Desperate Defenders in the Heart of Berlin: The Last Stand of the Charlemagne Division
- by Gernot Kramper
- 6 Min
Defectors and French nationals - they fortified Nazi leader Hitler's final fortress - Defectors and French Nationals: They Guarded Hitler's Final Hideout
In the twilight of World War II, as the Soviet troops closed in on Berlin, the staunch National Socialist, SS officer Wilhelm Mohnke, was tasked with defending the government quarter. Mohnke, a veteran of the notorious 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler," knew the game was up. The bloody battle was merely a delaying tactic, allowing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler time to prepare his own demise.
Mohnke's troops, a ragtag group of soldiers from various formations, including the Volkssturm, were ill-prepared for the fierce urban combat. Among them were men of a penal battalion, reluctant to die for the Führer's cause. Yet, alongside these unwilling soldiers were elite fighters, such as Georg Diers, who fought on with his titanic King Tiger tanks - numbers 314 and 100. Among them, too, were foreign volunteers who embraced the cause of the Third Reich to their dying breath, fearing death and capture at the hands of the Soviets.
Frenchmen Among the Last Defense
A peculiar yet crucial role was played by the men of the SS Division "Charlemagne." Operating out of the Reichstag, they defended the symbolic heart of the Third Reich, sacrificing themselves for a bloody and demoralized regime. The Reichstag, architecturally significant but politically insignificant in Hitler's Germany, nonetheless held great symbolic value for the Soviets. Its capture was crucial for the Soviet advance and marked a key victory in the final days of the war.
The end was near, and the fanatical defenders waged a fierce battle against the tide of the Red Army. Among them was Günter Debski, a teenage conscript from the penal battalion, sentenced to death but handed over to the grueling service of the horrific Penal Battalion 999. He was one of the many Frenchmen who fought on, driven by their anti-communist convictions rather than loyalty to Germany.
In the Reichstag, Debski found an SS unit, consisting mostly of Frenchmen. The division, although lightly staffed at around 300-350 men, displayed incredible tenacity in their defense of the building, becoming the last fighters to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on April 29, 1945. Their bloody struggles in the collapsing Berlin were a testament to their fierce resistance and unwavering ideology.
Plunging into the Abyss
With the Soviets nearing victory and the Wehrmacht's resources dwindling, the stubborn defense of Berlin bought time as Stalin pressure the fanatical defenders to show their mettle. Among those who obliged were men like Christian de La Mazière, a devout royalist and anti-communist who saw the end of the Third Reich as the end of his ideological beliefs. He fought alongside his comrades, enduring the horrors of the apocalyptic battle, ultimately joining the ranks of the historian Simonov's "place of pilgrimage."
Yet, as the smoke of war cleared and the battles came to an end, a grim future awaited the Frenchmen who had supported the Third Reich. With the newly re-established French government regarding them as traitors, the fate of these soldiers was penance and retribution. Many were arrested and tried, while some of the more prominent officers were executed for collaboration and treason. The post-war French purging of collaborators marked a tumultuous period in the country's history, one in which those who had aligned themselves with Nazi Germany faced severe consequences for their choices.
In the end, the men of the Charlemagne Division had demonstrated their commitment to their convictions, but their loyalty to the Third Reich would come at a heavy personal cost.
Christian de La Mazière was an aristocrat and renowned royalist, who, after giving the Third Reich his allegiance in 1944, found himself being led into the abyss. As the last survivor of Charlemagne, he was captured in Pomerania and did not take part in the final Battle of Berlin. In hindsight, he reflected on the madness of the final days, "We jumped into nothingness. Hopeless, a total void. A great grinding. We were nothing. Life had no more meaning, we didn't care about our own lives."
The SS Division "Charlemagne" was, ironically, a symbol of France's collaboration with Nazi Germany and ultimately, a testament to the cost of ideological extremism.
Sources: Documentary "Le Chagrin et la Pitié" (1971), Eyewitness Portal
- Adolf Hitler
- Endkampf
- World War II
- The SS Division "Charlemagne," despite its French origin, had aligned themselves with the fanatical defenders of Adolf Hitler in the final Battle of Berlin, with Christian de La Maziere, a notable member, honestly expressing their blind loyalty as a plunge into nothingness.
- During the height of the Endkampf (final battle), elusive eyewitness accounts reveal that the Charlemagne Division, under the Wehrmacht's command, valiantly fought alongside Georg Diers and his King Tiger tanks (numbers 314 and 100) in the heart of Berlin, against the Soviet forces at the Reichstag, a symbolic heart of the Third Reich.
- as the final days of World War II drew near, Moltke, a staunch defender of the regime, led a ragtag group of mainly French soldiers—including unwilling servicemen from the penal battalion and the SS Division "Charlemagne"—into the fiercest urban combat of the year 1945, engaging in a desperate last stand that ultimately became the setting for the 503rd and final awarding of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
