Having fought with the Russians against Napoleon’s ill-fated 1812 invasion, Prussian Lieutenant-Colonel Karl von Clausewitz commented that his adversary’s failure was not due to operational overreach, but rather that the region ‘could be subdued only by its own weakness and by the effects of internal dissension’. At the end of 1941, Axis forces found themselves in a similar situation. Having advanced 1,000km into the Soviet Union over the previous six months, but unable to capture Leningrad and Moscow or hold Rostov-on-Don, they now had to maintain a 2,800km front line from near Murmansk on the Arctic Ocean to Taganrog on the Sea of Azov.
A repeat of the previous world war, in which Germany had inflicted such battlefield losses against Imperial Russia that it had triggered its economic and military collapse and prompted a revolution that removed the nation from the conflict, was not immediately in the offing. Bitterly cold weather and Soviet reserves that had been opportunistically transferred to the Moscow sector from the Far East enabled the Red Army to defend its country’s administrative and political centre and stabilize the front. With both sides having suffered considerable losses in men and materiel during the summer and fall, the resulting counter-attack proved unable to capitalize on its initial success and emulate Tsarist Russia’s success in rebuffing Napoleon’s ‘Grand Army’. Although the Germans maintained superiority in command and control, doctrine, and technology, their battlefield attrition and a lack of opportunities for rest, refitting, and reorganization similarly degraded their combat effectiveness. An ever-lengthening logistics chain was harassed by partisans and those enemy forces that had been bypassed, and severe manpower, materiel, and fuel shortages conspired to hamper further offensive operations for the foreseeable future.
Kampfgruppe elements of 25th Panzer Regiment (part of 3. Panzergruppe, Heeresgruppe Mitte), having just crossed the 1939 Soviet–German border on 22 June 1941. By early afternoon, this armoured column of several Panzer 38(t)s (towing fuel trailers), followed by a Panzer IV, Panzer 38(t), and Panzer II, would secure vital bridges over the Memel River at Olita. (NARA)
Although many German senior commanders favoured moving to a defensive stance along the Eastern Front for up to a year to regain their strength, Hitler would have none of it. Maintaining his incorrect assumption that the Red Army was on the verge of collapse, he ordered Chief of the General Staff, Generaloberst Franz Halder, to prepare for a spring invasion towards the Don and Volga rivers and into the Caucasus to secure the facilities that produced nearly 95 per cent of the enemy’s oil. Once controlled, the southern sector could serve as a springboard from which the Germans could renew their effort to encircle Moscow, this time from the south and east. Hitler’s delusions of Soviet weakness and German operational capabilities, however, were soon confronted with reality, much of it of his own making.
In part to maintain popular support and to avoid completely altering the nation’s situation to a war economy, domestic military production largely operated as if it were peacetime. Hitler’s pre-Barbarossa Directive 32 had reduced military asset production for the Army in favour of strengthening the Luftwaffe and Navy for another effort to eliminate Great Britain in 1940, and this necessitated more modest goals for the coming campaigning season in 1942. Instead of using Heeresgruppen Nord (North), Mitte (Centre), and Süd (South), as in 1941, only the latter could be allocated to offensive operations, and even then only at 80 per cent effectiveness compared to the previous year. Pressured to compensate for such deficiencies, Axis Italy, Rumania, and Hungary provided men and materiel as well.
On 5 April 1942, Hitler issued Directive 41, which defined German war aims for 1942 on the Eastern Front, including capturing Leningrad, securing the Crimean Peninsula, and cleaning up partisan-controlled rear areas to better focus on the summer’s primary combat operations. As a continuous front line could not be maintained in sectors that had been weakened, he further ordered that indigenous labour construct strong defences at key areas to protect logistics and communications from the Baltic to the Sea of Azov, including the cities of Gatchina, Luga, Pskov, Nevel, Smolensk, Roslavl, Bryansk, Poltava, Dnepropetrovsk, and Melitopol. To make the best use of limited resources the offensive was to be undertaken in three consecutive stages, comprising the capture of Voronezh and a thrust along the Don River, and a coordinating pincer movement east of Rostov-on-Don to encircle and eliminate Marshal Semyon Timoshenko’s South-West Front. With their rear thus secured, German spearheads would then encircle and destroy Soviet forces to the south and south-east of Rostov-on-Don, and strike for the coastal ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse to deprive the Black Sea Fleet of an anchorage, secure the area for German shipping, and establish direct communication with Turkey to assist with a possible invasion of the Middle East and link up with friendly forces advancing from North Africa.
During a training demonstration, a shaped-charge German magnetic mine is detonated against a captured Soviet T-34 Model 1943, which has all steel road wheels, a ‘hardedge’ turret (minus cupola), and no rear fuel tanks. Introduced in 1940, these simple, rugged vehicles presented an excellent balance of armour, firepower, and mobility, and were produced in considerable numbers during the war. (NARA)
On the anticipated successful conclusion of Operation Barbarossa, the Germans planned to establish a Reichskommissariat Kaukasus as a political entity once they had captured the region. Unlike the newly created Reichskommissariat Ostland and Ukraine, and the planned Moskowen and Turkestan, these ‘indigenous groups’ were initially to govern the North Caucasus as pro-German client states. Tasking his commanders with eliminating the Soviet ability to continue the war, Hitler determined that the large movements of encirclement conducted during the previous year allowed too many enemy formations to escape, and instead pushed for smaller, more numerous encirclement battles.
With little direction from Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, Army High Command) or insight beyond knowing he would receive an influx of new divisions and that his Heeresgruppe Süd command would eventually be divided during the coming offensive, on 29 April Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock and his staff formulated Directive 1 to implement Directive 41. Tasked with securing the front from Voronezh to the Don and Volga rivers and south into the Caucasus, 68 German and 25 allied divisions along a 725km front were at his disposal. In an effort to direct enemy attention to what was probably a better operational objective, the Germans implemented a disinformation campaign focused on another push to capture Moscow, something the Stavka (Armed Forces High Command) already believed was the most logical enemy option. As part of Operation Kremlin, the Germans successfully reinforced this mindset by issuing fake orders and sealed maps of the endeavour, and increased aerial reconnaissance over likely targets. During the May 1942 build-up, German divisions and higher commands were given cover names as part of an effort to confuse enemy intelligence.
The Soviet Union, like Germany, also struggled to produce sufficient fuel to maintain its military in the field. In anticipation of the Caucasus being overrun in late 1941, the Soviets had evacuated or rigged for demolition much of the drilling and related petroleum extraction equipment from around Grozny and Baku to prevent their reuse should they be captured. With Luftwaffe bombers already within range of Azerbaijan, should the Germans choose to destroy these facilities instead, existing fuel rationing would do little to avert a crippling blow to Soviet operational movement. As the Soviets’ oil pipelines in the region led east toward the Black Sea and Rostov-on-Don, what was moved north had to be transported on the Volga River on large barges. Should the Germans take the city of Stalingrad, which lay on the Volga, the Soviets would have to redirect millions of tons of oil east across the Caspian Sea to the Krasnovodsk shore, and then north to the Soviet heartland.
A Fieseler Fi-156 ‘Storch’ (‘Stork’) provides reconnaissance for advancing German forces on 1 July 1941. On 19 June 1942 Major Joachim Reichel (23rd Panzer Division) was carrying a copy of Operation Blau on such a plane when it was forced to land behind enemy lines. (NARA)
The oil question was becoming crucial for both combatant nations. To emphasize his intention, at a meeting of Heeresgruppe Süd’s senior officers at Poltava on 1 June 1942, Hitler stated that ‘If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must end this war.’ Nearly two weeks later, Halder reported that based on a land forces quartermaster’s assessment, fuel for the upcoming summer offensive was only expected to last until mid-September.
By June the Soviet counter-offensives, especially at Izium south of Kharkov, had been checked, and the Red Army subsequently moved to the defensive in operational terms. This concerned German senior commanders in case it indicated an enemy alerted to the coming offensive in the south, originally drawn up on 18 March 1942 as Operation Siegfried, and later changed to Blau. Such potential threats to security and surprise were only reinforced when on 19 June a Fieseler Fi-156 ‘Storch’ (‘Stork’) carrying 23rd Panzer Division’s 1st Generalstaboffizier (Chief of Staff Operations Division), Major Joachim Reichel, and a copy of Operation Blau, strayed over enemy lines and crashed. Faced with the prospect of such intelligence falling into the hands of the enemy and giving them sufficient time in which to respond effectively, Bock attempted to move up the offensive’s X-Day. Delays with getting Hitler’s consent, and rainy weather and the resulting mud, however, conspired to delay its start.
In the lead-up to Operation Blau, the German effort to equip participating formations with adequate amounts of motor transport had fallen short, due to inadequate domestic production, captured vehicles that required a nearly endless variety of replacement parts, and the frequently long distances needed to get to assembly positions. Despite intensive maintenance and repair efforts the spearhead divisions had at most 60 per cent of their organic complement. The supply situation during Blau’s opening segment appeared satisfactory, with sufficient ammunition and rations available for the second phase (Blau II), but petrol, oil, and lubricant reserves would likely be consumed by 15 July unless prioritized, and the continuation of the offensive would be dependent on current shipments. Having participated in Barbarossa, and more recently the winter fighting along the Mius River and elsewhere along the Eastern Front, most German formations struggled to rest and recuperate. The near constant Soviet pressure meant German formations were often unable to exit forward combat positions temporarily to rest, replenish, and train, or reposition to other sectors, which reduced their combat effectiveness. Armoured divisions suffered from a shortage of technicians and lorry drivers; and to relieve manpower shortages, Tatar, Caucasian, Georgian, Armenian, and Cossack prisoners were allocated to routine labour duties.
Having failed to defeat the Red Army during Operation Barbarossa (22 June–5 December 1941), by year’s end Germany had pushed to the gates of Leningrad in the north and to just west of Rostov. To facilitate the movement of conventional forces, especially during the early frontier battles, specially trained 'Brandenburger' units infiltrated enemy lines to secure bridges and sow confusion until relieved.
As the time for action approached, an extensive German training programme evolved in the immediate rear areas, with units alternating with auxiliary formations. Such efforts, including the general interest in the men’s welfare, translated into a sense of camaraderie among the ranks, where high morale and the inherent value of the individual soldier countered the unceasing efforts of enemy propaganda. During this period, SS Division (Motorized) Wiking focused on using experience gained the previous year, which included assault and shock training in any weather or time of day, while artillery practised rapid firing and barrages against moving targets. Unable to complete its rehabilitation by the start of the offensive, infantry was roughly at half-strength, although it drew additional units as they became available. Armoured units worked on inter-vehicle/unit fire and movement drills, in coordination with artillery, engineers, and Panzergrenadiers, while recovery personnel were instructed in vehicle removal while under fire and in providing ad hoc repairs. Engineers practised rapid mine removal under fire, armour destruction, and demolitions, and imparted these skills to Panzergrenadier personnel. The rear echelon organized a mobile, mechanized supply train that was capable of performing maintenance in a fast war of movement, and military police were given refresher training in traffic control, march discipline, and motor vehicle emergency service.
During this relative lull in the fighting, German observation and intelligence indicated that the Red Army remained active at night in developing fortifications and communication trenches, and in laying mines and other obstructions. Operations had not developed the skills necessary for effective all-arms fighting, and tactics remained unsophisticated, inflexible, and often costly due to the continued practice of employing reckless, massed infantry attacks. Individual soldiers, or small groups, either showed dogged tenacity in combat or were quick to avoid it. Soviet artillery and camouflage improved, and a large amount of flash and sound detection equipment had been distributed, while reconnaissance remained active, and tended to operate in specific sectors. Soviet discipline and morale were buoyed by political commissars, who provided a variety of tasks for enlisted personnel at company and platoon levels, including informing them of the tactical situation, political events, and building confidence in the military’s ‘unlimited resources’, while systematically tearing down the enemy’s capabilities and resolve. At higher echelons, staff commissars maintained close observation of officers and lower ranks to best guarantee adherence to orders and the political cause.
A French poster exhorting ‘Victory’ in ‘The Crusade against Bolshevism’ in 1942. Should the effort fail, it was stressed that the Soviet Union would overrun most, if not all, of Europe. (Bedos et Cie)
Transfer of 200-litre fuel drums from rail to Nachschubdienste (supply services) by road transport. Note the structural differences (dual reinforcing or two sets of three ribs). (NARA)
The offensive would be conducted by Heeresgruppe Weichs, comprising the Second, Fourth Panzer, and Second Hungarian armies, under Generaloberst Maximilian von Weichs. On 28 June, Bock issued the codeword ‘Dinkelsbühl’ (‘Dinosaur’), and the German southern offensive finally launched eastward from around Kharkov, the German forces having repelled the Soviet counter-attack of the second battle of Kharkov in May. In Blau’s initial phase, the Germans advanced on the important transportation and communication hub of Voronezh along the upper Don River, something the Soviets maintained was a stepping stone for a renewed assault on Tula and Moscow. As such, they were opposed by five Soviet armies, comprising South-western and Southern Fronts respectively under Marshal Timoshenko and Lieutenant-General Rodion Malinovsky, which had recently been considerably depleted during their ill-fated counter-attack near Kharkov. These still succeeded in hampering German progress, however, and in upsetting their carefully conceived timetable and resource allocation. Having flanked the Soviet line, Panzer divisions spearheaded a drive that cascaded southward as Bock carried out a classic series of rolling flank attacks, while also maintaining pressure along the middle Don River. As a result of Reichel’s recent crash landing, on 30 June the overall operation’s name was changed from Blau to Braunschweig (‘Brunswick’). Although the first campaign stage to capture Voronezh ended around 13 July, it did not receive a name change as did Blau II and Blau III, to Clausewitz and Dampfhammer (‘Steam Hammer’) respectively.
Stalin, the Stavka, and the General Staff continued to believe that the German offensive remained focused on Moscow. With the Soviets readying to resist north-east of Kursk-Voronezh, on 1 July Hitler’s staff, the OKW, announced that they had had begun a major offensive ‘in the southern and central sectors’ of the Eastern Front. Within a week, the Red Army faced a dilemma, as it became increasingly unlikely that Moscow was the goal. With the South-West Front dislodged between the Donets and Don rivers and pushed into and behind the flank of the neighbouring South Front, the Stavka – for the first time in the war – ordered a strategic retreat. On 6 July, Stalin demanded Voronezh be held at all costs in order to maintain control of the rail line linking Moscow with points south, but the city fell that day. To prevent the Germans from acquiring the Caucasus oil facilities, Stalin tasked his oil industry commissar, Nikolai Baibakov, with securing this vital strategic prize while maintaining supplies to the Red Army, to which the latter replied that the only way was to dismantle the essential equipment and transport it eastwards, continuing to pump and distribute fuel to the front until the last minute, and only then to destroy the oilfields. Stalin approved of the idea, responding that ‘if you don’t stop the Germans getting our oil, you will be shot, and when we have thrown the invader out, if we cannot restart production we will shoot you again.’
On 7 July, the formation that had been held in reserve since May, Küstenstab Asow (Coastal Staff Azov), lost its cover name as it was officially assigned as headquarters for a new Heeresgruppe A under Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm List, which was to use First Panzer Army to strike into the Caucasus. The following day, Heeresgruppe Süd provided Seventeenth Army and Third Rumanian Army, which were organized as a temporary command, Heeresgruppe Ruoff. To provide for the eastward offensive, Bock’s command was redesignated Heeresgruppe B on 9 July. With German forces having captured Sevastopol the previous week after an eight-month siege and secured the Crimea, Ploesti was now safe from Soviet bombers that could otherwise have used the ‘Soviet aircraft carrier’ (the Crimean peninsula) to deliver attacks. On 11 July, Hitler issued Directive 43, in which Erich von Manstein’s Eleventh Army was to cross the Kerch Strait and into the Taman Peninsula by early August. Under the code name Blücher, the operation was to secure the Black Sea ports of Anapa and Novorossiysk to deprive the enemy of their use, followed by an eastward thrust north of the Caucasus Mountains. If possible, a follow-up attack would push along the coastal highway via Tuapse. The Luftwaffe was to provide the Army with support and logistics, while naval forces in the Black Sea would offer indirect assistance as needed. Consideration was even given to using 22nd Infantry Division in a reprisal of its Luftlande (air landing) role when during the 1940 invasion of Holland it acted as a tactical response unit to quickly capture enemy airfields.
A portion of the estimated 103,000 Soviet soldiers captured on 14 August 1941 during the German encirclement around Uman. After similarly large numbers of Red Army prisoners taken during Barbarossa, including Kiev (665,000), Vyazma-Bryansk (663,000), and Smolensk (310,000), a year later such hauls would pale in comparison. (NARA)
A pair of Luftwaffe Horch Kfz 15 and a Sturmgeschütz III Ausf F8 or G on the Eastern Front. Note the track segments affixed to the assault gun’s rear, which imparted a degree of additional armour protection, and the Winterketten extensions to lessen the vehicle’s ground pressure in soft terrain. (NARA)
With Seventeenth Army having pushed around Rostov-on-Don to the north, stubborn successive Soviet rearguards prompted Hitler to redirect First Panzer Army from supporting Fourth Panzer Army’s eastward advance on 13 July to help secure crossings over the Don River to the south-west instead. In addition to the operational and logistic difficulties of securing physically divergent goals, the Germans’ limited fuel supplies slowed their advance tempo, as rationing and prioritizing limited vehicle usage and contributed to the Red Army’s ability to avoid becoming bypassed and eliminated, a tactic many of Stalin’s senior commanders, and British and American advisers, promoted. Three days later, with German forces having overrun a large tract of enemy territory from Voronezh and along the Don River to Rostov-on-Don, Hitler arrived at his Vinnitsa headquarters. Located along a proposed post-war German highway connecting Europe and the Crimean Peninsula, the Führer was also close to the respective command posts of Heeresgruppe B and A west of Poltava and Stalino.
Strong German armour formations from First Panzer Army pushed along the lower course of the Don River, intent on joining Panzer divisions of Fourth Panzer Army south of Millerovo to encircle and destroy Donets Front. Due to the barriers posed by the Donets and Don River tributaries, hilly terrain, and underdeveloped road infrastructure, the deployment was only half completed, and only one pincer was able to move through the large elements of Fifty-First and Thirty-Seventh Soviet armies to the east and south. Underestimating their enemy’s ability to retreat faster than they could advance, Fourth Panzer Army became entangled in the fight for Voronezh, which degraded the overall offensive’s tempo and enabled Timoshenko to escape to the south-east. As air transport had proven effective in supplementing ground-based logistics during the Norwegian campaign in April 1940 and Barbarossa in 1941, the Luftwaffe’s Junkers Ju 52 transport fleet flew in some 200 tonnes of fuel per day just to keep Sixth Army moving as it advanced southeast along the Don River, and was now some 100km from the Volga River and Stalingrad. Because several of the overrun airstrips were not near German railheads or established supply routes, construction, supply, and maintenance personnel and equipment often had to be flown into these areas to get them operational.
By 19 July, elements of Fourth Panzer Army had already reached the Don River’s north bank, with Grossdeutschland and 24th Panzer Division respectively some 100 and 200km east of Rostov-on-Don. Within the enclosing ring, the Soviet Ninth, Twelfth, Eighteenth, Thirty-Seventh, and Fifty-Sixth armies were being pushed back on the waterway and into the city. Over the next few days, Heeresgruppe A initiated a cascading movement that worked to steadily isolate Rostov-on-Don, using First Panzer Army in a wide clockwise movement on List’s left, while Heeresgruppe Ruoff would conduct a direct assault on the inside. Up to this point, the rapid German operational tempo had surprised its largely disorganized adversary, which spun the situation as an intentional effort to draw them into a trap. While superficially the campaign was progressing well, except for encircling large Soviet formations around Izium and later Millerovo, subsequent prisoner hauls were disappointing. Regardless, Hitler maintained that the uncoordinated Soviet retreat indicated effective resistance was coming to an end.