Episode 5 - A redhead leads a battalion of women at Kharkov facing General Paulus’ 6th Army

This episode we’ll join the 6th Army as it began to move inexorably towards the city that bore the name of the Soviet Union’s President and which be the grave for almost two million people. But first, we need to take a closer look at General Paulus who was to lead the army to its doom. Unlike other commanders such as Rommel, Guderian, Hoth and Halder, Paulus possessed what historian Anthony Beevor calls an exaggerated respect for the chain of command. He was an oddity in many ways, spending long nights bent over maps with coffee and cigarettes at hand. His hobby was drawing scale-maps of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia – something which you’d think would have given him some knowledge about the mistakes the Germans’ should avoid making. Apparently it did not. He first made his name as his Chief of Staff starting in 1939 in a relationship that appeared odd to outsiders. Reichenau almost looked the part of a thug, thick set and tough whereas Paulus was tall and very much the officer and a gentleman. With his advanced map reading skills, Paulus was part of the group of Generals who planned Operation Barbarossa and was eventually nominated by Reichenau to take over the control of the 6th Army which he did on New Years day 1942. We heard about that in the last podcast. One of the most memorable events of this battle was the role played by an all-women battalion which the Germans described as a bandit battalion led by a redhead. A senior NCO writing later said “The fighting methods of these female beasts showed itself in treacherous and dangerous ways. They lie concealed in heaps of straw, and shoot us in the back when we pass by..”