During the summer of 1942 Hitler and OKH had split Germany's Army Group South in two. Army Group A represented the linchpin of the German strategic effort. Army Group A's objectives included the Maikop oil fields (captured during August, albeit after being thoroughly demolished), the Grozny oil refineries, and the Baku oil fields. Together, these oil fields and refineries constituted the overwhelming majority of the Soviet Union's sources of oil.
On November 23,1942, and following the November 19, 1942 beginning of Operation Uranus, the spearheads from the Soviet Southwest and Stalingrad fronts, met at Kalach to Stalingrad’s west. They had cut off the entire German 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzer Army in a massive pocket. Following a belated and thwarted German relief effort the final role for the formerly proud and merciless 6th Army was to tie down the Soviet armies around Stalingrad as German Army Group A completed its withdrawal from the Caucusus.
