Was German 1942 Caucasus advanced doomed.

It appears that even today that there are only 3 good roads across the Caucasus.

1) The Black Sea coastal higway (easily blocked by demolitions, bomabarded by black sea fleet)
2) The Georgian Military road from Mozdok to Tiflis (demolitions were prepared if the Germans got too far)
3) Along the Caspian sea from Makhachkala to Batum (this is present day higway, don't think this existed as an improved road in 1942, could be swept by Caspian Sea gun boats)

With 3 narrow paths, easily blocked, guarded by a limited number of Soviet troops or exposed to naval fire, it appears the Germans would never have been able to take Batum or Baku, even if not tied down at Stalingrad????

Anybody know about this campaign and why the Germans thought they would be able to pull this off????

B.T.W. There is an interesting article about it in life magazine from the period:

http://books.google.com/books?id=rU4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=german+drive+on+grozny+1942&source=bl&ots=J2m9_4M_Yn&sig=5qM1HEH8kvTFl0SYai-btRIdxJI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cH22UPz8M8nWygGU-oHICw&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=german%20drive%20on%20grozny%201942&f=false
 
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Deleted member 1487

It appears that even today that there were only 3 good roads across the Caucasus.

1) The Black Sea coastal higway (easily blocked by demolitions, bomabarded by black sea fleet)
2) The Georgian Military road from Mozdok to Tiflis (demolitions were prepared if the Germans got to far)
3) Along the Caspian sea from Makhachkala to Batum (this is present day, don't think this existed in 1942, could be swept by Caspian gun boats)

With 3 narrow paths, easily blocked, guarded by a limited number of troops or exposed to naval fire, it appears the Germans would never have been able to take Batum or Baku, even if not tied down at Stalingrad????

Anybody know about this campaign and why the German thought they would be able to pull this off????

B.T.W. There is an interesting article about it in life magazine from the period:

http://books.google.com/books?id=rU...onepage&q=german drive on grozny 1942&f=false

I think it was more a campaign of wishful thinking. Hitler knew that it would be impossible to capture oil wells intact or transport that oil out of the Caucasus, but thought that he needed the oil so badly that they would simply find a way if they got the oil wells.
 
The entire campaign was profoundly illogical. Either you could ko the Soviet Union, and then you went for the head of it, that is again Moscow, or you couldn't, and thence decided to keep a strict defensive to bleed it white and force a compromise peace befire the Western Allies could strike back in the continent.
Stalingrad made actually sense strategically, as a production and most of all trasportation hub, but even its utter loss would mean little. Seeing the Germans plunge themselves into the meatgrinder of an urban battle was exactly what Stalin could have hoped.
 
Wel, if not doomed in itself the failure to take Stalingrad quickly meant that the Germans were locked intotwo magor operations while only having the resources to do one of them. Perhapsd the situation might have been better had thewy managed to surround and destroy many more Red Army forces earlier in Fall Blau (eg near Voronezh) But under the circumstances of late summer and early Autumn it would have been better for the Wehrmact to suspend the offensive into the Caucasus until after Stalingrad fell. But Hitler had to have that oil - fast.
 
There was in fact an oil pipeline from Baku to the Black Sea port of Batumi pipeline. When first constructed in 1906, it was the world's longest kerosene pipeline. In 1885, mining engineer I. Ilimov established the Caspian and Black Sea Oil Pipeline company. In December 1887, the Government of Russia granted to Ilimov the concession to establish the Society of the Caspian-Black Sea Oil Pipeline, but in 1891 the pipeline construction was postponed as premature, and the construction started only in 1896. The first pipeline was kerosene pipeline with total length of 835 kilometres (519 mi) and 16 pumping stations. The diameter of the pipeline was mainly 8 inches (200 mm), but some parts had diameter of 10 inches (250 mm) and 12 inches (300 mm). The pipeline was built along the railroad line and the telephone communication was arranged along the route. The initial pipeline capacity was 980,000 tons of kerosene per annum. After the Revolution, kerosene deliveries through the pipeline were relaunched in March 1921 and on 20 May 1921, the first delivery of kerosene arrived at Batumi.

In 1925, the USSR held negotiations with French companies to set up a joint venture to construct and operate the Baku-Batumi crude oil pipeline. The intention was to use the pipeline for oil export to Europe, mainly to France. However, the negotiations failed as also failed negotiations with the United States companies. In 1927, the construction of the pipeline was awarded to a soviet oil company. The construction started in May 1928 and the pipeline was opened on 30 April 1930. It supplied mainly Batumi refinery.

The operation of the oil pipeline showed that it was incapable of transporting oil in planned amount and the capacity was needed to increase by 750,000 tons.In August 1942, the pipeline was dismantled in connection with the threat of penetration of German troops in that direction and its pipes were used for the construction of the Astrakhan-Saratov pipeline.

So there was something there - if they'd moved fast enough they might have been able to capture it more or less intact, altho blowing the pumping stations would have been easy. be hard to get it working again though even if they did capture Baku.
 
Anybody know about this campaign and why the Germans thought they would be able to pull this off????

I think the Germans were unofficially counting on a large scale internal collapse of Soviet forces and the defection of tens of thousands of armed Armenians, Azeris, Caucascians and Georgians to the German side.

The Soviet forces never collapsed and though the Germans were able to recruit several thousand anti Soviet locals into para military units, the defections were no where near what had been hoped for.
 
If Germany had had a sane leader (i.e. not Hitler), they could have attacked Stalingrad and hoped that cutting off the oil pipeline from Baku to central Russia would hurt them enough. But Hitler wanted the city named after his enemy, so he was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers for it.
 
It's possible for the Germans to avoid disaster at Stalingrad, but it would require substantial changes to Case Blue either as it was planned or as it developed. That's within the Germans' ability, but probably not likely as they don't have our hindsight (substantial blunders were made - if you have elite Italian alpine troops in the campaign, why are you sending them to Stalingrad instead of sending them into the Caucasus - that should be known even without hindsight though).

It's not possible to seize Baku before end of 1942 unless total Soviet collapse happens, which it won't. However, it is possible that by avoiding disaster at Stalingrad, they retain forces in the north Caucasus and might try to launch an attack to take Baku in 1943. That probably won't succeed either, but it changes the nature of the war.

The Germans thought they could pull it off because Hitler was convinced that the Red Army had no more reserves and would simply fall apart after another big blow. When that didn't happen, the plan couldn't work.
 
The main reason why Case Blue and related movements were doomed wasn't that they were ASB, but that the Nazis were being tied down in North Africa and did not have as much of the Luftwaffe available to them as in '41.
 
It was basically how I play all my strategy games. Yup! That looks nice to grab! And then throw troops at it until the enemy go away.

Although in seriousness it had a chance of succeeding but, as with all of Hitler's plans, it just involved so much luck.
 
Was Germany really suffering from dangerous oil shortages in 1942? I mean, they churned out well-trained pilots, drivers and submariners all the way into 1944, and training these specialists requires a lot of fuel. At the same time, they provided enough fuel for their front-line troops and active-duty submarines that were big consumers, too. German economy, on the other hand, consumed mostly coal, of which they had more or less enough (and they were holding Donetsk basin already by the autumn of 1942; admittedly, it did not help them much, as the mines were thoroughly wrecked by the retreating Soviets).

I do know that the Italian Navy did suffer from catastrophic fuel shortage (and their industry needed more coal than Germany was able to send to Italy), but would the Italians of 1942 be any good with extra fuel available, but with their morale already very low and civilian economy breaking down?

If Germany's fuel situation was tolerable in 1942 (and if Italy's energy crisis was not the decisive factor of its looming collapse), Hitler's decision to go for broke to try and get some oil looks simply indefensible.
 
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it was doomed due to inability of germany to operate so far from their staging areas

however the soviets so completely and utterly bungled their attack on kharkov at the start of the campaign that it nearly allowed germany to achieve their otherwise asb objectives
 
I think the Germans were unofficially counting on a large scale internal collapse of Soviet forces and the defection of tens of thousands of armed Armenians, Azeris, Caucascians and Georgians to the German side.

The Soviet forces never collapsed and though the Germans were able to recruit several thousand anti Soviet locals into para military units, the defections were no where near what had been hoped for.

That would have been the only way to pull this off, a complete Soviet collapse Feb 1918 style, with local insurrections large enough that the small forces the Germans could push and supply through the limited mountain roads would be enough to tip the balance their way. Any serious defence of the Caucasus passes means the Germans never get across.

The only other way is to keep driving down the railway through Grozny to the Caspian (all on the North side of the Caucasus), block the railways completely from Asktrahan, deploy small boats and air force on and over the Caspian to disrupt supply and oil shipments across that lake and hope for a Soviet economic collapse generally.
 
it was doomed due to inability of germany to operate so far from their staging areas

however the soviets so completely and utterly bungled their attack on kharkov at the start of the campaign that it nearly allowed germany to achieve their otherwise asb objectives

Add to that Hitler's strategy of wasting valuable resources on too many and too unworthy fronts (BoB, North Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece(?)...) that he left the single most important theater in the war under-supplied, undermanned, and under-equipped.
 
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