Militar Helmuth Weidling

Battle of Berlin: Helmuth Weidling

The battle of Berlin was the last battle of the World War II. It involved aero attack and Helmuth Otto Ludwig Weidling was one of the most recognized general in the German Army, before and during World War II. During the Battle of Berlin he was the commander of the Berlin Defence Area.

Since November of 1938 he was a Colonel, he participated of the invasion of Poland in 1939. On April of 1940 he was labeled as a Commander and hi participated in the Battle of France y on the first stages of the Operation Barbarossa in the USSR. The 1 of January from 1942 he was a Commander of the division of infantry and one month later he became on the Mayor General. The 1 of January from 1943 he was promoted to Marshal and on October from the same year he becomes the general of the XLI. After that the 10 of April from 1945 he was assigned to the Commander of the LVI Panzerkorps,  by then the Battle of Berlin have had already started.

On 22 of April he was accused of firing a squad for having retreated in the face of advancing Soviet forces, which was in defiance of standing orders to the contrary. So his action were required a death sentence. This situation turned to be a misunderstanding and it was cleared up before Weilding’s execution could take place. After this incident Hitler named him commander of the Berlin Defence Area. He represented many people including Hitler himself.  

The forces available to Weidling for the city defence included   roughly 45,000 soldiers in different divisions. These divisions included Berlin police force, boys in the Hitler Youth and about 40,000 elderly men of the Home Guard. 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. On 25 April, Weidling ordered Major-General of the 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, Hans-Oscar Wöhlermann. On 26 April, Weidling 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 was replaced with fierce defensive fire and several local counter-attacks. These soon halted the German tank division's advance.

While Hitler and his generals focus their effort to thwart Feeling and Himmler, Weidling focuses on the more obvious and pressing issue at hand: the siege of Berlin by the Red Army. On several occasions he has rebelled against Hitler's rule. Because his personality is as strong as Hitler’s so they have had many times big discussions about insignificant stuff.

Written by: Eileen Gallagher