to a policy principle he had already agreed with the British of defeating Germany
first. However, one must record the fact that in practice in 1942 American military
resources of all kinds, as they were mobilized, headed in at least as great quantities for
the Pacific theatre as they did towards Europe. The reasons for this were straightfor-
ward. In the Pacific, strategic opportunity knocked and there was a combat job of
immediate significance to be done in order to slow, arrest and reverse Japan’s forward
surge. In Europe, by contrast, there was no near-term military task for American forces
to perform.
In broad strategic terms, 1942 was the high-water mark for the Axis, as well as the year
which provided unmistakeable evidence that Berlin and Tokyo had far exceeded
Clausewitz’s ‘culminating point of victory’. In Russia, Stalin foolishly insisted on
continuing the Great Winter Offensive, even to, and beyond, the point of the exhaustion
of current Red Army reserves. In due course, the Germans counter-attacked a much
weakened Red Army and then were at liberty to plan and execute their grand campaign
design for the year. Chastened by the near catastrophe in the Battle for Moscow, Hitler
elected to pursue a less direct approach. Codenamed Operation Blau, the principal
German thrust in 1942 would be to the south, specifically to secure the oil fields at
Grozny and eventually at Baku on the Caspian Sea. This caught the Russians by surprise:
they had expected a renewal of the attack on Moscow. It would not be the last time
they were wrong-footed by Hitler’s irregular, not to say eccentric, operational choices.
So, while still besieging Leningrad and watching the road to Moscow, the Germans
committed some of their most potent formations to drive east and south. The result, as
history records, was the disaster at Stalingrad and a near disaster for the German forces
that had penetrated as far south as the foothills of the Caucasus.
The Russians fought hard, when eventually they did stand and fight, and the distances
were a logistical nightmare for the Germans. But the German defeats in Russia in late
1942 were mainly the product of their own operational incompetence. The German
Army in the summer of 1942 was probably still strong enough to secure a major objective
in the south, had it only been concentrated for the task. In other words, the Germans
could have taken Stalingrad, which the Sixth Army first reached as early as 19 August.
Similarly, they could have forced their way through the relatively modest opposition to
seize and hold the critical oil fields at Maikop and Grozny. By and large, Russian forces
retreated rather than contested every foot of ground in 1942. The Germans were lured to
overreach themselves logistically. What the Germans could not do was seize and hold
both the Caucasian oil fields and Stalingrad on the Volga andprotect the long lines of
communication to, and the flanks of, these hugely divergent objectives. They needed to
choose. On 19 July, just three weeks after launching Operation Blau, Hitler decided that
the forces advancing towards objectives in the Caucasus, 600 miles from their start line,
should detach six divisions (three infantry, two motorized infantry and one panzer) to
assist the Sixth Army in its none too potent drive on Stalingrad. Murray and Millett argue
that Caucasian oil was logistically beyond German grasp (Murray and Millett, 2000:
278 – 8 3). What cannot be contested is that Hitler’s belated weakening of the attack to the
south condemned that venture to failure and possible disaster, while the slow-moving
approach to Stalingrad still would not be strong enough to ensure success.
Hitler was not a war leader to make operational choices between desirable goals.
He favoured multiple ambitious tasks that translated militarily into a reckless dispersal
World War II in Europe, I 135