Wilhelm Möhnke

was born in Lübeck Germany on 15 March 1911. His father, who shared his name with his son, was a cabinet maker. After his father's death he went to work for a glass and porcelain manufacturer, eventually reaching a management position.

Möhnke joined the NSDAP on 1 September 1931, and the SS two months later. He was assigned to the Lübeck Trupp, of the 4. SS-Standarte, where he was to stay until January 1932. Möhnke was then transfered to the 22. SS-Standarte in Schwerin, the same unit as Kurt Meyer. On 17 March, personally chosen by Sepp Dietrich, Möhnke became one of the 117 original members of SS-Stabswache Berlin. It was from this chancellery guard that the Leibstandarte was to grow. Eventually Möhnke took command of 5 Kompanie, in which capacity he served in the Polish campaign. On 21 September he was awarded the Iron Cross second class, the Iron Cross first class was to come just one month later on 8 November.

Möhnke led 5.Kompanie at the outset of the Western campaign, taking over command of II.Bataillon on 28 March after the Bataillon commander was wounded. It was around this time that Möhnke was charged with murder of 80 Brittish prisoners of war of the 48th Division at Wormhoudt. Möhnke has never been brought to trail for these allegations, and when the case was reopened in 1988 a Germen prosecutor came to the conclusion that there is insufficient evidences to bring charges. Four years later, Möhnke's name was again mentioned with war crimes. This time as the commander of 1.SS-Panzerdivision Leibstandarte "Adolf Hiter", units under his command where charged with the "Malmedy Massacre". It is also alleged that Möhnke is responsible for the murder of 35 Canadian POW's while with the "Hitlerjugend" at Fountenay le Pesnel.

He commanded the II.Bataillon during the Balkan campaign, where he lost his foot in a Yugoslavian air attack on 6 April 1941. It was the decision of the medics that his leg would need to be amputated, but Möhnke overrode that decision. Still, his wound was so grievous that they were still forced to take his foot. While recuperating he was awarded the German Cross in Gold (26 December 1941). Due to the severity of his injury, Möhnke did not return to active service until early 1942. It was Mohnke who planted the seed for the formation of the LSSAH Panzerabteilung early that year. He charged Ralf Tiemann as his "Adjutant" and his first "official" task was finding "recruits". Tiemann than proceeded to compile a list, eventually with enough names to fill two Kompanies!

While the newly wed Sepp Dietrich presented his new wife to his officers on 14 January, Möhnke presented Dietrich with his personnel list, which had in the mean time turned into transfer orders. Dietrich, who was caught unaware, finally relented to Möhnke's pressure and signed the paper. So was born the Panzerwaffe of the Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler". It was not to be though, and Möhnke was relieved of his command and transferred to the replacement battalion on 16 March 1942.

This is where he was to remain until the formation of 12.SS-Panzerdivision "Hitlerjugend". He was given command of SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt 2 (this was the original designation of SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt 26. It was renamed on 30 October when the entire Division was reorganized into a Panzerdivision). Leading the young grenadiers in Normandy, SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt 26 was responsible for holding the brunt of the allied offensives from 10-20 June, which resulted in Möhnke being awarded the Knight's cross on 11 July 1944.

Following the breakout and escape from Falaise, Möhnke was one of the few to lead organized resistance on the western bank of the Seine. He led this Kampfgruppe until 31 August, when he replaced the injured Theodor Wisch as the commander of 1.SS-Panzerdivision Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler", effective as of the 20th.

Möhnke led the LSSAH throughout Wacht am Rhine (Battle of the Bulge), and was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer on 30 January 1945. SS-Brigadeführer Möhnke was forced to relinquish command a short while later as he was again injured in a air raid; this time suffering ear damage.

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After recovering from his wounds, Möhnke was personally appointed by Hitler as the (Kommandant) Battle Commander for the defense of the centre government district (Zitadelle sector) which included the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker. Möhnke's command post was under the Reich Chancellery in the bunkers therein.[He formed Kampfgruppe Möhnke (Battle Group Möhnke) and it was divided into two weak regiments. It was made up of the LSSAH Flak Company, replacements from LSSAH Ausbildungs-und Ersatz Battalion from Spreenhagan (under SS-Standartenführer Anhalt), 600 men from the Begleit-Bataillon Reichsführer-SS, the Führer-Begleit-Kompanie and the core group being the 800 men of the Leibstandarte (LSSAH) SS Guard Battalion (that was assigned to guard the Führer).

Although Hitler had appointed General Helmuth Weidling as defense commandant of Berlin, Möhnke remained free of Weidling's command to maintain his defense objectives of the Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker. The combined total (for the city's defense) of Möhnke's SS Kampfgruppe, General Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps (and the other few units) totaled roughly 45,000 soldiers and 40,000 Volkssturm. They faced a superior number of Soviet soldiers. There were approximately 1.5 million Soviet troops allocated for the investment and assault on the Berlin Defence Area.

Since Mohnke's fighting force was located at the nerve center of the German Third Reich it fell under the heaviest artillery bombardment of the war, which began as a birthday present to Hitler on 20 April 1945. The shelling lasted to the end of hostilities on 8 May 1945. Under pressure from the most intense shelling, Möhnke and his SS troops put up stiff resistance against impossible odds. The Red Army race to take the Reichstag and Reich Chancellery condemned the troops to bitter and bloody street fighting. Completely encircled and cut off from any reinforcements, his Kampfgruppe fought off the Soviet advances.

While the Battle in Berlin was raging around them, Hitler ordered Möhnke to set up a military tribunal for Hermann Fegelein, adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, in order to try the man for desertion. Möhnke, deciding that the Obergruppenführer deserved a fair trial by other high ranking officers, put together a tribunal consisting of Generals Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Johann Rattenhuber, and himself. Years later, Möhnke told author O'Donnell the following:

I was to preside over it myself...I decided the accused man [Fegelein] deserved trial by high-ranking officers...We set up the court-martial in a room next to my command post...We military judges took our seats at the table with the standard German Army Manual of Courts-Martial before us. No sooner were we seated than defendant Fegelein began acting up in such an outrageous manner that the trial could not even commence. Roaring drunk, with wild, rolling eyes, Fegelein first brazenly challenged the competence of the court. He kept blubbering that he was responsible to Himmler and Himmler alone, not Hitler...He refused to defend himself. The man was in wretched shape - bawling, whining, vomiting, shaking like an aspen leaf... I was now faced with an impossible situation. On the one hand, based on all available evidence, including his own earlier statements, this miserable excuse for an officer was guilty of flagrant desertion... Yet the German Army Manual states clearly that no German soldier can be tried unless he is clearly of sound mind and body, in a condition to hear the evidence against him. I looked up the passage again, to make sure, and consulted with my fellow judges...In my opinion and that of my fellow officers, Hermann Fegelein was in no condition to stand trial, or for that matter to even stand. I closed the proceedings...So I turned Fegelein over to [SS] General Rattenhuber and his security squad. I never saw the man again.

On 30 April, after receiving news of Hitler's suicide, orders were issued that those who could do so were to break out. The plan was to escape from Berlin to the Allies on the western side of the Elbe or to the German Army to the North. Prior to the breakout, Möhnke briefed all commanders (who could be reached) within the Zitadelle sector about the events as to Hitler's death and the planned break out. They split up into ten main groups. It was a "fateful moment" for Brigadeführer Möhnke as he made his way out of the Reich Chancellery on 1 May. He had been the first duty officer of the LSSAH at the building and now was leaving as the last battle commander there. Möhnke's group included: Hitler's secretaries Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, Borman's secretary Else Krüger, Hitler's dietician Constanze Manziarly, Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck, Walther Hewel, Hitler’s driver Erich Kempka and various others. Möhnke planned to break out towards the German Army which was positioned in Prinzenallee. The group headed along the subway but their route was blocked so they went above ground and later joined hundreds of other Germans civilians and military personnel who had sought refuge at the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer Brewery on Prinzenallee.

SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Möhnke, the last commander of Adolf Hitler's bodyguard, was leading one of three parties escaping the ruins of the bunker under the Reich Chancellery. The Führer was dead and Möhnke was guiding members of Hitler's military escort and other courtiers through the black subterranean tunnels of the U-Bahn, deep beneath the shattered streets of the city.

Suddenly the party hit an obstacle. Two railwaymen had locked a tunnel door, as was their duty, once the final train had passed for the day. Despite Möhnke's entreaties, these two senior servants of the Reichsbahn refused to budge. They had their orders.

Möhnke was a veteran of six years' fighting, had been twice wounded and had won the Knight's Cross. But, rather than drawing his pistol and forcing the railwaymen to open the door, he ordered the party to retrace its steps down the tunnel. Not long afterward, they surrendered to the Russians. Möhnke had 10 years in the Soviet gulag to contemplate his inability to persuade the railwaymen to obey common sense rather than their orders.

This incident is emblematic of the decisions of millions of Germans, at the front lines and at home, who continued to fight and die as the Third Reich collapsed in the early months of 1945.

British historian Ian Kershaw, the most insightful authority on Hitler and the Third Reich, captures all of this in The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45.

On 2 May 1945, General Weidling issued an order calling for the complete surrender of all German forces still in Berlin. Knowing they could not get through the Soviet rings, Möhnke decided to surrender to the Red Army. However, several of Möhnke's group (including some of the SS personnel) opted to commit suicide. Some groups kept up pockets of resistance throughout the city and did not surrender until 8 May 1945.

General Erich Bärenfänger

According to Read & Fisher in The Fall of Berlin, Hitler had promoted Lt. Colonel Erich Bärenfänger, who had acted briefly as his deputy during the one day he had personal command of the Berlin garrison defenses before appointing Weidling. The thirty-year-old Bärenfänger, a holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak leaves and Swords, and a keen member of the SA since 1933, was now a major-general, and was given command of defense sectors A and B. James O'Donnell, in his seminal work The Bunker, mentions an apparition appearing on the Humbolthain on the 2nd of May to the members of SS-General Möhnke's "escape group." There they saw before them a "host" of new "Tiger Tanks" and "artillery pieces" arrayed around the Flak-tower, as if "on Parade." The young General Bärenfänger was allegedly seated in the turret cupola of one of these "Tigers."

Following their surrender Möhnke and other senior German officers were treated to a banquet by the Chief of Staff of the 8th Guards Army. He was then handed over to the NKVD. On 9 May 1945, he was flown to Moscow for interrogation and kept in solitary confinement for six years for refusing to talk of Hitler's last days, after being transferred to Lubjanka Prison. Thereafter, Möhnke was transferred again to the Generals' Prison in Woikowo. He remained in captivity until 10 October 1955. Following his release, he worked as a dealer in small trucks and trailers, living in Barsbüttel, West Germany.

Möhnke was granted immunity from prosecution by US intelligence services, according to sources who have seen the CIA's files on him, writes Stephen Ward.

According to sources quoted by an ABC television programme broadcast in the United States, Möhnke was debriefed by the CIA on his release. His CIA files show that he provided information on fellow Nazis and SS veterans, in return for money and a guarantee of immunity from prosecution by the Germans or the British.

War crimes trials had ended, and with the advent of the Cold War, saw the Soviet Union as the main threat. A former US military intelligence officer said that by 1955 the Americans were anxious to interview any former senior Nazis leaving Russia, to find which of their colleagues might have become Soviet agents, and to find how much the Russians had learnt about senior ex-Nazis in the West.

Möhnke did not reply to ABC's requests for an interview.

In January 1994 year the German government ruled there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution of Möhnke over the killing of 90 British prisoners in a barn at Wormhoudt, near Dunkirk, in 1940, or for the massacres in 1944 of 130 Canadian prisoners in Normandy and 72 Americans in the German Ardennes offensive.

Despite a campaign, led by the British Member of Parliament Jeff Rooker, to prosecute him for his alleged involvement in war crimes during the early part of the war, Wilhelm Möhnke was able to live out the remainder of his years in peace. Möhnke strongly denied the accusations, telling historian/author Thomas Fischer, "I issued no orders not to take English prisoners or to execute prisoners."

He died in the coastal village of Damp, near Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein on August 6, 2001, at the age of 90.