Battle of the Caucasus

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Battle of the Caucasus
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
German tanks in formation in a Caucasus valley with infantry in the foreground, September 1942
Date 25 July 1942 – 12 May 1944 (1942-07-25 – 1944-05-12) Location Greater Caucasus, Soviet Union Result Soviet victory Territorial changes Axis withdrawal to Kuban bridgehead in 1943 Axis forces expelled completely in 1944
Belligerents
Germany Romania Slovakia Chechnya-Ingushetia	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Wilhelm List Ewald von Kleist Eberhard von Mackensen Richard Ruoff Petre Dumitrescu Hasan Israilov † Mairbek Sheripov †	Semyon Budyonny Ivan Tyulenev Ivan Petrov Ivan Maslennikov Rodion Malinovsky Filipp Oktyabrsky Lev Vladimirsky
Strength
July 1942: 170,000 men 1,130 tanks 4,500 guns and mortars ~1,000 aircraft January 1943: 764,000 men 700 tanks 5,290 guns and mortars 530 aircraft	July 1942: 112,000 men 121 tanks 2,160 guns and mortars 230 aircraft January 1943: 1,000,000+ men ~1,300 tanks 11,300+ guns and mortars 900 aircraft
Casualties and losses
281,000 casualties	344,000 casualties

The Battle of the Caucasus was a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus as part of the Eastern Front of World War II. On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union to the Germans and threatening the oil fields beyond at Maikop, Grozny, and ultimately Baku. Two days prior, Adolf Hitler had issued a directive to launch an operation into the Caucasus named Operation Edelweiß. German units would reach their high water mark in the Caucasus in early November 1942, getting as far as the town of Alagir and city of Ordzhonikidze, some 610 km from their starting positions. Axis forces were compelled to withdraw from the area later that winter as Operation Little Saturn threatened to cut them off.