German expedition to the Caucasus

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Picture collage of the Caucasus expedition in the "Great Picture Atlas of the World War"

The German Caucasus Expedition was a military expedition sent by the German Empire to the formerly Russian Transcaucasus during the First World War . The primary goal of the expedition was to secure the oil supplies for the German Empire and to stabilize the newly founded pro-German Democratic Republic of Georgia .

background

The Erzincan Armistice of December 5, 1917 ended the fighting between the Russians and Ottomans in World War I on the Caucasus Front . This treaty was followed on March 3, 1918 by the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk , with which Soviet Russia , which was in a civil war , withdrew from the world war. Between March 14 and April 1918, negotiations took place in Trabzon between the Ottomans and the Transcaucasian Democratic-Federal Republic , which was founded after the Russians had withdrawn from the Caucasus and consisted of Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis. In return for the end of the Ottoman military expeditions to the Caucasus, the Ottoman War Minister Enver Pasha wanted the Federation to recognize the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

On April 5, the chairman of the delegation Akaki Chechenkeli accepted the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as a basis for further negotiations. He advised the Federation government in Tbilisi to follow his example, but they refused because of Armenian pressure. Fighting broke out again in the Caucasus.

On May 11th there was a new conference in Batumi. Now the Ottomans demanded more and wanted the areas of Tbilisi, Alexandropol and Etschmiadzin . They wanted to connect Kars to Baku with a railway line via Culfa . The Armenian and Georgian delegates in Batumi then withdrew. On May 21st, the Ottomans began their offensive and fought against the Armenians in the battles of Sardarapat (May 21-29 ), Kara Kilise (May 24-28) and Bash Abaran (May 21-24 ). The Armenians won at Sardapat and were able to avert the conquest of Yerevan .

Georgia signed the Treaty of Poti with the German Reich on May 28, 1918, thus securing German protection against external enemies such as the Bolsheviks and the Ottomans.

Troop strength

The expedition corps consisted almost exclusively of Bavarian troops and comprised the 7th Royal Bavarian Cavalry Brigade , reinforced by the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment , which consisted of the Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalions 7 and 9, the 10th Storm Battalion, the 1 Machine Gun Division and the 176th Mortar Company. The corps was 3,000 strong and was led by Major General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein . General Erich Ludendorff was also involved in the supervision and organization of the expedition. Ludendorff received Georgian ambassadors in Berlin and was also present at their audience with the German Emperor Wilhelm II . Shortly after the beginning of the World War and before the Treaty of Poti, a Georgian Legion was founded within the German army.

The expeditionary force arrived at the Georgian port of Poti on June 8, 1918 by sea from the Crimea . The corps was later reinforced by other German soldiers from the other fronts in Syria and Ukraine . Many German officers and soldiers of the expeditionary corps later received the Order of St. Tamara .

expedition

foreplay

German troops in Tbilisi

On June 4th, under pressure from the Ottomans , the Democratic Republic of Armenia was forced to sign the Treaty of Batumi . On June 10, the Germans reached Tbilisi and held a German-Georgian military parade on Rustavelis Gamsiri boulevard . Former German prisoners of war from Russia and armed German settlers who had settled in the Caucasus in the mid-19th century joined later .

Several German-Georgian garrisons were stationed in Georgia. B. in Poti, Otschamtschire , Kutaisi and Marneuli .

The conflict over Batumi

The arrival of German troops in Georgia coincided with the growing German-Ottoman dispute over resources and influence in the Caucasus. Specifically, it was about the oil wells near Baku on the Caspian Sea and the pipeline and railway line from there to Batumi on the Black Sea. At the beginning of June 1918, the Ottoman general Vehib Pasha marched towards Tbilisi and met a German-Georgian unit. His victory on June 10th meant that Berlin Istanbul threatened the capping of all aid and the withdrawal of German troops from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government then stopped all military operations in the direction of Georgia. For the moment, the Ottomans' attention turned to Iran and Azerbaijan .

On the way to Baku

At the same time, two German divisions, relocated to Georgia from the Ukraine and the Balkans , were marching towards Baku. At the same time, Germany negotiated with Soviet Russia and asked for guaranteed access to the oil in Baku. In return, the Germans would stop the Army of Islam , which was set up under Enver Pasha and was operating in the Caucasus. Soviet Russia pledged a quarter of the oil to the Germans under an August 27 agreement.

The German government demanded that the Ottoman government stop the offensive of the Army of Islam on Baku. But Enver Pascha refused and so Baku was captured by the Ottomans in the Battle of Baku on September 15, 1918.

The Russian Bicherakhov unit met with the German troops under the leadership of Colonel Friedrich von der Holtz on September 17th. The soldiers from the Baku Commune who fled the city also joined them. But when a crisis broke out in Germany in September, the Caucasus expedition was ended.

aftermath

On October 21, the German government ordered the withdrawal of German soldiers from the region. The last ship with soldiers left Georgia in December 1918. The last members of the expeditionary force did not reach Germany until April 1919.

memories

The memories of Friedrich Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein Meine Mission in the Caucasus were published in 2001 in German in Tbilisi, Georgia (Samschoblo publishing house) by the editor Dr. David Paitschadze published.

literature

  • Winfried Baumgart : The Kaspi company - Ludendorff's megalomania or routine planning by the German General Staff? In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe. 18, pp. 231-278 (1970). Digitized: [1]
  • Briton Cooper Busch: Mudros to Lausanne. Britain's Frontier in West Asia. 1918-1923 . State University of New York Press, Albany NY 1976, ISBN 0-87395-265-0 .
  • Edward J. Erickson: Ordered to die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War . Foreword by Hüseyin Kivikoğlu. (= Contributions in military studies. 201). Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 2000, ISBN 0-313-31516-7 .
  • Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.): The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times . Volume 2: Foreign Dominion to Statehood. The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century . Macmillan, Basingstoke 1997, ISBN 0-333-61974-9 .
  • David Marshall Lang: A Modern History of Georgia . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1962.
  • Stanford J. Shaw , Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey . Volume 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic. The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977, ISBN 0-521-21449-1 .
  • Tadeusz Swietochowski: Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920. The Shaping of national Identity in a Muslim Community . (= Soviet and East European studies. 42). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1985, ISBN 0-521-26310-7 .

Web links

Commons : German Caucasus Expedition  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tadeusz Swietochowski: Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920. The Shaping of national Identity in a Muslim Community . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1985, ISBN 0-521-26310-7 , p. 119.
  2. ^ A b Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey . Volume 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic. The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977, ISBN 0-521-21449-1 , p. 326.
  3. ^ Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.): The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times . Volume 2: Foreign Dominion to Statehood. The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century . Macmillan, Basingstoke 1997, ISBN 0-333-61974-9 , pp. 292-293.
  4. ^ David Marshall Lang: A Modern History of Georgia . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1962, pp. 207-208.
  5. ^ Edward J. Erickson: Ordered to die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War . Foreword by Hüseyin Kivikoğlu. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 2000, ISBN 0-313-31516-7 , p. 233.
  6. ^ David Marshall Lang: A Modern History of Georgia . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1962, p. 182.
  7. ^ A b Edward J. Erickson: Ordered to die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War . Foreword by Hüseyin Kivikoğlu. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 2000, ISBN 0-313-31516-7 , p. 186.
  8. ^ Briton Cooper Busch: Mudros to Lausanne. Britain's Frontier in West Asia. 1918-1923 . State University of New York Press, Albany NY 1976, ISBN 0-87395-265-0 , p. 22.
  9. ^ Edward J. Erickson: Ordered to die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War . Foreword by Hüseyin Kivikoğlu. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 2000, ISBN 0-313-31516-7 , p. 187.
  10. ↑ David Paitschadze (ed.): My mission in the Caucasus. The memories of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein. Samshoblo, Tbilisi 2001, ISBN 99928-26-62-2 , online version here