Operation Edelweiss
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Operation Edelweiss (German: Edelweiß, named after the prominent German 1st Mountain Division) 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 July 23, 1942. The main forces included the "A" Army Group (Wilhelm List), 1st Tank Army (Ewald von Kleist), 4th Tank Army (Colonel-General Hermann Hoth), 17th Army (Colonel-General Richard Ruoff) and 3rd Romanian Army (General Petre Dumitrescu). The "A" Army Group was covered by the "B" Army Group under Fedor von Bock from the left flank and by the 4th Air Fleet (1,000 aircraft). The land forces, accompanied by 15,000 oil industry workers, included 167,000 men, 4,540 guns and 1,130 tanks in total.
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[edit] Preparations
Several oil firms such as "German Oil on Caucasus", "Ost-Öl" and "Karpaten-Öl" have been established in Germany. They gained the sole right from the state for exploitation of the Caucasian oil fields within 99 years. For these purposes a large number of pipes, which later proved useful to the Soviet oil industry workers, have been delivered. A special economic inspection "A", headed by Lieutenant-General Nidenfuhr was created. The oil fields bombings were strongly banned. In order to defend them from destruction by Nikolai Baibakov and Semyon Budennyi an SS guard regiment and a Cossack regiment have been formed. The head of Abwehr developed the operation "Shamil", which assumed landing in the Grozny, Malgobek and Maikop regions.
[edit] Operation
After neutralizing the Soviet counter-attack on the Izyum-Barvenkovsk direction the German "South-B" Army Group rushed upon the Caucasus. When Rostov-on-Don, nicknamed "The Gates of Caucasus" fell on July 23, 1942 the tank units of Ewald von Kleist moved across the Caucasian Mountain Range. The "Edelweiss" division commander Hubert Lanz competently 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 by such passes as Sancharo, Klukhorskiy and Marukhskiy in order to reach Kutaisi, Zugdidi, Sukhumi and Tbilisi. The units of the 4th German Mountain Division, manned with Tyroleans were active in this direction. The units of this division succeeded in approaching Sukhumi to a distance of 30 km. In order to attack from the Kuban region, capture the passes which led to Elbrus and for the flank cover of "Edelweiss" a vanguard detachment of 150 men commanded by Colonel-General Grott 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 operation on the Krasnodar-Pyatigorsk-Maikop line was reached on August 10, 1942. On August 16 the battalion commanded by von Hirschfeld made a dummy maneuver and reached the Kadar Gorge. On August 21 a Nazi flag was installed on the Elbrus peak, the highest point of Caucasus.
| Eastern Front |
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| Barbarossa – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague |
[edit] External link
[edit] Bibliography
- Nick Michael. Operation Edelweiss: The most audacious mission of World War Two.
- (Russian) Иван Тюленев. Крах операции "Эдельвейс". Орджоникидзе, 1975.
- (Russian) К.-М. Алиев. В зоне "Эдельвейса". М.-Ставрополь, 2005.
