Holste joined the
German Army on in August 1914 and was commissioned as an officer in 1915. During
World War II, he commanded
14th Infantry Division, the 4th Cavalry Division and the
XLI Panzer Corps. On 15 November 1944 he was promoted to major general (
Generalleutnant).
Battle of Berlin On 22 April 1945, Holste became part of a poorly conceived and particularly desperate plan that Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel and Colonel General
Alfred Jodl proposed to
Adolf Hitler. The plan envisaged for the few remaining German forces in central Germany to attack the Soviet forces encircling Berlin. The plan called for General
Walther Wenck's
Twelfth Army on the
Elbe and
Mulde fronts to be turned around and to attack towards the east, then linking up just south of Berlin with General
Theodor Busse's
Ninth Army. Then both armies would strike in a northeastern direction towards
Potsdam and
Berlin. Wenck's objective would be the autobahn at Ferch, near Potsdam. Holste's directive was to attack from the area northwest of Berlin with his
XLI Panzer Corps across the Elbe between
Spandau and
Oranienburg. To give Holste as much punch as possible,
Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner (who had been himself the subject of another desperate attempt by Hitler to save Berlin, a few days earlier) was to turn over to Holste his mechanized divisions (the
25th Panzer-Grenadiers and the
7th Panzer). Wenck's army did make a turn around and attacked towards Berlin, but was soon halted outside of Potsdam by strong Soviet resistance. Neither Busse nor Holste made much progress towards Berlin. By the end of the day on 27 April, the Soviet forces encircling Berlin linked up and the forces inside Berlin were cut off. Late in the evening of 29 April, General
Hans Krebs contacted Jodl by radio from Berlin and requested an immediate report on the whereabouts of Holste's spearhead. On 30 April, Jodl replied that Holste's Corps was on the defensive. Early on the morning of May 1, Holste is reported to have appeared at Twelfth Army HQ having abandoned his troops. A day later, on 2 May, the
Battle for Berlin came to an end when General
Helmuth Weidling unconditionally surrendered the city to the Soviets. Holste surrendered 8 May 1945. In 1947, he was released. ==Awards==