Full name: Helmuth Otto Ludwig Weidling
Nickname: No information
Date of Birth: 2 November 1891 - Halberstadt, Province of Saxony (German Empire)
Date of Death: 17 November 1955 - Vladimir POW camp, south-east of Moscow (Soviet Union)
Battles and Operations: Invasion of Poland 1939, Battle of France 1940, Operation Barbarossa and subsequent Eastern Front operations including the winter battle at Rzhev 1942/43, defensive battles between the Pripyat marshes and the Berezina river in Byelorussia 1944, first battle of East Prussia and defensive fighting along the Narew front in late 1944, Battle of the Seelow Heights and Battle of Berlin as commander of the Berlin Defence Area in April-May 1945
NSDAP-Number: No information
SS-Number: No information
Religion: No information
Parents: Dr. med. Ludwig Weidling (Sanitätsrat and head of a clinic for women's diseases) and Klara Weidling, née Dippe
Siblings: No information
Spouse: Lilo Weidling (married date unknown)
Children: Two sons, Klaus Weidling and Alexander Weidling
Promotions:
10 August 1912 Leutnant
1 June 1922 Hauptmann
10 June 1932 Major
1 September 1935 Oberstleutnant
1 March 1938 Oberst
1 February 1942 Generalmajor
1 January 1943 Generalleutnant
1 January 1944 General der Artillerie
Career:
1911 joined the Prussian Army in Feldartillerie-Regiment „von Peucker“ (1. Schlesisches) Nr. 6 in Breslau
World War I service as artillery officer, observer and airship commander in Luftschiffer-Bataillon Nr. 1, including command of LZ 97 and LZ 113
Post-war service in the Reichswehr with 4. Artillerie-Regiment
1 January 1931 Chef 3. Batterie / 4. Artillerie-Regiment
1 October 1935 Kommandeur I. Abteilung / Artillerie-Regiment 75
15 October 1936 Kommandeur Artillerie-Regiment 75
10 November 1938 Kommandeur Artillerie-Regiment 56
1 April 1940 Kommandeur Artillerie-Regiment 20
10 April 1940 Artilleriekommandeur 128 (Arko 128) with XXXX. Panzerkorps
1 January 1942 Kommandeur 86. Infanterie-Division (until September 1943)
15 October 1943 Kommandierender General XXXXI. Panzerkorps (with a brief interruption June-July 1944)
10 April 1945 placed in the Führerreserve
12 April 1945 Kommandierender General LVI. Panzerkorps
23 April 1945 Kampfkommandant / Commander of the Berlin Defence Area until surrender on 2 May 1945
Taken prisoner by Soviet forces on 2 May 1945, held in various prisons in Moscow and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in 1952 for war crimes, died in custody in Vladimir Central Prison
Awards and Decorations:
09.10.1914 1914 Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
03.03.1916 1914 Eisernes Kreuz I.Klasse
00.00.19__ Ritterkreuz des Königlichen Hausordens von Hohenzollern mit Schwertern
00.00.19_ Hanseatenkreuz Lübeck
00.00.19__ Österreichisches Militärverdienstkreuz III. Klasse mit der Kriegsdekoration
00.00.19__ Erinnerungsabzeichen für die Besatzung der Luftschiffe
05.10.1934 Ehrenkreuz für Frontkämpfer
00.00.19__ Wehrmacht-Dienstauszeichnung, IV. bis I. Klasse
00.00.19__ Medaille zur Erinnerung an den 1. Oktober 1938
18.09.1939 1939 Spange zum 1914 Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
12.10.1939 1939 Spange zum 1914 Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
00.00.19__ Königlich Bulgarischer Militärverdienstorden, II. Klasse mit Schwertern
18.08.1942 Ostmedaille
09.02.1944 Mentioned in Wehrmachtbericht
23.06.1942 Deutsches Kreuz in Gold
15.01.1943
Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes #1433, as Generalmajor and Kommandeur
86.Infanterie-Division / XXXXI.Panzerkorps / 9.Armee / Heeresgruppe
Mitte. Weidling earned the award for his performance in the savage winter fighting around the Rzhev salient. In the first days of December 1942, during the closing phase of the Soviet Operation Mars, Red Army units launched a surprise thrust through dense, snow-covered forests and rough terrain south toward the village of Burzeva. The attack caught German positions off guard in the freezing conditions, with Soviet infantry and tanks exploiting the wooded cover to infiltrate deep into the lines. Weidling reacted instantly. Drawing on his long experience as an artillery officer, he orchestrated rapid, coordinated counterattacks that combined precise artillery fire, infantry assaults, and limited armored support. His troops methodically cleared the thick forests sector by sector, driving the enemy back in hand-to-hand fighting amid waist-deep snow and sub-zero temperatures. By the end of the engagement the division had not only halted the Soviet advance but pushed northward, recapturing all lost ground as far as the village of Karskaya. The action restored the integrity of the German front in that sector, inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, and prevented a dangerous breach that could have unhinged the entire Rzhev defensive system. For this decisive leadership under the most punishing winter conditions Weidling was awarded the Ritterkreuz.
22.02.1944 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub
#408, as General der Artillerie and Kommandierender General
XXXXI.Panzerkorps / 9.Armee / Heeresgruppe Mitte. Weidling received the award for his exceptional corps-level leadership in the defensive battles between the Pripyat Marshes and the Berezina River in Byelorussia. Throughout the winter of 1943/44 and into early 1944 the corps faced repeated Soviet attempts to smash through the German lines in the swampy, forested region near Kritschev and Retschiza. The terrain was a nightmare of mud, bogs, and dense woodland that severely restricted movement and favored the attacker’s infiltration tactics. Soviet forces, often supported by heavy artillery and tank units, repeatedly probed and assaulted the thinly held German positions. Weidling’s corps, though understrength after months of continuous fighting, held firm through a series of expertly timed counterthrusts. He shifted his limited panzer and assault-gun reserves at the decisive moments, used artillery to interdict Soviet approach routes across the marshes, and established strongpoint defenses that turned the difficult ground into a killing zone. His calm, decisive command prevented any major breakthrough, stabilized the front, and allowed neighboring units to regroup. The fighting near Kritschev and Retschiza exemplified the kind of fluid, attritional defense that characterized the German effort in Byelorussia before the great Soviet summer offensive, and it was for this sustained excellence that Weidling was decorated with the Eichenlaub.
28.11.1944
Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern #115, as
General der Artillerie and Kommandierender General XXXXI. Panzerkorps. Weidling earned the award for his outstanding leadership during the defensive battles in East Prussia and along the Narew River in late 1944. In the First Battle of East Prussia (16–28 October 1944) the corps was thrown into desperate fighting as Soviet forces tried to break into the Reich’s eastern provinces. Amid bitter tank-versus-tank clashes, artillery duels, and close-quarter infantry combat in the border forests and villages, Weidling’s units executed tenacious holding actions and timely counterattacks that blunted the Soviet spearheads and protected vital approach routes. Despite being heavily outnumbered and operating with worn-out equipment and dwindling fuel, the corps maintained cohesion and inflicted severe losses. In November and December 1944 the fighting shifted to the Narew River front, where the corps again formed the backbone of the defense. Under relentless pressure, Weidling orchestrated skillful withdrawals to new positions while launching sharp local counterstrokes that kept the enemy from achieving a clean breakthrough. His personal presence at critical points, combined with his artilleryman’s eye for terrain and fire support, turned what could have been a collapse into an orderly, fighting retreat that preserved the corps as an effective fighting formation and delayed the Soviet advance into East Prussia by critical weeks. For these actions in the face of overwhelming odds Weidling was awarded the Swords.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Helmuth Otto Ludwig Weidling (2 November 1891 – 17 November 1955) was
born in Halberstadt in 1891. Weidling entered the military in 1911 and
served as a lieutenant in the First World War. He remained in the
reduced army of the Weimar Republic after the war. As an artillery
officer, Weidling took part in the invasion of Poland, the Battle of
France and during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion
of the Soviet Union.
In January 1942, still on the Eastern Front, Weidling was appointed commander of the 86th Infantry Division.
On
15 October 1943, Weidling became the commander of the XLI Panzer Corps,
a position he held until 10 April 1945 with a short break in his
command from 19 June 1944 to 1 July 1944. During this break,
Generalleutnant Edmund Hoffmeister took over during the first stages of
Soviet Operation Bagration. Hoffmeister was in command when most of the
German 9th Army, along with the XLI Panzer Corps, was encircled during
the Bobruysk Offensive.
While Weidling was in command, XLI Panzer
Corps was responsible for an atrocity committed by the Wehrmacht in the
Soviet Union during the war: Up to 50,000 civilians were deliberately
infected with typhus, and placed in a "typhus camp" in the area of
Parichi, Belorussia, in the path of oncoming Red Army forces, in the
hopes that this would cause a massive outbreak of typhus among the Red
Army soldiers. This was noted by the commander of the 65th Soviet Army,
General Pavel Batov, months later when it found itself facing this same
corps in the Battle of Berlin.
The XLI Panzer Corps was rebuilt
as part of the German 4th Army. The 4th Army, under the command of
General Friedrich Hoßbach, was given the task of holding the borders of
East Prussia. On 10 April 1945, Weidling was relieved of his command. He
was thereafter appointed as commander of the LVI Panzer Corps.
The
LVI Panzer Corps was part of Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula. As
commander of this corps, Weidling began his involvement with the Battle
of Berlin.
On 16 April 1945, 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 Panzer Corps was in the centre,
flanked by the CI Army Corps to his left and the XI SS Panzer Corps to
his right. All three corps were part of General Theodor Busse's 9th
Army, which was defending the heights above the River Oder. While all
three corps were in generally good defensive positions, they were
conspicuously short of tanks. Weidling's commander, Heinrici, recognised
the shortage earlier in the day, as Hitler had ordered the transfer of
three panzer divisions from Army Group Vistula to the command of
recently promoted Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner.
In the middle
of the Battle of Berlin, the leader of the Hitler Youth, Artur Axmann,
visited Weidling's headquarters and told him that the youngsters of the
Hitler Youth were ready to fight and were even now manning the roads in
the 56th rear. Weidling argued it was futile for these teenage boys to
be thrown into the battle. He told Axmann it was, "the sacrifice of
children for an already doomed cause". Axmann did not withdraw them from
the battle.
By 19 April, with Schörner's Army Group Centre
collapsing, Weidling's corps was forced to retreat west into Berlin. The
German forces retreat from Seelow Heights during the 19th and 20th left
no front line remaining.
On 22 April, Hitler ordered that
Weidling be executed by firing squad on receiving a report that he had
retreated in the face of advancing Soviet Army forces, which was in
defiance of standing orders to the contrary. Weidling had not actually
retreated, and the sentence was called off after he appeared at the
Führerbunker to clear up the misunderstanding.
On 23 April,
Hitler appointed Weidling as the commander of the Berlin Defence Area.
Weidling replaced Lieutenant General (Generalleutnant) Helmuth Reymann,
Colonel (Oberst) Ernst Kaether, and Hitler himself. Reymann had held the
position only since March.
The forces available to Weidling for
the city's defence included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely
depleted German Army and Waffen-SS divisions. These divisions were
supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Hitler Youth,
and 40,000 men of the Volkssturm (militia). The commander of the central
government district was SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke. Mohnke had
been appointed to his position by Hitler and had over 2,000 men under
his direct command. His core group were the 800 men of the Leibstandarte
Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) SS battalion (assigned to guard Hitler). The
Soviet command later estimated the number of defenders in Berlin at
180,000, but this was based on the number of German prisoners they
captured. The prisoners included many unarmed men in uniform, such as
railway officials and members of the Reich Labour Service
(Reichsarbeitsdienst).
Weidling organised 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 Panzergrenadier
Division. To the north was the 9th Fallschirmjäger Division, to the
north-east the Panzer Division Müncheberg. To the south-east of the city
and to the east of Tempelhof Airport was the SS-Nordland
Panzergrenadier Division composed mainly of foreign volunteers.
Weidling's reserve, the 18th Panzergrenadier Division was in Berlin's
central district.
Sometime around 26 April, Weidling chose as his
base of operations the old army headquarters on the Bendlerstrasse, the
"Bendlerblock." This location had well-equipped air-raid shelters and
was close to the Reich Chancellery. In the depths of the Bendlerblock,
Weidling's staff did not know whether it was day or night.
Around
noon on 26 April, Weidling relieved Colonel Hans-Oscar Wöhlermann of
command, and Major General Werner Mummert was reinstated as commander of
the Müncheberg Panzer Division. Later that evening, 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 have no
intentions of wandering around in the woods. I am staying here and I
will fall at the head of my troops. You, for your part, will carry on
with your defence."
By the end of the day on 27 April, the
encirclement of Berlin was completed. The Soviet Information Bureau
announced that Soviet troops of the 1st Belorussian Front had broken
through strong German defences around Berlin and, approaching from the
east and from the south, had linked up in Berlin and northwest of
Potsdam and that the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front took
Gartenstadt, Siemenstadt and the Goerlitzer Railway Station in eastern
Berlin.
When Weidling discovered that a major part of the last
line of the German defences in Berlin were manned by Hitler Youth, he
ordered Artur Axmann to disband the Hitler Youth combat formations in
the city. But, in the confusion, his order was never carried out.
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 Bismarck Street, the
west half of Moabit, and the eastern part of Schoeneberg. Soviet troops
of the 1st Ukrainian Front occupied Friedenau and Grunewald in north and
west 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 General Walther Wenck's
12th 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 Soviet troops of the 1st Belorussian
Front had 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.
Late in the
morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the
bunker, Hitler had a meeting with Weidling, who informed him that the
Berlin garrison would probably run out of ammunition that night.
Weidling asked Hitler for permission to break out, a request he had made
unsuccessfully before. Hitler did not answer at first, and Weidling
went back to his headquarters in the Bendlerblock, where at about 13:00,
he received Hitler's permission to try a breakout that night.
After
Hitler and Braun's suicides, Weidling reached the Führerbunker and was
met by Joseph Goebbels, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann and General Hans
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 Reich Chancellery garden above. Weidling was forced
to swear that he would not 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.
Weidling rang Colonel Hans Refior, his civil
Chief-of-Staff, in the Bendlerblock headquarters soon afterward.
Weidling said that he could not 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 on 1 May between Krebs, who had been sent by Goebbels, and
Soviet Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov ended with no agreement.
According to Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge, Krebs returned to
the bunker complex looking "worn out, exhausted". The surrender of
Berlin was thus delayed until Goebbels committed suicide, after which it
was left up to Weidling to negotiate with the Soviets.
On 2 May,
Weidling had his Chief-of-Staff, Theodor von Dufving, arrange a meeting
with Chuikov. Weidling told the Soviets about the suicides of Hitler
and Goebbels, and Chuikov demanded complete capitulation.
Pursuant
to Chuikov and Sokolovsky's direction, Weidling put his surrender order
in writing. The document, written by Weidling, read as follows:
On 30 April 1945, the Führer committed suicide, and thus abandoned
those who had sworn loyalty to him. According to the Führer'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. Every hour you keep on fighting prolongs the
suffering of the civilians in Berlin and of our wounded. Together with
the commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces I order you to stop fighting
immediately. WEIDLING, General of Artillery, former District Commandant
in the defence of Berlin
The meeting between Weidling and Chuikov ended at 8:23 am on 2 May 1945.
The
Soviet forces took Weidling into custody and flew him to the Soviet
Union. Initially, he was held in the Butyrka and Lefortovo prisons in
Moscow. On 27 February 1952, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court
of the Soviet Union sentenced him to 25 years' imprisonment for war
crimes committed in the occupied Soviet Union. Weidling died on 17
November 1955 in the custody of the KGB in Vladimir of an apparent heart
attack. He was buried in an unmarked grave at the prison cemetery. On
16 April 1996, the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian
Federation declared Weidling non-rehabilitative.
Source:
https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Personenregister/W/WeidlingH.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_Weidling
https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/20425/Weidling-Helmuth-Otto-Ludwig.htm
https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/5408/Helmut-Otto-Ludwig-Weidling.htm
https://rk.balsi.de/index.php?action=list&cat=300
https://forum.axishistory.com/
https://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/
https://www.geni.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20091027052912fw_/http://geocities.com/orion47.geo/index2.html
https://www.unithistories.com/units_index/index.php?file=/officers/personsx.html
No comments:
Post a Comment