![]() No one in September would have ventured to consider today’s epilogue as a faint possibility, let alone to predict it. A stunning chapter of the war is drawing to a close. General Paulus, appointed marshal yesterday, has ended all resistance today. In Bucharest, Iosif Hechter recorded in his journal: News of Hitler’s humiliation spread quickly. Stalin signalled General Rokossovsky to say, ‘I congratulate you and the troops of the Don Front on the successful completion of the annihilation of the enemy forces surrounded at Stalingrad’. Newly promoted Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered on 31 January 1943, and the 6th Army ceased to exist after the loss 60,000 - 100,000 dead and 120,000 starving, frostbitten POWs. ![]() German commander Von Manstein’s efforts to break through to the beleaguered 6th Army were nullified by Hitler’s stubborn refusal to allow them to break out. During the second week of January, he had managed to secure two and half weeks’ worth of rations for his division from the last airfield before it was overrun, it had done them no good. Binder, who was photographed on Christmas Eve, at that stage looked far from malnourished. Deputy Chief Quartermaster Karl Binder from the 305th Infantry Division managed to get 30 miles to the west of Stalingrad before his group was caught by the Red Army at Karpovka. Breaking west, they were swiftly killed or captured. ![]() The Army requests permission to surrender so as to save the lives of those that remain.Ī few desperate bands of German soldiers attempted to escape their fate. We have 18,000 wounded who are without any kind of bandages or medicines at all. ![]() There are signs of disintegration on the southern, western and northern fronts. We have contact with some elements of six divisions only. The commander of the 297th Infantry Division, General von Drebber was taken in his command post. Other generals took their own lives or were overrun and captured. General von Hartmann, commanding the 71st Infantry Division, was shot in the head during the bitter close-quarter fighting. Paulus’ divisional commanders did everything they could. ![]()
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