The Caucasian Question in the World War II

Türkçe Tercüme
By mid-summer 1942, General Kleist's 1st Panzer Army had captured the railroad linking the Caucasus to central Russia, and by early August the Wehrmacht had entered the North Caucasus in several columns.  For Nazi Germany, Caucasian oil was not a probability, but a sine qua non, and could not be jeopardized in any way.  Therefore, relations with the Caucasian peoples became one of the top priorities of the Reichstag.  Although the meetings held in April with the representatives of the Caucasian peoples in political exile in Europe at Berlin’s famous Adlon Hotel on Count Schulenburg's initiative failed to yield concrete results, German diplomats, academics, and officers who understood the importance of the issue, such as Count Schulenburg, Professor Gerhard von Mende, and Otto Bräutigam, continued to push all the conditions to use the Caucasian peoples in this war in line with German ideals.  They tried to formulate a policy based on the feedback they received from the representatives of the Caucasian peoples in political exile in Europe, and they tried to convince both the Eastern Ministry and the Führer.

For this purpose, during their meetings with Alihan Kantemir, representing the North Caucasian group, they asked for a briefing on the Caucasian Question.  Alihan Kantemir, who had been involved in the political life of Russia and the Caucasus since the early days of the revolutionary activities in Russia, and who played an active role in the relations of the North Caucasus with the Trans-Caucasian peoples together with Haydar Bammat, especially after the October revolution in Russia, prepared a report for the Germans to explain the complex political situation that even an ordinary Caucasian had difficulty in understanding. 
It serves as a lesson for the followers of Georgian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, and North Caucasian politicians of the time, who shamelessly wore the mask of freedom and independence, when necessary, but at every opportunity sought the future of the Caucasus somewhere within a single and indivisible Russia. 
Kantemir wrote in very plain language so that the Germans would not get lost in the details and open the door to the polemics of political rivals, Kantemir explained the following to his German interlocutors:

The Caucasian Question

The Caucasus and the Soviets,
At the time of the World War and the Russian Revolution in 1917, four republics were formed in the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and the North Caucasus Republic, which proclaimed their independence according to international law and were morally and actually supported by Germany and Turkey.
The withdrawal of the German-Turkish forces from the Caucasus, the disunity of its peoples, who by their very nature should have formed not four but one state, and finally the tacit tolerance of England, enabled Soviet Russia to conquer the Caucasus in 1921. However, the Caucasus never completely surrendered and has continued its struggle against the invaders to this day.
In the struggle against the national movement of the Caucasians and its constant armed uprisings, the Soviet government resorted to the old tried and tested method of “divide and rule” and divided the North Caucasus Republic into seven autonomous regions, directly subordinate to Moscow. Exactly the same surgical operation was carried out on the United Transcaucasian Republics, which, although founded under Soviet Russian rule, nevertheless appeared dangerous, and were therefore divided into three “independent” republics, also directly subordinate to Moscow: Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Moreover, in each of these republics, which suddenly became autonomous regions, there were ethnographic elements who were quite dissatisfied with their integration and felt attracted to other regions within the Caucasus.
Needless to say, this arbitrary division of the Caucasus was bound to destroy all individuality and freedom, which was of course entirely in the interest of the dictator in the Kremlin, who unscrupulously exploited this rich country, killing all cultural and national independence.

Particularism and the Idea of Confederation,
The politically interested Caucasian emigrants who fled from Soviet terror in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and the North Caucasus are naturally also concerned with the Caucasus question abroad. Unfortunately, they have no more unity in the Caucasus than they did at home. Some parties and politicians from the four regions mentioned above still refuse to acknowledge the mistakes that were so fatal to them and that enabled the Red Army to conquer their country. Their main mistake was that they disdained the idea of Caucasian unity and independence and, limiting it to their own independent republic refused to unite their military, financial, and economic forces against the common enemy. Each republic relied on its own strength and the skills of its diplomats in a way that was as disloyal as it was prudent, indeed downright criminal. Only the North Caucasus Republic, which borders directly on Russia and had to endure the first blows of the White and Red Armies, repeatedly called on its Transcaucasian neighbors to unite their military and political forces based on a confederation. (Memorandum of Foreign Minister H. Bammat at the Trebizond Conference on April 1, 1918).
A few months later, on October 4, 1918, the North Caucasus delegation in Constantinople, together with the Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian delegations, was expecting a conference with the representatives of Germany and its allied states and turned to the members of the Transcaucasian diplomatic missions with a formal proposal to immediately begin discussions on the formation of a Caucasian confederation. Azerbaijan and Georgia excluded themselves under various formal pretexts. Only the Armenian delegation considered it necessary to clarify its position. In the reply note of October 14, 1918, Agaronian wrote: “Although the question of the Caucasian Confederation is not alien to our delegation, it considers it correct to first clarify the territorial border issues and the question of independence.” In subsequent years, in 1919, at the Conference of the Caucasian Republics in Tiflis, which coincided with the struggle of the Volunteer Army of Denikin against the North Caucasian Republic, the delegation of the latter once again categorically put forward the demand for joint defense against the common enemy and the confederal union of the Caucasian republics. Unfortunately, this proposal was not heard either, so the North Caucasian delegation demonstratively left the conference.
There is perhaps much more to report about similar, tragic attempts from 1917 to 1921, which unfortunately brought no mutual support and during which Caucasian republics one after another were destroyed by the Bolsheviks.

The ideological struggle: Marxism and nationalism,
From a practical point of view, it is right to come to terms with the past mistakes of the various political groups and try to shape the fate of the Caucasus.
The numerous intelligentsias of the Caucasian emigration belonged to various political doctrines and parties at home, and strangely enough, their number grew even more abroad, especially among Georgians. Ultimately, this preponderance of contradictory political ideas led to the formation of two blocs, Marxism and nationalism, which are as opposed to each other as they are in their orientation towards foreign policy.
In one bloc, which entered Warsaw’s “Prometheus” as the Caucasian sector, there was: the Georgian Social Democracy under the leadership of the former Chairman of the Georgian Government, Jordania, associated with the member of the Azerbaijani Parliament and the “Musavat” party, Rasul-Zade, and the grandson of the historical leader of the mountain peoples, Said Shamil. The real leader of the “Prometheus” was Jordania, who, while remaining in the Second International, strove to give the Caucasian movement a social-democratic character, bringing it into line with Poland, England, and France in terms of foreign policy. It should not be forgotten that in the Caucasus, as well as abroad, the Georgian social democracy did not strive for either Georgian or Caucasian independence, which was contrary to its doctrine. At the meeting of Georgian nationalists in Tiflis in 1917, Jordania demanded the “indivisibility of the Russian Empire” and when this demand failed to prevail, he insisted on recording the opinion of the social-democratic organization. When Georgia's independence was finally achieved, the Mensheviks came to power with the help of Russian elements and army units remaining on the Caucasian front. But even this did not protect against Russophilia and the Marxist disease. In 1919, the delegation of the Menshevik government at the Paris Peace Conference, Cheidze and Tsereteli, informed the representatives of the French press that Georgia was a social democratic republic that would unite with Russia if the same regime existed there. (Petit Parisien, 8.3.19 and La France Libre, 13.3.19)

Jordania government suddenly found itself in exile, one of its first steps was to approach the foreign delegation of the Russian Social Democratic Party (Mensheviks), which humbly assured them that Georgia's independence was only a historical stage and that its future was inseparably linked with Russian Social Democracy (see Jordania 's letter quoted in Sots- Vestnik No. 14/1930 ). This was immediately followed by the work of the Second International in defending and protecting the Soviet Union from foreign policy threats and interventions and several respected Mensheviks, Jordania's closest associates, such as Eliava, Devderian, Tevsaya, and others, returned to Soviet Russia, of course not without Jordania's knowledge, in the hope of finding a way to reconciliation with Stalin.
At the same time, pharisaical memoranda were constantly appearing at the League of Nations, in which Jordania and groups related to him pleaded for help for oppressed Georgia and other peoples at a time when the Geneva institution was already a plaything in the hands of Litvinov, England, and other democratic states.
Jordania played a leading role in Caucasian affairs in Prometheus, where, cloaked in the garb of a democrat and patriot, he supported the policy of the “great democracies” and “popular fronts,” and filled his press with attacks against Germany and Italy, which assumed a particularly violent character at the time of the Spanish conflict, in which these states supported the national government of General Franco.
It is not worth talking about the Azerbaijani Rasul-Zade group and the North Caucasian Shamil group, which were part of Jordania's bloc. They had no ideas of their own and were completely in the wake of the obscure “Promethean” association, under the command of Polish officials, like extras, whom Jordania used, which, incidentally, led to the defection of many of its supporters. All these Caucasians of “Prometheus” were formally united by the so-called “Brussels Pact” of the Caucasian Conference, which they signed without faith in the idea under pressure from foreign forces. They did not carry out any organic work on Caucasian soil, and not even in ten years did their executive body, the “Committee of Caucasian Independence,” attempt a simple exchange of ideas. In short, the fate of the Caucasians in “Prometheus” was a failed product of social democracy and rash Polish diplomacy, which ultimately led its own people to a sad fate.
In the meantime, we must mention the “Armenian-Georgian Union” founded by Djamalian and Vachnadze , which set itself the goal of separating the Christian peoples of Armenians and Georgians from the middle of the Caucasus. The ideological birth pangs of the “union”, founded on sectarian strife and distrustful and hostile towards its surroundings, are not interesting. The practical purpose of this masked group was to work according to Jordania 's directives in those countries that were hostile to the Social Democratic Party and the Second International.

“The Caucasus”,
As a counterweight to the Prometheus Bloc and its followers, “The Caucasus” (edited by H. Bammat, former Foreign Minister of the North Caucasus) appeared, in which the mountain peoples, Azerbaijanis under Halil Bey Has -Mehmet, former ministers, parts of Georgian nationalists under Prof. Avalishvili and General Kwinitadze, the former commander-in-chief of the Georgian army and finally a group of Armenian youth ( Asg ) under Sargarian came together.
At the beginning of 1934, the magazine formulated its goals as follows: “The Caucasus” considers its main task the liberation of the Caucasus from foreign rule and the creation of an independent Caucasian state based on the Caucasian Confederation.
In the belief that the political independence of the Caucasus and its cultural and economic development can only be ensured by a state that stands on the principles of national solidarity, “Der Kaukasus” will appear in German once a month and will tirelessly fight against all subversive and anti-national forces in all their manifestations, internationalism and Marxism, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
In this clear form, “The Caucasus” rejected any connection with international democracy and, in terms of foreign policy, openly sided with the states of the Anti-Comintern Pact. It was published in seven languages: Armenian, Georgian, Turkish, German, French, English, and Russian, and always sympathized with Germany, Italy, and Japan.
It was clear that the brilliant leaders Hitler and Mussolini would lead a new path to the recovery not only of their own countries but of the whole of Europe. National Socialism and Fascism are powerful means that alone can save the world from the seas of anarchy and civil wars. A form of just settlement of social and national questions was found that could not fail to find the sympathy of real Caucasian nationalists. Therefore, in all its publications, especially in the Spanish conflict, “The Caucasus” expressed its sympathy for Germany and Italy, thus contributing to the victories of General Franco's national idea in the struggle against the Soviets, England, and France. “The Caucasus” resolutely sided with Japan in the Far Eastern conflicts, fighting for the national awakening of the peoples of Asia.

Measures against “The Caucasus”,
The statement of the “Caucasus” caused considerable excitement in the “Promethean” and Russian émigré circles, who concluded that the leaders responsible were only Goebbels' mouthpieces. These attacks naturally resulted in the persecution of the “Caucasus” organization in various countries.
In Turkey, which was then under Russian influence and in sharp contrast to Germany, the copies of the “Caucasus” were confiscated and its editor F. Darjal was punished. Other contributors, Kantemir, Halil Bey Has-Mehmet, and others, were expelled after repeated arrests.
The publication of the Caucasus was also banned several times in “free France” and the home of the editor-in-chief, H. Bammat, was searched twice. Interestingly, the import and distribution of the Caucasus was also banned in Poland, as a result of its zealous struggle for the liberation of the Caucasus. As a result of all these persecutions, the Caucasus moved its publishing work to Berlin, which it stopped, with full understanding of the reasons, at the moment of the conclusion of the German-Russian treaty. But this fact in no way affects the ideology and orientation of the Caucasus, which continues to look with deep faith to the German leader and his people.

State organization,
As mentioned above, the aim of the “Caucasus” is to establish a unified Caucasian state on a confederal basis, following the example of Switzerland. In any case, unity in terms of the army and diplomacy, currency and state borders, as well as social policy, is the conditio sine qua non.
National discipline and close unity of all Caucasians are essential for the effective revolutionary work of the “Caucasus” - as a guarantee of success in the struggle. The Caucasians consider themselves equal members of one family, living in one house, in which all rooms are equally spacious, bright, and comfortable. The “Caucasus” firmly supports the preservation of the ancient cultural heritage and traditions that the peoples of the Caucasus have developed in centuries of community on their native land.

Borders,
The border question is proving to be a stumbling block on the path to Caucasian unity and independence. “The Caucasus”, reckoning with the real possibilities and conditions of the impending struggle, considers it expedient to maintain the territorial status quo in the south, with Turkey and Iran, in order not to provoke disputes with these neighbors, and to draw the border in the north along the Kuban and Kuma rivers. This proposal for drawing the border made the “Caucasus” the subject of fierce attacks and persecutions on the part of the “Promethean” Caucasians and the Armenian Dashnaks.
In this connection, it may be useful to give a brief historical outline of the border situation in the Caucasus. According to the Belgrade Treaty of 1739, the borders of the North Caucasus extended to the banks of the Don. During the uninterrupted hundred-year struggle, the Tsarist government expelled and exterminated the Caucasian tribes until they were finally subdued in 1864. From 1918 onwards, the Kuban and Kuma formed the borders of the North Caucasus Republic, although a significant number of Circassians and other Caucasians remained north of this border.
As for the southern borders of the Caucasus, which touch Iran and Turkey and, on the other hand, are of interest to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, it should be said that at the time of Georgia's incorporation into Russia (1861) and the conquest of the rest of the Caucasus, the borders of these territories ran along the line determined by treaties between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. As a result of a whole series of Russo-Turkish and Russo-Iranian wars, the borders of Russia in the southern Caucasus were finally determined by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. By this agreement, which was observed until 1914, the territories of Ardagan and Artvin were annexed to Georgia and Kars to Armenia.
During the World War, when the Brest-Litovsk Conference was again debating Russia's border issues, Germany and Turkey invited the Transcaucasian people to the conference. But the Georgian Mensheviks and the Armenian Dashnaks, who were then working in the Transcaucasian Reichstag, did not want to abandon “Russian democracy”. They not only rejected this proposal but protested with weapons in hand against the Brest-Litovsk agreements, according to which Kars, Ardahan, Artvin, and even Batum went to Turkey. Turkey had no choice but to break the senseless pro-Russian resistance and occupy the territories.
As a result, only the independence of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia was proclaimed (May 1918), with whom Turkey simultaneously concluded a friendship treaty in Batum.
The victory of the Entente powers brought a new attitude of the Mensheviks and the Armenian Dashnaks. The treaty dictated to the Turkish Sultan, which tore Turkey to pieces and created an independent Armenia, in whose name Agaronian signed the treaty. The question of Armenian borders was to be decided by American President Wilson himself. He intended to take over the mandate over this country, which demanded through the Armenian Dashnaks seven cities of Anatolian Turkey: Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, and others up to Cilicia with the road to the Mediterranean at Alexandretta (Iskenderun).
Wilson ordered General Harbord to conduct preliminary studies in Armenia, who found that “in the projected Armenia the Turks were in the majority even before the forcible resettlement and would remain in the majority even if all the refugees returned.”
Thus, the treatment of the “Armenian question” by the victorious powers was limited to the usual de facto recognition, just as with the other Caucasian republics.
Later, after the victory of the Red Army over the separated Caucasian republics, the Treaty of Kars was concluded between Moscow and Ankara (September 1921), which established the current borders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, which particularly dissatisfied the army.
History knows no states with borders that are set forever. Everything flows, and everything changes in this world in the lives of people. The Great Wall of China and the modern Maginot Line are only a weak defense against the dynamic flow of growing national power.
Small nations have to be particularly cautious in border issues, as they have difficulty defending their borders against powerful neighbors. A quest for “historical” territories that belonged to Armenia and Georgia many centuries ago is now a thankless pursuit and a pointless utopia.
Taking into account the sad experiences of the past and the real possibilities of the peoples of the Caucasus today, the “Caucasus” proposes the following: concerning Turkey and Iran, which also control Azerbaijani territory, the territorial status quo, peaceful good-neighborly relations and cooperation in the fight against the colossus in the north, which threatens the entire Middle East. The “Caucasus” also expects Turkey, Iran, and other peoples of the Middle East to join forces with Germany per geopolitical laws.
The Caucasus, the transit country that connects peoples, must become independent. This is not only due to its local interests, but objective politics demands the same. A Caucasus buffer state guarantees the security of Turkey and Iran and forms the necessary link between the future new Europe and the Middle East.
In conclusion, a few words should be said about the attitude of “Prometheus” at the time of the current war. After the fall of Warsaw, numerous Georgian Social Democrats, Chenkeli, Gegetachkori, and others, under Jordania and the Azerbaijani Mir Yakub Mechti and the North Caucasian Shamil, who lived in Paris, developed feverish activity to come to the aid of their like-minded colleagues in the Anglo-French coalition.
Important statements were made in the French newspaper Prometheus and in the Georgian Courier, in which the enemies of Hitler and of “Hitler’s Germany” finally showed their true faces.
“Two opposing flags flutter over the world today: that of freedom and that of slavery. The place of the Georgian flag is on the field of freedom,” they wrote.
Jordania recognized the borders between Turkey and Georgia in a special declaration, apparently under the impression of French diplomats who were hoping for the friendship and military support of “allied Turkey.”
So easily and surprisingly did the Georgian Social Democrats give in on the border question, about which they had been bitterly polemicizing for seven years against the “Caucasus”, which, in the interests of the Caucasian cause and the maintenance of good neighborly relations with Turkey, proposed nothing other than the very solution that seemed so disgraceful to “Prometheus”.
But these were the last acts of the “Promethean Caucasians”. With the occupation of Paris by the German army, they were all thrown onto the great rubble heap of Western democracies, together with their enthusiastic Polish colonels, the French Blums, and other international Abramovitz.
Their metamorphosis and return to the Caucasian cause are just as problematic as the victory of the Western democracies with which they are linked for better or for worse.

Although this memorandum presented by Alihan Kantemir to the German government has been accessible in the German Archives for a very long time, it is worth investigating why historians working on the subject and the history of the period have persistently ignored this important document. Among all these researchers, only Patrik von zur Mühlen made a few small excerpts in his work titled “Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sowjetstem. Der Nationalismus der sowjetischen Orientvölker im Zweiten Weltkrieg” (Between the Swastika and the Red Star, Nationalism of the Peoples of the Soviet Eastern People in World War II), which has an iconic feature among the works written on the subject, and this document is extremely important in terms of revealing the reality of the Caucasus in a naked way, in addition to Kantemir's praises for German Nazism as one of the impositions of the period. Kantemir’s exposing of the political unreliability of some Caucasian elements that appeared to be forces against Russian imperialism through quotations from historical events was not only a very valuable warning for the German government but also a very valuable warning in terms of revealing the threat that entering into such an alliance with these groups, based on the events he quoted from history, posed to other allies. At that time, Nazi Germany, attracted by the legionnaire support it would obtain on the Eastern Front at all costs, paid a heavy price for heeding Kantemir’s warning. Indeed, when the idea of ​​forming volunteer units from POWs belonging to these national elements held in concentration camps between 1943 and 1945 came to the agenda, the issues mentioned in Kantemir’s historical quotations were repeated, and German war diaries stated that there were intense mass desertions or defections to the enemy side among volunteers belonging to these groups. Hundreds of legion members associated with the Armenian Dashnaks defected to the enemy, especially on the French front, and provided very strategic information to the enemy. Even though General Hellmich, who was appointed to the Eastern Front command during the period in question, demanded the abolition of the volunteer legions, the course of the war left the German side in even greater need of these volunteers.
The main message of the story is that the current versions of these groups, which still make the most fervent anti-Russian speeches today, are, as Kantemir stated in those days, displaying symptoms of not being able to overcome the syndrome of addiction to everything Russian origin at every opportunity, and are leaving the North Caucasians with the threat of being left alone with Russian imperialism, as in the past.
The expressions used by the Georgian Mensheviks Cheidze and Tsereteli, whom Kantemir referred to in his memo, in an interview published on the front page of a high-circulation French newspaper by Léon Faraut in the spring of 1919 were quite striking:

“Would Georgia enter a Russian republican federation?

A question arose: what would be the attitude of independent Georgia towards Russia when the latter, freed from Bolshevism, had returned to a normal regime?
It was Mr. Tseretelli who stated the answer: At the moment, he said, only two forces exist in Russia: the Bolshevik force and the reactionary force. If the latter succeeded in triumphing, it would be restoration, and our attitude towards a monarchical Russia would be the same as we adopted towards Lenin's government. If it happened later, he continued, with the approval of Mr. Tcheidze, that Russia gave itself a genuine republican and democratic regime, Georgia's attitude towards it would doubtless change. However, we cannot prejudge the future. It would then be up to the Georgian people to decide whether to join a federation of all republican and democratic governments in Russia. But, once again, we are not there yet...”

While lobbying the Paris Peace Conference for the recognition of their independence, they also tried to keep the doors open for an opportunity to find a place for themselves under the roof of an indivisible Russia again. Indeed, the Noe Jordania administration, which subsequently received written assurances from the Bolshevik Russians, played a facilitating role in the Bolshevik Russian occupation by betraying the North Caucasus in April 1920.

History is the mirror we must look at to comprehend the present and the lighthouse that illuminates the future…

Cem Kumuk
Istanbul, 8 February 2025