“We must take the initiative again”: how Hitler tried to conquer the Caucasus and Baku

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On April 5, 1942, Adolf Hitler signed Directive 41—that is, Directive No. 21, The Fall of Barbarossa. The codename of the new plan was Fall Blau – “Blau” or “Blue”.

According to the Blau plan, in the summer and autumn of 1942, two main strategic goals were set for the German troops – to seize the regions in the lower reaches of the Volga and the Caucasus, thereby depriving the USSR of its supply of oil and oil products, and Moscow, the Western control of the same petroleum products to cut off its ties with Central Asia and Iran, where there are borrowing supplies from its partners.

Historians continue to debate how decisive Hitler’s choice of this direction could have been the economic problems facing Germany. The Führer might have feared the impending shortage of fuel he needed to wage a global war and hoped to replenish these stocks with Baku oil and also to seize the oil refineries in Tuapse, Maikop and Grozny, but at the same time, everyone understood. During the retreat, Soviet troops will most likely blow up or disable all this infrastructure, and it will take a long time to provide supplies. In addition, oil products in the USSR were produced by Western standards of such low quality that German equipment, as a rule, could not use – processing was necessary in Germany itself. Thus, the need to seize oil fields was determined, apparently, by the desire, first of all, to deprive the enemy army of fuel supplies. For this, it was also necessary to exclude the supply of oil along the Volga, which the Germans had to seize or at least prevent the strategically important city of Stalingrad in this sense.

However, in the summer of 1942, a joint-stock company “German Oil in the Caucasus” was formed in Germany together with the German troops, the oilmen advanced to Baku and Grozny, ready to support the continued operation of the captured oil fields and, in addition to Soviet oil, to the German people because of the fertile land. The provision of food was also planned.Don and Kuban. According to Alfred Rosenberg, the “chief ideologue” of the Third Reich, Reich Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories, the southern regions of Russia were to become the “breadbasket of the German people” in the future.

One way or another, but in drawing up a new plan, Hitler rejected the proposals prepared by Marshal Küchler to seize Leningrad, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Colonel General Halder, who proposed to focus on capturing Moscow and central industry. The region up to the Volga. It was the Moscow direction that Stalin himself considered the most important target for the upcoming Hitler campaign, from which he was seriously deceived as a result. Even the real plans of the German command, which accidentally fell into the hands of the German command, failed to persuade Stalin, who ignored the main blow and saw all this as deliberate disinformation:

On June 19, Major Reichel, flying in a light aircraft, violating all instructions, received detailed plans for the upcoming attack, was shot down near the front line, after which the documents fell into the hands of the Soviet leadership.

In the directive No. 41 itself, all these facilities are expressed as follows: “The winter campaign in Russia is coming to an end. Thanks to the extraordinary courage of the soldiers of the Eastern Front and their readiness for self-sacrifice, our defensive actions were crowned with the great success of German guns … Given the superiority of the German command and German troops, we must take it again. to take the initiative and impose our will on the enemy as soon as weather and terrain conditions allow. The aim is to finally destroy the forces held by the Soviets and deprive them as much as possible of the most important military and economic centers… The general initial plans for the campaign in the East remain in effect: the main task is to maintain the situation in the north, in the central sector, It is to take Leningrad and make land contact with the Finns and make a breakthrough in the Caucasus on the southern flank of the front.

During the offensive, it was planned to use the already classic tactic of a rapid attack – “blitzkrieg”: tank breakthroughs with the support of attack aircraft, followed by the destruction or capture of besieged enemy units. At the same time, the most important role was given to aerial reconnaissance, carried out with the help of high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. With full air superiority, the German command almost always had detailed information on the location and movements of Soviet troops, while for the Stalinist Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, enemy actions often remained a mystery.

As a result of the implementation of the Blau plan, Army Group A, led by Marshal Wilhelm List, as part of the 17th and 1st German Panzer Armies, went to Rostov, and then to the North Caucasus, planning to further capture Transcaucasia. First of all, the Baku oil fields and the armies of Group B under the command of Field Marshal Fyodor von Bock, as part of the 6th and 4th German tank armies, were to advance to Stalingrad and later to Astrakhan. This second group also included the 8th Italian and the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies. After the alleged breakthrough and liquidation of the Bryansk Front, it was planned to capture Voronezh, then turn south and move German troops along the right bank of the Don, where the Southwestern and Southern fronts had access to the rear of the Soviet troops. A successful combination of circumstances develops the success of the offensive against Stalingrad and the Caucasus. At the second stage, it was planned to seize Rostov-on-Don and advance to Maikop, Grozny and Baku.

The offensive, which began on June 28, initially developed very successfully for the Nazis, and Stalin’s mistake in determining the direction of the main attack made their task much easier: tank troops quickly approached, with the support of aviation, almost without serious resistance. Voronezh crossed the Don and occupied most of the city by 6 July. Poorly prepared attacks of the Soviet troops in the absence of proper reconnaissance and communications made it possible to tear the tank formations into pieces.

However, the complete capture of Voronezh did not happen, as the Soviet troops still managed to gain a foothold on the left bank of the Don and continue separate offensive operations. There were clashes on the outskirts of the city, attempts were made to liberate the right bank, so part of the German troops was trapped in this area and could not carry out further attacks. Paulus’ sixth army was forced to continue advancing towards the Volga without the support of the tank forces.

The success of the Blau plan was, therefore, very short-lived – primarily due to the underestimation of the remaining forces in the Red Army and the moral stamina of the Soviet soldiers.

It turned out that the logistical problems of the German army were crucial, connected above all with very long supply routes, and there was clearly a shortage of manpower and equipment for such large-scale operations. In addition, the population of the occupied territories, for the most part, had a negative attitude towards the occupation policy of the Nazis – the partisan movement organized from the Center grew and expanded, causing great damage to all extended communications. Finally, significant delays before the start of a full-fledged offensive were due to the heroic defense of Sevastopol by the Soviet troops who still remained in the Crimea – this lasted several critical weeks and shackled the significant forces of the Nazis on the peninsula.

Despite the vast territories captured by the Germans during their offensive in 1942, all this required such significant efforts from them that they exhausted the army and undermined the morale of the troops. Each stage of the plan was carried out at the expense of a lot of casualties, and the Soviet troops successfully changed their combat tactics – now they avoided falling into the “cauldrons”, skillfully maneuvered, took the defense and continued whenever possible. counterattack. During the implementation of the Fall Blau, it was not possible to encircle and destroy a single large formation of Soviet troops.

In the future, the offensive was to be carried out along the entire tense Eastern Front in southern Russia – from Taganrog along the Donets River, and then in the direction of Kharkov and Kursk. However, the operation in the Caucasus did not bring the necessary success – and although the date of the capture of Baku was even set – September 25, 1942 – the Germans failed to penetrate Transcaucasia and the Middle East, and the subsequent implementation of the Blau plan led to the completion of the defeat of the Wehrmacht troops near Stalingrad. As a result, the southern 250,000th group led by Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus disappeared in early 1943, and more than 90,000 German and Romanian soldiers were killed. caught. After the Battle of Stalingrad, a radical change occurred that changed the entire course of the Second World War.

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