Walther Wenck

Walther Wenck (18 September 1900 – 1 May 1982) was a German officer and industrialist.

He was the youngest General of the branch (General der Truppengattung) in the German Army and a staff officer during World War II.

At the end of the war, he commanded the German Twelfth Army that took part in the Battle of Berlin.

Wenck left the military after surrendering to the Allies.

The third son of officer Maximilian Wenck, Walther was born in Wittenberg, Germany in 1900.

In 1911 he joined the Naumburg Cadet Corps of the Prussian Army.

From the spring of 1918 he went to the secondary military school in Gross-Lichterfeld.

Wenck joined a paramilitary group (Freikorps) in 1919 and then the Army (Reichswehr) of the Weimar Republic in 1920.

On 21 April, Adolf Hitler ordered Waffen SS Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner to attack the forces of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front.

Zhukov's forces were encircling Berlin from the north, while the forces of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front were encircling from the south.

Steiner was to attack Zhukov with his Army Detachment Steiner.

With few operational tanks and roughly a division's worth of infantry, Steiner requested that his "army" be allowed to retreat instead of attacking.

On 22 April, as Steiner retreated, Wenck's 12th Army became part of an unrealistic and poorly planned attempt by Hitler to save Berlin from encirclement.

Under suggestion of Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, Wenck was ordered to disengage the Americans to his west and, attacking to the east, link up with the Ninth Army of General der Infanterie Theodor Busse.

Together, they would attack the Soviets encircling Berlin from the west and from the south.

Meanwhile, the XLI Panzer Corps under General Rudolf Holste would attack the Soviets from the north.

Wenck's forces attacked towards Berlin, but they were halted outside of Potsdam by strong Soviet resistance.

Neither Busse nor Holste made much progress towards Berlin.

From 1939 to 1942, Wenck was Chief of Operations for the 1st Panzer Division.

In 1942, he was an instructor at the War Academy, chief of staff for the LVII Corps, and then the Third Romanian Army on the Eastern Front.

From 1942 to 1943, he was chief of staff of "Army Detachment Hollidt", named after Karl-Adolf Hollidt, which was subordinated to the Third Romanian Army.

In 1943, he was Chief of Staff of the ill-fated 6th Army.

From 1943 to 1944, Wenck served in the same capacity in the 1st Panzer Army.

In 1944, he was chief of staff of Army Group South Ukraine.

There he first attracted Adolf Hitler's attention with his report about conditions on the Eastern Front, saying, "As you see My Führer, the Eastern Front is like Swiss cheese, full of holes."

Even though he was reprimanded for using informal language, Hitler commended the "liveliness" of his report.

On about 22 July 1944, Wenck was appointed Chief of Operations at OKH, the High Command of the German Army, by Heinz Guderian, who had just been appointed as OKH Chief of Staff by Hitler.

He was soon advanced to Chief of Command Staff (Chief of the Führungsstab) an office that replaced Quartermaster General I.

Historians consider Wenck a capable commander and a brilliant improviser, although incapable of the impossible task he was given of saving Berlin in 1945.

On 13 February 1945, after a long argument, Guderian persuaded Hitler to make Wenck chief of staff of Army Group Vistula (with the power to launch an attack) under Himmler.

Wenck's attack was initially successful, but Hitler requested him to attend daily Führer's briefings which forced him to make a daily round trip of 200 mi. On February 17, 1945, an extremely tired Wenck took the driving wheel from his driver Dorn who had collapsed.

Wenck then fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his car off the road.

Saved by Dorn, he ended up in the hospital with a fractured skull and five broken ribs.

Meanwhile, the attack failed.

On 10 April 1945, Wenck was appointed commander of the German Twelfth Army located to the west of Berlin to guard against the advancing American and British forces.

But, as the Western Front moved eastwards and the Eastern Front moved westwards, the German armies making up both fronts backed towards each other.

As a result, the area of control of Wenck's army to his rear and east of the Elbe River had become a vast refugee camp for Germans fleeing from the approaching Soviet Army.

Wenck took great pains to provide food and lodging for these refugees.

At one stage, the Twelfth Army was estimated to be feeding more than a quarter of a million people every day.

He was asked to become Inspector General of the Bundeswehr as West Germany was re-arming in 1957, but declined to take the post when conditions he set were not met, such as the Inspector General being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, not just an administrative leader.