Nazi Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus
and Horrible Surrender of German Army after Battle of Stalingrad

29 October 2022

Category: High Ranking Nazi Representatives

Friedrich Paulus was born on the 23rd of September 1890 in Guxhagen. In February 1910 he joined the 111th Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet and 2 years later in 1912 he married the Romanian noblewoman Constance Elena Rosetti-Solescu. The First World War began on the 28th of July 1914. By the end of the war, Friedrich Paulus was a captain and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class The First World War ended on the 11th of November 1918 when the German leaders signed the armistice in the Compiègne Forest in France. In the new Weimar Republic Friedrich Paulus was a brigade adjutant with the paramilitary Freikorps units.

Paulus was chosen as one of only 4,000 officers to serve the Reichswehr – the German Army – which Treaty of Versailles had limited to 100,000 men. He served in various staff positions and also worked as a tactic’s teacher and in this function, he drew attention to himself with his operational talent. In February 1931 he was transferred to the war school in Berlin and promoted to major. As a course leader for tactics and war history, he was employed in officer training. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in January 1933. In May 1939, Paulus was promoted to major general and became chief of staff for the German Tenth Army with which he took part in the invasion of Poland which began on the 1st of September 1939 and marked the beginning of the Second World War.

In the great wave of promotions that followed the “Fall of France” in June 1940, Paulus was promoted to lieutenant general in August 1940. The following month he was named deputy chief of the German General Staff In that role he helped draft the plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa began on Sunday the 22nd of June 1941. In November 1941 Friedrich Paulus became commander of the Sixth Army. On the 28th of June 1942, Army Group South began the German Army's summer offensive into southern Russia known as the “Fall Blau” or “Case Blue” plan which was supposed to deliver a final and devastating blow to the Soviet Forces on the Eastern Front.

Battle of Stalingrad

On the 23rd of August, the 6th Army, led by Paulus, reached the outskirts of Stalingrad. On the same day, the city was firebombed with 1,000 tons of high explosives and incendiaries in 1,600 sorties turning Stalingrad into a sea of fire and killing thousands of civilians and soldiers. Paulus’ troops fought Soviet forces defending Stalingrad for over three months in an increasingly brutal urban warfare. The Germans called this unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg or Rat War, and bitterly joked about capturing the kitchen but still fighting for the living room and the bedroom. Buildings had to be cleared room by room through the bombed-out debris of residential areas, office blocks, basements and apartment high-rises.

On the 19th of November 1942 the Soviet Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive, code-named Operation Uranus. By the late 22nd of November, the northern and southern Soviet forces linked up at the town of Kalach, encircling the entire Paulus’ army which numbered more than 220,000 soldiers. After all the formalities had been settled and the Field Marshal received guarantees of his personal safety, he was led out of the basement, along with his staff officers. Paulus and his staff were captured on the morning of 31st of January 1943. The 6th Army, regarded as the best field army in the Wehrmacht, surrendered between the 31st of January and the 2nd of February 1943.

In Germany as well as abroad, Paulus’ surrender was met with astonishment, since he had followed Hitler's orders unconditionally and to the last consequence. Following his surrender, Paulus’ wife was sent to the Dachau concentration camp and his son was imprisoned in a fortress in Immenstadt. The battle for the city of Stalingrad proved a decisive psychological turning point, ending a string of German victories in the summer of 1942 and beginning the long retreat westward.

Friedrich Paulus was 66 years old when he died in his Dresden villa on the 1st of February 1957, only a few months after he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. German field marshal Friedrich Paulus was the highest-ranking German officer to surrender during World War II.

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