Battle of Sarıkamış

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Battle of Sarıkamış
Part of the Caucasus Campaign in the Middle Eastern Theatre (World War I)
Date 29 December 1914-2 January 1915 Location Caucasus Result Decisive Russian victory
Combatants
Russian Empire	Ottoman Empire
Commanders
Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov Nikolai Yudenich	Enver Pasha
Strength
60,000	Third Army 90,000 (plus aprox. 100,000 auxiliary non-combatant personnel)
Casualties
35,000	77,000

Caucasus Campaign
Sarikamis – Malazgirt – Van – Koprukoy – Erzurum – Erzincan – Bitlis – Kara Killisse – Sardarapat – Bash Abaran – Baku

The Battle of Sarıkamış was a decisive Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Caucasus region during World War I. It is sometimes spelled Sarıkamışh or Sarıkamış, known in Turkish as Sarıkamış Faciası ("Sarıkamış Tragedy").

Contents 1 Background 2 Forces 3 The battle 4 Results 5 Sources

[edit] Background

Russia viewed the Caucasus Front as secondary to the Eastern Front where most of their manpower and resources had been concentrated up to this point. However, since Russia had taken the fortress of Kars from the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, Russia feared a Turkish invasion into the Caucasus aimed at retaking Kars and the port of Batum. In fact the major Turkish war aim against Russia was to recapture both Kars and Batum from the Russians.

[edit] Forces

Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha mobilized the Third Army numbering somewhere between 95,000 and 190,000 with himself personally in command. By the time the Third Army reached the Russian border, strength was reduced to roughly 80,000 due to frostbite, desertion, and hypothermia in winter snow in the Allahüekber Dağları Mountains.

The Russian Caucasus Army, commanded by Governor General Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov, numbered around 100,000 troops in August of 1914 but the Russians rapidly redeployed troops from this front to reinforce the Eastern Front to replace losses they were suffering against the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians. By the time the Ottoman Army arrived, Nikolai Yudenich, Caucasus Chief-of-Staff (and Russia's most successful general^{[citation needed]}) had some 60,000 troops defending Sarıkamış.

[edit] The battle

In mid December, Enver Pasha entered the Caucasus region through Armenia. Enver ordered his forces to attack along many routes with the goal of arriving suddenly at Sarıkamış at the same time. The chief German military advisor, General Otto von Sanders strongly argued against this plan, but was ignored. Governor General Vorontsov planned to withdraw his forces to the city of Kars. But Yudenich ignored Vorontsov's wishes to withdraw and instead stayed to defend Sarıkamış.

Enver's forces lost touch with one another and arrived at Sarakamis at different times from December 29, 1914 through the January 3, 1915. The first divisions to arrive briefly took control of the barracks in the western part of the city but were driven off. In the following days, as more Ottoman forces arrived at the battle, they attacked without coordination and the Russians fought off the attacks one by one. The Ottoman soldiers reached some of their targets but they were too fatigued to fight effectively. The battle finally ended on January 4 and the Ottoman Army retreated in complete disorganization back through the mountains in the middle of winter.

[edit] Results

The number of Turkish losses is unknown, estimates range from 175,000 dead out of an army of 190,000 to a low of 60,000 dead out of an army of 90,000 (Turkish sources). It is very likely that the majority of Turkish soldiers died because of inadequate winter clothing and field shelters during the attack and retreat. In any event, this was an extraordinarily costly defeat for the Turks; in losses this was the worst single defeat they suffered in the entire war. The Russian casualties were estimated at 35,000 (Turkish sources).

As one German officer attached to the army wrote later, the Turkish Third Army had "suffered a disaster which for rapidity and completeness is without parallel in military history."

On the other side, the victor of the battle, General Yudenich, was appointed commander of the Russian Caucasus Army and he launched an offensive of his own in the summer of 1915 towards Erzincan and Lake Van.

Enver Pasha relinquished field command to General Hafiz Hakki and never commanded Turkish troops in battle again. In May of 1915, Enver Pasha started publicly blaming his failure on the Armenian rebels attacking the Ottoman supply routes, an early step toward the Armenian Genocide.

[edit] Sources

• Tucker, Spencer. The Great War: 1914-18 (1998) ISBN 0-253-21171-9
• Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace, pp. 120-121. Avon Books.
• Compton's Home Library: Battles of the World CD-ROM
• T.N. Dupuy's Encyclopedia of Military History (many editions)
• ISBN 0-89839-296-9, Caucasian Battlefields: A History Of The Wars On The Turco-Caucasian Border 1828-1921
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