“You cannot sacrifice these children for a cause that is already lost,” he seethed. When the zealous, one-armed youth leader offered to commit the last of his teenage warriors to the final defense of the Third Reich, Weidling could not control his anger. (Immerse yourself in all the harsh fighting and action of World War II’s Eastern Front inside the pages of WWII History magazine.) Hitler Youth and a Lost CauseĮarlier that day, Weidling had received several high-level visitors from Berlin, one of whom was Hitler Youth leader Artur Axeman, who was half Weidling’s age. Even the arrival of the crack 11th SS “Nordland” Panzergrenadier Division from Third Panzer Army the night before could not stem the steady unraveling of the German front. The paratroopers were “a threat to the course of the whole battle,” Wohlermann said. Having returned from the front, now no more than a few kilometers to the east, Wohlermann told how soldiers from the 9th Parachute Division “were running away like madmen” and that not even the threats of officers with drawn pistols could compel the frightened troops to stand their ground. The most ominous and disturbing was that delivered by Colonel Hans Wohlermann, Weidling’s artillery commander. The reports were as dark as the unlit corners of the basement. It was a tall order, but one befitting a veteran of campaigns in Poland, France, and Russia. On April 15, 1945, one day before Marshal Georgi Zhukov launched his First Belorussian Front against the Ninth Army defending the middle Oder, Weidling had arrived to take command of 15,000 soldiers in three divisions tasked with holding the high ground behind the village of Seelow Heights against vastly superior Soviet forces. Disorder on the Front: One Day Before the Battle of Seelow Heights

Weidling’s LVI Corps had been tasked with the most difficult assignment given to any of the four corps in the German Ninth Army: defend the most direct approach to Berlin against Vasily Chuikov’s reinforced Eighth Guards Army.

Sixty-year-old General Helmuth Weidling, a holder of the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, listened to reports of the three-day-old Battle of Seelow Heights from his subordinates. Outside the walls could be heard the steady pounding of artillery explosions and the whoosh of rockets to the east. The officers huddled in a candlelit cellar in an abandoned farmhouse midway between the Oder River and Berlin.

Big battle tanks parachutes