The Battle for the Caucasus, 1942–1943

Anthony Tucker-Jones

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781473894921
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473894945
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

In late 1942 Hitler's forces advanced far into the Caucasus in the southern Soviet Union in one of the most ambitious offensives of the Second World War, but this extraordinary episode is often forgotten-it is overshadowed by the disastrous German attack on Stalingrad which took place at the same time. Using over 150 wartime photographs Anthony Tucker-Jones gives the reader a graphic, concise introduction to this remarkable but neglected campaign on the Eastern Front.Operation Edelweiss was designed to seize the oil fields of Maikop, Baku and Grozny. Seen by some as a wholly unnecessary diversion of resources from the critical confrontation at Stalingrad, the assault on the Caucasus aimed to secure oil supplies for the Germans and deny them to the Soviets.As this memorable selection of photographs shows, the Werhmacht came close to success. Their forces advanced almost as far as Grozny, famously raising the Nazi flag over Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in the region, before they were compelled into a hurried withdrawal by the rapid deterioration of the German position elsewhere on the Eastern Front.

Chapter One

Stalin’s Lifeblood

At the time of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the sleepy oil-rich Caucasus region was producing 80 per cent of Stalin’s oil supplies. Not only was the area a rich source of oil but also manganese, coal and peat. The western Kuban area was very fertile, producing abundant harvests of crops such as corn and wheat. South of the Caucasus mountains, the Transcaucasus incorporated the Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Stalin was a native Georgian so had a close personal interest in the fate of both the Caucasus and Transcaucasus.

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union the Caucasus had little love for Soviet rule. The North Caucasus, along with the lower and middle Volga, was one of the most important food producing regions in the country. Together they were designated as the main grain growing area. The administrative capital was Rostov-on-Don. The Krasnodar area with a number of other areas that later became autonomous republics (North Ossetia, Chechen-Ingush Republic and the Kabardin-Balkar Republic) also formed part of the larger administrative territory run by the North Caucasian Communist Party committee in Rostov.

The North Caucasus suffered like many regions as a result of Stalin’s forced collectivization of peasants’ land to form large state-owned farms known as kolkhozy. The state took almost everything, leaving the peasants to starve. Procurement quotas were enforced. Inevitably this resulted in widespread famine in the region and the neighbouring Ukraine.

In the early 1930s the situation was so bad that Stalin sent a special commission to the North Caucasus and a state of emergency was declared. Those who opposed collectivization were deemed to be counter revolutionaries and dealt as such. The Soviet writer A.B. Kosterin visited the area in the mid-1930s and was dismayed by what he found:

I had occasion to go through dozens of villages in Stavropol, on the Don, Kuban and Terek, and in Saratov, Orenburg, and Kalinin oblasti … Houses with boarded-up windows, empty barnyards, abandoned equipment in fields. And terrifying mortality, especially among children …

Then in the late 1930s the North Caucasus was separated into the Rostov region as well as several territories and autonomous national republics. This was the classic Soviet tactic of divide and rule, that saw widespread arrests of local party leaders deemed to be ‘enemies of the people’. To an outsider it seemed as if the Caucasus would willingly help an invader throw off the Soviet yoke, but Marshal Zhukov later wrote with satisfaction, ‘The Nazis calculation that when their troops arrived the peoples of the Caucasus would break away from the Soviet Union proved unfounded.’

Nonetheless, in 1939 the Chechen leader Khasan Israilov and his brother Hussein launched a Muslim Chechen insurgency against Moscow. They were greatly encouraged by the Red Army’s failures in the Winter War against Finland. They set up a guerrilla organization in the mountains of south-eastern Chechnya.

‘I have decided to become the leader of a war of liberation of my own people,’ announced Israilov.

I understand all too well that not only in Checheno-Ingushetia, but in all nations of the Caucasus it will be difficult to win freedom from the heavy yoke of Red imperialism … The valiant Finns are now proving that the Great Enslaver Empire is powerless against a small but freedom-loving people. In the Caucasus you will find your second Finland and after us will follow other oppressed peoples.

Although Lavrenti Beria’s feared NKVD internal security troops were sent against the Chechen rebels they were defeated in the mountains. Hitler would have done well to heed the nationalist aspirations of the Chechens.

‘I was 15 years old and had just completed my seventh school year,’ recalled Zhores Medvedev. ‘The war seemed far away and in July [1941], together with my classmates, I was sent to one of the kolkhozy in the Don area to assist with the harvesting. The harvest was very good and we returned to Rostov at the end of August. The city had changed. People were in a panic.’ Although German troops entered Rostov, the first occupation only lasted a few days, as the Red Army retook the city within a week. For the rest of the year Hitler’s attention was largely focused on Moscow and Leningrad.

In early April 1942 Hitler began to cast his eye toward the Caucasus when he issued Directive No. 41. He stated:

In pursuit of the original plan for the Eastern campaign, the armies of the Central sector will stand fast, those in the North will capture Leningrad and link up with the Finns, while those on the southern flank will break through into the Caucasus.

In view of the conditions prevailing at the end of the winter, the availability of troops and resources, and transport problems, these aims can be achieved only one at a time.

First, therefore, all available force will be concentrated on the main operations in the Southern sector, with the aim of destroying the enemy before the Don, in order to secure the Caucasus mountains themselves.

This order put the Wehrmacht firmly on the road to Stalingrad and the battle for the Caucasus. First, though, his troops had to continue clearing the Red Army from the Crimea by securing Sevastopol and the Kerch Straits. The latter was particularly vital as it would secure the German right flank as they wheeled into the Kuban and the Caucasus. Likewise the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine had to gain dominance of the Black Sea in order to neutralize the troublesome Soviet Black Sea Fleet.

Field Marshal von Rundstedt was not entirely happy that he had been assigned the task of clearing the Black Sea coast and reaching the Caucasus. He had to gain the Don from Voronezh eastward to its mouth near Rostov, then secure Stalingrad on the Volga with his left flank and the Maikop oilfields on his right. It was an enormous task and meant that Rundstedt had to thrust a further 400 miles beyond the Dnieper with his left dangerously exposed.

Rundstedt noted that ‘The plan was handicapped from the start by the diversion of forces to the Moscow front. A number of my mobile divisions were drawn off for a north-easterly advance past Orel towards the southern flank of Moscow.’ The Red Army around Moscow, with its supporting rail network, was able to ensure the thrust toward the capital achieved little. He felt that von Bock should have swung southeastward and cut across the Soviet armies that were opposing him near Kursk.

All this had a knock-on effect, as Rundstedt observed:

As it was, my 6th Army on the left wing was blocked beyond Kursk, and fell short of its objective, Voronezh on the Don. This check reacted on the progress on its neighbour, the 17th Army, and constricted the width of the advance towards the Caucasus … It could not push far enough forward to protect the flank of von Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army.

Although Manstein’s 11th Army successfully broke into the Crimea, this move greatly weakened Rundstedt’s manpower on the mainland.

Kleist recalled:

Before we reached the Lower Don it became clear that there was no longer time or opportunity to reach the Caucasus. Although we had trapped most of the enemy forces west of the Dnieper, and thus gained an apparently open path, the Russians were bringing up many fresh divisions by rail and road from the east. Bad weather intervened and our advance was bogged down at a crucial time, while my leading troops ran short of petrol.

His plan had been to take Rostov and destroy the bridges on the Don, then hold fast. Kleist wanted to take up defensive positions on the Mius which would act as his winter line. However, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels hailed Kleist’s arrival at Rostov as having ‘opened the gateway to the Caucasus’. Kleist was obliged to hang on to Rostov and suffered at the hands of a Soviet counteroffensive in November 1941.

In January 1942 General Blumentritt became Deputy Chief of the General Staff under Halder. He was very aware ‘there was much pressure from economic authorities in Germany. They urged that it was essential to continue the advance, telling Hitler that they could not continue the war without oil from the Caucasus and wheat from the Ukraine.’ Before the w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Edelweiss
• Photograph Sources
• Chapter One Stalin’s Lifeblood
• Chapter Two The Stalingrad Flank
• Chapter Three Operation Edelweiss
• Chapter Four Road to Grozny
• Chapter Five Battle for Grozny
• Chapter Six Luftwaffe Air Offensive
• Chapter Seven Defeat in the Taman
• Chapter Eight The Aftermath