EVIDENCE OF VON PAULUS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24800, 14 February 1946, Page 5

EVIDENCE OF VON PAULUS

GERMAN CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA

COMMANDER OF FORCES AT STALINGRAD

NUREMBERG, February 12. Tho plan to attack Russia was Hitler’s personal “brain • child,” said Field-Marshal von Paulus, under crossexamination by the defence at the war crimes trial. The German High Command had little alternative but to perfect the details and carry it out, he added. Those who executed Hitler’s plan of attack probably had as their motive good faith and love of the Fatherland, in spite of disturbing doubts about the moral issues involved. Vor._ Keitel’s counsel: Do you know that by your membership in the organisations accused here you are also among the accused? Von Paulus: I ask the tribunal to relieve me of the responsibility of answering questions directed against myself. Rejecting the appeal. Lord Justice Lawrence directed that the witness must answer questions.

Von Paulus then said that he accepted the command of the German 6th Army, the objective of which was to capture Stalingrad, in spite of his personal conviction that the operation was a criminal assault against the Soviet Union. He did this because it was his assignment as a soldier and because of extraordinary propaganda which had convinced him, in spite of his scruples, that he had a duty to the Fatherland. Von Paulus, under a renewed barrage of questions, admitted that if he contended he acted in good faith in carrying out his superiors’ orders, then other members of the High Command could lay similar claims. He held fast to the statement, however, that Russia had not planned an attack against Germany. German counter-intelligence, he claimed, would have known if such a move had been planned. Telegram to Hitler Ho expressed regret for a telegram which he sent to Hitler from Stalingrad expressing devotion to the Fuehrer. "I described the suffering of my soldiers as heroism because I did not want to think that so many were dying in vain.” he said. By the middle of January, 1943. he sent a message to Hitler protesting against the misery, suffering, cold, and hunger of his troops, which was beyond human endurance. Ten days before he caoitulated he sent a message to the High Command reauesting permission to surrender. Hitler’s reply stated categorically: “Capitulation is impossible. You will do your duty to the last •man ” The High Command reauired the 6th Army’s virtual suicide “while the lines of the Eastern Front are being straightened.”

Von Paulus admitted that in the autumn of 1942 the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff told him that he was in line for promotion. He denied that he knew that Hitler intended to appoint him as Jodi’s successor if he were victorious at Stalingrad. All the Nazis in the dock leaned forward intently while von Paulus, his face flushed with anger, defended his role in the Russian-sponsored “Free German Committee of Wehrmacht Prisoners.” Von Paulus denied that he became a teacher at the Military Academy in Moscow, and declared that he was imprisoned in a camp along with other German prisoners of war. Von Paulus agreed that he was a member of the German Freedom Committee in Russia which, he claimed, was a movement by German soldiers of all ranks who called on the German people “at the last moment before the abyss to end the Hitler Government, which had brought so much misery to the German people.” In reply to a question about Russian treatment of German prisoners, von Paulus said: “There was an incredible amount of propaganda which led to the suicide of so many Stalingrad officers and others that I feel it my duty to say ” Lord Justice Lawrence, interrupting, said: “The treatment of war prisoners in thp Soviet is not relevant. The tribunal will not hear it’’ The German counsel dumbfounded the court by replying: “I only wanted to ascertain how German war prisoners fared under the Red Army because so many families in Germany to-day are worried about their fathers and sons. I thought that, by obtaining information in this way, I could relieve their minds.” Losses at Stalingrad Further questioned, von Paulus disclosed that he lost 20 infantry and armoured divisions at Stalingrad, also two Rumanian divisions. Von Paulus left the courtroom by a rear door, not passing the dock.

The Soviet prosecutor (Mr Zorya), dealing with Rumania, submitted a statement in which the former Rumanian dictator, Antonescu, was quoted as saying that Hitler’s offer to begin war against the Soviet Union corresponded with his aggressive intentions, and he announced that he agreed to participate in the attack. General Buschenhagen, former Chief of Staff of the German forces in Norway, gave evidence about the preparations for Germany’s attack against Russia. He said that a supply route was built up through Norway to Petsamo and other Finnish ports, and conversations were held with the Finnish General Staff. Keitel and Jodi attended the last conference where final details of German-Finnish co-operation were laid down. Under cross-examination, Buschenhagen said that both he arid Falkenhorst. the German commander in Norway, regarded an order to shoot down Soviet commissars as criminal. Falkenhorst carried out the order because the commissars were always fighting to the last, and even if they were captured ‘.heir papers showing that they were commissars were destroyed.