What is the significance of General Weidling passing out?
He kinda passed out after giving the announcement? Exhaustion, relief or capitulation?
shareMore of Exhaustion and because of Capitulation. He was somewhat relieved that more German lives would be spared from the senseless slaughter. However, he knew he was handing his soldiers over to a very bleak fate. He, as many other Germans believed, that once they surrendered they would be shot outright, possibly tortured, and or sent to a GULag in Siberia where they would spend the rest of their days. They knew this would happen. So there was a relief that the fighting had stopped, but they knew they were stepping into the unknown. Weidling collapsed from a combination of many emotions / being drained of energy.
shareIt was over and the fear of the unknown was setting in. The Russians were looking for revenge on the German people.
And General Weidling was taken prisoner by the Red Army. He was for guilty of not surrendering Berlin sooner. He spent the rest of his live in a Russian prison. He died in the 1955. Never to see Germany again.