Operation Blau

Case Blue — German summer offensive of 1942
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
German troops take cover behind a knocked out T-70 light tank and beside a Sd.Kfz. 250 halftrack, summer 1942
Date 28 June – 24 November 1942 Location Voronezh, Rostov to Stalingrad, Kuban, Caucasus, Southern Russia, Soviet Union Result German operational failure Strategic Soviet victory
Belligerents
Germany  Italy  Romania  Hungary Croatia  Slovak Republic	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Adolf Hitler Fedor von Bock Maximilian von Weichs Wilhelm List Erich von Manstein Paul von Kleist Alexander Löhr W. von Richthofen Italo Gariboldi Petre Dumitrescu	Joseph Stalin Aleksandr Vasilevsky Georgy Zhukov Dmitri Kozlov Ivan Tyulenev Semyon M. Budenny Filipp Golikov Rodion Malinovsky Andrey Yeryomenko K. Rokossovsky Semyon Timoshenko
Strength
1,300,000 personnel 1 million Germans 300,000 German allies 1,900 tanks 1,610 aircraft	Initially: 2,700,000 personnel 1,700,000 men 1,000,000 reserve 3,720 tanks c. 1,671 aircraft
Casualties and losses
1,013,000	2,226,416 1,111,681 killed and missing 1,114,735 wounded and sick

German operational failure

Case Blue (German: Fall Blau), later renamed Operation Braunschweig, was the German Armed Forces' (Wehrmacht) name for its plan for the 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942.

The operation was a continuation of the previous year's Operation Barbarossa, intended to knock the Soviet Union out of the war, and involved a two-pronged attack against the oil fields of Baku as well as an advance in the direction of Stalingrad along the Volga River, to cover the flanks of the advance towards Baku. For this part of the operation, Army Group South (Heeresgruppe Süd) of the German Army was divided into Army Groups A and B (Heeresgruppe A and B). Army Group A was tasked with crossing the Caucasus mountains to reach the Baku oil fields, while Army Group B protected its flanks along the Volga.

Initially, the offensive saw gains, with an advance into the Caucasus capturing large areas of land and several oil fields. However, the Red Army defeated the Germans at Stalingrad, following Operations Uranus and Little Saturn. This defeat forced the Axis to retreat from the Caucasus. Only the city of Kursk and the Kuban region remained tentatively occupied by Axis troops.

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