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EVEN before Operation Barbarossa petered out in December 1941, Germany's oil reserves were severely depleted. Adolf Hitler worried that his armed forces would soon grind to a halt for want of petroleum products. During the last months of 1941 and the first of 1942, economic considerations played as much of a role in the formulation of a new strategy as did the run-down state of the eastern armies and air fleets. Hitler feared heavy Soviet bombing attacks on Rumanian oilfields, his main source of oil, and knew that the Reich's reserves were almost exhausted. Consequently, he considered the protection of the Rumanian oilfields and the acquisition of new sources of oil crucial if he were to wage a prolonged war against the growing list of nations he opposed.1
He therefore formulated Fall Blau (Case Blue), a major campaign for summer 1942. This aimed first, through preliminary offensives in the Crimea, to protect Rumanian oil centres from Soviet air attacks, and second, through a powerful thrust to the Don River and then into the Caucasus, to deliver that oil-rich region into German hands. The capture of the Caucasus oilfields, he believed, would relieve Germany's critical oil shortages and deliver a massive, and hopefully mortal, blow to the Soviet economy and war effort.
The consequences of that ill-fated campaign are well known, and need little discussion here. Hitler became distracted by Stalingrad (which was not even a main campaign objective) and lost an entire army trying to take it. Soviet forces also drove his armies from the Caucasus and pushed them back to the line they had held before Blau started nine months earlier.
This study analyses a little-known and poorly documented aspect of the 1942 campaign: Hitler's employment of airpower in the Caucasus region. It focuses on his reluctant admission in October that his ground forces would probably not reach the main oilfields before adverse weather conditions forced them to take up winter positions, and on his subsequent decision to have the Luftwaffe attempt the oilfields' destruction. He believed that if he could not have the oilfields (at present, anyway), he should at least deny Josef Stalin's agriculture, industry, and armed forces their vast output.
The essay argues for the first time that the Luftwaffe could...