‘Unternehmen Blau’ [‘Operation Blue’] or ‘Fall Blau’ [‘Case Blue’] was the code name for the summer and autumn offensive of the Wehrmacht (as well as allied Italian, Hungarian and Romanian armies) in the southern section of the German Eastern Front, which began on 28 June 1942. Army Group South [German: Heeresgruppe Süd] was divided into Army Groups A and B [German: Heeresgruppen A und B] for this purpose.
The advance into the southern Soviet Union as far as the Volga and the oil-rich North Caucasus was intended to secure economic resources and decisively weaken the Red Army. The offensive led to considerable territorial gains by November 1942, but this resulted in an overstretched front and supply problems, which enabled the Soviet troops to counterattack.
Ultimately, ‘Operation Blue’ proved to be a strategic failure, culminating in the battle of Stalingrad with its heavy losses and the destruction of the 6th Army under Commander-in-Chief Friedrich Paulus (1890–1957). The remaining German units subsequently began their retreat from the North Caucasus. By the end of February 1943, most of the newly occupied territories had been lost again.
In the course of ‘Operation Blue’, targeted mass murders were carried out against thousands of civilians, including mostly Jews, but also hundreds of Roma, psychiatric patients and (supposedly) ‘enemy elements’.
Most of the shootings of Roma, such as in Sal’sk and Kislovodsk, were carried out by Einsatzgruppe D, whose commandos had followed the Wehrmacht troops to ‘process’ the hinterland for Security Police purposes. Einsatzkommando 12 used a gas van to murder over 100 Roma in Voroshilovsk in November 1942. In Nizhneiablochnyi near Stalingrad, it was soldiers of the 6th Army who shot Roma. In Korocha, on the other hand, the perpetrators were Hungarian gendarmes.
