188 Ë War and Dénouement
Others continued working with the Germans, however, because Germany ap-
peared to them the only hope for their dream of a free Caucasus. Although the center
of the Armenian Dashnak party refused to work with them and supported the Allies,
some groups of Dashnaks, as well as right-wing Armenian groups, supported the
German war against the Soviet Union.⁷⁷Even the Georgian Mensheviks, who were
rmly against Nazi ideology, were willing to work indirectly with the Germans out of
political expediency. Their intermediary was Mikheil Kedia, who, as discussed earlier,
worked closely with German intelligence. Yet he respected the Georgian government
in exile headed by Noe Zhordania, a Menshevik (Social Democrat), as the symbol of
the Georgian nation. According to Gerhard von Mende, who was closely involved with
the Caucasian émigré groups, the Mensheviks accepted Kedia as the representative of
all Georgian political forces in exile and worked with him, even providing him with
information on their underground organizations in Georgia.⁷⁸Without the German
authorities’ knowledge, the Georgians adopted a secret plan to dispatch groups to
Georgia, proclaim its independence, and present a fait accompli to the Germans when
they conquered Soviet Georgia.⁷⁹Of course this plan did not materialize. Some histo-
rians suspect that Kedia was a Soviet double agent,⁸⁰although documents we have
examined at the Georgian NKVD archive do not support their view.
More generally, numerous Caucasians, both émigrés and prisoners of
war/deserters from the Red Army, consented to ght on the German side against
the Soviet Union. Along with Georgians, Northern Caucasians (Chechens, Dages-
tanis, Ingush, and others), and Azeris, Armenians also joined in theseOstlegionen
(Eastern Legions). In 1942, unlike similar formations of Russians and other Slavic
peoples (such as A.A. Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army), they were widely deployed
on the battle eld, including during the Caucasus campaign of 1942 (Operation Edel-
weiss). Altogether tens of thousands of people served in the Caucasian legions.⁸¹Many
Caucasians also worked for German intelligence, whether military intelligence (the
Abwehr) or state/party intelligence (the Sicherheitsdienst). Haidar Bammat’s former
collaborator, Osman Saidurov (“Gube”), originally from Dagestan, worked for the
Abwehr and took part in a special operation in Chechnia where he and his team were
parachuted in August 1942. But they were more successful in sabotage operations
77 Von zur Mühlen,Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sowjetstern, 109.
78 See von zur Mühlen,Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sowjetstern, 114, and Mamoulia,Les combats in-
dépendandistes des Caucasiens, 294–96.
79 See Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 298–99.
80 See Burds, “The Soviet War against ‘Fifth Columnists’,” 287, 302, 312.
81 See Joachim Homann,Ostlegionen 1941–1943: Turkotataren, Kaukasier und Wolga nnen im
deutschen Heer(Freiburg: Rombach, 1976). For Georgian legions, see Mamoulia,Gruzinskii legion.
General John Shalikashvili, who became Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Sta in 1993, was born
in Poland in 1936, where his father, Prince Dimitri Shalikashvili, was a Georgian émigré. After ghting
alongside the Poles against the invading Germans, Dmitri Shalikashvili subsequently fought against
Moscow in the Georgian legion.