This article is about the World War II military campaign. For the World War I military campaign, see Caucasus Campaign. For the 19th century Russian invasion, see Caucasian War.
German advances in summer of 1942.
The Battle of the Caucasus is a name given to a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus area on the Eastern Front of World War II. On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, Russia, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union, and the oil fields beyond at Maikop, Grozny, and ultimately Baku, to the Germans. Two days prior, Adolf Hitler issued a directive to launch such an operation into the Caucasus region, to be named Operation Edelweiß. German forces were compelled to withdraw from the area that winter as Operation Little Saturn threatened to cut them off.
Operation Edelweiss (German: Edelweiß), named after the mountain flower, was a German plan to gain control over the Caucasus and capture the oil fields of Baku during the Soviet-German War. The operation was authorised by Hitler on 23 July 1942. The main forces included Army Group A commanded by Wilhelm List, 1st Panzer Army (Ewald von Kleist), 4th Panzer Army (Colonel-General Hermann Hoth), 17th Army (Colonel-General Richard Ruoff), part of the Luftflotte 4 (Generalfeldmarschall Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen) and the 3rd Romanian Army (General Petre Dumitrescu). Army Group A was supported to the east by Army Group B commanded by Fedor von Bock and by the remaining 4th Air Fleet aircraft (1,000 aircraft in all). The land forces, accompanied by 15,000 oil industry workers, included 167,000 troopers, 4,540 guns and 1,130 tanks.
Several oil firms such as "German Oil on Caucasus", "Ost-Öl" and "Karpaten-Öl" had been established in Germany. They were awarded an exclusive 99-year lease to exploit the Caucasian oil fields. For this purpose, a large number of pipes—which later proved useful to Soviet oil industry workers—were delivered. A special economic inspection "A", headed by Lieutenant-General Nidenfuhr was created. Bombing of the oil fields was forbidden. To defend them from destruction by Soviet units under the command of Nikolai Baibakov and Semyon Budyonny, an SS guard regiment and a Cossack regiment were formed. The head of the Abwehr developed Operation Schamil, which called for landing in the Grozny, Malgobek and Maikop regions. They would be supported by the local fifth column.
After neutralizing the Soviet counter-attack in the Izyum-Barvenkovsk direction the German Army Group A rapidly attacked towards the Caucasus. When Rostov-on-Don, nicknamed "The Gates of Caucasus," fell on 23 July 1942, the tank units of Ewald von Kleist moved across the Caucasian Mountain Range. The "Edelweiss" division commander, Hubert Lanz, decided to advance through the gorges of rivers of the Kuban River basin and by crossing the Marukhskiy Pass (Maly Zelenchuk River), Teberda, Uchkulan reach the Klukhorskiy Pass, and simultaneously through the Khotyu-tau Pass block the upper reaches of the Baksan River and the Donguz-Orun and Becho passes.
Concurrently with the outflanking maneuvers, the Caucasian Mountain Range was supposed to be crossed through such passes as Sancharo, Klukhorskiy and Marukhskiy to reach Kutaisi, Zugdidi, Sukhumi and the Soviet Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. The units of the 4th German Mountain Division, manned with Tyroleans, were active in this thrust. They succeeded in advancing 30 km toward Sukhumi. To attack from the Kuban region, capture the passes that led to Elbrus, and cover the "Edelweiss" flank, a vanguard detachment of 150 men commanded by Captain (Hauptmann) Heinz Groth, was formed. From the Old Karachay through the Khurzuk aul and the Ullu-kam Gorge the detachment reached the Khotyu-tau Pass, which had not been defended by the Soviet troops. Khotyu-tau gained a new name — "The Pass of General Konrad".
The starting point of the operation on the Krasnodar-Pyatigorsk-Maikop line was reached on 10 August 1942. On 16 August the battalion commanded by von Hirschfeld made a feint and reached the Kadar Gorge. On 21 August troops from the 1st Mountain Division planted the flag of Nazi Germany on the summit of Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in both the Caucasus and Europe.
There were no military operations in the region in 1941. But the region was affected by warfare elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
In his memoirs, Soviet Transcaucasian Front commander Ivan Tiulenev recounts how thousands of civilians attempted to flee from Ukraine to the comparatively safe Caspian ports, such as Makhachkala and Baku. The Caucasus area became a new area of industry when 226 factories were evacuated there during the industrial evacuations undertaken by the Soviet Union in 1941. After the Grozny to Kiev line was captured during Axis advances, a new link between Moscow and Transcaucasia was established with the construction of the new railway line running from Baku to Orsk (via Astrakhan), bypassing the front line Grozny, while a shipping line was maintained over the Caspian Sea through the town of Krasnovodsk in Turkmenistan.
In 1942, the German Army launched Operation Edelweiss which was aimed at advancing to the oil field of Azerbaijan. The German offensive slowed as it entered the mountains in the southern Caucasus and did not reach all of its 1942 objectives. After the Soviet breakthroughs in the region around Stalingrad, the German forces in the Caucasus were put on the defensive.
In early 1943, the Germans began to withdraw and consolidate their positions in the region due to setbacks elsewhere. They established a defensive line (Kuban bridgehead) in the Taman Peninsula from which they hoped to eventually launch new operations in the Caucasus. The fighting remained reasonably static until September 1943 when the Germans ordered fresh withdrawals which effectively ended the period of fighting in the Caucasus.
Soviet Operations in 1943 consisted of the following.
The key military base of Novorossiysk was retaken in September, 1943.
During the Winter Spring Campaign of 1944 (1 January - 31 May), the Soviet army was able to launch an invasion of the Crimea from the Caucasus.
Ivan Tyulenev, "Cherez Tri Voyny" (Through Three Wars), Moscow, 1960, P.176.
(in Russian) Иван Тюленев. Крах операции "Эдельвейс". Орджоникидзе, 1975.
(in Russian) К.-М. Алиев. В зоне "Эдельвейса". М.-Ставрополь, 2005.
Javrishvili K. Battle of Caucasus: Case for Georgian Alpinists, Translated by Michael P.Willis, 2017.
After concluding the Battle of Kiev in September 1941, the German Army Group South advanced from the Dniepr to the Sea of Azov coast. Walther von Reichenaus 6th Army captured Kharkov, carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagels 17th Army marched through Poltava towards Voroshilovgrad. Erich von Mansteins 11th Army moved into the Crimea and had control of all of the peninsula by autumn. To replace him, General of Infantry von Manstein was ordered to travel from the Leningrad sector of the front to the southern sector. He would support from the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet. Therefore, initially von Manstein replaced the LIV Corps with the smaller XXXth Army Corps and XLIXth Mountain Corps, and ordered the LIV Corps into the first echelon in the advance to Rostov. Late in September the 3rd Romanian Army joined the 11th Army in its advance towards Rostov, but was severely depleted by the attacks of the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies on 26 September. This forced a halt to the Armys advance to safeguard its flank, and forced von Manstein to use his only reserve unit.
Smirnov, was killed by fire on his command post in the village of Popovka during the breakout attempt between 5 and 10 October 1941. This was interpreted by Hitler as such a success that he declared The battle of the Sea of Azov is over, on 11 October before the troops had even reached their objective. As a commemorative gesture, Hitler issued the order to redesignate the Leibstandarte Brigade as 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, the German 11th Army was ordered back to Crimea to effect the breakthrough of the Isthmus of Perekop. During the subsequent reorganisation of Axis forces the 3rd Panzer Corps and 14th Panzer Corps took the lead, supported by the XLIX Mountain Corps recently arrived from Crimea. However the Red Army was at this stage fortunate in that the Autumn rains had begun, and this meant that the leading German units did not reach the outskirts of Rostov until mid-November, having lost contact with the Red Army in the meantime. The assault on Rostov began on 17 November, and on 21 November the Germans took Rostov, the German lines were over-extended, and von Kleists warnings that his left flank was vulnerable and that his tanks were ineffective in the freezing weather were ignored.
Petre Dumitrescu was a Romanian general during World War II who led the Romanian Third Army on its campaign against the Red Army in the eastern front. Dumitrescu was born in Dobridor, Dolj and he began his military training at the Artillery and Engineers Officers School in 1901, graduating in 1903 with the rank of second lieutenant. Dumitrescu was promoted to lieutenant in 1906 and, five years and that year, he was admitted into the Military Academy at Bucharest, graduating in 1913. When World War I started, Dumitrescu was a major, following the war, he climbed higher and higher in the military hierarchy, become a lieutenant colonel in 1920, a brigadier in 1930 and a major general in 1937. Between 1937 and the beginning of World War II, Dumitrescu served as a military attaché in both Paris and Brussels, after returning to Romania from these postings, he was given command of the First Army. However, on March 25,1941, he was commander of the Third Army. On July 5,1941, Dumitrescu attacked the forces in northern Bukovina and took Cernăuți.
He crossed the Prut to recover northern Bessarabia, the German Eleventh Army covered Dumitrescus right flank while he advanced towards the Dnister. In September of that year, Dumitrescu repulsed a Soviet attempt to cross the Dniestr in the east, behind the Eleventh Army. After Hitler convinced Ion Antonescu to continue the war beyond Romanias pre-1940 borders, Dumitrescu led the Third Army to the Crimea, by October 10, the Third Army had marched 1,700 kilometres from Romania, fought four major battles and 42 minor engagements. Later on he was given the Oak Leaves. In October, he was awarded the Order of Michael the Brave, on July 18,1942 he was made a general, thus becoming Antonescus second-in-command. This was ameliorated, to a degree, by the High Commands decision to incorporate all Romanian forces in the southwest of the Soviet Union into the Third Army. The High Command, chose to ignore Dumitrescus reports about a Soviet troop buildup in the southwest, in November 1942 the Red Army launched a devastating attack in the southwest, breaking through the Romanian line and forcing Dumitrescu into retreat.
Russian trenches at the Battle of Sarikamish.