The Germans’ summer offensive in southern Russia, 1942

The German plan to launch another great summer offensive crystallized in the early months of 1942. Hitler’s decision was influenced by his economists, who mistakenly told him that Germany could not continue the war unless it obtained petroleum supplies from the Caucasus. Hitler was the more responsive to such arguments because they coincided with his belief that another German offensive would so drain the Soviet Union’s manpower that the U.S.S.R. would be unable to continue the war. His thinking was shared by his generals, who had been awed by the prodigality with which the Soviets squandered their troops in the fighting of 1941 and the spring of 1942. By this time at least 4,000,000 Soviet troops had been killed, wounded, or captured, while German casualties totaled only 1,150,000.

In the early summer of 1942 the German southern line ran from Orël southward east of Kursk, through Belgorod, and east of Kharkov down to the loop of the Soviet salient opposite Izyum, beyond which it veered southeastward to Taganrog, on the northern coast of the Sea of Azov. Before the Germans were ready for their principal offensive, the Red Army in May started a drive against Kharkov; but this premature effort actually served the Germans’ purposes, since it not only preempted the Soviet reserves but also provoked an immediate counterstroke against its southern flank, where the Germans broke into the salient and reached the Donets River near Izyum. The Germans captured 240,000 Soviet prisoners in the encirclement that followed. In May also the Germans drove the Soviet defenders of the Kerch Peninsula out of Crimea; and on June 3 the Germans began an assault against Sevastopol, which, however, held out for a month.

The Germans’ crossing of the Donets near Izyum on June 10, 1942, was the prelude to their summer offensive, which was launched at last on June 28: Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs’s Army Group B, from the Kursk–Belgorod sector of the front, struck toward the middle Don River opposite Voronezh, whence General Friedrich Paulus’ 6th Army was to wheel southeastward against Stalingrad (Volgograd); and List’s Army Group A, from the front south of Kharkov, with Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army, struck toward the lower Don to take Rostov and to thrust thence northeastward against Stalingrad as well as southward into the vast oil fields of Caucasia. Army Group B swept rapidly across a 100-mile stretch of plain to the Don and captured Voronezh on July 6. The 1st Panzer Army drove 250 miles from its starting line and captured Rostov on July 23. Once his forces had reached Rostov, Hitler decided to split his troops so that they could both invade the rest of the Caucasus and take the important industrial city of Stalingrad on the Volga River, 220 miles northeast of Rostov. This decision was to have fatal consequences for the Germans, since they lacked the resources to successfully take and hold both of these objectives.

Maikop (Maykup), the great oil centre 200 miles south of Rostov, fell to Kleist’s right-hand column on August 9, and Pyatigorsk, 150 miles east of Maikop, fell to his centre on the same day, while the projected thrust against Stalingrad, in the opposite direction from Rostov, was being developed. Shortage of fuel, however, slowed the pace of Kleist’s subsequent southeastward progress through the Caucasian mountains; and, after forcing a passage over the Terek River near Mozdok early in September, he was halted definitively just south of that river. From the end of October 1942 the Caucasian front was stabilized; but the titanic struggle for Stalingrad, draining manpower that might have won victory for the Germans in Caucasia, was to rage on, fatefully, for three more months (see below Stalingrad and the German retreat, summer 1942–February 1943). Already, however, it was evident that Hitler’s new offensive had fallen short of its objectives, and the scapegoat this time was Halder, who was superseded by Kurt Zeitzler as chief of the army general staff.