Did Hitler know better than his generals?

[Cyclops]

1) The blame on the Romanians is very unfair and undeserved. I don't believe German troops would've fared any better. Especially not with their level of equipment.

Fair point, they were strung out very thin, so whoever was holding the flanks had poor prospects against any serious attack. I guess in the initial stages of Blau the German advance destroyed a number of flank attacks, which may have lulled OKH into a false sense of security about the flanks.

The argument about miss-allocation of forces (Alpini on the steppe, panzers on the street) follows on from this point: OKH had so few troops to cover so much front the had to put whatever wherever I could reach. You note fuel ran disastrously low during AG Souths advance, and it would require even more fuel to reorganise the line.

2) Just reinforcing the southern advance is a very reductionist attitude. The Germans had most of their troops in the north, but so did the Soviets. Weakening the north further would've likely come with further losses against the Soviets. You can argue that retreating from the Rzhev salient sooner would've freed up more troops, but it would've done the same even more so for the Soviets, as Rzhev was the "sword aimed at Moscow". Furthermore, more troops would've compounded the already terrible logistical situation at Stalingrad. As I've mentioned several times, the Wehrmacht was already hungering and eating their horses before the encirclement. The Soviets on the other hand had a much easier time with the logistics.

Indeed and even severing the Caucasus lifelines (the rail hubs at Stalingrad and Rostov, and the Volga steerage) didn't sever Soviet oil lines, as they had a fairly developed (if circuitous) route via the Caspian in place that was quickly upgraded. The Soviets still had one major rail line to the east bank of the Volga and a developed net to the north, whereas the Wehrmacht was relying on captured stores and air drops as they frequently outran their supply chain.

3) I don't care about semantics, and try to avoid those discussions. Cyclops get's mad for me calling Stalingrad tantamount to a "fortified base". K, if he agrees with the point I was making and only has a problem with the semantics, I can live with that. So when he went like "No, it wasn't an anchor, it was a salient." my first reaction was "whatever, bro".
But salient isn't just downright wrong, it also comes with so many false implications.
Stalingrad wasn't a detour. It was directly in their way. The only line the Wehrmacht could ever even HOPE to defend were the Volga and Don rivers with a front line as short as possible between those two. This whole argument he was going for is stupid on so many levels.

I think we agree on most things, you've presented mostly sensible arguments and I'm not mad.

The plans for Stalingrad changed over time. Initially it was merely a flank position to defend the Caucuses advance, then it absorbed an entire army's efforts in a close assault. I agree the oil was the main game, suddenly one city with no oil became a major focus tohe detrment of campaign goals.

If you want to call it an anchor I have no problem, its definitely a salient and not a fortified base (these are technical military terms with specific meaning).

I follow the argument Stalingrad was attacked as it appeared an easy catch. It was lightly defended at first but the battle escalated over two months absorbing the efforts of an entire army, and diverting panzer forces initially allocated to AG South. That didn't happen accidentally.

I think that was Hitler thinking he knew better than his generals and making a bad situation worse. Given the goals of Fell Blau, even the modified terms such as shield the flank of the Caucasus advance, could be achieved without fully occupying Stalingrad, we have to ask why the inch by inch assault? If you think here's a military justification fair enough, but I will argue the toss for technical terms like salient and fortified base.

I also have to point out that the STAVKA wasn't passive in all of this. They were reacting. They made and changed their plans based on the situation given. That's why most "they should've done that instead"-discussions are mostly moot anyway, as you can't be sure the enemy would still have acted that way.

Yes I agree, and the Soviet capability seemed to improve over time quite markedly. My impression is that Stalin became more "hands off" and trusting of his military advisors while Hitler increasingly interfered down to a micro level, which may have led to a few more disasters for the Wehrmacht.

4) I don't try to hide behind ethos, and I'm frankly annoyed when historians here act as if they were the only ones who've learned academic research. I'm sorry. That's not a hard thing to do at all. Especially when all you're going to do is quoting other historians all day long.
But here's the thing: I don't care how many times historians repeat each other and thereby myths, such as the Russians having always on purpose defended themselves through retreat and scorched earth (neither in 1812, nor in ww2 was that ever the defense strategy), or Nazi Germany having been very close to getting the nuclear bomb (it was not!), or in this case the refinement of oil having been a problem (it's DRILLING! And even that wouldn't have been a major one in Baku!).

Oil was definitely the campaign goal at the start of Fell Blau in 1942, and we agree it was a desperate campaign with a low probability of success. I think Hitler became distracted and messed with the desperate plan to make I even less likely to succeed.

No! Just no! You'll sooner alter history than physics.
The Germans obviously DID have a use for the oil, they obviously DID have a plan for what they were going to do with it.
They didn't just put together a specific 6500 men strong caucasus oil brigade with lots of equipment for the lulz. Mind you that part of the equipment was confiscated from the French and the other part still managed to cost 16 MILLION Reichsmark.
Taking the oil fields in the caucasus was one of the, if not THE main reason for the German attack on the Soviets. Getting the production into full swing could've changed the game a lot for everyone involved, though likely still not enough to change the outcome.

I agree. My impression is they performed extremely well to just get to Maikop: there was never a realistic chance they would export oil to Germany.

Mid- to long term it could've been done the way you (Oda) say. By pointing out that makeshift refineries are an incredibly easy thing to do, I was pointing out that even very short term solutions would've been possible. As soon as the repairs of the wells or the drilling of new ones had been successful. And again, I'm choosing my fights here. I'm quite certain I read somewhere that the Germans managed to extract a little bit of oil before they had to retreat. If Cyclops claims they didn't even get one drop: Whatever.

Happy to be corrected, its why I post here.

I've been digging around for some interesting oil production tables that were posted on this site previously but not luck so far. IIRC they showed the Soviets shutting down a lot of Caucasian wells, many of which either never resumed production, or only returned to service after decades. It may be the Nazis had even less hope than they thought, and production was decades away.

And Cyclops, I must admit that yeah, you are right about one thing: I was ignorant. In that getting into this discussion was an asinine waste of my time from the start. I'm out.

Sorry you feel this way. We've clashed chiefly over semantics. The rest of your case is pretty sensible.

[Condottiere 40K]

Stalingrad was just a bridge too far, and the Sixth Army lost momentum as they couldn't achieve their objectives on their time plan, allowing the Soviets to regroup within the city, and as I understand it, the initial forces sent in were severely understrength.

This might have been a case where the army commander had to be on the front to direct the assault units; probably needed Rommel rather than Paulus.