Background
Friedrich von Paulus was born in Breite- nau on 23 September 1890, the son of a civil servant.
Friedrich von Paulus was born in Breite- nau on 23 September 1890, the son of a civil servant.
A professional soldier, he joined the Imperial army as a cadet in 1910 and during World War I served as an Adjutant and General Staff officer on both the eastern and western fronts. Between 1920 and 1939 von Paulus held various regimental and staff commands, helping to organize the armoured troops.
Promoted in January 1939 to Major General, he participated in the victorious drive of the German army under von Reichenau through Poland, France and Belgium. On 3 September 1940 von Paulus was appointed Senior Quartermaster in the OKH (Army High Command) and Deputy Chief of Staff under General Haider. Responsible for planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Russia, von Paulus was awarded the Knight’s Cross in May 1942 and on 30 November 1942 he was promoted to General. Several months earlier von Paulus had been given command of the Sixth Army (his first operational command), which opened its campaign on 28 June with the intention of reaching Stalingrad and occupying the part of it which stretched along the Volga before surrounding the whole city.
By mid-October 1942 von Paulus's forces had reached Stalingrad, but they became bogged down in weeks of exhausting house-to-house fighting, coming under severe Russian pressure. Von Paulus begged for more troops, for arms, fuel, food and winter clothing for his beleaguered army, but received no aid. When the Soviet counter-offensive began on 19 November 1942 and led to the Sixth Army’s encirclement in four days, von Paulus asked for permission from Hitler to withdraw rather than stand firm and risk complete annihilation. Hitler, who categorically refused to abandon the Volga, ordered the Sixth Army to hold their position, for ‘by their heroic endurance they will make an unforgettable contribution toward the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the western world’. Though von Paulus knew that further defence was senseless and that his 285,000-strong army was rapidly disintegrating, he held on through December 1942. Hitler showered a series of promotions on his doomed officers, even making von Paulus a General Field Marshal in January 1943, in the hope that this would strengthen their resolve to die gloriously at their posts. He was enraged when von Paulus surrendered the dazed, frostbitten, half-starved remnants of his Sixth Army to the Soviet forces on 31 January 1943.
Stalingrad was the decisive turning-point of World War II and the capitulation of some 90,000 surviving German troops symbolized the end of the Wehrmacht's military dominance. Von Paulus was taken into Soviet captivity and eventually agreed to broadcast from Moscow on behalf of his Russian captors. After learning of the conspiracy against Hitler in July 1944 he joined the National Committee for a Free Germany, a Soviet-sponsored organization. After the war von Paulus was called as a witness for the Russian prosecution at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. The Russians kept him in prison until 1953, when he was released and permitted to settle in East Germany, where he died four years later.