178 Ë War and Dénouement
would ght with the same vigor as before and with the same support as before. (Clearly
the reference to the “same support as before” implied Japan’s support.) It turned out,
according to Kruashvili’s report to Bammat, that their comrades in Georgia had es-
tablished links in all of Georgia (and in Armenia as well), and that everywhere peo-
ple were interested in their movement. But the Kruashvili-Tedoradze mission was cut
short: their arrival coincided with the uncovering by the Soviet police of a clandestine
“Turkish” organization in Ajaria. Sensing danger, they returned to Turkey. Fired on at
the border, the two managed to return to Turkey, although Tedoradze was wounded.³⁵
Germany having withdrawn (only for the time being, as it turned out), Britain and
France came decisively onto the Caucasian scene. Both countries had maneuvered
to turn Germany and the Soviet Union against each other to their mutual destruc-
tion, but the maneuver failed, resulting in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. They now
had to face the dire consequences. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, to
which Britain and France responded militarily, albeit feebly. World War II thus began.
Along with the Polish army, Caucasian émigré groups fought against the German in-
vaders.³⁶In accordance with the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the
Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and annexed it to Ukraine and Belarus. Poland
was thus destroyed by Germany and the Soviet Union. Following its agreement with
Germany, the Soviet Union duly provided oil, grain, and other vitally needed materials
to the Nazis. In November 1939, the Soviet Union further invaded Finland, demanding
the concession of border territory. By default, Moscow thus became a de facto enemy
of Britain and France. This prompted the two countries to target the oil elds in the
Caucasus for destruction, for they accounted for approximately 80 percent of the oil
supply in the Soviet Union, by means of which Moscow was assisting Germany’s war
eorts.
In the end Operation Pike, as the British-French scheme became known,³⁷was
never carried out, just as the earlier scheme of the two countries to intervene in the
Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union in support of the former never came
to fruition, owing to Finland’s capitulation in March 1940. Considering that an attack
on the Caucasian oil elds would lead to war with the Soviet Union, Britain even en-
tertained the idea of encouraging Japan into battle against the Soviet Union in the Far
East to distract it from the West. Japan had its own scheme of attacking the Caucasian
oil elds as part of its strategy against the Soviet Union. Japan’s taking of Xinjiang, or
Chinese Turkestan, would have placed the oil elds of the Caucasus within the direct
reach of long-range bombers taking o from Xinjiang. Even without Xinjiang, Japan
35 Report by Kruashvili to Bammat (November 1939) from the Bammat family archive in Paris. See
also Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 385–88.
36 See Mitat Çelikpala, “The North Caucasian Émigrés between the World Wars.”International Journal
of Turkish Studies9, nos. 1–2 (2003), 313.
37 See Patrick Osborn,Operation Pike: Britain versus the Soviet Union, 1939-1941(Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 2000).