Where should Hitler have attacked in 1942?

We could postulate a rainless, coldless, snowless East Front. Hitler should have invaded Shangri-la instead

As an armchair general, I believe AH should have simply stuck to a flexible defense and leave the Russki-Popoffs blunder their way into utter defeat by swallowing every and each of Stalin's overambitious offensives. Stepping down and passing the baton to v.Manstein and others of the same ilk, that is. But then Hitler would never do that, would he.

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After reading this message please be sure to burn it or with a name like this I'll have trouble with Lubianka Square!

 

Friedrich, I mean that Richtofen should be allowed to send whatever aircraft, and however many he needs, on a one-way flight to Baku, in hope of doing as much damage to Baku as possible. One-way flight means it takes off, goes to its destiney, but it doesn't come back.

So the Luftwaffe would send a few dozen aircraft to Baku with as many bombs as possible (this is where the "one-way" would help, as more bombs could be used), bomb Baku, and then maybe have them downed pilots try and make it to Iran or Turkey or something, hopefully to meet up with German intelligence, who would send them back to Nazi Europe.

Yeah, its a crazy idea, and it would cost a crap load of planes, but the possible benefits outweigh the costs hundreds of times over, as the Red Army would begin to starve fairly quickly.

Or we can go with my prior option of having the Germans push down the Caucasus quickly, and only enough so an aerial attack on Baku can be succesful without a "one-way" type deal.

 

How long do you believe Baku oil plant (which covered an awful spread of ground, anyway, so it would be difficult to inflict significant damage) would take to recover production levels?

How long did Ploesti, for instance, after it's big raid by *good* bombers take to reach production again? Unless you nuke them, these kind of plant are rather easy to recover if you don't have ground troops to occupy them.

There could be better options rather than purposefully sinking the Luftwaffe even deeper than it was already! How about midget U-Boats in the Volga to sink the oil barges?