something from the disaster. He ordered a shower of promotions on Sixth Army’s senior officers, most notably one that made Paulus a field marshal. Knowing that no German field marshal had ever surrended, Hitler hoped that Paulus would take the hint and commit suicide.
Paulus did not. Before dawn, his interpreter, Boris von Neidhardt, went out through the darkened square to the Russian tank, where a young Soviet lieutenant, Fyodor Yelchenko, stood in the turret. When Neidhardt waved to him, Yelchenko jumped down and Neidhardt said, “Our big chief wants to talk to your big chief.”
Yelchenko shook his head and answered: “Look here, our big chief has other things to do. He isn’t available. You’ll just have to deal with me.” Suddenly apprehensive because of nearby shelling and the presence of the enemy, Yelchenko called for reinforcements and fourteen Russian soldiers appeared with their guns ready.
Neidhardt was disgusted. “No, no, our chief asks that only one or two of you come in.”
“Nuts to that,” Yelchenko said. “I am not going by myself.” The lieutenant with the turned-up nose and boyish smile had no intention of going alone into the enemy camp. After agreeing on three Russian representatives, the group went into the cellar of the Univermag where hundreds of Germans had gathered. Yelchenko had a difficult time deciding who was in command. Though Roske spoke to him and then Arthur Schmidt, he did not see Paulus.
After Roske explained that he and Schmidt were empowered to speak for the commander and negotiate a surrender, Schmidt asked as a special favor that the Russians treat Paulus as a private person and escort him away in an automobile to protect him from vengeful Red Army soldiers. Laughing gaily, Yelchenko agreed. “Okay,” he said, and then they took him down the corridor to a green-curtained cubicle. Yelchenko stepped in and confronted Friedrich von Paulus, unshaved, but immaculate in his full-dress uniform.
Yelchenko wasted no time on formalities. “Well, that finishes it,” he offered in greeting. The forlorn field marshal looked into his eyes and nodded miserably.
A short time later, after conversations with more Soviet officers, Paulus and Schmidt walked out of the fetid depths of the Univermag and stepped into a Russian staff car. It took them south over the Tsaritsa Gorge, past the grain elevator, through the ruins of Dar Goya, and on to the suburb of Beketovka where, in a wooden farmhouse, they were ushered into the presence of Gen. Mikhail Shumilov, commander of the Soviet Sixty-fourth Army. Surrounded by cameramen, Shumilov greeted his guests correctly and asked for identification. When Paulus produced his paybook, the Russian pretended to read German and grunted his acceptance.
The Russians offered the Germans food from a tremendous buffet but Paulus balked, insisting that he first receive a guarantee that his men be given proper rations and medical care
The primary antagonists of the battle for Stalingrad never got to meet. Deprived by jealous commanders of the chance to capture Paulus himself, Vassili Chuikov had to content himself with lesser fry.{The honor of capturing Paulus caused bitter rivalry among Red Army officers. In postwar reminiscences, several lesser generals and colonels claimed that they had received Paulus’s surrender in the Univermag cellar. In almost all these accounts, Lt. Fyodor Yelchenko’s role was dismissed.} Dressed in a fur jacket, Chuikov sat behind a big desk in his Volga bunker, and glared at the first German to come through the door.
“Are you Seydlitz?” he asked. The officer was Lt. Philip Humbert, Seydlitz’s aide. To cover his error, the flustered Russian interpreter introduced Humbert as a lieutenant colonel, and then brought the rest of the Germans into Chuikov’s presence
Chuikov was suddenly expansive. “Be glad, general,” he said to Seydlitz, “that you are with us. Stalin will have his parade in Berlin on the first of May. We shall then make peace, and we shall work together with you.”
His questions then came fast. “Why do you look so bad? Why did they not fly you out?” General Krylov broke in to say that he had been flown out of Sevastopol when that city was doomed.
At this point, General Korfes became a talkative spokesman for the German officer corps. “It is the tragic point of world history that the two greatest men of our times, Hitler and Stalin… have been unable to find common grounds so as to beat the mutual enemy, the capitalist world.”
Even Chuikov seemed startled by this declaration. Seydlitz grabbed Korfes’s arm and cried: “Why don’t you stop talking?”
Korfes could not be stilled. “After all, I feel entitled to say this because it is the truth.”
Seydlitz-Kurzbach and General Pfeiffer lapsed into a fretful silence, marred by each man’s occasional weeping. Chuikov tried to make his prisoners more comfortable by ordering food and tea, which they gratefully accepted. After more polite conversation, the Germans were escorted to the Volga shore and a battered Ford which took them across the ice to captivity. Behind them, their German troops faced a mixed reception from the Russian captors.
On the summit of Mamaev Hill, Lt. Pyotr Deriabin led a company of soldiers into German trenches. Intent on looting, the Soviet troops shot at random into men who raised their hands in surrender, then stripped the bodies of watches and other valuables.
At the edge of Red Square, Sgt. Albert Pfluger packed a few pieces of bread and sausage while the Russians tiptoed down the cellar stairs. In the corner of the room, three
At the NKVD prison, the surrender was orderly. From the catacomb of cells, the Germans poured into the courtyard, ringed with piles of corpses. In the middle of the assembly area, a German cook, incongruously attired in a spotless ‘white apron, stood by a stove. As Russian guards circulated among the prisoners and shared cigarettes with them, the cook continued to ladle out mugs of hot coffee both for his men and their new masters.
Further north, Cpl. Heinz Neist heard the Russians pounding down into his cellar. One of them confronted him and pointed, at the wedding ring on his hand. When Neist used sign language to explain that it was difficult to pull off, the Russian whipped out a knife and made a motion to slice the finger away.
At that moment, the corporal heard a voice shouting, “All nice young Germans, goddamn Hitler,” and Neist beckoned the speaker over to help him with the irate looter. But the officer just shook his head and said: “Give the ring, give everything you have, save your life.” Struggling frantically with the wedding band, Neist finally loosened it and handed the treasure to the happy Russian who then left him alone.
That same day, January 31, hundreds of wounded German troops were killed where they lay.
In his cellar north of Red Square, the desperately ill Hubert Wirkner heard a noise and turned to see a Russian soldier pouring gasoline in through the window. Summoning all his strength, he lunged from his bed and crawled on his deadened arms and legs toward the stairs.
Behind him the Russian lit a match and tossed it onto the fuel. The cellar exploded in a violent orange cloud and turned fifty men into human torches. As some of the flaming bodies clutched frantically at the window bars the Russians pounded their hands with rifle butts.
At the bottom of the stairs, Wirkner dumped a pail of water over himself and groped upward toward fresh air. Clouds of smoke choked him and the awful screams of the burning patients followed him as he fell out the door into the snow. On all fours, he crouched like a dog while a Soviet officer came up to him, cocked his pistol and shoved it in Wirkner’s ear. While he waited to die, another voice broke in, “Comrade Stalin wouldn’t like that.” Wirlcner’s executioner pulled the pistol away and stalked off. Safe for the moment, Wirkner dragged himself across the street to find another sanctuary.
On February 1, at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, Adolf Hitler had not taken the news of surrender calmly.
Sitting before the huge map of Russia in the main conference room, he spoke with Zeitzler, Keitel, and others about the debacle: “They have surrendered there formally and absolutely. Otherwise they would have closed ranks, formed a hedgehog and shot themselves with their last bullet….”
