Group A was to lead the thrust into the Caucasus during Operation Blue and capture Grozny and the Baku (current capital of Azerbaijan) oilfields. The First Panzer Army was to spearhead the attack. Rostov, Maykop, Krasnodar and the Kuban region were captured. In September 1942, the offensive by Army Group A stalled in the Caucasus and List was sacked. After Adolf Hitler briefly took personal control of Army Group A, he appointed Kleist to the command on 22 November 1942. As Kleist took over, Colonel-General Eberhard von Mackensen took the reins of the First Panzer Army. In December 1942, as the German 6th Army was being crushed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army launched an offensive against Army Group A. The First Panzer Army was ordered to retreat through Rostov in January 1943, before the Soviet forces could cut it off in the Kuban. By February 1943, the army had been withdrawn west of the Don River and Kleist withdrew the remains of his forces from Caucasus into the Kuban, east of the Strait of Kerch. 1943 In January 1943, von Mackensen's First Panzer Army became attached to Army Group Don under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. The month after that, von Manstein redeployed the First Panzer Army together with the Fourth Panzer Army to counter-attack the Soviet breakthrough from the Battle of Stalingrad. The First Panzer Army contributed to the success of the Third Battle of Kharkov in March 1943. In July 1943, the Army, with the help of the XXIV Panzer Corps, repelled the Soviet Izyum-Barvenkovo Offensive. In October 1943 Soviet forces crossed the Dnieper River between Dnipropetrovsk and Kremenchug. The First Panzer Army counter-attacked along with the 8th Army, but failed to dislodge the Soviet forces. At the end of that month, as the Red Army closed in on Kiev, von Mackensen was replaced by Colonel-General Hans-Valentin Hube. 1944 The First Panzer Army remained attached to Army Group South from March 1943 to July 1944. By that time German troops had been pulled out from the Ukraine. In March 1944, crisis hit the First Panzer Army as it was encircled by two Soviet fronts in the Battle of Kamenets-Podolsky pocket. A successful breakthrough was made, saving most of the manpower but losing the heavy equipment. That same month Hitler, who insisted his armies fight an inflexible defense to the last man, dismissed von Manstein. In