidling read as follows:
"On April 30, 1945, the Fuehrer committed suicide, and thus abandoned those who had sworn loyalty to him. According to the Fuehrer's order, you German soldiers would have had to go on fighting for Berlin despite the fact that our ammunition has run out and despite the general situation which makes our further resistance meaningless. I order the immediate cessation of resistance. WEIDLING, General of Artillery, former District Commandant in the defence of Berlin"
Chuikov and Sokolovsky reviewed what Weidling had written and the conversation continued.
Chuikov: "There is no need to say 'former'. You are still commandant."
Weidling: "Jawohl! How shall it be headed, as an appeal or an order?"
Chuikov: "An order."
The meeting between Weidling and Chuikov ended at 8:23 am on
2 May 1945. Later that same day, loudspeakers announced Weidling's surrender and copies of his order were distributed to the remaining defenders. With the exception of scattered areas of resistance and of desperate efforts to break out, the
Battle for Berlin was over.
The Soviet forces took Weidling into custody as a
prisoner of war and flew him to the Soviet Union. He never returned to Germany alive.
Aftermath
On
27 February 1952, a Soviet military tribunal in Moscow sentenced Weidling to 25 years of imprisonment for not surrendering Berlin sooner. Weidling died on
17 November 1955, apparently in the custody of the
KGB in
Vladimir. KGB records listed the cause of death as "arterial and cardiac sclerosis along with circulatory collapse."
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