Friedrich Paulus Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus ( 23 September 1890 – 1 February 1957 ) was an officer in the German military from 1910 to 1945 . He attained the rank of " Generalfeldmarschall " ( field marshal ) during World War II , and is best known for commanding the Sixth Army in the Battle of Stalingrad , including the successful advance toward the city and the less successful attack in 1942 ( Case Blue ) stopped by the Soviet counter - offensives during the 1942 - 43 winter . The battle ended in disaster for Nazi Germany when about 265 , 000 soldiers of the Wehrmacht , their Axis allies , and the anti - Soviet Hilfswillige Russian volunteers were encircled and defeated . Of the 107 , 000 captured , only 6 , 000 survived the captivity and returned home by 1955 . Paulus surrendered to Soviet forces in Stalingrad on 31 January 1943 , a day after he was promoted to the rank of " Generalfeldmarschall " by Adolf Hitler . Hitler expected Paulus to commit suicide , citing the fact that there was no record of a German field marshal ever 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 . He moved to the German Democratic Republic ( East Germany ) in 1953 . Early life . Paulus was born in Guxhagen , Hesse - Nassau , the son of a school teacher . He tried , unsuccessfully , to secure a cadetship in the Imperial German Navy ( " Kaiserliche Marine " ) and briefly studied law at Marburg University . Military career . After leaving the university without a degree , he joined the 111th Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet in February 1910 . He married Elena Rosetti - Solescu on 4 July 1912 . 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 Macedonia , France and Serbia . By the end of the war , he was a captain . After the Armistice , 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 at Stuttgart as a company commander . He served in various staff positions for over a decade ( 1921 – 1933 ) and then briefly commanded a motorized battalion ( 1934 – 1935 ) before being named chief of staff for the Panzer headquarters in October 1935 . This was a new formation under the direction of Oswald Lutz that directed the training and development panzerwaffen or tank forces of the German army . In February 1938 Paulus was appointed Chef des Generalstabes to Guderian ' s new XVI Armeekorps ( Motorisiert ) , which replaced Lutz ' s command . Guderian described him as ‘ brilliantly clever , conscientious , hard working , original and talented ’ but already had doubts about his decisiveness , toughness and lack of command experience . He 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 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 ( OQu I ) . In that role he helped draft the plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union . Stalingrad . Paulus was promoted to General of the Armoured Troops and became commander of the German Sixth Army in January 1942 and led the drive on Stalingrad during that summer . Paulus ' troops fought the defending Soviet troops holding Stalingrad over three months in increasingly brutal urban warfare . In November 1942 , when the Soviet Red Army launched a massive counter - offensive , code named Operation Uranus , Paulus found himself surrounded by an entire Soviet Army Group . Paulus followed Adolf Hitler ' s orders to hold the Army ' s position in Stalingrad under all circumstances , despite the fact that he was completely surrounded by strong Russian formations . A relief effort by Army Group Don under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was launched in December . Following his orders , Paulus refused to cooperate with the offensive and kept his entire army in fixed defensive positions . Manstein told Paulus that the relief would be unlikely to succeed without assistance from Sixth Army , but Paulus remained absolutely 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 they held onto Stalingrad , an impossible task . For the next two months , Paulus and his men fought on . However , the lack of food , ammunition , equipment attrition and the deteriorating physical condition of the German troops gradually wore down the German defense . The battle was fought with terrible losses on both sides and great suffering . Crisis . On 8 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 , and repatriation to any country they wished after the war , terms that Rokossovsky was not in a position to guarantee . As part of his communication , Rokossovsky advised Paulus that he was in an impossible situation . Paulus again requested permission from Hitler to surrender . As before , Hitler rejected the request out of hand . Although it was obvious the Sixth Army was in an untenable position , Hitler ordered Paulus to hold " fortress Stalingrad " to the last man . After a heavy Soviet offensive overran the last emergency airstrip in Stalingrad on 25 January , the Russians again offered Paulus a chance to surrender . Paulus again requested permission to surrender . He informed Hitler that his men were without ammunition or food , and he was no longer able to command them . He also said that 18 , 000 men were wounded and were in immediate need of medical attention . Once again , Hitler ordered Paulus to hold Stalingrad to the death . On 30 January , Paulus informed Hitler that his men were hours from collapse . Hitler responded by showering a raft of field promotion s by radio on Paulus ' officers to build up their spirits and steel their will to hold their ground . Most significantly , he promoted Paulus to field marshal . In deciding to promote Paulus , Hitler noted that there was no known record of a Prussian or German field marshal ever having surrendered . The implication was clear : Paulus was to commit suicide . If Paulus surrendered , Hitler implied he would shame Germany ' s military history . Surrender . Despite this , and to the disgust of Hitler , Paulus and his staff surrendered the next day , 31 January . On the 2 February 1943 the remainder of the Sixth Army capitulated . Upon finding out about Paulus ' surrender , Hitler flew into a rage , and vowed never to appoint another field marshal again . He would , in fact , go on to appoint another seven field marshals during the last two years of the war . Speaking about the surrender of Paulus , Hitler told his staff : Paulus , a Roman Catholic , was opposed to suicide . During his captivity , according to General Max Pfeffer , Paulus said of Hitler ' s expectation : " I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal . " Another general told the NKVD ( the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union ) that Paulus had told him about his promotion to field marshal and said : " It looks like an invitation to commit suicide , but I will not do this favour for him . " Paulus also forbade his soldiers from standing on top of their trenches in order to be shot by the enemy . After Stalingrad and postwar . Although he at first refused to collaborate with the Soviets , after the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944 , Paulus became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime while in Soviet captivity , joining the Russian - sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany and appealing to Germans to surrender . He later acted as a witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials . He was allowed to relocate to the German Democratic Republic in 1953 , two years before the repatriation of the remaining German POWs who were held under the pretext that West Germany was not recognized by the Soviet Union , and were used for forced labor . During the Nuremberg Trials , Paulus was asked about the Stalingrad prisoners by a journalist . Paulus told the journalist to tell the wives and mothers that their husbands and sons were well . Of the 91 , 000 German prisoners taken at Stalingrad , half had died on the march to Siberian prison camps , and nearly as many died in captivity ; only about 6 , 000 returned home . From 1953 to 1956 , he lived in Dresden , East Germany , where he worked as the civilian chief of the East German Military History Research Institute and not , as often wrongly described , as an inspector of police . In late 1956 , he developed Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and became progressively weaker . He died within a few months , in Dresden , on 1 February 1957 , 14 years after the surrender at Stalingrad . As part of his last will and testament , his body was transported to Baden , West Germany to be buried next to his wife , who had died eight years earlier in 1949 , not having seen her husband since his departure for the Eastern front in the summer of 1942 .