the pincers would cease to exist. Now what concerned the strategists was the plotting for the next phase of the offensive: fording the Don and moving forty miles further east to the Volga.
The original plans for Operation Blue did not call for the capture of Stalingrad. In fact, the city was not even a primary target for attack. As originally conceived, the strike force was to consist of two groups of armies, A and B. Army Group A, under the command of Field Marshal List, included the Seventeenth and First Panzer armies; Army Group B, under Fedor von Bock, boasted the Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies, which were to be aided by the Hungarians in support of their rear echelons. The army groups were to move eastward on a broad front to the line of the Volga River “in the area of” the city of Stalingrad. After “neutralizing” Russian war production in that region by bombing and artillery fire, and after cutting the vital transportation line on the Volga, both army groups were to turn south and drive on the oil fields of the Caucasus.
But in July, the Fuhrer himself had subtly altered the scope of the campaign after German intelligence reported that the Russians had few reliable divisions on the west bank of the Volga. Boat traffic on the river had not increased, which indicated that the Soviet High Command was not yet pouring reinforcements into the city from the Urals or Siberia. Furthermore, the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) determined that the defense lines between the Don and Volga were primitive at best, though it appeared that some Russian work battalions were out on the steppe, throwing up hasty antitank fortifications. Thus, Hitler concluded, the Red Army was not about to make a major stand at Stalingrad, and he ordered Sixth Army to seize the city by force as soon as possible.
In his cramped, field-gray tent, the commander of the Sixth Army, Col. Gen. Friedrich von Paulus, was rejoicing quietly. A cautious man, who disdained public emotion, he relaxed for a few moments by listening to Beethoven on a gramophone. Music was the best catalyst for his moody, introspective personality. Tall and darkly handsome, the fifty-two-year-old general was the classic example of a German General Staff officer. Apolitical, trained only to do his job in the army, he left diplomacy to the party in power. He thought Adolf Hitler an excellent leader for the German people, a man who had contributed greatly to the development of the state. After watching him evolve the strategies that conquered Poland, France, and most of Europe, Paulus was awed by Hitler’s grasp of the technical aspects of warfare. He considered him a genius.
His wife did not share his beliefs. The former Elena Constance Rosetti-Solescu, Coca to her friends, a descendant of one of Rumania’s royal houses, had married Paulus in 1912 and borne him a daughter and twin sons. Both boys now served in the army. She detested the Nazi regime and told her husband he was far too good for the likes of men such as Keitel and the other “lackeys” who surrounded Hitler. When Germany attacked Poland, she vehemently condemned it as an unjust act. Paulus did not argue with her. Content with his role, he merely carried out orders. When, in the fall of 1940, he brought home maps and other memoranda related to the planned invasion of Russia, Coca found them and confronted Paulus, saying a war against the Soviet Union was completely unjustified: He tried to avoid discussing the matter with her, but she persisted.
“What will become of us all? Who will survive to the end?” she asked.
Attempting to calm her fears, Paulus had’ said the war with Russia would be over in about six weeks’ time. She was not appeased. Just as she had feared, the new campaign dragged on past the six-week deadline and into the awful Winter of 1941 on the Moscow front. Yet despite the setbacks, despite the horrendous losses suffered by the German Army because of the climate and ferocious Russian resistance, Paulus retained one unshakable belief: Hitler was invincible.
In January 1942, when his superior, Field Marshal Reichenau died suddenly, Paulus finally got his life’s desire: command of an army in the field. The two men could not have been more dissimilar. Reichenau, an ardent Nazi, had been coarse in manner and unkempt in appearance. Paulus was impeccably groomed at all times. He even wore gloves in the field because he abhorred dirt; he bathed and changed his uniforms twice a day.
Despite such glaring differences, Paulus had sublimated his retiring manner to the volatile Reichenau. A master of detail, fascinated with figures and grand strategy, he handled the administration of the Sixth Army while Reichenau led charges at the front. In return, ReichenaU treated Paulus like a son and always trusted his judgment. The two men agreed on all but one important policy. It marked the great gulf between them in heritage and philosophy.
Reichenau had been a ruthless believer in Hitler’s thesis of racial supremacy and had supported the Fuhrer’s infamous “Cornmissar Order,” which ordained the killing of all captured Russian political officers without benefit of trial. He even went a step further by introducing within Sixth Army Command what came to be known as the “Severity Order.” It read in part:
…The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization…. In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception…. For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry….
Reichenau’s insistence on “retribution” had resulted in monstrous crimes. After the front-line troops of Sixth Army divisions passed through towns, a motley collection of homicidal maniacs came in their wake and systematically tried to eliminate the Jewish population.
Divided into four
Reichenau had helped the
Those Germans who had protested the killings were ignored. Nothing interfered with the campaign of extermination. Nearly a million people died before Friedrich von Paulus assumed control and ended the genocide—at least in his sector—by rescinding both the Commissar and Severity Orders.
As commander of the Sixth Army, Paulus was victorious in his first major battle when, in May, the Russians had tried to upset German plans at Kharkov by attacking first. The Sixth Army was instrumental in rallying the Wehrmacht from near disaster and trapping more than two hundred thousand Russians in a giant envelopment. Congratulations poured in from old comrades, some of whom now assiduously courted his favor. It was clear to them that he was marked for greater responsibilities within the German Army’s High Command. Later, when Operation Blue appeared to be sweeping the Russians away like chaff in the wind, Paulus’s career expectations assumed even more gigantic proportions. Still fastidious, always the epitome of the cool, thinking machine, he traveled the barren steppe, seeking a last confrontation with the enemy.
An excellent cadre of staff officers made the task of running Sixth Army immeasurably easier. The chief of staff, Gen. Arthur Schmidt, was new but, like Paulus, he was a master of the smallest detail and promised to take much of that tedious work load upon himself. A thin-faced man with bulging eyes and a sharply pointed chin, Schmidt did not fit the traditional mold for German staff officers. Born in Hamburg to a merchant family, he had served in World War I as a soldier. Afterward he stayed through the convulsions of postwar politics and emerged as an officer under Hitler’s reborn Reichswehr.
He was autocratic, overbearing, and had a nasty habit of interrupting conversations when the subject bored him. Many of- Ilcers disliked his imperious manner. Some resented his rapid rise in rank and responsibility, but as he assumed his job under Paulus, Schmidt ignored his critics. Sharply different in temperament and tastes, the two men thought alike on military matters. As a result, the Sixth Army was functioning like a smoothly running watch.
