If this was the main point then it was a miserable failure:ljadw wrote:The whole concept of Blau was to defeat ddefinitively the SU at the start of the campaign
German insistence on using the same operational tactics in the belief that they could encircle and destroy enough soviet forces to support such a concept with one AG, when they couldn't do it with three defies belief (admittedly the theatre was smaller-but all they did was enlarge it so the one AG could not cope) . There misconception of actual soviet strength compared to the instances of German superiority on some axis of advance is also pretty out there.
And after not defeating them at the start of the campaign,(even if the Soviets were withdrawing)the over stretching of all the formations involved, the stripping of other fronts for an operation which held a miniscule chance of strategic success is dumbfounding.