GERMAN TACTICS
IN MOUNTAIN WARFARE IN CAUCASUS
TERRAIN THAT FAVOURS DEFENCE. FIERCE & RESOLUTE POPULATION (By Battalion-Commissar Troyanovsky, Red Army, in “Soviet War News.’’) The Caucasus is being defended not bv Russians only, but by Ossetians, Chechens, Georgians, Abkhazians, Azerbaijanians and Armenians. The highlanders, true to their fighting traditions, are out in force, armed with artillery, machine-guns, hand-gren-ades, rifles and daggers. But the enemy, too, is not unprepared for this mountain war. Special Alpine troops have replaced the units which operated in the Don and Kuban. The Nazi command does not hurl tanks, trucks and motor-cycles into the hill country. They act with greater caution than they considered necessary in the plains, and move mainly in “small mobile groups. Pack-horses carry light mortars and mountain guns. The infantry, armed with sub-machine-guns, follow close behind. German tactics, put in a nutshell, amount to this: Tanks, heavy artillery and transport columns are brought to the foot of the mountains. A defence is established, tanks often being used as pill-boxes. When this base has been set up the Germans send ahead small parties of Alpine troops.
SPECIAL HILL FIGHTING UNITS. On one important sector, where the Nazi mechanised columns had approached the very base of the mountains, Italian and German Alpine troops and units of the 2nd Rumanian Alpine Division were brought up. Groups of them were sent, along the difficult roads and paths. The level stretches were covered at night, or by exceedingly swift marches during the day. When they come up against resistance the Germans send groups of sub-machine-gunners into the hills. Sometimes they open fire at raildom, hoping to deceive the defenders into betraying their positions, while their main forces concentrate for an attack. The Luftwaffe bombards the mountain villages to intimidate the people. But the Germans have, learned to respect the merciless swiftness of Caucasian vengeance—so much so that the Nazi command has issued a special order giving its men and officers a few hints on how to behave. An order to the 13th Tank Division reveals that in those villages where there, were cases of rape the inhabitants killed all che Germans at night and then took to the mountains. On one sector the Red Army, captured some members of the so-called Brandenburg Special Regiment. This regiment is made up of criminals oi Czech Slovak and Polish nationality, who speak Russian. They are dressea in Red Army uniforms and equipped with Soviet arms. Small groups of Brandenburg men try to mingle with retreating Soviet units and capture bridged, stations and road junctions. Parading as guards, they try to hold these key points until the Germans arrive.
DEFENDER BEHIND EVERY CRAG. The Red Army regular troops and the Caucasian people themselves have their own methods of countering German tactics. Every crag hides a defender, either a soldier of a highlander Nowhere in the mountain districts have the Germans achieved any substantial success. , Wherever they try to creak through important roads and mountain passes they meet steadfast resistance. The terrain particularly favours the defence. One resourceful Red Army man can wine out a company of Germans. Red Army man Akishkin, for example, guarding a spring, saw 12 Nazis moving up the gorge. They proceeded to climb the mountain path. Akishkin let them advance some way before ne opened fire. He brought down three, and the others began to retreat. But Akishkin could see them, though they could not see him, and his. well-aimed fire soon disposed of the nine Nazis who remained. . When they began their offensive in the south the Germans bragged that they would overrun the Caucasus ma short space of time. But,,the key to the mountains remains ih the Lianas of the Red Army.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 4
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616GERMAN TACTICS Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 4
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