Amid all of the secrecy, something happened which threatened Operation Blau. Hitler instructed his field commanders to give oral orders only, they were to put nothing of Operation Blau in writing. Hitler did not want anything that could be discovered and read by the Russians. On June 17th, chief of the Sixth Army's XL Panzer Corps, Lieut. General Georg Stumme gave a briefing to his division commanders. Just as Hitler had ordered, Stumme gave oral instructions only. One of the commanders, however, urged Stumme to write down a few points. Stumme yielded and gave half of page of points regarding the first few days of the operation and he sent a typed copy to each division headquarters. On June 19th, operations chief of the 23rd Panzer Division, Major Joachim Reichel flew in an observation plane to explore the area northeast of Kharkov and he carried Stumme's typed notes with him. The plane flew behind enemy lines and was shot down by the Russians. The plane wreckage was found by a German patrol on the following day and nearby two graves were found. The corpses in the graves were in terrible condition and could not be identified, but they were presumed to be Reichel and the pilot. ( One source claims there were two graves but only one body ) The horrified Germans also discovered something else - the papers were gone. Panic set in and the news soon reached Hitler, who was infuriated. Operation Blau was compromised due to the disobedience of his orders. Hitler now had serious questions to consider - Did the Russians find the papers? What did they do with them? Were they taken to Stalin? Did Stalin now know where Hitler was going to attack? Hitler did not want to cancel the operation, he decided to take his chances and go through with it, but he was not going to let Stumme get away with this dangerous gaffe. Stumme and his chief of staff were court-martialed and found guilty of excessive disclosure of orders. Their punishment was imprisonment but Hermann Goering, who was the presiding officer, intervened on their behalf and convinced Hitler to give clemency. As a result, both Stumme and his chief of staff were assigned to North Africa under Erwin Rommel. Stumme would later meet his end on the battlefield at El Alamein.

The fate of the papers that were on Reichel's plane led to a very ironic twist. They were indeed found by the Russians and they ended up on Stalin's desk. Upon reading the German plans, Stalin came to the conclusion that they were phony plans and the Germans wanted the Russians to find them in order to throw them off the trail of the impending Moscow attack. The irony, as we have seen, is that the opposite was true. Hitler was busy throwing Stalin off the trail of Operation Blau with his bogus plans to attack Moscow and Stalin thought that the Moscow attack was real and Blau was fake.

http://www.thirdreichpages.org/blau.htm

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