How the Caucasus Campaign Toppled Empires

0:00Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it. Infliction is killing me! Who cares? Big retailers and making record profits! That's why we support the Durban Marshall Credit Card Bill! See, banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources they need. While increasing Megastore profits, they deserve it. Don't they? No Congress, stop the Durban Marshall Money Grab for corporate megastores. Paid for it by the Electronic Payments Coalition. Welcome to the deep dive. Glad to be here. So if you want to understand the modern Middle East or the borders of Russia, and even just the global obsession with oil, you really have to look at this totally forgotten theater of World War I. Oh, absolutely. Today we are unpacking the caucus's campaign. We've got this massive stack of historical research, military records, articles, and our mission here is to just extract all the critical mind-blowing insights from these sources.

1:01Right. That way, you, listening right now, can sound like a master historian. The next time geopolitics comes up at a dinner party. It's just a phenomenal topic to dive into, because, you know, our collective memory of World War I almost automatically defaults to one specific image. The trenches. Exactly. The muddy, static trenches of the Western Front. We picture the sown, we picture Verdun. Right. Guys just sitting in mud for months. Yeah, but the events we are exploring today, they paint a wildly different picture of that global conflict. We are talking about an incredibly chaotic, fluid, and just largely overlooked clash between the Russian and Ottoman empires. This was a brutal, high-altitude mountain war, spanning from the South Caucasus all the way down to the Armenian Highlands. It had global empires collapsing in real time. In a level of unpredictability you just did not see in France. Exactly. Okay, let's unpack this. What was the actual core driver of this massive conflict? Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture,

2:01the stakes were just unimaginably high. And they involved resources that honestly still dictate global power today. Oil. Oil. But first, territory. The Ottoman Empire, which was led by war minister Ember Pasha, they had a very specific strategic goal. They wanted to reclaim land. They lost to the Russians decades earlier. Back in 1877. Right, 1877. Specifically, these regions like cars, Ardahan, and the super-vital port of Batoum. But beyond just drawing new lines on a map, their ultimate grand objective was to sever Russian access to the hydrocarbon resources around the Caspian Sea. Because oil was rapidly becoming the absolute lifeblood of modern empires. Exactly. And the Ottomans wanted to control that tap. That definitely explains the Ottoman drive. But what was keeping Russia so invested in this specific mountain fight? I mean, they had millions of men locked in this desperate struggle against Germany and Austria-Hungary over in Europe. Yeah, they were heavily extended. Surely they needed every single available soldier on that eastern front.

3:03They did. And for the Russian Tsarist regime, the Caucasus was technically a secondary front. Right. However, foreign minister Sazanov and the Russian high command, they had this grand vision that made the risk completely worthwhile in their eyes. They wanted Constantinople. Yes. They wanted full possession of Constantinople and total control over the vital straits convicting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It was this centuries-old Russian dream to secure a warm water port. Unhindered naval access. Exactly. And while these two massive empires are throwing punches at each other in the freezing mountains, you have, of course, the British hovering in the background. Carefully watching the chessboard. The British presence always seems to materialize the exact moment Caspian oil enters the geopolitical equation. Always. The British government desperately needed to protect the Anglo-Persian oil company. They had just secured these massive contracts right before the war broke out. To supply oil fuel for the Royal Navy.

4:03Right. However, Pasha pushed to establish this independent Transcaucasia under Ottoman influence. The British started coordinating with Russian forces purely to prevent that. They had to protect their petroleum supply lines. Wow. So this theater, which starts out as basically a peripheral distraction for Russia, it rapidly evolves into this chaotic multi-empire collision over energy, territory, and basically imperial survival. It really did. When you look at the actual forces that marched into those mountains, the initial mismatch is striking. It's massive. The Ottomans deployed their third army to the region, which gave them a huge man-powered advantage early on. Yeah, the Ottoman third army had up to 190,000 men available for the campaign. 190,000. But they were severely hampered by their own logistics. They were poorly equipped for high-altitude winter warfare. On the other side, the Russians initially fielded the Caucasus army with about 100,000 troops. But they didn't keep them. No.

5:03Because of devastating losses in Europe, like the absolute disaster at Tannenberg, the Russian high command continually drained their Caucasus forces just to plug holes on the eastern front. So they dropped their regional strength down to just 60,000 men? 60,000 against 190,000. Being outnumbered three to one in hostile mountainous terrain is a strategic nightmare for literally any commander. But the Russians did have some unique advantages that completely shifted that balance of power on the ground. They did. They received massive support from Armenian volunteer units. These were highly motivated fighters who had very deep personal stakes in the region. And many of them had actually fought alongside the Russians in previous conflicts. Right, so they knew the drill. They used volunteer units, organized under commanders like Andrenegosanian. They provided a critical backbone to the Russian defensive line. This line stretched from van all the way to Erzinkin. And their numbers grew quite a bit, didn't they?

6:04Oh, massively. By the later stages of the conflict, there were up to 150,000 Armenian troops operating in the Near East. Wow. And they possessed an intimate knowledge of the local terrain that regular Russian conscripts just completely lacked. Furthermore, they were incredibly well equipped. With Russian gear. Exactly. They frequently recovered and maintained the absolute best artillery and rifles that the regular Russian army left behind. Okay, here's where it gets really interesting to me. Just a completely surprising detail. Japan was actively involved in this mountain war in the Middle East. It's wild. The sheer distance and logistics involved in that are mind-boggling. It is one of those stunning historical footnotes that reminds you this was truly a world war. Right. Japan was allied with the ontant powers and their logistical support proved vital for a Russian empire that was constantly struggling with massive supply shortages. Because Japan supplied them with what, 300,000 rifles? 300,000 rifles.

7:04They sent military observers. They sent artillery captains right to the front lines. And the divers. Yes. They actually deployed 12 highly specialized Japanese naval divers all the way to the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. Just to help raise that sunken Russian dreadnought, the Empress Maria. Moving hundreds of thousands of weapons and specialized naval teams across the Trans-Siberian Railway, it just highlights how globally interconnected this seemingly isolated mountain conflict really was. Absolutely. But even with global supply lines, no amount of rifles could protect these armies from the environment itself. No. Which takes us to the winter of 1914. It is hard to overstate the absolute nightmare that unfolded at the Battle of Sarachimish. This was December 1914. Right. Ottoman War Minister Enver Pasha makes the fateful decision to take personal command of the Third Army. His most experienced generals strongly advised against this. They basically told him to remain in a defensive posture for the winter. Because launching an offensive in those conditions was tactical suicide.

8:05Total suicide. But Enver ignored them. He forced this massive overly complex flanking maneuver aimed at retaking the city of cars. And they were fighting at 6,500 feet above sea level. In December. In December. And the sources note that many of the Ottoman soldiers were wearing standard issues summer uniforms. Because the winter gear had been delayed or just completely lost in transit, the logistics were doomed from the exact moment the march began. The Ottoman Army was attempting to supply nearly 100,000 men using a single railway line and a network of snow-bound rudimentary mountain passes. A complete recipe for disaster. And the Russian commander, General Nikolai Yudinich, he recognized the absolute peril his enemies were putting themselves in. So what did he do? He simply held his ground. He fortified his defensive positions and let the brutal environment do the heavy lifting. Let the winter fight for him. The cost was staggering. Out of the 95,000 Ottoman soldiers who marched into that offensive. Less than 18,000 survived to retreat.

9:07It's just devastating. The historical records show that 30,000 men literally froze to death in the snow. Entire units were found frozen in their Bivouacs. It wasn't even enemy artillery that broke the Third Army. It was this sheer, inescapable cold. The entire Ottoman Nyx Corps ultimately surrendered. It was an unmitigated catastrophe. And Vropasha had essentially overseen the complete destruction of his own fighting force. So he just leaves. He quietly gave up command and scurried back to Constantinople, but he faced a severe political crisis. He couldn't just return to the capital and admit that his own strategic arrogance had annihilated the Third Army. So Ember needed escape coat. Someone to deflect the blame away from his horrible leadership. Exactly. He publicly blamed the defeat on the local Armenians living in the region. He claimed they had actively rebelled and sided with the Russian forces, acting as this sort of fifth column that undermined his offensive. Wow. And this act of political scapegoating to cover up a military failure,

10:09it would serve as the catalyst for horrific, world-altering consequences just a few months later. Right. And as we move into 1915, we arrive at the most tragic aspect of the Caucasus campaign, the devastating toll on civilians. Yeah. Now, but before we dive into these events, we need to pause here. We want to be completely transparent with you. The historical tests we are using detail, the Armenian genocide, as well as massive atrocities committed against Muslim and Greek populations. Right. Our strict rule here is that our goal is not to take sides. We are not endorsing any political viewpoints. We are strictly and impartially reporting the historical facts, the statistics, and the claims exactly as they are documented in our source material. Exactly. And the escalation of violence against civilians really began around the city of Van in April 1915. The Ottoman Interior Minister issued claims that Armenians in the region were actively rebelling and coordinating with the advancing Russian forces. The source records describe an incredibly desperate siege at Van.

11:09A group of about 1,500 Armenian defenders barricaded themselves inside this city. They were trying to protect 30,000 residents and an additional 15,000 refugees who would fled in from the surrounding countryside. And they held off regular Ottoman forces for more than three weeks. Using mostly antique weaponry, reportedly just 300 modern rifles and a thousand pistols among the entire group. It's incredible. They maintained that defense until Russian General Yudandich finally arrived with his forces to relieve the city. But following the events at Van, things took a dark turn. On April 24, 1915, Ottoman Interior Minister Talut Pasha passed orders that initiated the Armenian genocide. And the official Ottoman justification, according to the historical archives. The official justification they documented was that the Armenian population could serve as a potential fifth column in league with the Russians. So the Armenian population was systematically removed from their homes and forced on long death marches. Directed toward concentration camps located in the middle of the Syrian desert.

12:11Right. And the methods documented in our sources from this period are just brutal. They include forced marches, deliberate starvation, disease, rampant abuse by guards, and indiscriminate massacres all along the deportation routes. These actions accomplished the Ottoman government's goal of removing Armenians from their historic homelands, which resulted in the total depopulation of Western Armenia. And the human cost. The ethnic cleansings and massacres carried out under these orders resulted in the deaths of between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenian civilians. To maintain our strict impartiality and accurately reflect the entirety of the historical record we're looking at, we also have to look at the counter atrocities documented throughout the region. Yes. Historian Usur Umut Ugunger notes that severe atrocities were carried out against the local Muslim Turks and Kurds by the advancing Russian army and its allied Armenian volunteer units. Right. The historical consensus from the texts is that a massive portion of the local Muslim Turks and Kurds fled westward.

13:15They were trying to stay ahead of the Russian invasion in 1916 to escape the violence. And the records indicate that the number of Muslim civilians killed by the troops of the Russian coalition reached roughly 600,000 people. 600,000. And in addition to this, 300,000 Greek civilians also lost their lives amid the wider ethnic conflicts and deportations sweeping the region. This raises an important question. It does. This raises an important question for you as the listener reflecting on this period. How does total war completely destroy the civilian fabric of an entire geographic region? What? When you place these numbers side by side up to 1.5 million Armenians, 600,000 Muslims, 300,000 Greeks, it forces us to confront the sheer unimaginable scale of tragedy that impacted all populations. It birthed a level of generational trauma that far outlasted the empires that initiated the war. Absolutely. The devastation was total. And the demographics of the region were permanently altered.

14:15Yes, they were. Now, as we move forward in the timeline to 1916, the momentum on the battlefield took another dramatic turn. Russian General Yudanish pulled off what looks like an absolute masterclass in military deception. He orchestrated a brilliant offensive, basically, by weaponizing the environment. In early 1916, Yudanish secretly mobilized his forces out of their winter quarters. Which was unthinkable. Unthinkable. The Ottoman command safely assumed that no army would dare attack in the bitter mountain cold, especially after the horrors everyone had just witnessed at Sarikamish. So Yudanish used that exact assumption against them. He forced march to his troops through the winter terrain directly toward the major Ottoman fortress at Erzurum. He achieved total tactical surprise. And just completely crushed the Ottoman defensive lines. The Russian military was suddenly dominant across the entire state. Oh, overnight. Following Erzurum, they captured the ancient Black Sea port city of Trabzon. They pushed deep into Anatolia, seizing motion bitless.

15:17By the end of 1916, the Ottoman Second and Third armies were entirely on the ropes. Russians had decisively won the battlefield. They were preparing to push even further south. But then in 1917, the absolute unimaginable happens. The Russian Revolution erupted. Completely upends the board. The entire dynamic of the global war flipped overnight. The Russian military didn't suffer a tactical defeat to the Ottomans on the battlefield. No. The Russian army simply disintegrated from within. That's wild to think about. The political and social chaos happening back in Petrograd rapidly infected the front lines in the Caucasus. Because the troops were already suffering terribly from typhus and scurvy. Right. And with the Tsar deposed, they frankly no longer saw a reason to fight an imperial war. The psychological shock of this moment is fascinating to read about. Particularly the impact of something called order number one. Oh, yeah. This was a directed issued by the Petrograd Soviet, the Council of Workers and Soldiers, that had essentially taken control of the Russian capital.

16:18Order number one literally democratized the Russian military. It's such a bizarre concept for an army. It allowed individual military units to elect their own representatives and actually vote on whether to follow the orders of their officers. Think about that. You have a heavily armed military force occupying hostile, foreign territory. And suddenly their rank and file soldiers are holding committee meetings to vote on whether they should hold the line. Or just board trains back to Russia. And the vote was overwhelmingly to go home. Naturally. The command structure just evaporated. The Russian army slowly packed up its personal gear and abandoned the front. They get good behind. They left the newly formed Armenian National Forces completely alone to hold a 600 kilometer front against the regrouping Ottomans. And the sheer volume of military hardware they abandoned is staggering. In Baku alone, the retreating Russian forces simply walked away from 160 artillery cannons, 180 heavy machine guns, and an estimated 160 million cartridges of ammunition.

17:20160 million. The newly independent local forces suddenly found themselves heavily armed but vastly outnumbered. This massive power vacuum sets the stage perfectly for the absolute free for all that consumed the region in 1918. It was chaos. With the Russian regular army entirely removed from the board, the Ottoman Empire rushed its forces back in to reclaim all the territory they had lost over the previous three years. But the absence of Russian authority was so profound that entirely new unexpected players scrambled into the Caucasus to secure their own interests. Right. And this is where the alliances break down into complete absurdity. Total absurdity. You have German troops arriving in the Caucasus in June 1918. But wait, the German Empire was allied with the Ottoman Empire. They were fighting on the exact same side of the war. They were allies in Europe, but in the Caucasus, the ultimate prize was the immense oil wealth at Baku. It always comes back to the oil. Always.

18:20The German general staff actually deployed troops to Georgia to compete directly against their own Ottoman allies for regional influence and petroleum resources. They are fighting their own friends. The Germans went so far as to threaten to withdraw all military and financial support for the Ottoman Empire if the Turks didn't halt their advance into Georgian territory. It is a stark demonstration that the need for oil trumped even the most critical military alliances. Absolutely. The sheer variety of factions fighting in 1918 makes it look like a complete geopolitical free for all. And Vropasha created a brand new specialized force called the Army of Islam, which was specifically designed to march on Baku and seize the oil fields. And meanwhile, the British are scrambling. They deployed an allied force of Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealand troops. And they drove all the way from Baghdad through the mountains in Ford vans and armored cars. Which is an insane road trip. It really is. They were literally called Dunsterforce, named after their eccentric commander General Lionel Dunsterville.

19:22Dunsterforce was a desperate attempt by the British Empire to secure the Baku oil fields before the Ottomans or the Germans could get there. Right. And to miss the chaos of armored cars, German opportunists, and Ottoman advances, you have the desperate birth of brand new nations. The short-lived trans Caucasian Federation collapsed. And out of its ashes came the sudden proclamations of the first Republic of Armenia, the Democratic Republic of Georgia, and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. These newborn nations were fighting for their very existence while centuries-old empires were just collapsing all around them. And this is exactly why this chaotic scramble in 1918 matters to you today. The borders that were drawn in panic during this period, and the fierce ethnic conflicts over regions like mountainous Karabakh and the Kishovan, these are the exact same-gear political fault lines that continue to flare up on the news right now. It's all connected. The total casualties for this specific campaign were staggering. Over 300,000 dead for the Ottomans, and nearly 120,000 for the Russians.

20:22But the regional conflicts birthed in the vacuum of 1918 far outlasted both the Romanov and Ottoman empires. So we started this deep dive, looking at a battle over casping sea oil and imperial borders. We journeyed through freezing mountain passes where tens of thousands perished in the snow. We witnessed the total tragic devastation of civilian populations across the board. Saw a centuries-old Russian dynasty collapse from the inside out. And watched a bizarre scramble of armored cars and newborn republics fight for a new world order. Yeah, so what does this all mean? Well, I want to leave you with one final profound historical counterfactual to mull over. Okay. Consider the timeline of events. By late 1916, General Yudnezh and the Russian army had completely decimated the Ottoman forces on this front. They had taken Erzurum, secured Trabzon, and were actively preparing to push their offensive deep into Mesopotamia. They were winning. They were dominating. If the Russian Revolution had held off for just one more year, just 12 months, the Tsarist Empire would have won the Caucasus campaign decisively.

21:28They almost certainly would have achieved their centuries-old goal of capturing Constantinople. That's crazy to think about. Imagine how completely different the map of the modern Middle East, the Soviet Union, and Europe would look today, if the Tsar had survived just 12 more months. It completely rewrites the entire 20th century. That is a staggering what-if to think about. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. We hope you walk away with a much richer understanding of this chaotic, world-altering theater of war, and the invisible lines of history that still shape our modern world. Keep questioning the history behind the headlines, and we will catch you next time. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this.

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