@Controller causing java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/http/HttpServletRequest
You are probably missing right dependencies, like:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
<scope>provided</scope>
<version>3.1.0</version>
</dependency>
Please note that your version could be 2.5, 3.0 or 3.1 – it depends on application server you are using. Also when you want to create executable war you should probably not use provided scope (depending on your servlet container).