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

It was from Captain Fenet that Sergeant-Major Rostaing learnt that he and Sergeant Albert, who had just destroyed his fourth tank, had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class. The awards were made in the one of the building’s interior courtyards. No doubt it was then that SS-Lieutenant von Wallenrodt received his Iron Cross Second Class. Captain Fenet had hardly shaken the hands of the recipients when fresh shells hit the building, raising enormous clouds of dust. ‘We stayed there blind, suffocated, without being able to move a step, and it was a while before we regained the use of our senses,’ wrote Captain Fenet later.

SS-Lieutenant Christensen had quit his command post on the left at Kochstrasse U-Bahn station to conform with the French, passing round several bottles of wine with which to refresh their throats.

On the other hand, Captain Fenet seemed to have only a hazy picture of the Müncheberg Tank Division’s sub-sector on the right. Reports coming from there that day indicate otherwise than all communications had been severed with the Nordland:

Soviet spearheads have reached the Anhalter Railway Station some 200–300 metres from the French positions. However, a Tiger II of SS-Panzer-Regiment Hermann von Salza, the ‘314’ of SS-Sergeant Diers – one of the two still at the disposal of the Division – is stationed on Potsdammer Platz and is keeping Saarlandstrasse under fire with its formidable 88mm gun, which has hit several tanks trying to come up the road towards the north-west.

That evening, after several more tank attacks supported by infantry, the problem of effectives became of concern to Captain Fenet, who had seen the number of losses increase, even with the lightly wounded remaining at their posts. He now only had one officer, one officer-cadet and a sergeant-major left, SS-Lieutenant von Wallenrodt, Officer-Cadet Douroux and Sergeant Major Rostaing. Officer-Cadets Protopopoff, Billot, Le Maignan and Karanga had been killed, Officer-Cadet de Lacaze and Staff-Sergeant Ollivier wounded and evacuated. Second-Lieutenant Aimé Berthaud had been evacuated after having been found unconscious under the ruins of a balcony. Officer-Cadets Boulmier and Jacques Frantz had also been evacuated, the latter in a tent-half, after being hit by mortar fire.

Sergeant Eugène Vaulot had also left the front line for the divisional command post after receiving the Knight’s Cross that evening in candlelight from SS-Major-General Krukenberg on the station platform, being the first of the French volunteers to receive this decoration. Three other members of the Charlemagne were awarded the Knight’s Cross that day, making this the record number for any contingent in the battle for the city and demonstrating the importance of their anti-tank role. The destruction of sixty-two tanks, a tenth of the numbers engaged against this sector, was attributed to the Charlemagne alone.

During a visit to the Reichs Chancellery first-aid post after having been wounded in the shoulder after destroying his thir-teenth Soviet tank, SS-Lieutenant Wilhelm Weber, reported to SS-Major-General Mohnke, who, greatly impressed, had then recommended Knight’s Cross awards for Weber, Captain Fenet and Staff-Sergeant Appolot (six tanks) to General Wilhelm Burgdorf, head of the Army personnel branch.

30 April

Krukenberg continued: