This might have far-reaching consequences upon the Allied conduct of the war. The British-Soviet positions in Northern Persia would collapse, and the southern supply route for American military aid to Stalin—by way of the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, and up the Volga—would be severed.
Even the bold plan of directing Rommel's Africa Corps via Egypt into Mesopotamia would enter the realm of the possible.
At that time the men of the German-Italian Panzer Army in Africa were standing at El Alamein, at the gates of Cairo, after their brilliantly fought pursuit during the late summer of 1942. The sappers were already calculating the number of bridging columns they would need for crossing the Nile, and whenever a trooper was asked, "Where's our next stop?" he would frivolously reply, "Ibn Saud's palace."
These fantastic long-range objectives were exceedingly popular among the men of Ruoff's combat group. As soon as the formations of XLIX Mountain Corps heard that they were moving into the Caucasus they too coined their slogans.
In his book Mountain Jägers on All Fronts Alex Buchner reports the answer of a Jäger to the question about the purpose and objective of the long trek through the steppe:
"Down the Caucasus, round the corner, slice the British through the rear, and say to Rommel, 'Hello, General, here we are!' "
Towards the end of August 1942 the divisions of V Corps began their attack against Novorossiysk, the first major naval fortress on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Novorossiysk, which had 95,000 inhabitants at that time, was an important harbor and industrial town with extensive cold-storage plants and shipbuilding yards, with a large fish-processing industry and cement-mills.
The 125th and 73rd Infantry Divisions fought their way forward through the foothills of the Caucasus to the approaches of the town. Quite suddenly before them they saw the sea.
Colonel Friebe, commanding 419th Infantry Regiment, on catching sight of the sea-coast from some high ground, ordered the old Greek tag to be radioed to his neighbor, Colonel Reinhardt of 421st Infantry Regiment: "Thalassa, thalassa-the sea, the sea!"
With these words, according to the ancient Greek historian Xenophon, the Greek vanguards, 2400 years before, had hailed the sea when they first caught sight of it after their arduous retreat through the waterless deserts and mountains of Asia Minor, when they reached the coast near Trebizond, exactly opposite Novorossiysk.
But a great deal of hard and costly fighting was needed before the regiments of 125th and 73rd Infantry Divisions gained control of Novorossiysk, which was being stubbornly defended by units of the Soviet Forty-seventh Army. On 6th September 1942 the 1st Battalion, 186 Infantry Regiment, under Lieutenant Ziegler launched its assault against the port and harbor at the head of 73rd Infantry Division. By 10th September the town and its surroundings were firmly in German hands. The first objective of Ruoff's Army-sized combat group had been reached.
The next objective was Tuapse—a keypoint in the narrow coastal plain.
Tuapse became a turning-point in the destinies of List's Army Group.
In addition to V Infantry Corps, XLIV Jäger Corps, and LVII Panzer Corps, Seventeenth Army also included XLIX Mountain Corps, with its 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions, as well as the Rumanian 2nd Mountain Division. There was a special purpose behind this combination of infantry, Jägers, and mountain troops.
While General Wetzel's infantry divisions were taking Novorossiysk by frontal attack across the wooded foothills of the north-western Caucasus, the 97th and 101st Jäger Divisions, advancing behind LVII Panzer Corps via Maikop, were already fighting their way across the "Wooded Caucasus" towards the port of Tuapse. These Jäger divisions were experts in operating in hilly country. General Konrad's mountain Jägers, on the other hand, were to drive across the 10,000 to 14,000 feet high passes of the Central Caucasus towards the Black Sea coast, bursting in, as it were, through the back door. Their objective was Sukhumi, the palm-lined town on the sub-tropical coast and capital of the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Many holiday dachas for Soviet leaders, including Stalin, were situated here. From there it was about 100 miles to the Turkish frontier at Batumi.
Behind advanced motorized combat groups of the SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking" and the Slovak Fast Division, General Konrad's mountain Jägers on 13th August mounted their attack from the steppe against the high passes of the Caucasus—the 4th Mountain Division on the right, to gain the passes in the headwaters region of the Laba river, the 1st Mountain Division on the left, to charge over the mountain passes along the glaciers of Mount Elbrus, where the Kuban river has its source. The most important crossing was the Klukhor Pass, 9230 feet high, the starting-point of the old Sukhumi Military Highway.
In the sector of 1st Mountain Division Major von Hirschfeld made a rapid dash with the 2nd Battalion, 98th Mountain Jäger Regiment, as far as the entrance to the pass, which was barricaded and defended by strong Russian forces. The position could not be taken by frontal assault. But von Hirschfeld gave the Russians a demonstration of German mountain warfare.
While cleverly deceiving the enemy by engaging him frontally, he outflanked the pass by negotiating the sheer sides of the mountains, and presently rolled up the Soviet positions from the rear. The highest point of the Sukhumi Military Highway was in German hands by the evening of 17th August.
Quick as lightning Major von Hirschfeld continued his dash into the Klydzh Valley, took the village of Klydzh at the foot of the mountains, and thus found himself in the middle of the luxuriant forests of the Black Sea coast. One last leap, and the coastal plain would be gained.
But a surprise advance into the plain was not to be accomplished with the weakened forces. The Russians were furiously and stubbornly defending the exit from the mountains. Sukhumi, the great objective, was a mere 25 miles away. But Major von Hirschfeld, far ahead of the bulk of his forces, with a mere handful of men entirely self-dependent, was in a dangerous position. On his left flank was a big void; Kleist's Panzer Army was still in the steppe, north of Mount Elbrus.
Faced with this situation, General Konrad decided upon a bold operation in order to cover the Corps' left flank. Captain Groth, with a high alpine company composed of mountain guides and climbers, was given the task of getting into the Mount Elbrus passes, which were over 13,000 feet high, and of cutting off the Baksan Valley from where the Russians were threatening the German flank.
This was probably the most spectacular battlefield of the war.
Deeply creviced, the sheer faces of rust-red porphyry dropped precipitously over several thousand feet from the rocky mass of Mount Elbrus. The distant ice-fields of the great Asau Glacier glistened in the sun—ice-falls, cleft rocks, and vast expanses of scree.
Over the savage mountain fighting for the former Tsarist hunting-lodge of Krugozor, situated at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet over the deep cleft of the Baksan Valley, towered Mount Ushba, 15,411 feet high, and one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. It was topped only by Mount Kazbek, farther east on the Georgian Military Highway, and by the twin peaks of Mount Elbrus.
Naturally enough, the men of 1st Mountain Division, in whose line of advance Mount Elbrus was situated, wanted to conquer the giant mountain. Such an operation, of course, was of no military value, but the world might prick up its ears if German troops planted the swastika on the highest mountain in Europe.
General Konrad therefore authorized the proposed climb.
He made it a condition, however, that the ascent should be made jointly by men of 1st and 4th Divisions. It was a wise decision: it avoided wounding the mountaineering pride of 4th Division.
The expedition was led by Captain Groth.
The participants from 4th Mountain Division were under the command of Captain Gammerler. The climbers had a curious surprise very early in the proceedings. First Lieutenant Schneider had set out from the base camp with his signals party ahead of the bulk of the climbers, because the heavy signals equipment they were carrying would later be bound to slow them down. A long way ahead, on the far side of the huge glacier, the men saw the fantastic Intourist House which the Soviets had erected at an altitude of 13,800 feet—a massive oval shape of concrete, without any kind of ledge or projection, entirely clad with aluminum sheeting. It looked like a gigantic airship gondola.
There were forty rooms with sleeping accommodation for a hundred people in that amazing glacier hotel. Above it was a meteorological station, and below the main structure was the kitchen building.
Schneider and his party made fast progress over the snow of the glacier, which had not yet been softened by the day's sunshine. Suddenly, through his binoculars, he spotted a Soviet soldier in front of the house.
"Careful," Schneider called out to his men.
He made them turn off the direct route and bypass the hotel. Among the rocks above the building they took up battle positions. Just then Captain Groth came trudging along, all alone. Before it was possible to warn him the Russians had him covered.
The Soviet garrison consisted of only three officers and eight men. They had come up only that morning.
Groth instantly grasped the situation and kept his head. One of the Russian officers spoke German: to him Groth explained the hopelessness of their situation. He pointed to the German rope parties approaching in the distance and to the signals platoon which had taken up positions among the rocks. In this way he eventually persuaded the Soviets to withdraw voluntarily. Four of the Red Army men, however, preferred to stay with Groth and await the arrival of the bulk of the German climbing party in order to offer their services as porters.
The following day, 18th August, was declared a day of rest. The mountain Jägers were to get acclimatized to the altitude. On 19th August the assault on the summit was to start. But the plan was foiled by a sudden blizzard. On 20th August heavy thunderstorms with gusts of hail kept the men again at the Mount Elbrus house.
On 21st August at last a brilliantly sunny morning promised a fine day. They had set out at 0300 hours—Captain Groth with sixteen men and Captain Gammerler with five. By 0600 hours the fine weather was at an end. A Föhn came up from the Black Sea. Fog, and later a snowstorm, defended the peak of the giant mountain. In a small refuge Groth and Gammerler stopped with their men for a break. Should they return again? No—the mountain Jägers wanted to go on.
On they went. The climb in the rarefied air and the biting cold became an eerie race. The men's eyes were caked with snow. A gale was howling over the icy flank of the ridge. Visibility was barely 10 yards. By 1100 they had conquered the ice-slope. Captain Gammerler stood at the highest point of the ridge. In front of him the ridge began to drop again. Clearly he was on the summit.
Sergeant Kümmerle of the 1st Mountain Division rammed the shaft of the Reich War Flag deep into the soft snow. Then the standards of 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions with the edelweiss and the gentian were thrust into the ground. A brief handshake and the party quickly climbed into the eastern face where the force of the westerly gale was somewhat diminished. Presently an amazed world was told that the swastika was flying from the highest peak in the Caucasus.
The conquest of Mount Elbrus by German mountain Jägers, a successful climb of a mountain entirely unknown to them, and in appalling weather, was an outstanding mountaineering feat. It is not made any less remarkable by the fact that a few days later, when the weather had cleared, Dr Riimmler, a special correspondent with the Corps, discovered that the flags had been planted not at the trigonometric point of the highest peak, but on an eminence of the summit ridge about 130 feet below the main summit. In the fog and icy blizzard of 21st August the mountain Jägers had mistaken that point for the actual summit.
To return to the fighting in the mountain passes. While the battalions of 1st Mountain Division were forcing their way through the Klukhor Pass and along the old and dilapidated Sukhumi Military Highway, always within sight of the 18,480-foot peak of Mount Elbrus, Major-General Eglseer took his 4th Mountain Division from Austria and Bavaria through the high-level passes of the main range.
Colonel von Stettner with the 1st and 3rd Battalions, 91st Mountain Jäger Regiment, gained the Sancharo and Alustrakhu Passes at altitudes between 8500 and 10,000 feet. The main range of the mountains had thus been crossed, and the further advance now was downhill towards the passes of the foothills and into the sub-tropical forests of the Sukhumi area.
Major Schulze with the 3rd Battalion, 91st Mountain Jäger Regiment, stormed through the Bgalar Pass, and thus found himself immediately above the wooded slopes dropping steeply towards the coastal plain. The coast, the great objective, was a mere 12 miles away.
The Jägers had covered more than 120 miles of mountains and glaciers. With exceedingly weak forces they had fought engagements at altitudes of nearly 10,000 feet, overwhelming the enemy, charging vertiginous rocky ridges and windswept icy slopes and dangerous glaciers, clearing the enemy from positions considered impregnable. Now the men were within sight of their target. But they were unable to reach it.
Von Stettner's combat group had only two guns with twenty-five rounds each at its disposal for the decisive drive against the coast. "Send ammunition," he radioed.
"Are there no aircraft?
Aren't the Alpini coming with their mules?"
No—there were no aircraft.
As for the Alpini Corps, they were marching to the Don, towards Stalingrad.
Colonel von Stettner, the commander of the gallant 91st Mountain Jäger Regiment, was in the Bzyb Valley, 12 miles from Sukhumi. Major von Hirschfeld was in the Klydzh Valley, 25 miles from the coast.
Major-General Rupp's 97th Jäger Division had fought its way to within 30 miles of Tuapse. Included in this division were also the Walloon volunteers of the "Wallonie" Brigade under Lieutenant-Colonel Lucien Lippert.
But nowhere were the troops strong enough for the last decisive leap. Soviet resistance was too strong. The attacking formations of Army Group A had been weakened by weeks of heavy fighting, and supply lines had been stretched far in excess of any reasonable scale. The Luftwaffe had to divide its forces between the Don and the Caucasus. Suddenly the Soviet Air Force controlled the skies. Soviet artillery was enjoying superiority. The German forces lacked a few dozen fighter aircraft, half a dozen battalions, and a few hundred mules. Now that the decision was within arm's reach these vital elements were missing.
It was the same as on all other fronts: there were shortages everywhere. Wherever operations had reached culmination point and vital objectives all but attained, the German Armies suffered from the same fatal shortages. Before El Alamein, 60 miles from the Nile, Rommel was crying out for a few dozen aircraft to oppose British air power, and for a few hundred tanks with a few thousand tons of fuel. In the villages west of Stalingrad the assault companies of Sixth Army were begging for a few assault guns, for two or three fresh regiments with some anti-tank guns, assault engineers, and tanks. On the outskirts of Leningrad and in the approaches of Murmansk —everywhere the troops were crying out for that famous last battalion which had always decided the outcome of every battle.
But Hitler was unable to let any of the fronts have this last battalion.
The war had finally grown too big for the Wehrmacht.
Everywhere excessive demands were being made on the troops, and everywhere the fronts were dangerously over-extended.
The battlefields everywhere, from the Atlantic to the Volga and the Caucasus, were haunted by the spectre of impending disaster.
Where would it strike first?
Way to go Hitler! Sort of nice to read first hand accounts of the consequences of Hitler's strategic blunders.