151 - Stalingrad Now a Primary Objective?! - Hitler's Chaotic Directives - WW2 - July 17, 1942

by Panzer
Yeah, they can't use the road anymore.
What?
No, not by sea either.
Shhh!
Check it out - they fly them in over the Himalayas.
For real.
Yep, starting now.
Over the Himalayas,
that's pretty impressive.
Alright!
Bye!
July 17th 1942
Your armies are off and running!
Your tanks are crashing through the enemy!
But you second guess yourself, thinking that if they were over here or over there, they'd
crush the enemy, so you issue new orders.
And those orders are followed.
And you create one big traffic jam.
I'm Indy Neidell; this is World War Two.
Last week an Allied shipping convoy in northern waters met with disaster, putting an end to
such convoys until there is less daylight in the north, there was more fighting in North
Africa, though inconclusive, and on the Eastern Front, Fall Blau, the big Axis summer offensive,
continued, taking Voronezh and loads of territory, though there is big friction between Adolf
Hitler and Fedor von Bock over the conduct of the offensive.
The first phase of Fall Blau is complete, and logically it is time for Blue Phase II.
The plan was for Ewald von Kleist's 1st panzer army to make a thrust south of Kharkov, head
along the north bank of the Donets, break through the Red Army, and link up with Hermann
Hoth's 4th Panzers and Friedrich Paulus' 6th Army somewhere around Vysochanovka.
This would surround another huge cauldron of the enemy that would be broken up by 6th
army and the Italian 8th Army.
But as we saw last week, the situation has changed pretty drastically, even though Blau
II was launched already on the 9th.
And how did it go?
Well, as Robert Citino writes, "What happened over the course of the next few days, in any
other context but war, could only be described as a comedy."
The orders to link up near Vysochanovka are pretty much obsolete from day one.
The 6th army spearhead- the 40th panzer corps- is going so fast that they'll be south of
Vysochanovka before Kleist can get there, so he gets new orders to head east for Millerovo
and then link up further south.