Germans land at Poti

On 8 June 1918, at Poti, a Georgian port on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, the first sizeable regular German units sent to Transcaucasia came ashore. The steamer Corcovado had sailed from Sevastopol on 6 June. According to the German historian Winfried Baumgart, who drew on documents and the regimental history, she brought the Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion No. 1 (20 officers and 1,060 riflemen) and the Prussian 10th Assault Battalion (13 officers and 475 men), together about 1,600 men. With them sailed Captain von Egan-Krieger of the General Staff, from Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein’s staff, who was to head the German mission in Georgia. The British historians of the Caucasian wars W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff date the landing as early as 3 June, but German documents rule out that date.

A British chronology of the war also records under this day the signing of a treaty with Germany by the Georgian government. In reality the only agreement concluded in those weeks was the provisional agreement signed at Poti on 28 May by the Foreign Minister, Akaki Chkhenkeli, and the German General Otto von Lossow, two days after the declaration of Georgian independence. In it Germany recognised the new republic and took it under its protection in return for the right to use its railways and ports and a share in exploiting the country’s resources. In a separate letter of the same day Lossow announced the arrival of German troops. Baumgart sees these documents as the formal basis of the German intervention in the Caucasus. A final treaty was to be negotiated in Berlin, where a Georgian delegation went, but it was never concluded.

Sending troops was argued over in Berlin throughout May. The Foreign Secretary, Richard von Kühlmann, in agreement with the Chancellor, Georg von Hertling, warned that even a small detachment would drag Germany into new, unlimited commitments and further sour relations with Turkey. Erich Ludendorff, however, got his way. He argued that the battalions were merely a “training unit” for a future Georgian army and an escort for a German railway commission that was to improve traffic on the line from Batum to Tiflis. The Supreme Army Command was in fact after something more: oil from Baku, manganese from the mines at Chiatura and control of the railway linking the Black Sea with the Caspian, before the Turks took it over. Before the soldiers from the Crimea arrived, Lossow, together with the Georgians, posted guards of 20–50 men each in the ports of Poti and Sukhum and at the stations of the railway from Poti through Tiflis to Karakilisa. They were made up of former German prisoners of war from Russian camps, and by the end of May several hundred of them had been gathered.

The landing came at a moment of the greatest tension between the Germans and the Turks. Four days earlier the Ottoman Empire had concluded at Batum a peace with the three Transcaucasian republics, in which it took further districts from Georgia, and Vehip Pasha’s troops were preparing to march on Tiflis. On 5 June the War Minister, Enver Pasha, sailed from Constantinople to Batum with General Hans von Seeckt to seek an understanding with the Germans. The battalions from Poti did not stay in the port. Over the next two days they were taken by rail to Tiflis. Kress, who assumed command of all German troops in the Caucasus, did not land at Poti until 23 June. The first transport was followed by others in the summer, and German garrisons were stationed at Poti, Kutaisi, Tiflis and along the railway.