and the establishment of transport facilities for deported peoples. Despite the support of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for these plans, individual officers still disputed them, along with resettlement plans, as unhelpful to the war effort. General Georg Thomas protested to Hermann Göring and field marshal Wilhelm Keitel, noting that Alfred Frauenfeld, Crimea's General Commissioner, was also opposed to deportation during the war. Three weeks later, he was told that the plans for colonisation and deportation had been halted until the war's end. In late 1942, Manstein was replaced by Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist as commander of German forces in Crimea. Alongside his position as commander of forces in Crimea, Kleist was involved in the Battle of the Caucasus, and his attitudes towards the North Caucasian peoples served as a basis for later activity he conducted in regards to the Crimean Tatars. Another noteworthy development in 1942 was the establishment of the , which served as a central organisational authority for Crimea's Muslim Committees. These committees in late 1942 established a plenum with the intention of representing all Crimean Tatars. They elected Amet Özenbaşlı as their leader, and granted him broad permission to negotiate with the Germans on behalf of the Crimean Tatar people. However, the election of Özenbaşlı as the Muslim Committees' representative was followed only by further hesitation on the part of German authorities when dealing with the Crimean Tatars, leading Özenbaşlı to remark in 1943, "We have found ourselves between Scylla and Charybdis." Such sentiment was widespread among nationalist circles, as Germany's unclear attitude and gains by the Red Army led to increased feelings of consternation. Also negatively affecting the German-Tatar relationship was anti-partisan reprisals against Crimean Tatar villages. Özenbaşlı made an unsuccessful effort to effectively rebuild Milliy Firqa, the leading party of the Crimean Tatars during the Russian Revolution. Taurida On 1 September 1942, the Wehrmacht released the five districts of Generalbezirk Krym-Taurien north of the Isthmus of Perekop to a civilian government which acted as part of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. This administration, based in Melitopol and headed by the Generalbezirk's de jure General Commissioner Alfred Frauenfeld, was simply referred to as "Taurida" (). Frauenfeld soon found himself embroiled in conflict with the Reichskommissar of Ukraine, Erich Koch, who instituted an economic blockade of with the support of Hitler and Himmler with the intention of starving out the Crimean Tatar population. After the intervention of the Wehrmacht