Theodor von Dufving

In May 1945 he was one of the last Germans to enter the Führerbunker, shortly after the death of Adolf Hitler.

During the Battle for Berlin, Dufving was again the military Chief-of-Staff to General Helmuth Weidling. On 1 May 1945, after Hitler's suicide on 30 April, the new German Chancellor Joseph Goebbels sent General Hans Krebs and Dufving, under a white flag, to deliver a letter he had written to the Soviet General Vasily Chuikov. Chuikov, as commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, commanded the Soviet forces in central Berlin. Krebs, having been a fluent Russian speaker, had been brushing up in front of his shaving mirror, but Dufving took a Latvian officer with them as a Russian interpreter.

At 5:55 a.m. on 2 May 1945, Dufving, Hans Refior, Siegfried Knappe, and a German Major led a column of roughly one hundred German soldiers to the end of the Bendlerstraße. Knappe was also a member of Weidling's staff. The Soviets were waiting for them on the other side of the Landwehr Canal (Landwehrkanal).

A soldier before 1939, Dufving fought on the Eastern Front, where he enjoyed unusually fast promotion and became the Chief-of-Staff to General Helmuth Weidling, the commanding officer of the LVI Tank Corps (LVI Panzerkorps). In 1944, he completed Senior Staff Officers' training at the Prussian Military Academy, and was then assigned as chief of staff of the 76th Panzer Artillery Regiment, with the rank of Colonel.

Theoderich Heinrich August Wilhelm von Dufving (1907–2001), known as Theodor von Dufving, was a German officer of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.