DBWI: June 1942 - Hitler orders Army Group South to take the Baku oilfields?

The common consensus is that 1942 was the year Germany squandered any last real chance to win or even stalemate the war. Leningrad was struck an awful blow, but the Soviets anticipated the second attempt at Moscow and dug themselves in deep. It was only going to go one way.

What I like about these offensives is that they weren't much liked by Hitler from the start, and had been mostly sourced from the Wehrmacht. This really runs against the grain of the "If only he listened to his generals" crowd, but that's just me. It seems like Hitler actually understood that Germany was now in an economic war, and wanted to attack an economic target - the vast oilfields of Baku, in near the Caucasus Mountains, supplying the Soviets with the majority of their oil. Taking these oilfields would've been a boon to Germany and a blow, possibly crippling, to the Soviets. However, his generals convinced him otherwise that Moscow and Leningrad were more critical targets.

So, I'm going to ask a question not often asked - What if the generals listened to Hitler? Would the Soviets have anticipated the offensive deep down in the south? Would the German offensive succeed? Would the USSR have been crippled if it did?
 
Related question: did Germans have access to enough ships to supply their army straight from Romania to Georgia?
How much could the Russian Black Sea Fleet interfer with German supply ships?
How many warships did the German Navy send to the Black Sea?
 
Related question: did Germans have access to enough ships to supply their army straight from Romania to Georgia?
How much could the Russian Black Sea Fleet interfer with German supply ships?
How many warships did the German Navy send to the Black Sea?

I imagine that the German presence on the Black Sea would be mostly concentrated on airpower and landforces taking ports as the move along the coast. They might've taken the rest of Crimea with additional forces, as well as Rostov and Novorossisk. What actual ships they get in their depends a lot on how nice Turkey was feeling that day, and even then Istanbul is a long way from Wilhelmshaven.
 
Well, this is not quite as bad as the "Germans roll into the Middle East through Egypt" scenarios that we usually get.

But the logistics still would have been really difficult, though not quite as bad. The distances are still quite long.

The Soviet Union still holds Sevastopol, and that has to be taken first (along with Kharkov). Given how tough Leningrad was, that presents a problem in itself. These things also ignore the fact that the Red Army has the capability to counterattack.

If the panzers reach the Caucasus, the different ethnic groups there would be a headache even for the SS.

Thinking it over, what might have worked was to use 1942 to secure the Crimea, and take a strong position on the Volga River, which pretty much (not entirely) cuts Baku off from Moscow. With the Red Army concentrated around Moscow, the Germans could have done this before the Soviets could reinforce Voronezh, Stalingrad and/ or Astrakhan. Then you make the drive into the Caucasus in 1943.

But even the General Staff didn't think in terms of two year campaigns and for good reason. You will have to deal with a Red Army winter offensive somewhere, plus now the US is in the war and going to try a landing in Europe. Nazi Germany is running out of time. Given the constraint of time, throwing everything at Moscow really was the best option.
 
As Galba says, knocking out Moscow quickly would be the most sensible option (if you can do it). But if Baku had to happen, Leningrad is going to have its siege dropped - you can't do all three things and Moscow's a bigger prize than Leningrad.

What I'm stuck on is how you get around Stalingrad. Correct me if I'm wrong but the usual assumption is Stalingrad is attacked to protect the advance on Baku and I can't see the Nazis going for yet another city siege when Leningrad and Moscow have gone like hell. Maybe attack it and fake like you intend a siege.
 
As Galba says, knocking out Moscow quickly would be the most sensible option (if you can do it). But if Baku had to happen, Leningrad is going to have its siege dropped - you can't do all three things and Moscow's a bigger prize than Leningrad.

What I'm stuck on is how you get around Stalingrad. Correct me if I'm wrong but the usual assumption is Stalingrad is attacked to protect the advance on Baku and I can't see the Nazis going for yet another city siege when Leningrad and Moscow have gone like hell. Maybe attack it and fake like you intend a siege.

Depends on the speed of the Soviet response and the success of the drive up to the city, I guess. Obviously the best case scenario (for Germany) is that the Heer practically walk into an empty city, but while that was a lot of men and materials around Moscow which would be both a pain and a shame to dismantle and rail to Stalingrad, we obviously can't underestimate the Soviet ability to bounce back from a retreat.

I am what you might call a Moscow sceptic. Napoleon captured Moscow inside one campaign, and didn't turn his war into a war that the Russian people could not afford to lose, like the Germans, but it ended up not doing zip for him when he finally got it. With most of the Soviet heavy industry and supply lines coming from Britain and America still tucked safely away far behind the front, then aside from the possibility of Stalin insisting that the whole of STAVKA stays in the city while the Germans surround it, Moscow doesn't seems like all that much of a target in the Grand Strategic sense, and the Germans had to be focusing on those economic and industrial centres with all their might if they still had any chance at all.

In any case, Case Blue showed us it was futile, short of the Soviets choosing to defend another target, for the Germans to try and take the city. They levelled half of it, but they didn't take it.
 
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