Russian 152 mm Artillery Towed Gun In The Crimean
It’s May 1942, at Wolfsshanze, Hitler’s rugged Command bunker in the forested hills of East Prussia. There Halder meets with Hitler and a host of other German commanders who are there to plan then next major offensive now that Barbarossa was such a monumental military success. This moment was the very pinnacle for the German Army. It would never be this good again for the Wehrmacht. Thousands of British and French troops had been cornered in Western Europe. Rommel was gaining ground in North Africa, and the Germans on the Eastern Front had taken over a million and a half Russian prisoners and smashed Russian divisions twice their size. Hitler truly felt that his own micromanaging meddling and his refusal to allow German commanders to retreat an inch was the reason why Germany seemed to be winning everywhere. Hitler whispered to Halder at a party that he had decided where the next offensive would be.
Hitler At Wolfsshanze
The new target would be the oil fields in and around the Caucasus Mountains. Hitler felt he could kill two birds with one stone: interdict Russian oil supplies and feed his own diesel hungry Army. Halder knew better than to argue with Hitler and even once quipped “it does no good. He just foams at the mouth and yells,” obviously referring to Hitler’s insistence that his own council would he ever keep regarding battlefield command. Halder didn’t feel comfortable enough to point out that the Wehrmacht had already lost 1.1 million men killed or wounded, plus an additional 500,000 men just sick or frostbitten. Most of the infantry divisions were at about half strength. There had been 24,000 vehicles destroyed, many just from the cold and only about 2400 replacement vehicles. Of the pack animals the Wehrmacht drove in or rode in or pulled in, 180,000 of them had perished and they had expropriated about a tenth of that number to replenish the need. Halder felt that the troops were exhausted and desperately needed to rest and re-supply. Hitler would have none of it.
Crimean Offensive
What always amazes is the size of the German operations in the Eastern front. Consider Spring and Summer offensives in 1942 that are dwarfed by the invasion itself and the subsequent siege of Stalingrad. Take the Crimean Peninsula – it is strategically located between Europe and Central Asia, and it’s on water. Historically, Russians found themselves defending that diamond shaped land. Russian forces were still raising Hell there by mid 1942 and so from May 8th, 1942 until the end of June when Manstein launched a combined arms air sea land assault that netted 270,000 Russian prisoners. He also launched a siege of Sevastapol on the Western edge of the peninsula, looking into the Black Sea. Sevastapol was the only fresh water port it controlled for the duration of the existence of the Soviet Union. On June 19th, while Manstein was busy with the Crimea, Army Group North under Von Runstedt was closing up the Volkhov pocket. At one point, Russian Commander Vlassov’s forces opened a 150 mile wide hole around the surrounded Russian troops. The Wehrmacht closed the door again and Voslov, stuck inside, refused to retreat even when an aircraft was sent to get him. On the 22nd, 33,000 starving, wounded, out of ammunition Russians surrendered. 100,000 of them had already died.
These last two battles were considered minor.
Oddly, Vlassov was caught in a car trying to drive away with some woman he had met. Ultimately he acted with all the fidelity of a whore in a hotel full of lobbyists. He made a deal with the Devil and agreed to lead a Russian Army against Stalin. We have lightly touched on this before, but I believe the Russians who were fighting against Russians at Stalingrad were the Army under Vlassov and the Tartars from the Crimean Pennisula, sworn enemies of Stalin to begin with.
Franz Halder
It was at this point that Hitler’s plan for world domination was still considered possible. If the Caucasus had been taken and held, if Hitler had stuck to his plans with Army Group South, you can look at the map and see that once there was a possibility that Von Manstein would one day lead Wehrmacht forces south of the Black Sea and cross into Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and possibly link up with Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
This did not happen for a lot of reasons: Hitler’s unapologetic tendency to micro-manage, the resilience and manpower of the Russians, and of course another harsh Winter was on the way as well. This next Winter would be remembered as the one that destroyed an entire German Army, and was the single greatest turning point of the war. It would be a terrible tragedy in human lives lost, in historical architecture destroyed, and fortunately, in the greatest defeat of the German Army. This storm was called Stalingrad.
