With Paulus at Stalingrad

Colonel Wilhelm Adam, senior ADC to General Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, wrote a compelling and controversial memoir describing the German defeat, his time as a prisoner of war with Paulus, and his conversion to communism. Now, for the first time, his German text has been translated into English.

His account gives an intimate insight into events at the 6th Army headquarters during the advance to Stalingrad and the protracted and devastating battle for possession of the city. In vivid detail he recalls the sharp personality clashes among the senior commanders and their intense disputes about tactics and strategy, but he also records the ordeal of the German troops trapped in the encirclement and his own role in the fighting.

The extraordinary story he tells, fluently translated by Tony Le Tissier, offers a genuinely fresh perspective on the battle, and it reveals much about the prevailing attitudes and tense personal relationships of the commanders at Stalingrad and at Hitler’s headquarters. It deepens understanding of the German side of the fighting and explains the circumstances that led some German soldiers to ask fundamental questions about the cause they were fighting for.

Wilhelm Adam (1893-1978) fought in the German army in the First World War and joined the Nazi Party in the 1920s. During the Second World War he served as ADC to Generals von Reichenau and Paulus and he was captured along with Paulus by the Red Army at Stalingrad. He wrote his memoir of Stalingrad, with the assistance of Dr Otto Rhle, during his retirement in the 1960s.