The Eastern Front 1941-43 by James Holland

Author:James Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405929837
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

The outskirts of Stalingrad were reached on 10 August, but by then the advance south into the Caucasus was beginning to slow as once again the supply lines began to stretch and Red Army resistance grew. The Germans were now more than 500 miles further on, the distance at which they could no longer operate with the speed and manoeuvrability that was the benchmark of their operational and tactical skill. They had exceeded what is known as the culmination point.

Hitler had dreamed of creating a mammoth Axis link between Rommel’s forces advancing from Egypt into the Middle East and his armies in the Soviet Union, but this was pure fantasy. In fact, it was also absurd to believe they could capture the world’s third-largest producing oilfields in Baku, even though that had been the prime strategic aim of Operation BLUE.

Such ambition was extremely flawed thinking for a number of reasons. First, the Red Army would destroy the wells in advance as they had at Maikop. Second, even if they didn’t, the Germans had no means of either refining the oil or, more importantly, transporting it west. The only pipelines were few and far between and all headed east to the Urals. Oil was transported around the world almost entirely by ship – as it still is today – yet Germany had neither shipping nor access to the world’s oceans. The alternative was the railway, but the Reichsbahn was already operating at capacity and had nothing like enough oil wagons.

Incredibly, no one within the Reich appears to have considered any of this.

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