He was one of the highest-ranking German soldiers. He was one of Hitler's most trusted people. However, at the Nuremberg trials, he appeared ... alongside the Bolsheviks as a witness for the prosecution.
At the beginning of 1943, the situation of the Germans on the Eastern Front was hopeless. The 6th Army, led by General Friedrich Paulus, had been standing at Stalingrad for months. Despite repeated efforts, she could not get through the Soviet defense of the city. In addition, from the end of November 1942, the army was locked in a cauldron. The soldiers also suffered from poor supplies. Instead of food and equipment, they found orders and ... condoms in transports.
Regardless of the deplorable situation of his army, the marshal defended himself to the very end. Thus, he contributed to the death of many thousands of soldiers. Charges of stupid defense and too late surrender kept coming back to him like a boomerang all his life.
Weak in captivity
Paulus surrendered on January 31, 1943. Soon before, he was promoted by Hitler to the rank of field marshal. By appointing him, the Führer wanted the general to commit collective suicide with his army. However, this did not happen and the remnants of the 6th Army ended up in Soviet captivity. It made the chief furious. “No German field marshal went into captivity! Paulus is a weakling! Hitler reportedly shouted. Propaganda has meanwhile reported that none of the German soldiers survived the Battle of Stalingrad.
In the first months of his captivity, Paulus seemed adamant and inaccessible. Despite the depression he had experienced earlier, he did not allow himself to be broken by the threats of the NKVD. He hoped that the Germans would exchange him for Stalin's son, Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili. But the leader of the USSR did not want to hear about it. He stated that the marshal was not being replaced with a lieutenant. The Germans themselves were not very interested in the exchange either. They were counting on Paulus to kill himself…
Wilhelm Adam was one of Friedrich Paulus' closest associates during the war with the USSR.
The marshal was sent to a POW camp in Krasnogorsk. This is how the first camp days were reported by General Wilhelm Adam in his book Difficult Decision. With Paulus at Stalingrad ":
Being in captivity brought with it some kind of tension and anticipation. We waited with some excitement for the unknown - more:for the uncertain. The feeling, however, passed quickly in the monotony of habit:getting up, three meals, walking, after-lunch and night rest were the main items on the agenda. Early in the morning and late in the evening the duty officer made his rounds of the quarters. We used to go to the bath once a week, to "suck".
Immediately after his imprisonment, Soviet propaganda wanted to make the most of the fact that the German marshal had been captured by the Soviets. A special press conference was convened in Moscow to show journalists "his most important prisoner." Paulus did not like this action very much. In the photos from that event, you can see him sitting disgusted and refusing to answer questions.
A dream of power
Time passed, and the imprisoned marshal slowly lost any hope of returning to Germany. He began to look more favorably at his opponents and gradually changed his mind about possible cooperation. The breakthrough came in the summer of 1944, when he saw how many German soldiers were sent to the POW camp in Wojków.
Paulus then finally lost faith in Hitler and decided that the war was lost . He joined the Free Germany National Committee, and on August 8, 1944, he addressed the German people and all the captured soldiers. He wanted them to come to terms with their defeat and overthrow Hitler.
In Germany, however, no one attached much importance to Paulus' appeal. Nazi propaganda made sure that no one had access to the foreign radio stations where the marshal's speech was broadcast. There was a death penalty for breaking this ban. The marshal's situation was made worse by the fact that Paulus himself was discredited. His family was jailed for collaborating with the Soviets.
Paulus' photo taken when he was taken prisoner by the Soviets.
Despite the poor response to the appeal to overthrow the leader of the Third Reich, Paulus did not lose his energy. He still hoped that he would become the prime minister of the German government in exile, and the prisoners of war remaining in captivity would form a German army under his command, fighting alongside the Red Army. His hopes turned out to be in vain, and the marshal himself began to be less and less useful to the Bolsheviks.
Nuremberg trial
The "most important prisoner" was only remembered in 1946, during the Nuremberg trials. At the initiative of the Soviets, he appeared as a witness for the prosecution. His arrival aroused a lot of emotions. When Hermann Göring, seated on the dock, saw him in the courtroom, furiously called him a "dirty pig" . The former Luftwaffe commander was only calmed down by the intervention of the American gendarmes.
Paulus was carefully prepared by the Bolsheviks for his speech. He described in detail the process of planning the German attack on the USSR. This is what he remembers about that event in the book “Difficult Decision. With Paulus at Stalingrad ”Wilhelm Adam:
Paulus worked very hard. I had a feeling that it had to do with the trial, but I was surprised to hear on the radio that he had appeared in Nuremberg as a witness against war criminals. During those many hours in Stalingrad, when, bound by Hitler's orders, he decided to desperately remain in the cauldron on the Volga, he rarely allowed himself to say a bitter word about this whole war.
The appearance of Paulus at the Nuremberg trial aroused a lot of emotion. His testimony to which he was carefully prepared by the Soviets plunged some of the war criminals.
Now, however, in his speech in Nuremberg, he had a clear judgment of the war. It openly revealed the events preceding the war with the Soviet Union, systematically prepared by Nazi Germany since the fall of 1940.
After the trial, Paulus returned to the USSR. However, the Soviets needed less and less. As the Cold War escalated in the West, rumors spread that a former Nazi general in collaboration with the communists was creating an army of German prisoners . Supposedly, her march to West Germany was to trigger World War III. Such fears were even expressed by the influential German weekly Der Spiegel.
Fears that Paulus' army would lead to another war obviously did not materialize. The marshal returned to the GDR in October 1953. At the station, he was greeted by his former comrades from the time of his service in the Wehrmacht. It was on them that the former Nazi commander was now to exert his influence. The communist authorities of the GDR hoped that he would unite war veterans around him. It was predicted that this would help in organizing the East German army. However, not much came from these plans.
After returning to eastern Germany, Friedrich Paulus was to deal with the consolidation of the milieu of former Wehrmacht soldiers. Pictured at a meeting in 1954.
Luxury and threatening letters
Paulus spent the last years of his life near Dresden. He lived in a 650-meter-high villa on the Elbe. He had his adjutant at his disposal, and his account was getting 3,000 marks a month . There was poverty in the devastated Dresden, but Paulus could not complain. He regularly attended the opera, played tennis, and sewed suits at a tailor. He could even afford to pay for a maid and a gardener. Only occasionally did he get threatening letters and questions about Stalingrad. Stasi followed his every step.
The marshal died on February 1, 1957. Even though he was one of Hitler's most trusted people, he was never punished. The decision to cooperate with the Soviets, which he made in Soviet captivity, ensured his safe return to the country. In addition, he was provided with a comfortable and prosperous life in the GDR. Until the end, he was like a cat that always falls on its feet.