Caucasus

Caucasus. The Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, jointly known as ‘Transcaucasus’, are separated from Russia by the peaks of the Caucasus range. The region attracted attention during the war both through the strategic value of its oilfields at Baku, Grozny, and Maikop, and through the allegedly separatist tendencies of its population.

In the spring of 1940, when the USSR was making massive deliveries of oil to Germany, a British plan to bomb Baku was only called off at the last minute.

In the summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht's southern offensive was aimed at the oilfields (see German–Soviet war, 4). German troops occupied Maikop in the northern Caucasus, scaled Mount Elbruz (5,630 m./18,470 ft.), Europe's highest peak, and entered the valley of the Terek ( August 1942). But growing complications on their northern flank at Stalingrad forced a halt. They neither crossed the mountains nor reached the Caspian shore. In 1944 Stalin ordered that many of the mountain peoples of the northern Caucasus—Chechens, Ingushi, and others who were suspected of collaboration—be forcibly deported to central Asia (see deportations). Though remnants were allowed to return 20 years later, the ethnic composition of the population was permanently changed.

The whole of the region was re-occupied by Soviet forces in the course of 1943.

Norman Davies