The Expansion of War Ë 187
Prince Shalva Amiredzhibi, Mikheil Tsereteli, General Leo Kereselidze, Irakli Bagra-
tioni, Zurab Avalishvili, Shalva Maglakelidze, Davit Vachnadze, Hosrovbek Sultanov,
Khalil bey Khasmammadov and his collaborator Fuad Emirdzhan, Mammad Amin
Rasulzade, Mustafa Vekilli, Mir Yakub Mekhtiev, and Nazhde, an Armenian general
(thus representing Georgia, the Northern Caucasus, Azerbaijan, and Armenia). Yet the
Ostministerium, the German civil administration of occupied territory headed by chief
Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, was adamantly opposed to imparting any promise
of independence to the Caucasian political leaders.⁷²
Bammat for his part demanded Germany’s immediate recognition of the Cauca-
sus’s independence as a precondition for collaboration. He told his Georgian colleague
Spiridon Kedia at this conference: “I’m surprised by the silence of [our] Caucasians.
Why don’t they demand more forcefully the independence of the Caucasus from the
Germans? We need to demand categorically the recognition of the independence of the
Caucasus from the Germans.... Otherwise we cannot cooperate with them.”⁷³Bam-
mat still dreamed of a Caucasian Federation living in the international equilibrium
of the Western (German) and Eastern (Japanese) powers. Rosenberg, however, was
greatly oended by Bammat’s “ingratitude,” and Bammat returned to Switzerland
deeply disillusioned by the Germans. But judging by his private correspondence in the
wake of the conference, he still had not given up his hopes entirely, noting the possi-
bility that theOstministeriummight adopt “a more reasonable direction in the future”
(une direction plus raisonnable dans l’avenir) and expecting the “last word” that would
come from a “very higher instance.”⁷⁴No encouraging last word followed, however.
His hopes dashed, Bammat thereafter resigned from active political life. Rasulzade,
too, understood in the end that Nazi policy and the independence of Azerbaijan were
incompatible, and in August 1943 he left Berlin for Romania. By that time, Said Shamil
had also stopped even speaking with the Germans and returned to Turkey.⁷⁵Nonethe-
less, in the summer of 1942, as the Wehrmacht was pushing toward the Caucasus,
Bammat returned brie y to politics: along with Shamil and Vassan-Giray Dzhabagi
(see p. 186), an Ingush who had belonged to the Promethean movement, Bammat ne-
gotiated with the Germans in Berlin regarding the political future of the Northern Cau-
casus. The negotiation got nowhere.⁷⁶
72 See G. von Mende, “Die kaukasischen Nationalkomitées,” 1. Personal Archives of G. von Mende
(Oslo). See also Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 287–91, and von zur Mühlen,
Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sowjetstern. 71, 107.
73 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 233–34.
74 H. Bammat, Letter to O. Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, 14 June 1939. Jan Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz Pa-
pers, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
75 Georges Mamoulia and Ramiz Abutalybov,Strana ognei. V bor’be za svobodu i nezavisimost’.
Politicheskaia istoriia azerbaidzhanskoi emigratsii 1920–1945 gg., (Paris-Baku: CBS, 2014), 508-517.
76 See Joachim Homann,Kaukasien 1942/43: Das deutsche Heer und die Orientvölker der Sowjetunion
(Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 1991), 186.