As Rokossovsky’s attack continued, losses mounted on both sides. German wounded lay unattended because of a lack of medical supplies, and morale inside the pocket rapidly began to plummet. During the final week of January, the carnage reached new heights as the pocket was steadily reduced. Soviet shells rained down everywhere within the pocket, forcing the starving defenders to seek shelter in the cellars of the ruins that were once Stalingrad.

The final blow for the Sixth Army came on January 25, when Gumrak airfield was lost. With the fall of Gumrak, the Sixth Army was completely isolated, and supplies would have to be airdropped. Making matters worse, there were now more than 20,000 wounded inside the pocket, with an equal number of men too sick or malnourished to bear arms. A sense of hopelessness now pervaded the highest levels in the entrapped army.

On January 26, the Sixty-second and Twenty-first Soviet armies linked up to split the pocket in two. The XI Army Corps, under General der Infanterie Karl Strecker, anchored itself around the tractor works in the northern part of the city. A larger pocket, consisting of the Sixth Army headquarters, the VII and LI Army Corps and the XIV Panzer Corps, was centered in an area around the railroad station. Another formation, the IV Army Corps, had been destroyed earlier in the day.

By now, some commanders were taking it upon themselves to end the killing. General der Infanterie Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, commander of the LI Army Corps, repeatedly asked for Paulus’ permission to surrender during the last week of January. When his pleas were refused, he ordered his troops to expend all of their ammunition, making any further resistance impossible.

January 29 saw the Soviet forces destroy the XIV Panzer Corps and further reduce the German pocket. By now, the meager rations of the Sixth Army were being given only to those capable of fighting, leaving nothing to sustain the wounded, and the command structure within the pocket had almost completely collapsed.

At midday on January 30, the newly appointed Field Marshal Paulus was taken prisoner. His sense of duty still held firm; taken before Maj. Gen. Laskin, chief of staff of the Sixty-fourth Army, Paulus surrendered only his immediate staff. He was then driven away to a lengthy captivity. He was held under house arrest in Moscow until 1953.

The commanders of the VIII Army Corps, Generals Seydlitz-Kurzbach and Walther Heitz, surrendered their commands on January 31, but Strecker’s XI Army Corps still held out in the northern pocket. Finally, Strecker’s division commanders convinced him of the futility of further resistance. On February 2, Strecker surrendered with 33,000 men. The XI Army Corps had begun the battle for Stalingrad with 80,000 troops.

On December 18, there had been approximately 249,000 officers and men inside the Stalingrad pocket. Of that number, 42,000 sick, wounded and specialists were flown out before the last airfield fell. Another 85,000 lay dead on the battlefield, leaving about 122,000 German soldiers, and their Italian and Romanian allies, to surrender. Only about 6,000 men ever returned home. The rest lay buried somewhere in the Soviet Union.

After the war, Paulus reflected on his decisions at Stalingrad: “What convincing and solid arguments could have been brought forward by the Commander-in-Chief of the Sixth Army for his conduct contrary to orders in the face of the enemy, especially when he had no way of knowing the eventual outcome?…Does the prospect of one’s own death or probable destruction or the capture of one’s troops relieve one of the responsibility of soldierly obedience?…Before the troops and officers of the Sixth Army as well as before the German nation I bear the responsibility that I carried out the orders to hold on issued by the supreme command until the collapse.”

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Author Pat McTaggart is an expert on the war on the Eastern Front. For further reading try: Stalingrad, by Paul Carell; and Lost Victories, by Erich von Manstein.[ TOP ] [ Cover ]

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