Some historians call WW2 a war for oil. Germany was suffering under a deficit of oil.
Hitler saw this too. He hoped to knock out the USSR in a swift blow seizing its main city (Moscow and Leningrad) but that failed.
Now it was the summer of 1942 and now he made a race to the Caucasus. Because there was oil in abundance.
This here is a video about the German perspective on the Battle of the Caucasus. Keep watching.
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Oil. It drove the war.
Germany didn't have natural oil resources and had its main foes (US and USSR) were the biggest oil producing
countries in the world. Back in 1918, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
where the Central Powers signed a peace deal with Soviet Russia and gaining much territory,
especially in Ukraine, German troops advanced to the Caucasus. In Baku there were many oil wells,
but the Germans had to compete with their Ottoman ally, as well as other factions. The war ended before
the Germans could reach Baku. The experience of WW1 certainly had not left the mind of Nazi
commanders. The fear of running out of oil was there.
Georg Thomas (Head of the Defence Economy and Armament Office) had already warned his leaders
before the war that: “Germany finds itself still in a position of economic weakness.”
After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed the USSR became the new supplier for oil.
“The Soviet Union sent more than 600,000 tons of petroleum to Germany in 1940 under
the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement of February 1940. [...] As of October 1, 1940, however, only
532,000 tons of the 909,000 tons Moscow agreed to deliver had arrived. In January 1941, the
two sides concluded a new commercial agreement, under which the Soviets
would deliver almost one million tons between February 1941 and August 1942.”
On 22 June 1941 however Hitler invaded the USSR. And he had basically
motives: a political motive and an economic one. The political motive was to bring down
the Bolshevik state by seizing its main cities: Leningrad and Moscow. The economic motive was to seize
the fertile lands of Ukraine and the oil wells of the Caucasus.
“German plans to occupy the oilfields of the Caucasus and,
later, the Middle East were therefore as much a
response to unexpected contingencies as the fruit of a coherent strategy.”
Operation Barbarossa became a faillure: Leningrad wasn't seized,
Moscow wasn't seized. Even worse: Army Group Centre was almost annihalated. Ukraine
was largely seized but the Soviets had dismantled its industries from Kharkiv and the Donets Basin.
When 1942 came around Germany needed the Caucasus more than ever. There were cities with oil wells in the Caucasus
Maikop and Grozny, but the biggest prize was Baku, right here, with 8,000 oil wells.
“Another offensive along the entire Eastern Front was out of the question, as Axis Europe would
have a 595,000-ton shortfall during the first quarter of 1942 alone. The great hope in 1939,
Romania, would never live up to expectations. […] Following Operation Barbarossa’s failure,
Germany returned to the offensive in June 1942, with oil now its explicit objective.”
As Fall Blau was launched on 28 June 1942 it would originally take three stages:
first to capture Voronezh, then encircling the Soviet forces in the great bend of the Don and
then advance towards Stalingrad and Astrakhan to protect the left flank. Capturing the city
of Stalingrad wasn't necessary as long as the German guns could prevent the Soviets
from using it as a base of communication and armaments. Initially it went very well.
Voronezh was taken and Rostov fell. Rostov was the gateway to the Caucasus and the oilfields
of Grozny and Maikop. Hitler claimed that if the oilfields weren't seized he had to end
the war. Hitler deviated from his plan by Führer Directive No. 45 on July 23,
1942: Army Group B would move to Stalingrad. Army Group A to the Caucasus.
I got my hands on a Luftwaffe propaganda magazine named Der Adler (The Eagle) from
8 September 1942. There appeared an article on the Caucasus named:
crossroads of the world. The article basically provides a “history lesson” on how the Caucasus
has been the crossroad of the world for centuries. It speaks of how ethnic Germans used to live there
and owned wine fields until the Soviets destroyed their communities and deported them to Siberia.
“Under the pretense of a far-reaching nationality policy, Moscow has divided
the Caucasus into many parts, but the whole area […] [is] subjugated. Communism had
neither social nor ideological premises here.”
The paper speaks of how many different people needed to be liberated. It doesn't speak about
the main economic-strategic goal of the campaign: the oil. Yet, it does mention the fact the
British and American supplies drive through the Caucasus from occupied-Iran to provide aid for
the USSR. And cutting this line was also a goal: to deprive the USSR of its resources ánd supplies.
Operation Edelweiß, the name of the Caucasus Campaign, was launched 26 July 1942. Army Group A,
with two Panzer armies in tow, under Wilhelm List began a successful drive
towards the Caucasus covering much ground in the first three weeks. On
open ground it was running at top speed. Most accounts mention the extreme heath,
with day after day of almost 40 degrees Celcius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), and not
the Soviet resistance. Aided by Romanian troops the Germans also pushed down the coast of the
Sea of Azov. The Red Army made sure it wouldn't be encircled and mostly pulled back. List named it:
"A fast thrust to the southeast with sufficient mobile forces [...] will not
encounter serious resistance anywhere forward of Baku."
On August 9 the Germans launched their assault on Maikop. After heavy street fighting the
city fell the 10th. Yet, the city's oil wells were destroyed. A German official named it "a
classic example of fundamental demolition". It would take much time and effort to make these oil
wells up and running again. On top of that General Eberhard von Mackensen stated:
"By now, the motorized formations were advancing forward very slowly in the difficult and densely
forested mountains. They could no longer bring their unique qualities to bear."
Late August the second phase of the Caucasus Operation started and it became a crawl. In German
terms, Bewegungskrieg (war of movement) yielded to Stellungskrieg (trench warfare). This had
to do with the fact the the drive on Stalingrad became the new Schwerpunkt (main emphasis) and AG
A was given lower priority status for supplies and airpower. As Mackensen wrote: "Lack of fuel made
any further movement of the corps impossible," […] "And how much we might have achieved!". As
the Wehrmacht headed south they seemed to leave civilization to a world of: "… mountainous
primeval forest, never harvested and crossed only by a few beaten footpaths," […] "Streams and
rivers, when they weren't flooded by the rains, had to serve as the major routes for the troops."
Field kitchens couldn't get far enough to deliver food. It had to be done by
overloaded horses which died in droves. So did wounded men. And those who got lightly injured had to walk all the way back through this inhospitable terrain. If the injuries didn't kill
them it would've been the terrain. Most frontline soldiers slept under the stars, the rain and later
the snow. And then there was enemy activity of course. By the end of September the Germans in the
Caucasus faced a wall of Soviet formations.
One soldier wrote: "This morning it is now so clear that you can see the mountains in the distance. We've
come pretty close now. Because there are also a few small elevations behind us,
the well-known El. [probably Mount Elbrus], you have the impression that you are in the
middle of a mountain world, even though we are still on a vast plateau between
the mountains. But we will never get there, because the terrain is unsuitable for us. That
should really be left to the mountain troops. They are specialized in that.”
Near the end of August German mountain troops (Gebirgsjäger) placed a Swastika
flag on the summit of Mount Elbrus (Europe's highest mountain). It is
said when Hitler heard this he flew into a rage and believed the soldiers had prioritized this
mountain over the goal of Batumi on the coast. In reality the lack of transport and supplies
prevented them to get to their destination. A German soldier named Heinz R. was stationed
at the footof the high mountains and wrote in November to his wife:
“The battalion will be deployed again on the front line to build bunkers there. I
can't imagine that this will be the winter position, because first Or. [some place in
the Caucasus] must come into our possession so that we get our hands on the Georgian military
road and prevent the supply from Tiflis. But of course I'm not a strategist. I could be wrong.”
With the German defeat at Stalingrad the entrenched Germans in the Caucasus ran the risk
of being outflanked and therfore early 1943 they had to pull back from the region.
They only had captured the oil city of Maikop.
But even if they reached Baku, and that's a big 'if', looking at the enormous distances, most likely the Soviets would've destroyed the
oil wells that just as in Maikop. And it would take so much time and effort to get these up and running again
let alone transporting the oil all the way back to Germany. Not to
mention the partisans that would take any chance to sabotage the oil pipe lines.
“Germany’s subsequent failure to capture the Caucasian oilfields,
followed shortly afterwards by the destruction of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad,
did not turn the tide of World War II so much as hasten its end.”
Altough a little beyond the scope of this episode but interesting to mention was the
Chechen insurgency that took place during WW2 when the Germans were in the region. The
rebellion started before the Germans actually set foot on Soviet soil: in 1940. When the Soviets
were suffering heavy losses in the Winter War against Finland. Chechen
rebel leaders believed now the time had come to fight against the foreign occupyers (read:
the Soviets). The Germans never reached them as they never made it to Grozny. Stalin unleashed
a terrible vengange as in 1944 the Chechen population fell victim to mass deportations.