Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus (23 September 1890 – 1 February 1957) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) during World War II who is best known for being the commander of the German 6th Army during the Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 to February 1943). The battle ended in disaster for the Wehrmacht when Soviet forces encircled the Germans within the city, leading to the ultimate death or capture of most of the 265,000-strong 6th Army, their Axis allies, and collaborators.
Paulus fought in World War I and saw action in France and the Balkans. He was considered a promising officer; by the time World War II broke out, he had been promoted to major general. Paulus took part in the invasions of Poland and the Low Countries, after which he was named deputy chief of the German Army General Staff. In that capacity, Paulus helped plan the invasion of the Soviet Union.
In 1942, Paulus was given command of the 6th Army. He led the drive to Stalingrad but was cut off and surrounded in the subsequent Soviet counter-offensive. Adolf Hitler prohibited attempts to break out or capitulate, and the German defense was gradually worn down. Paulus surrendered in Stalingrad on 31 January 1943, the day after he was informed of his promotion to field marshal by Hitler. Hitler expected Paulus to take his own life, repeating to his staff that there was no precedent of a German field marshal being captured alive.
While in Soviet captivity during the war, Paulus became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and joined the Soviet-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany. In 1953, Paulus moved to East Germany, where he worked in military history research. He lived out the rest of his life in Dresden.
Paulus was born in Guxhagen and grew up in Kassel, Hesse-Nassau, the son of a treasurer. He tried, unsuccessfully, to secure a cadetship in the Imperial German Navy and briefly studied law at Marburg University.
Many English-language sources and publications from the 1940s to the present day give Paulus's family name the prefix "von". For example: Mark Arnold-Forster's The World At War, companion volume to the documentary of the same name, Stein and Day, 1973, pp. 139–142; other examples are Allen and Muratoff's The Russian Campaigns of 1941–1943, published in 1944 and Peter Margaritis (2019). This is incorrect, as Paulus's family was never part of the nobility and Antony Beevor refers to his "comparatively humble birth" .
After leaving university without a degree, Paulus joined the 3rd Baden Infantry Regiment "Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm" No. 111 in Rastatt as an officer candidate on 18 February 1910. On 4 July 1912, he married the Romanian aristocrat Constance Elena Rosetti-Solescu, a descendant of the Rosetti family and sister of a colleague who served in the same regiment. They had a daughter, Olga (1914–2003), who married Achim von Kutzschenbach (1904–1944), a member of the German nobility. In addition, they had twin sons Friedrich and Ernst Alexander (born 1918).
When World War I began, Paulus's regiment was part of the thrust into France, and he saw action in the Vosges and around Arras in the autumn of 1914. After a leave of absence due to illness, he joined the Alpenkorps as a staff officer, serving in France, Romania and Serbia. By the end of the war, he was a captain.
After the armistice ending Germany's involvement in World War I, Paulus was a brigade adjutant with the Freikorps. He was chosen as one of only 4,000 officers to serve in the Reichswehr, the defensive army that the Treaty of Versailles had limited to 100,000 men. He was assigned to the 13th Infantry Regiment as a company commander at Stuttgart. He served in various staff positions for over a decade (1921–33). In the 1920s, as part of the military cooperation between the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union to evade the restrictions of Versailles, Paulus presented guest lectures in Moscow.
Later, Paulus briefly commanded a motorized battalion (1934–35). In October 1935, he was made chief of staff at Panzer Troop Command. This was a new formation under the direction of Oswald Lutz, which directed the training and development of the Panzerwaffe ("armored forces") of the German army.
In February 1938, Paulus was appointed Chef des Generalstabes to General Heinz Guderian's new XVI Army Corps, which replaced Lutz's command. Guderian described him as "brilliantly clever, conscientious, hard working, original and talented"; but Guderian had severe doubts about Paulus's decisiveness and toughness, and his lack of command experience. Paulus remained in that post until May 1939, when he was promoted to major general and became chief of staff for the German Tenth Army, with which he saw service in the invasion of Poland. The unit was renamed the Sixth Army and engaged in the spring offensives of 1940 through the Netherlands and Belgium. Paulus was promoted to lieutenant general in August 1940. The following month he was named deputy chief of the German General Staff (Oberquartiermeister I). In that role he helped draft the plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa.
In November 1941, after the German Sixth Army's commander, Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, Paulus's patron, became commander of the entire Army Group South, Paulus, who had never commanded a larger unit than a battalion, was promoted to General der Panzertruppe and appointed commander of the Sixth Army. However, Paulus took over his new command only on 20 January, six days after the sudden death of Reichenau, leaving him on his own and without the support of his more experienced sponsor.
Paulus led the drive on Stalingrad that summer. His troops fought Soviet forces defending Stalingrad for over three months in increasingly brutal urban warfare. In November 1942, when the Soviet Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive, Operation Uranus, Paulus found himself surrounded by an entire Soviet army group. Paulus did not request to evacuate the city when the counter-offensive began.
Paulus followed Adolf Hitler's orders to hold his positions in Stalingrad under all circumstances, despite the fact that he was completely surrounded by strong Soviet forces. Operation Winter Storm, a relief effort by Army Group Don under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, was launched in December. Following von Manstein's orders, Paulus prepared to break out of Stalingrad. In the meantime, he kept his army in fixed defensive positions. Manstein told Paulus that the relief would need assistance from the Sixth Army, but the order to initiate the breakout never came. Paulus remained firm in obeying the orders he had been given. Manstein's forces were unable to reach Stalingrad on their own and their efforts were eventually halted due to Soviet offensives elsewhere on the front.
Kurt Zeitzler, the newly appointed chief of the Army General Staff, eventually got Hitler to allow Paulus to break out—provided he continue to hold Stalingrad, an impossible task.
For the next two months, Paulus and his men fought on. However, the lack of food and ammunition, the equipment losses, and the deteriorating physical condition of the German troops gradually wore down the German defense. With the new year, Hitler promoted Paulus to colonel general.
About resisting capitulation, according to Adam, Paulus stated: What would become of the war if our army in the Caucasus were also surrounded? That danger is real. But as long as we keep on fighting, the Red Army has to remain here. They need these forces for a big offensive against Army Group 'A' in the Caucasus and along the still-unstable front from Voronesh to the Black Sea. We must hold them here to the last so that the eastern front can be stabilized. Only if that happens is there a chance of the war going well for Germany.
On 7 January 1943, General Konstantin Rokossovsky, commander of the Red Army on the Don Front, called a cease-fire and offered Paulus' men generous surrender terms: normal rations, medical treatment for the ill and wounded, permission to retain their badges, decorations, uniforms and personal effects. As part of his communication, Rokossovsky advised Paulus that he was in an impossible situation. Paulus requested permission from Hitler to surrender. Even though it was obvious the Sixth Army was in an untenable position, the German Army High Command rejected Paulus's request, stating, "Capitulation out of the question. Every day that the army holds out longer helps the whole front and draws away the Russian divisions from it."