Field Marshal Paul. Special investigation "AiF". How did Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus live his last years? Awards of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus

The name of the German field marshal, who commanded the Wehrmacht army that capitulated at Stalingrad, is sometimes written and spoken with the prefix “von”. That is, it sounds like Friedrich von Paulus. But in fact this is not true. After all, from birth this man was not an aristocrat. And he got into high German society only thanks to a successful marriage. But first things first.

Failed lawyer

According to archival materials, on September 23, 1890, a son was born into the family of a modest accountant who worked in a prison in the German city of Kassel. This was the biography of Friedrich Paulus, who was entirely determined by the historical collisions that befell his homeland.

Having graduated from a classical gymnasium, as befits a young man from a poor but quite decent family, and received a matriculation certificate, nineteen-year-old Friedrich entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Bavaria. However, having become convinced two years later that bothering his head with countless articles and paragraphs of laws was not his strong point, he left his studies. And with the rank of non-commissioned officer, he entered service in the infantry regiment, which bore the name of his namesake - Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm.

Happy marriage

Here he felt, as they say, “at ease.” With commendable zeal, he began to climb the rungs of the career ladder. His diligence was soon noticed and encouraged from time to time. But it is unlikely that the ambitious officer could reach those shining heights that he dreamed of, if not for a lucky chance - a chance sent by fate. Such a gift from heaven turned out to be his marriage to a Romanian aristocrat of German origin, Elena Constance Rosetti-Solescu, to whom Paulus was introduced through mutual acquaintances.

Frederick, who had learned the rude manners of the common people from childhood, acquired the luster of a secular man under her influence. And, most importantly, he was introduced by his young wife to high society, to which she belonged from birth. What made her, an aristocrat, fall in love with an unremarkable junior officer is the secret of a woman’s heart.

The path from captain to major general

The First World War did not bring him either fame or sharp career ups. From the first days, when the horizon of Europe was clouded with gunpowder smoke, Friedrich Wilhelm Paulus, along with his regiment fighting in France, found himself in a combat zone. But the connections in the circles of the high command, which the wife’s relatives had, did their job. And soon the nightmare of the front line gave way for him to relatively calm staff work. Paulus met the end of the war already wearing the captain's uniform.

In the post-war years, when the Weimar Republic was established in Germany, Paulus Friedrich continued to serve in the army, not grabbing stars from the sky, but not missing the opportunity to receive a promotion on time. And he would have ended his career quietly and unnoticed, but 1933 came, which became a turning point in the fate of Germany. With Hitler's rise to power, the entire life of the country was put on a war footing. And conscientious servants, who also had patronage in high circles, sharply went uphill. Suffice it to say that by 1939 Paulus was already a major general.

Beginning of World War II

General Friedrich Paulus, heading the headquarters of the Tenth Army, spent the first two years of World War II in battles, first in Poland, and then in Belgium and the Netherlands. Since July 1940, he was included by Hitler in the group engaged in the development of the notorious “Plan Barbarossa”, and after the start of the attack on the Soviet Union, he made every effort to implement it.

For Paulus personally, 1942 began as successfully as possible. Nothing foreshadowed an imminent tragedy. Back in January, having received another promotion, he was appointed commander of the Sixth Army, which operated on the Eastern Front and successfully resisted powerful counterattacks of Soviet troops. For his military services, the Fuhrer awarded him the Knight's Cross, and the army he led, which had so successfully proven the “invincibility” of German weapons, was transferred to the southern sector of the front, where the grandiose battle for Stalingrad unfolded in September.

Stalingrad encirclement

However, the previously favorable Fortune this time turned away from her darling. Instead of a quick victory on the banks of the Volga, she prepared encirclement for his army, and for him personally - the end of a brilliant career. The situation in which the forces entrusted to him found themselves could only be described as absolutely hopeless. Friedrich Paulus, a man who enjoyed special confidence from Hitler, in radio conversations with Berlin tried to convince the Fuhrer to allow his army to leave Stalingrad and make a breakthrough to reunite with the main forces of the Wehrmacht.

But his arguments (very reasonable, from a military point of view) met with categorical objections. Hitler justified his ban on leaving combat positions by the fact that, according to his assurances, in the shortest possible time German aviation would establish an air bridge capable of providing the troops with everything necessary to contain the enemy.

Late promotion

In reality, his plans were not destined to come true. And attempts to establish an “air bridge” collapsed under the blows of Soviet aviation and air defense forces. In order to somehow maintain the morale of his general, Hitler in mid-January 1943 awarded Paulus the rank of field marshal and awarded him the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross for future services.

Meanwhile, along with such good news, Paulus receives from him an order to fight to the death, and at the same time a reminder that not a single German field marshal has ever surrendered. In this context, this historical reference meant nothing more than an urgent demand to commit suicide if it was not possible to resist the Soviet troops.

Apparently, this was the only time that Friedrich Paulus - Field Marshal and Hitler's confidant - dared to disobey an order. But, not wanting to see the death of the “last soldier,” much less put a bullet in his temple, on the frosty winter morning of January 31, 1943, he conveyed the news of surrender to the Soviet command.

Collapse of the Wehrmacht's Sixth Army

Since the main part of the Sixth Army entrusted to him still continued to resist, the front commander, Colonel General K.K. Rokossovsky, to whom Paulus was brought for interrogation, suggested that he issue an order for its complete surrender. This measure made it possible to avoid the senseless death of German soldiers and officers.

But Friedrich Paulus, whose photo from those years can be seen in the article, refused, citing the fact that by surrendering, he thereby deprived himself of the right to give any orders. And the question of the surrender of the army must be decided by the generals remaining in the ranks. From the chronicles of those days it is known that by February 2, 1943, the resistance of German troops was completely suppressed. And 91 thousand enemy soldiers and officers ended up in Soviet captivity. But the refusal to surrender in a timely manner entailed additional casualties.

Not wanting to inform their compatriots about the capture of such a large contingent of troops, the German government spread among the people a myth about the heroic death of the entire Sixth Army. According to the official version, all soldiers and officers, without exception, preferred death to shameful surrender. National mourning was declared. For three days, Germany mourned the deaths.

The last tribute to the former ideology

As for the field marshal, who was buried by official propaganda, he and a group of generals and senior officers were taken to the NKVD transit camp located near Moscow. In those days, Paulus Friedrich had not yet lost faith in the final victory of German weapons. During interrogations, he sometimes broke into pathetic rhetoric, presenting himself as an unbending Social Democrat.

While in the Suzdal camp for senior German command personnel, he initiated an angry message addressed to members of the anti-Hitler alliance, created by captured Wehrmacht officers held in Krasnogorsk near Moscow. Paulus Friedrich accused his former comrades of betrayal and cowardice. However, a month later he suddenly withdrew his signature from the appeal addressed to them.

Camp for senior command personnel

From Suzdal, where the German generals were kept together with their field marshal, in the summer of 1943 they were transferred to the village of Cherntsy, located 30 km from Ivanovo. Here, within the walls of a sanatorium, turned into a special NKVD camp, they were under heavy security. This measure was taken out of fear of the possible kidnapping of high-ranking prisoners.

According to contemporaries, the conditions of their detention were more like a rest home than a place of detention. All prisoners received food that was unavailable to most citizens of the country during wartime, and on holidays even beer was added to their diet. No one was forced to work. They filled their leisure time, which was in abundance, as best they could. Many, including Paulus Friedrich, were involved in compiling memoirs.

Recruitment of a captured field marshal

In the summer of 1944, the Soviet leadership came up with the idea of ​​using Paulus as a propaganda tool aimed at German prisoners of war. For this purpose, he is transferred to one of the secret facilities near Moscow and systematic processing begins, which is personally monitored by L.P. Beria. At first he hesitated, and the transition to open cooperation with yesterday's opponents was not easy for him.

But, gradually broken by skillfully presented information about the defeat of the Germans at Kursk, the opening of the Second Front, total mobilization in Germany and other evidence of an imminent collapse, he began to give up. His persistence was finally broken by the news of the assassination attempt on Hitler, followed by the execution of the conspirators, among whom were people well known to him.

As an active anti-fascist

At the beginning of August 1944, Field Marshal of the Wehrmacht Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus openly began to cooperate with the Soviet government. His first step was an appeal to all German prisoners of war, in which he declared the need to overthrow Hitler, end the war and establish democratic rule in Germany.

Following this, he joined the anti-fascist “Union of German Officers”, as well as an organization calling itself “Free Germany”. There is no way back for him. Realizing this, Paulus became one of the most active propagandists of the fight against Nazism. His speeches were broadcast on the radio in those days, and planes dropped leaflets signed by him with calls to go over to the enemy’s side onto the positions of German troops.

Repressed family

Surprisingly, Friedrich Paulus, whose family was in Germany, did not take into account the consequences that his activities could have for them. And they were not slow in making their impact. His wife, who did not want to renounce her husband (here it is, a woman’s heart!), and his grandson were sent under house arrest. The daughter and daughter-in-law were placed in the Dachau concentration camp, and the son (also a Wehrmacht officer) was imprisoned in the city of Kostritsa.

Epilogue

The former field marshal of the German army, due to circumstances, finally took the path of fighting the regime, which he once served faithfully. In February 1946, at the sessions of the Nuremberg court, as a witness for the prosecution, he hotly denounced his former comrades and colleagues, which earned himself forgiveness.

After Nuremberg, he again found himself in Moscow, where he also successfully avoided trial and lived until Stalin’s death. After that, returning to his homeland, he settled in the territory of the GDR. According to the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany, for the rest of his life Paulus showed loyalty to the pro-Soviet regime established in the country. He died in contentment and comfort on February 1, 1957 from heart failure. It was the eve of the fourteenth anniversary of the surrender of his army at Stalingrad.

Paulus Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst

(09/23/1890-02/01/1957) – Field Marshal of the German Army (1943)

Friedrich Paulus was born on September 23, 1890 in the small Hessian town of Breitenau-Gerschagen. Paulus hid his humble origins. When he joined the army, he added the prefix “von” to his surname, although his father was a petty bourgeois. In 1910, after several years of studying law at the University of Munich, Friedrich joined the 3rd Baden Infantry Regiment and became a lieutenant less than a year later.

During the First World War, young Paulus managed to fight on both the Western and Eastern Fronts, although he mostly occupied staff positions. He established himself as a competent staff officer, which helped him get into the Reichswehr after the end of the war. In 1919, Friedrich Wilhelm Paulus was appointed head of the Reichswehr security department, and then sent to secret training courses for General Staff officers. The situation in the army during the Weimar Republic was not conducive to promotion, so by the beginning of 1933 Paulus was only a major. However, he had excellent certifications and many useful contacts, including with Walter von Reichenau and Franz Halder.

Already in mid-1933, Friedrich Paulus became a lieutenant colonel, and two years later, having received another rank of colonel, he was appointed chief of staff of the armored forces. In 1939, Major General Paulus was transferred to the 4th Army Group Reichenau as chief of staff. Just before the outbreak of war, this group was transformed into the 6th Field Army, which participated in the Polish Campaign and then fought in Belgium and France.

On September 3, 1940, Friedrich Paulus received the post of first Chief Quartermaster of the OKH. Halder instructed his new deputy to develop a plan for an invasion of the USSR with 130-140 divisions. The goal of the prepared operational plan was to destroy the main forces of the Red Army in border battles in the western part of the USSR and then reach the Volga-Arkhangelsk line in order to deprive Soviet aviation of the opportunity to bomb the Reich.

According to Paulus, the main blow had to be delivered in the Moscow direction. As a preliminary line, he outlined the Leningrad-Smolensk-Kyiv line, to achieve which it was necessary to create three army groups: “North”, “Center” and “South”. On October 29, Halder received a memo from Paulus, on the basis of which the Ost directive was then issued on the strategic concentration and deployment of Wehrmacht forces. On December 5, Halder presented Hitler with a plan for the upcoming campaign. The Fuhrer gave the operational plan for the war with the USSR the name of the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who led the Third Crusade in the Middle East.

Discussing the plan for the upcoming campaign with Hitler, Paulus drew the Supreme Commander's attention to the fact that hostilities could drag on until winter, while the army was completely unprepared for combat operations in winter conditions. However, Hitler, misled by the Abwehr, who systematically misinformed the German high command, had little idea of ​​the economic potential of the Soviet Union and the power of the Red Army. Besides, there was no time left for preparation.

After Field Marshal von Rundstedt was removed from his post as commander of Army Group South, whose place was taken by Reichenau, Hitler invited Paulus to take command of the 6th Field Army. On January 20, 1942, Friedrich Paulus arrived in Poltava. At this time, Army Group South was engaged in heavy fighting in the Izyum area, where Timoshenko’s troops were deeply wedged into German positions at the junction of the 6th and 17th armies. The 57th and 6th Soviet shock armies punched a hole in the Wehrmacht's battle formations and advanced detachments almost reached the Dnieper in the Dnepropetrovsk region. However, by the end of February, the Red Army's offensive ran out of steam, and the breakthrough was localized. But there remained a ledge 100 kilometers deep and 80 kilometers wide, to eliminate which Friedrich Paulus had to bring in four German and one Romanian corps.

In the spring of 1942, the front line passed 500 kilometers west of Stalingrad. The headquarters, developing the plan for the summer campaign, initially planned to limit the southern sector of the front to a local operation east of the Dnieper bend in order to secure the manganese mines in Nikopol. But under pressure from Hitler, a more ambitious plan was developed in April 1942, which included access to the Volga, an assault on Stalingrad and a blockade of the Caucasus.

Before the start of the summer offensive, Paulus's army had to withstand another severe test. On May 12, Soviet troops launched a new offensive near Izyum. Having broken through the positions of the 8th Army Corps and defeated the Hungarian security brigade, Soviet tanks were soon 20 kilometers from Kharkov. Northeast of this city, in the Volchansk region, in order to contain the enemy’s advance, the 6th Army brought its last reserves into battle. Salvation came on May 17, when General von Mackensen’s 3rd Panzer Corps struck Timoshenko’s left flank. Having recovered a little, Paulus, using the reserves urgently transferred to him, also launched a counteroffensive and inflicted a heavy defeat on the carried away Soviet troops. On May 29, the battle for Kharkov ended. Friedrich Paulus received the Knight's Cross.

On June 1, 1942, a meeting of army commanders was held at the headquarters of Army Group South, located in Poltava, to which Hitler and Keitel arrived. The Fuhrer informed the army group command about the upcoming grandiose operation, in which more than one and a half million people were to participate from the Reich and its allies. Paulus's 6th Field Army was initially tasked with securing the flanks of a tank group that was to advance on Stalingrad.

To create a more favorable starting position for the 6th Army, on June 13, Paulus carried out a strike on Volchansk, called Operation Wilhelm, and on June 22, during Operation Frederick II, together with the 3rd Panzer Corps, he encircled Soviet units near Krupyansk. where more than 20,000 Red Army soldiers were captured. But the successful start was thoroughly spoiled by an unexpected incident. On June 19, the chief of the operational department of the headquarters of the 23rd division, Major Reichel, after a meeting in Kharkov, flew to his division on a Storch. He never arrived at the scene, and by nightfall German reconnaissance officers discovered the plane 4 kilometers behind the front line. He was fired upon by the Russians and made an emergency landing, after which the major and pilot were killed. The scouts brought with them the bodies of two dead, but the major did not have documents that indicated that the German command was planning to encircle and defeat Red Army units between the Don and Volga rivers. On June 28, when the Wehrmacht launched an offensive in the Caucasus and Stalingrad, Timoshenko gave his troops the order to withdraw to the east. In this document, the marshal indicated that now, although it was important to inflict heavy losses on the enemy, the main task was to avoid encirclement. Preserving the integrity of the front and a planned retreat is much more important than defending every inch of land. Although the pace of the Wehrmacht's advance was so high that the Soviet troops were unable to completely break away from their pursuers, the Germans were unable to form a single pocket and carried out only frontal pursuit, engaging in battles with the rearguards of the enemy divisions rolling back to the east.

After the division of Army Group South, Paulus's army became part of Army Group Yu, commanded by Field Marshal von List. In addition to the 6th Army, this group also included the 2nd Field Army, 4th Tank Army, 2nd and 8th Italian Armies. On July 28, 1942, the 2nd, 4th Tank and 2nd Hungarian armies, united in the operational group of General Weichs, launched an attack on Voronezh. Three days later, Friedrich Paulus's 6th Army went on the offensive. Having overcome the fierce resistance of the Russian rearguard at Oskol, the Wehrmacht quickly moved forward.

At the end of July, the 6th Army reached the bend of the Dnieper in the area of ​​Kalach and Kletskaya. Here Paulus first met stubborn resistance from the Red Army units on the first defensive perimeter of Stalingrad, which made it clear that the rapid advance to the east and the battles with the rearguards were over. The Soviet command built four defensive lines, but failed to complete their equipment before the approach of the 6th Wehrmacht Army. Nevertheless, the 62nd and 64th armies held back the advance of Paulus’s troops for six days, forced him to deploy his army and gained time during which they managed to strengthen the middle, inner and city lines.

Friedrich Paulus was forced to leave several divisions near the Don on the left flank, since the 3rd Romanian and 8th Italian armies had not yet arrived. Hoth's 4th Panzer Army turned and rushed south. The divisions located in the Tsimlyansk region continued to advance into the Caucasus, and the forces that turned to Kotelnikovo were too small. As a result, the 6th and weakened 4th Tank Army were forced to conduct a frontal offensive against the continuously strengthening Red Army defenses on the Don.

On August 21, Paulus was able to capture a bridgehead northeast of Kalach, from which his troops broke through in a narrow wedge to the city on the Volga. Four days later, the Wehrmacht reached the western outskirts of Stalingrad.

Despite the extremely unfavorable tactical situation, which required a frontal attack, Paulus managed to surround the city from the west and north. The Wehrmacht launched an assault on Stalingrad, which resulted in two months of severe street fighting. The city turned into a pile of ruins, in which German infantrymen, supported by tanks, made their way from house to house, from basement to basement, from floor to floor. The buildings of huge military factories turned into fortresses, where day after day there were merciless battles between Russian and German soldiers for every meter of ruins. The Luftwaffe dealt blow after blow to Stalingrad and its crossings. Even before the German troops reached the city, it was engulfed in fire. Oil storage facilities and residential areas burned.

From the left bank, where the Soviet command positioned large-caliber artillery, the positions of Paulus's army were shelled around the clock. By November 11, the Red Army still had in its hands a section of the embankment in the area of ​​the Barrikady tractor plant, where the remnants of the 62nd Army fought. In the end, only the 138th Infantry Division remained on the “Island of Colonel Lyudnikov,” which gave the bridgehead the name of its commander. Paulus was unable to throw three Soviet rifle regiments into the Volga, which held a strip of the coast until the start of the counteroffensive.

On December 11, 1942, at 0:20 a.m., Stalin sent a directive to Rokossovsky to begin Operation Ring. Then, within a few days, from November 19 to 23, something unimaginable happened on the Eastern Front: the entire 6th Wehrmacht Army, led by Friedrich Paulus, was surrounded. On the morning of November 21, Soviet tanks broke through the positions of German troops and ended up just a few kilometers from Golubinskaya, where the headquarters of the 6th Army was located. Paulus, who flew to the location of the surrounded troops, urgently evacuated his headquarters to the Gumrak railway station west of Stalingrad. On the same day, the commander of the 6th Army contacted Weichs, demanding permission to withdraw his troops beyond the Don and Chir. Von Weichs agreed in principle, but in the evening Hitler ordered Paulus with a special radiogram to remain in Stalingrad and hold the city at any cost.

On November 23, Paulus sent a radiogram to the Fuhrer in which he asked for permission for his army to leave the city and break out of the ring: “Ammunition and fuel are running out. Most artillery batteries and anti-tank units had expended their ammunition. Timely and sufficient supply of supplies is impossible. The army will soon be on the verge of destruction if it is not possible, by concentrating all its forces, to defeat the enemy troops advancing from the south and west. To do this, it is necessary to immediately remove all divisions from Stalingrad and significant forces from the northern sector of the front. The inevitable consequence of this should be a breakthrough in the southwestern direction, since with such insignificant forces it is impossible to organize the defense of the northern and eastern sectors of the front. And although we will lose a lot of equipment, we will be able to retain most of the combat-ready troops.” But the next day, Hitler gave the 6th Army the order to stand to the end and wait for help.

While German soldiers were dying in the snowy Stalingrad steppes, which reminded Rommel's veterans of the sands of the Sahara, OKH Chief of Staff Zeitzler tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Fuhrer to withdraw Paulus's army from the pocket. Hitler relied on new heavy tanks - “tigers”, hoping that they would be able to break through the encirclement from the outside. Despite the fact that these vehicles had not yet been tested in combat and no one knew how they would behave in the Russian winter, he believed that even one battalion of “tigers” could radically change the situation at Stalingrad. Kurt Zeitzler, realizing the absurdity of such expectations, on November 23 demanded that Hitler give the 6th Army the order to fight out of the encirclement while there were still reserves of fuel and shells. But Hitler, with the support of Keitel and Jodl, refused to make such a decision. In addition, Goering promised to supply the 6th Army with everything it needed by air.

The fate of Friedrich Paulus and the 6th Army was sealed. Captivity and defection to the enemy's side awaited him, and his soldiers - death in the bare steppe, in the ruins of Stalingrad, or, at best, surrender.

By order of Hitler, Stalingrad was declared a “fortress” that Paulus’s army was supposed to hold until the “victorious” end.

Paulus, following the orders of the command, regrouped, distributing the forces he had as follows: the 24th and 16th tank divisions held the northern sector of the front adjacent to the Volga, the 113th infantry and 60th motorized divisions were located to the left. Paulus entrusted the defense of the northwestern sector to the 76th, 384th and 44th infantry divisions. The 3rd Motorized Division was located on the southwestern ledge. Further south, the front was held by the 29th Motorized, 297th and 371st Infantry Divisions and the remnants of the 2nd Romanian Army. In Stalingrad itself, the 71st, 295th, 100th, 79th, 305th and 389th infantry divisions fought. Friedrich Paulus obeyed the Fuhrer's order, although the corps commanders demanded that he make a breakthrough, regardless of Hitler's decision. By November 24, the encirclement ring was thin, an attempt to break through it could bring success, it was only necessary to remove troops from the Volga Front. But Paulus obeyed the order and destroyed the 6th Army.

On November 27, the Fuhrer instructed Field Marshal von Manstein to prepare the relief of the 6th Field Army. But while he received reinforcements arriving from the Caucasus, Soviet troops expanded the outer ring and strengthened it. When Hoth's tank group made a breakthrough in the second half of December, it was able to break through the positions of the Soviet troops, and its advanced units were separated from Paulus by less than 50 kilometers. But Hitler forbade Friedrich Paulus to expose the Volga Front and, leaving Stalingrad, to fight his way towards Hoth’s “tigers,” which sealed the fate of the 6th Army.

On January 10, 1943, Colonel General Paulus, despite the hopeless situation of his army, refused to capitulate, trying to pin down the Soviet troops surrounding him as much as possible. On the same day, the Red Army began an operation to destroy the 6th Field Army of the Wehrmacht. In the last days of January, Soviet troops pushed what was left of Paulus' army into a small area of ​​the completely destroyed city and dismembered the Wehrmacht units still defending.

Hitler forbade the remnants of the 6th Army to break through to his own and refused to remove anyone from the cauldron except the wounded. Friedrich Paulus punished the Fuehrer Headquarters officer who was leaving with the last plane: “Tell wherever you find it possible that the high command betrayed and abandoned the 6th Army to its fate!” On the night of January 31, the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade and the 329th Engineer Battalion blocked the area where Paulus' headquarters was located. All telephone lines leading to the army commander's headquarters were cut. The last radiogram that the commander of the 6th Army received was an order to promote him to field marshal, which the headquarters regarded as an invitation to suicide. Early in the morning, two Soviet officers made their way into the basement of a dilapidated building and gave the field marshal an ultimatum. In the afternoon, Paulus rose to the surface and went by car to the headquarters of the Don Front, where Rokossovsky was waiting for him with the text of surrender. However, despite the fact that the field marshal surrendered and signed the capitulation, in the northern part of Stalingrad the German garrison under the command of Colonel General Stecker refused to accept the terms of surrender and was destroyed by concentrated heavy artillery fire. At 16.00 on February 2, 1943, the terms of surrender of the 6th Wehrmacht Field Army came into force.

Having been captured, Friedrich Paulus and his staff expected to be immediately shot, but their fears were unfounded. After the first interrogations, all captured generals of the 6th Army were sent to a camp in Krasnogorsk near Moscow. On April 25, 1943, Paulus and the generals were transferred to Suzdal and placed in a monastery converted into a prisoner of war camp.

In June 1943, Wilhelm Pieck visited the field marshal for the first time. The old communist stayed in Suzdal for almost two weeks, but he failed to persuade the field marshal or any of the officers to cooperate. A month later, Paulus and his former staff were transferred to a camp for captured Wehrmacht generals. Meanwhile, on July 13, 1943, in Krasnogorsk, Pieck managed to put together a national committee “Free Germany”. On September 11, in Lunev near Moscow, more than a hundred delegates from five prison camps and members of the Free Germany national committee created the Union of German Officers, the presidium of which included several Stalingrad generals.

The field marshal refused to join the union until the summer of 1944. On August 8, 1944, a representative of the Soviet command informed Paulus that his personal friend Field Marshal von Witzleben had been hanged in Berlin on charges of plotting against Hitler. On the same day, the field marshal made his famous address, and on August 14 he announced his desire to join the Union of German Officers.

On October 25, 1953, Paulus returned to Germany and on the same day left for Dresden, where he settled in a small mansion on Weisser Hirsch and began writing his memoirs. On February 1, 1957, Friedrich Paulus died.