July and August of 1942: Why Operation Blue Began to Falter

Traditional accounts of Germany's 1942 summer offensive on the Eastern Front (codenamed Operation Blue) describe the tyranny of time, space, and distance all working together to undermine German efforts. Couple that with the Red Army's wise decision to pull back, draw the Germans in, and only then stand and fight, using its superior size and strength to beat the Axis forces, and you have a conventional wisdom that proved surprisingly enduring.

As it turns out a huge chunk of this conventional wisdom has already been proven to be more myth than reality. But a significant part of it is still held in high regard: that being the pre-existing quantitative reasons why the clock, as early as July of 1942, was already running out on the second German attempt to hamstring the Soviet armed forces effectively enough to allow Axis forces to seize the wealth of natural resources in Southern Russia and the Caucuses. In this article we shall examine the quantitative elements then in play. What we will find is that the Germans had all the resources they needed for Blue to continue with the great success it enjoyed during its first phase (itself an extension of the immense German victories on the southern sector of their Eastern Front during the spring of 1942). Instead, the German high command squandered the campaign's promising start via a series of horrible decisions that dissipated German strength at the exact moment it should have been concentrated to deliver the final blow.

During July's second week the second of Blue's four phases began as the bulk of Army Group South's hitting power (The German Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army) moved southeast toward Millerovo on the Donets River, and Kalach, on the Don Rive. Though Axis forces would capture the bulk of the Donets Basin, the great prisoner hauls that had been anticipated failed to materialize. Much like the year prior, and events following Barbarossa's initial lunge into the Soviet interior, a combination of command disputes and logistical failures played the key role in undermining the German advance.

For instance, though the German spearheads mangled the Soviet Southwestern and Southern Front's 9th, 21st, 28th, and 38th Armies - the Germans failed to destroy them. In addition, and though Axis forces including the German First Panzer Army, Seventeenth Army, and Romanian Third and Fourth Armies opened Blau II on July 7th by tearing through the Red Army's defensive front before Rostov (while capturing the city within just two weeks) they had missed out on eliminating the bulk of the Soviet forces gathered nearby. To that end, the First Panzer and Fourth Panzer Armies had attempted to forge multiple encirclements but achieved only decidedly modest results. Perhaps the most noteworthy losses the Red Army suffered in mid-July came when Mackensen’s III Panzer Corps, acting as First Panzer Army's spearhead, took 33,000 Soviet prisoners of war against only 251 dead and 1,134 wounded.

The German high command proved a big part of the problem. Interference from OKH and Hitler hindered Bock’s drive on Rostov, as well as the additional and initial push from the Don toward the Volga. Moreover, interference from the German high command combined with the threadbare logistical support given the German panzer army's to deny them the operational freedom to maneuver that could have led to the complete destruction of Soviet forces in the region (including those Soviet forces who had otherwise managed to escape from the first battles near the Don River). There is no question that the Red Army fought hard. Nevertheless, more was at play here in the series of incomplete victories with which Operation Blue had begun. In addition, it is also important to note that the Red Army was taking a beating. This pointed even further toward what could have been had the Germans properly resourced their campaign and had made it the true Schwerpunkt of their efforts during the summer of 1942.

For example, of the 1,715,000 men the Red Army had deployed against Army Group South between June 28 and July 24th they lost 568,347 (370,522 killed or missing and 197,825 wounded or sick). In addition, between June 21st and July 31st the Germans claimed they had taken 309,998 prisoners of war (with another 180,933 seized during August). These prisoner hauls and losses did not equate to what had happened during Barbarossa's first month, however, and if anything, the results for the Soviet Union were even worse given territorial and population losses to the Axis forces as of late July of 1942.  All told, nine Soviet army's had been decimated or destroyed in Blue's first month. Even elite Soviet formations, like the 13th Guards Rifle Division and 15th Guards Rifle Division, were down to 387 and 325 men respectively. In addition, during Blue's initial four weeks the Germans had taken or destroyed 2,436 Soviet tanks, 13,716 guns and mortars, and 783 aircraft. For example, The Soviet 24th Tank Corps went from 141 operational tanks on June 28th to 21 such tanks on July 20th, and other tank corps were in equally dire straights.

It must also be remembered that these Soviet losses occurred during the initial weeks of the exploitation phase of Blue. Thus, had the Germans logistically backed Blue by backing off on the other commitments draining its momentum then the Red Army's position in Southern Russia could have already been effectively destroyed. In particular the Germans failed to allocate existing fuel stocks in an efficient manner. As a result and time and again German combat formations facing nothing but open steppe before them were left sitting for lack of fuel - instead of pinching off escape routes allowing the skeletons of crushed Soviet formations to retreat to be rebuilt.

Already in July of 1942 the Luftwaffe was being forced to airlift 200 tons of petrol, fuel, and oil to the lead German panzer divisions on a daily basis. That said, and much like in North Africa, the regions east and south of Rostov were severly lacking in the transportation infrastructure needed to support entire Army Groups. However, it was well within German means to overcome the fact that rail lines were nowhere near adequate even in comparison to elsewhere in Russia no less Western European standards. But this was true only if the Germans had sought to concentrate their efforts where they were most strategically important, and not spreading that logistical effort on two entirely seperate axis of advance (in North Africa and Southern Russia). In a replay of what had happened the year before, by October of 1942 the German Sixth Army was getting only half the number of supply trains needed to fuel and support it. The Luftwaffe and truck transport could have made this up, but not when the Luftwaffe and Germany's truck fleet was also being tasked with supporting Rommel's forces at the end of a thousand plus mile supply line. Something had to give. Considering how tantalizing close the Germans came to securing most of Blue's objectives (not least of which was cutting the Soviet Union off from its economic foundation) this failure to prioritize is all the more glaring.

Moreover, at the same time the German command was not only dispatching huge quantities of oil, munitions, and other supplies to Rommel they were also sending him thousands of men to beef up his Panzerarmee all while key formations from Army Group South, like the German Second Army, were getting almost nothing. For instance, even though the German Second Army (tasked with guarding Blue's northwestern flank) was hit with a Third Voronezh Counteroffensive in August of 1942 (an offensive it would duly defeat at the cost to the Red Army of 2,861 prisoners of war taken and 501 tanks lost) and suffered nearly 6,000 casualties the German Second Army was sitting on overall shortfalls of 55,032 men in its ranks. Again, this wasn't because the manpower was lacking. These shortages stemmed from the German high command's decision to send reinforcements elsewhere. As a result, Army Group South was forced to leave panzer divisions with the Second Army that should have been buttressing the spearheads moving on the Volga or into the Caucuses. Though the German command did send 71,000 replacements to Army Group South in July of 1942, that was all that had been deemed appropriate even though there were six German field armies locked in strenuous combat and a high tempo of operations.

Now, the one aspect of poor German decision-making that typically gets attention at this time was the sheer folly behind the July 1942 decision to ditch the original planning for Blue. To that end, rather than properly resourcing a single drive on the Volga which only then was to be followed by the subsequent push into the Caucuses the Germans had decided to do both at once. On July 13th the German high command split Army Group South into Army Group A and B (with this order formalized in Directive Number 45 ten days later) even though the preconditions for that planned for move hadn't yet happened (namely reaching the Volga and isolating Stalingrad). Army Group B received orders to complete the tasks originally ordered for Blue's first phase even though it had been reduced to consisting of the bulk of the allied Axis armies as well as the German Second and Sixth Armies (with the latter admittedly the most powerful army in the world at that time).

Meanwhile Army Group A, then including the German Eleventh, and Seventeenth Armies as well as the First and Fourth Panzer Armies would begin its advance early. This diversion and dispersion of resources within a larger strategic context of diverted military power and resources would prove fatal to Blue's chances for success. This is well known and a key component in the argument that the Germans didn't have enough resources to accomplish their most important goals. Regardless, that's the problem with the conventional wisdom. The Germans did in fact have the resources. For instance, as bad as this decision was had the Germans not been: contemporaneously fully backing a drive into Egypt that had already irreversibly stalled out without the infusion of substantial additional reinforcements or had they not been launching an offensive with significant armored forces in Army Group Center's area of operations, had they not been already moving toward the soon to be realized dissolution of the German Eleventh Army and scattering of its veteran combat divisions across the map, had they not been pulling divisions from Army Group South and sending them to France, had they not been building up a large air based anti-shipping effort in the Arctic Circle, and so on...then they would have likely been able to overcome the premature splitting of Army Group South and dispersion of resources within Southern Russia. But combine that with everything else, and you can see how that if the Germans could get out of their own way then the Second World War might have been an even more godawful mess for the Allies than it was in reality.

For example, German Army Group Center's Operation Whirlwind from August 11th-24th (ostensibly designed to eliminate a Soviet salient in Army Group Center's front line) saw the German Second Panzer Army deploy five panzer (including the 11th Panzer Division that as of July had been with Army Group South), one motorized, and six infantry divisions (all told some 500 tanks and assault guns) in an effort that never should have been launched for a whole host of reasons - not least of which being the Soviet Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive that overlapped Whirlwind and fatally diluted its strength. Whirlwind failed (though the Germans still managed to take 17,000 prisoners of war from the Red Army) and cost the German Second Panzer Army 26,894 casualties at a time when those men could have otherwise been put to far better use. Worse yet, at the same time the Germans also pulled from Blue an SS Motorized Division, the 257th Infantry Division, and 22nd Infantry Division to send them all to either Western Europe or (in the case of the 22nd Infantry Division) Greece and the Aegean islands.

By the middle of August of 1942 Army Group South (now A and B) had given up 11 of the original 72 German divisions provided to the campaign (four each to Army Groups North and South and three sent to Western Europe or the Mediterranean). This included four panzer or motorized divisions representing a quarter of Army Group South's original armored strength. Though three Italian and four Romanian divisions had replaced them (with eight more Romanian divisions on the way) Germany's Axis allies simply did not have the organization, equipment, and skill set ready to take on the Red Army's tank heavy forces on the open steppe. Moreover, given the dramatically slim margins around which the fighting to develop in Stalingrad and the Caucuses was ultimately decided any of these redeployment decisions regarding German forces had they not been made likely would have tipped the scales to the German forces in Southern Russia. And all of this was happening on top of the huge resources being committed to the Mediterranean. Thus, what is remarkable is not that the Germans chose to pursue other goals at the same time - its that they seemed to be almost choosing to wholesale undermine Blue - whose overarching objectives were the only one's of any of the campaigns then being pursed by the Germans that would have had a strategic impact on the war's outcome.

As a result in August of 1942 the German Sixth Army, which should have been powering across the open steppe between the Don and Volga Rivers instead found itself denuded of support from the Fourth Panzer Army and an ongoing lack of proper logistical backing. In fact, it had been so slowed by the German high command's diversion of efforts elsewhere that this gave time to the Red Army to pull together armored forces totalling 1,239 tanks. These tanks, and the manpower that came with them, forced the Sixth Army (with 251 armored vehicles) to fight hard for what could have far more easily been done at a fraction of the price days and weeks prior. Thus, instead of facing disorganized, routed Soviet forces on flat steppe that was virtually perfect for large scale armored operations, the fuel starved German Sixth Army faced not only the Stalingrad Front's 1,239 tanks but also substantial Soviet manpower in the form of the 62nd, 63rd, and 64th Armies (with nearly half, or 550, of the front's tanks in the newly forming 1st and 4th Tank Armies).

Leading the way for the Stalingrad Front were Major-General V.I. Kolpakchi’s inexperienced 62nd Army and forty two year old General Vasili Ivanovich Chuikov’s 64th Army. Chuikov himself was a decorated, veteran combat officer with military experience reaching back two decades as well as being a graduate of the prestigious Frunze Academy. His 64th Army was a different story, as raw and unprepared for facing the German Sixth Army as the Stalingrad Front's other formations. Perhaps it is no surprise that when on July 24th the Sixth Army launched a massive combined arms assault the Germans shot through the 62nd Army's right flank, crushed two Soviet rifle divisions and motored straight for the Don River while another German thrust penetrated the 62nd Army's left flank.

The Soviet 1st and 4th Tank Armies countered. But these new formations were absolutely mauled by German combined arms teams heavily backed by close air support. The Germans shattered the 62nd Army's six rifle divisions and put half the Stalingrad Front's tank park out of action. By August 8th the Sixth Army took 57,000 prisoners and captured or destroyed 1,000 tanks (a total that would rise to 80,000 prisoners of war and 1,430 tanks destroyed or captured by the end of the month) but becuase of the premature acceleration of Blue's timetable Paulus had been forced to carefully marshal his forces and deal with the Stalingrad Front's component Armies in sequential rather than a comprehensive fashion.

Hitler and OKH were forced to order the Fourth Panzer Army to wheel around from Army Group A and waste time marching back to Army Group B to assist Sixth Army. This also meant that Army Group A was not only in the process of losing the German Eleventh Army but also the five German and four Romanian Divisions in the Fourth Panzer Army. Add in the highly unimaginative and questionable use of the German Seventeenth Army during the campaign in the Caucuses and you have several key reasons why in November 1942 Army Group A would fall an agonizingly several hundred meters short of securing the bulk of its objectives while Army Group B was doing the same in Stalingrad.

In the meantime and in August of 1942 the German command had also hamstrung itself by further denuding Army Group B’s northwestern flank via clearing out several German divisions (for use by the Sixth Army in Stalingrad) while slotting in the poorly equipped Italian Eighth Army to replace the German troops on the Don River defensive line. The Red Army immediately responded by attacking the seam between the Italian forces and Sixth Army. Soviet forces were able to thus seize bridgeheads over the Don in a week long battle late in August at Serafimovich and another at roughly the same time at Kremenskaya. Meanwhile, additional Soviet efforts to repeat those successes floundered time and again. For instance four offensives near Kotluban during September and October (launched against Sixth Army's flanks) would prove fruitless. As would most Soviet efforts against the Sixth Army's southeastern flank though one in particular (launched against Romanian forces) would provide a singular example of what was possible if the Red Army concentrated its efforts against Germany's Axis allies.

Though ny August of 1942 the German Sixth Army had been transformed into the strongest army in the world, deploying 22 divisions and supporting units - it hadn't needed to be if the Germans had followed their original plan. In all likelihood had they done so Stalingrad likely would have been theirs, no less isolated, by mid-August. Instead the Sixth Army had to continue laboriously taking apart the Stalingrad Front, which though resisting gamely had been beaten nearly into submission. For instance, the 62nd Army's 184th and 196th Rifle Divisions had begun the battle with 12,903 and 11,428 men respectively. By July 30th the most the 184th Rifle Division could muster was 1,196 men while the 196th Rifle Division had incurred 7,142 casualties. In addition the Stalingrad Front's tank park had gone from fielding 1,239 tanks on July 22nd to only 250 tanks in mid-August. Meanwhile the Southern Front could only put 200 tanks into the field against the increasing German armored assets bearing down on both fronts.

Thus, though the Germans could and did pound the Soviet army’s east, their resistance provided the time for Stavka to funnel in reserves and slow the Germans. In fact, because of German command decisions not only was Blue's exploitation phase prematurely shortened, but Stavka received the time it desperately needed to raise reserves armies and deploy some (like those in the Stalingrad Front) while others prepared for even grander counterstrokes yet to come against Army Group B's flanks. All the while the German Sixth Army was taking losses as well. For instance between July 21st and August 31st it endured 38,553 casualties. And this was only a preview of what was to come in the fall. Losses that in large part could be attributed to not only the Red Army's fierce and determined defensive effort, but the litany of German mistakes paving the way for the Red Army's renaissance.