SS Charlemagne: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS

Towards 1900 hours, the commanders signalled that they had found no one behind our grenadiers and that nowhere had they been able to discover the command posts or machine-gun nests that I had indicated as ready. With that I had the impression that all the defensive plans of Sector ‘Z’ existed only on paper and began to realise why my offers of assistance had been refused.

I decided not to defer any longer presenting myself to the Waffen-SS liaison officer to the Führer, SS-General Fegelein, and to go myself. Describing to him what had happened, I begged him to support me in my efforts to prevent the dissipation of the only SS division in the Berlin Defence Area. Defence Sector ‘Z’, where it was to be engaged, would become in time of capital importance. So far its preparations existed only on paper! There would be serious consequences if the regimental commanders of the Nordland were to be removed, having already removed their divisional commander, SS-Major-General Ziegler, whom they fully trusted. It would then be easy to blame the Waffen-SS for any setback in the defence of Sector ‘Z’.

I repeated all my objections to General Weidling, who entered the room at that moment, begging him, to his obvious annoyance, to engage the only experienced formation in the city centre under the command of its own officers. In any case, he wanted to leave Lieutenant-Colonel Seifert only the sector immediately leading to the Chancellery.

Eventually he aquiesced in subordinating the whole of Sector ‘Z’ to SS-General Mohnke, commander of the Chancellery, and in forming two sub-sectors: that on the right with its command post in the Air Ministry reserved for Lieutenant-Colonel Seifert. Outside the boundary formed by the centre of Wilhelmstrasse the Nordland would be engaged under its own officers, its sector being limited on the east side by Döhnhoffplatz–Kommandantenstrasse– Alexandrinenstrasse.

Stadtmitte U-Bahn Station was nominated as the city centre command post. The Nordland units already engaged in Seifert’s sector would stay there until relieved by others and then return to my control. General Weidling then left and I never saw him again nor received any further orders from him.

It was already 0100 hours on the morning of the 27th April when I returned to the Opera.

Meanwhile, the majority of the French volunteers of the Storm Battalion were sat, half-asleep in the entrance of a block of flats on Belle-Alliance-Platz. These troops were the remnants of only three of the companies. The 2nd Company was effectively reduced to the strength of a section, its Company Commander, Lieutenant Pierre Michel, having been gravely wounded the previous evening. The 3rd Company was down to Sergeant-Major Pierre Rostaing with twenty-five men, all the section leaders and many of the men having been either killed or wounded in Neukölln. The 4th Company was temporarily commanded by Officer-Cadet Serge Protopopoff in the absence of Staff-Sergeant Jean Ollivier, and had had one section completely wiped out the previous day.

Detached from the battalion, the 1st Company, commanded by Second-Lieutenant Jean Labourdette, had been engaged the previous day further the west, to the north of Tempelhof Airport. One of its platoons had been engaged defending the Landwehr Canal near the Hallesche Tor while attached to a unit commanded by the signals officer of the 2nd Battalion, SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 24 Danmark, SS-Second-Lieutenant Bachmann, facing attacks from Soviet armour, shelling and mortar fire.

Meanwhile, the SS-Lieutenant Weber’s Combat School had gone off in the direction of the Reichs Chancellery.

At 0500 hours the 1st Company rejoined the remains of the battalion to the relief of Captain Henri Fenet, who now had to negotiate with Lieutenant-Colonel Seifert, who wanted these men to reinforce his poorly manned sector. A section was sent off to the north, but was almost immediately eliminated by a shell-burst, which killed two men and badly wounded the other three.

The battalion adjutant, SS-Lieutenant Joachim von Wallenrodt, found accommodation for the battalion in the Thomas Keller pub opposite the Anhalter railway station, several hundred metres to the northwest, where the men were able to stretch themselves out on the tables and benches for several hours of sleep.

Meanwhile, Captain Fenet was accompanied and supported by his liaision officer, Officer-Cadet Alfred Douroux, for Fenet had been wounded in the foot by a machine-gun bullet. The pain was such that they stopped at the Regiment Danmar’s first-aid post in the cellars of the Reichsbank, where Fenet rested for several hours in a state of semi-consciousness. At daybreak an elderly Wehrmacht officer helped him on to the Nordland’s headquarters, which had been installed in the cellars of the Opera House since the 25th, and where SS-Major-General Krukenberg was holding a command conference. He told Fenet that he was very pleased with the work of the French battalion and that they would have the whole of the day off before reorganising into eight-man tank-destroying sections in support of the armour and assault guns based on Leipziger Strasse.