The final Berlin commander of a collapsing Reich
“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.”
Helmuth Weidling was a German general who rose from imperial service to become an artillery officer and corps commander in the Wehrmacht. His command on the Eastern Front implicated him in Nazi Germany’s war of aggression and occupation, and his corps was later examined in connection with the Ozarichi camp crimes. Appointed commander of the Berlin Defence Area on 23 April 1945, he directed the city’s defence under Hitler’s ban on surrender, then negotiated with Vasily Chuikov and ordered the garrison to cease resistance on 2 May. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, he received a 25-year sentence for war crimes and died in custody in 1955; Russian prosecutors declared him ineligible for rehabilitation in 1996.
Career Timeline
- 1911–1918Officer in Prussian artillery and Zeppelin units
- 1919–1938Reichswehr artillery officer and regimental commander
- 1939–1941Artillery commands in Poland, France and on the Eastern Front
- 1942–1943Commander of the 86th Infantry Division
- 1943–1945Commander of the XLI Panzer Corps
- 1945.04Commander of the LVI Panzer Corps at the Oder front and Berlin
- 1945.04.23–05.02Commander of the Berlin Defence Area, ordering the garrison’s surrender
- 1952–1955Imprisoned in the Soviet Union after a war-crimes conviction