… Empire Could Crumble
"In my opinion: in order to attain even marginal energy self-sufficiency, Germany would have to not only control communications running south-south-east of Stalingrad down to the Caucasus oil fields, but control the oil fields and prevent them from being damaged or destroyed. Then the oil would have to be transported to a refinery – somewhere – and turned into fuel, and transported back to the units at the front. This would have to be done instantly, or the mobile elements would be fuel-short the following year.
Stalin expected a thrust against Moscow and so had not reinforced the southern front. Germany made enormous gains against minimal resistance, lost steam as logistics collapsed and Soviet reinforcements arrived, and then wound up retreating back to Rostov. The oilfields were barely reached, the Soviets were sabotaging them before the Germans could get there, and no oil was ever recovered.
German fuel stocks were being exhausted much faster than they could be replenished, so Stalingrad is useless unless owning it helps open a the route to the oil, or block the Soviets from using the oil. At its fullest stretch, the German army never managed to take the oilfields, much less get them into production and find a way to transport oil. The Caucasus offensive was a high-risk, high-reward bet by a nation that could win against high odds, or see its mobile forces permanently hobbled by lack of fuel.
So Stalingrad, however titanic a struggle, was only fought because Germany needed to hold the Soviets in place and possibly interdict fuel shipments on the Volga while it withdrew its army from an already-failed campaign in the Caucasus.
If Germany had not fought for Stalingrad, the Soviet offensives would probably still have shredded and surrounded the Axis forces there. Had everything gone historically up to the battle of Stalingrad and then the Germans won (which probably means the Soviets pulling back) then the Soviet counter-offensive would still have come – the forces used for the counter-punch were not used for the defense of Stalingrad. Had the Germans survived that, they would have lacked the fuel to repeat the Caucasus offensive in 1943 – a major reason why the smaller Kursk operation was mounted instead…"
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Armand
