Walther Wenck

Germany state institutions Counter-revolution 1900–1982 ✕ Car crash

General whose Twelfth Army, Hitler's last hope for relieving Berlin, instead brought soldiers and refugees across the Elbe

"Comrades, you've got to go in once more. It's not about Berlin any more, it's not about the Reich any more." The last push was meant to open an escape route towards the Americans.

The son of an officer, born in Wittenberg, he went through the Prussian cadet corps, fought in the Freikorps Reinhard in the suppression of the Spartacist uprising in 1919, and joined the Reichswehr. In the Second World War he was chief of staff of several armies and army groups, and in 1944 became chief of the operations staff of the Army General Staff. On 10 April 1945 he took command of the new Twelfth Army west of Berlin, which Hitler counted on to relieve the encircled capital. Halted near Potsdam and judging Berlin lost, Wenck turned his army towards Halbe, took in the remnants of Busse's Ninth Army and masses of refugees, and brought them across the Elbe into American captivity. Released in 1947, he became an industrial manager, headed the arms maker Diehl from 1960, and died in a car crash in Austria in 1982.

Also known as: Walter Wenck