On 31 January 1943 Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army encircled at Stalingrad, surrendered with the southern part of his trapped army, a day after Hitler had promoted him to field marshal. No German field marshal had ever been taken prisoner before. Also on this day in 1919, Estonians and Finns won the Battle of Paju.
A field marshal who would not die
By the end of January 1943 the German 6th Army, encircled at Stalingrad since November 1942, had been driven back into the ruins of the city and split into a southern and a northern pocket. On 30 January Hitler promoted its commander, Friedrich Paulus, to field marshal. No German field marshal had ever surrendered, and the promotion was meant to make Paulus fight to the end.1
Paulus did not. In the morning of 31 January the army headquarters, in the basement of the Univermag department store on the city's Red Square, sent its last messages, and Paulus was captured there. He gave up with what was left of his troops in the southern pocket and became the first German field marshal ever taken prisoner. The cellar is now the Memory museum, a branch of the Stalingrad Battle museum-reserve in Volgograd.2
The northern pocket around the tractor works held out for two more days. Its surrender on 2 February ended the battle, and that day is told on 2 February in military history. The whole campaign is the subject of our article on the Battle of Stalingrad.3
Barvenkovo-Lozovaya offensive, 1942: the winter drive that made the Izyum bulge
31 January 1942 · 84 years ago
The Soviet South-Western and Southern Fronts attacked German positions around Barvenkovo and Lozova on the Eastern Front in World War II. The Red Army tore a gap in the German line, but the advance was then halted, leaving a salient later used for a failed drive on Kharkiv.
Read the full story of Barvenkovo-Lozovaya offensive, 1942: the winter drive that made the Izyum bulge ›Battle of Paju
31 January 1919 · 107 years ago
Paju, 1919: the road to Valga
On 31 January 1919, during the Estonian War of Independence, Estonian partisans of Lieutenant Julius Kuperjanov and Finnish volunteers of the Sons of the North regiment (Pohjan Pojat) attacked Paju manor, a few kilometers northeast of the railway town of Valga. The manor was held by Red Latvian Riflemen.4
The attackers were heavily outnumbered, and they took the manor only after hard fighting and at a heavy cost. Casualty figures differ widely: estimates of the Estonian and Finnish dead range from 42 to about 150. Kuperjanov was mortally wounded leading the attack and died in Tartu on 2 February.5
The victory opened the way to Valga, an important railway junction, and its capture pushed the front toward the Latvian border and shaped the course of the war. In the same years Poland fought its own war against Soviet Russia, which culminated in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920.6
