g, von Paulus and the new Commander of Army Group Don, Erich von Manstein. The result was an unmitigated disaster for Sixth Army and a very serious setback for Nazi Germany's war of extermination and conquest in the East.
Blitzkrieg Across the Steppes: May-July 1942
Without much dissent from the Army General Staff (OKH), some of whose members preferred that priority be given to the central front (the capture of Moscow), Hitler approved on April 5, 1942 plans for Operation Blau (Blue). According to Overy (1998), Hitler's "aim was to drive Soviet forces from the southern steppes and the Caucasus regions so that Axis forces could link up in the Middle East" with Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps which was then menacing Cairo and the Suez Canal (p. 157). Hitler was attracted by the prospect of capturing the industrial and resource wealth of the Donbas and the oil of the Caucasus. Germany itself lacked sufficient petroleum resources to wage indefinitely war against the Anglo-American Soviet alliance. During 1941 the Russians suffered massive and disproportionate losses of men (3.1 million killed in action and 3 million POWs v. one million German casualties) and material (Overy, p. 154; and Kershaw, 2000, p. 515). Nevertheless, Stalin, who was profligate in his use of military manpower, disregarded the advice of his general staff, STAVKA, and ordered an offensive in the Kharkov area of the Ukraine which the Germans stopped cold in May. Plan Blue called for the clearing the Crimea of Soviet forces which von Manstein's forces accomplished by early July.
Despite further losses of over 500,000 men, Stalin chose to ignore warnings from Soviet spies in Switzerland, the 'Lucy' network that Hitler intended to launch a major invasion in southern Russia. According to Kilzer (2000), "he [Stalin] carefully husbanded seventy Red Army divisions -the bulk of the Soviet forces- behind the Moscow front, where they were not needed. He had...