Schmidt held various positions in the
Heer, including chief of operations in
Fifth Army (25 August 1939 – 12 October 1939) and
Eighteenth Army (5 November 1939 – 1 October 1940). On 25 October 1940 he served as chief of staff in 5th Army Corps, a position he held until 25 March 1942, when he moved to the
Führerreserve at
Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH). Schmidt was appointed chief of staff to General
Friedrich Paulus in Sixth Army on 15 May 1942, replacing Colonel
Ferdinand Heim after the counter-attack against Marshal
Semyon Timoshenko at the
Second Battle of Kharkov. The British historian and author
Antony Beevor offers the following description of Schmidt:
Encirclement of Sixth Army at Stalingrad Despite Lieutenant-Colonel Niemeyer's frank and pessimistic area briefings, Schmidt severely underestimated the build-up and capabilities of Soviet forces at Stalingrad following the initial Axis successes, a failing that he – unlike Paulus – subsequently did not attempt to excuse. Ignoring Hitler's 'Führer instruction' of 30 June 1942 that Axis formations should not liaise with their neighbours, Schmidt authorised an officer from Sixth Army, Lieutenant
Gerhard Stöck, to be issued with a radio and join up with Romanian forces to the north-west of Stalingrad to help with intelligence gathering. Many false reports of the massing of Soviet forces were received from the Romanian sector, so when Stöck radioed at 5 a.m. on 19 November that an offensive (marking the start of Operation
Uranus, the Soviet encirclement of Axis forces) was about to begin, Schmidt, who was furious when disturbed by false alarms, was not informed, although he was awoken twenty minutes later when it became clear that this was no false alarm. Paulus and Schmidt realised that Sixth Army was encircled on 21 November. Evacuating their HQ at Golubinsky amid a bonfire of burning files and stores, they flew to Nizhne-Chirskaya that same day, just missing Hitler's order that "Sixth Army stand firm in spite of danger of temporary encirclement." At Nizhne-Chirskaya on 22 November, Schmidt told
8th Air Corps's commander, General
Martin Fiebig, that Sixth Army needed to be resupplied by air. He was told that "The Luftwaffe doesn't have enough aircraft." Later that day, Schmidt and Paulus held a conference attended by General
Hermann Hoth and Major-General
Pickert, When told that this was impossible, he replied that "more than 10,000 wounded and the bulk of the heavy weapons and vehicles would have to be left behind. That would be a Napoleonic ending." All the while, Paulus remained silent; the only time he spoke during the conference "was to agree with his chief of staff". On the afternoon of 22 November, Schmidt flew with Paulus to the new Sixth Army HQ at
Gumrak. That evening the Soviet encirclement of Axis forces was confirmed in a signal Paulus sent to Hitler. Schmidt contacted his corps commanders and, in defiance of Hitler's order to stand firm, they agreed with Schmidt that a breakout to the south was desirable. However, on 24 November Sixth Army received a further Führer order relayed from Army Group B, ordering them to stand firm. Schmidt commented: This decision to stand firm in a "hedgehog" defence sealed Sixth Army's fate. When presented with the commander of 51st Corps General
Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach's 25 November memorandum to Paulus, detailing plans for a breakout, Schmidt said: On 18 or 19 December, Major Eismann was sent by Field Marshal
Erich von Manstein to brief Paulus and Schmidt on Operation
Donnerschlag,
Army Group Don's plan, not sanctioned by Hitler, for the Sixth Army to break out and incorporate itself in Manstein's Army Group. Beevor states that it is unclear what happened at the meeting, except that Paulus, who still believed in the chain of command, refused to break out without a clear order to do so from a superior, something that the politically deft Manstein refused to give.
Schmidt as commander in the Kessel Interrogation of captured German officers led Soviet commanders to realise that, because of the toll of events on Paulus's nerves, Schmidt was the real commander of the defending forces. According to Beevor: Other historians, such as Mitcham, agree: The decision not to negotiate with the Soviet envoys who bore an ultimatum to Paulus on 8 and 9 January 1943, was, for example, made by Schmidt, not Paulus, as Colonel
Wilhelm Adam told one of the envoys, Captain
Nikolay Dyatlenko, during his post-battle interrogation. The envoys were even fired on; Paulus denied that he had ordered this, so it is possible that Schmidt might have issued the order. When General
Hans-Valentin Hube flew into the
Kessel [the encircled pocket of Axis forces in Stalingrad] on the morning of 9 January with Hitler's message to stand firm, "this strengthened General Schmidt's intransigent position at Sixth Army's headquarters." It has been suggested that much of the reason for Schmidt's ascendancy over Paulus lay in the fact that, unlike Paulus, Schmidt was a committed Nazi, and Paulus, afraid of Hitler and conscious of his responsibility for Sixth Army's catastrophic position, saw Schmidt as a cipher for the Führer whom he could placate. According to Pois and Langer: Hitler awarded the
Knight's Cross to Schmidt on 6 January 1943 – on the same day that Paulus signalled to General
Kurt Zeitzler: "Army starving and frozen, have no ammunition and cannot move tanks any more" – and made him
Generalleutnant on 17 January. Schmidt addressed Thiel in the same vein: Thyssen comments that both Paulus and Schmidt seemed to have forgotten Fiebig's statements on 21 and 22 November that the Luftwaffe would not be able to supply Sixth Army in the
Kessel. Schmidt and Paulus set up their HQ in the
Kessel underneath the Univermag department store on the city's Red Square. The signal sent from Sixth Army HQ on the evening of 30 January, that stated that soldiers were "listening to the national anthem for the last time with arms raised in the German salute", was, according to Beevor, much more likely to have been written by Schmidt than by Paulus. When the forces defending Sixth Army HQ surrendered on the morning of 31 January, Schmidt discussed surrender terms with officers from General Shumilov's HQ, while Paulus waited unaware in a room next door. Schmidt, together with Paulus and Colonel Adam, were taken to Don Front HQ at Zavarykino, where they were interrogated. When their baggage was searched for sharp metal objects, Schmidt, referring to Paulus, snapped at the Soviet officers: Prior to Paulus's interrogation, Paulus asked Schmidt how he should respond, to which Schmidt replied, "Remember you are a Field Marshal of the German Army," apparently (according to the Soviet interrogator) using the intimate
"du" form of address, although Captain Winrich Behr, who was familiar with the relations between the two men, considered this unlikely. ==Prisoner of war==