Russians take Kermanshah

On 26 February 1916 units of General Nikolai Baratov’s Russian expeditionary corps entered Kermanshah, the main city of western Persia. Its defenders abandoned it without a fight. The date of 26 February is given by the British chronology of the war, by W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff’s history of the Caucasian wars and by the work of General Yevgeny Maslovsky, who writes of 13 February by the Julian calendar. The British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign places the capture of the city a day earlier, and the Iranian historian Iraj Nasseri, relying on Persian sources, a day later.

The line at Bid-e Sorkh

For several months Kermanshah had been the centre of the Persian nationalists, who in November 1915 had left Tehran together with the ministers of the Central Powers. In January 1916 the émigrés entrusted executive power here to Nezam os-Saltaneh, a former governor of Lorestan, who wanted to form a national government. He was supported by German officers and by Ottoman battalions sent from Mesopotamia. After the Russians took Kangavar, the road to Kermanshah was defended by a fortified line at Bid-e Sorkh, where the Germans had about 20 kilometres of trenches dug. According to Nasseri, some 3,000 Persian gendarmes under Swedish officers, 5,000–6,000 tribesmen and volunteers, several thousand of Nezam os-Saltaneh’s horsemen and more than 1,500 Turkish soldiers gathered there. The German military mission was headed by Colonel Bopp. Nezam os-Saltaneh wrote to the Persian minister in Berlin that if help in men and arms did not arrive quickly, the situation would become critical.

Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, Viceroy of the Caucasus, ordered Baratov to eliminate this centre of resistance. According to Maslovsky, the corps numbered about 14,000 men with 38 guns in February, of whom 8,000–10,000 with 22 guns were concentrated on the Kermanshah axis. Instead of attacking the fortifications head-on, the Russians outflanked them from the south, through Nahavand. Cossacks and dragoons routed the gendarme and Kurdish detachments there. Allen and Muratoff date this to 8 February, Nasseri to 13 February. As Nasseri writes, the carelessness of the Swedish commanders played its part in the collapse of the front at Nahavand, and some of the Lur tribal units simply went home.

The fall of the city

Then the Russians attacked along the whole line. According to Maslovsky, on 22 February the main forces of the corps broke through the defences at Sahneh, throwing back the small detachments of Turkish infantry supporting the Persians, and on 24 February they took Bisotun, about 30 kilometres from Kermanshah. Nasseri writes that both sides suffered heavy losses, especially the Turks. The gendarmes resisted the Russians once more at Bisotun, only to gain time for the evacuation of the city. The Russian commander informed the inhabitants that if Kermanshah defended itself, it would be destroyed. Some of the local notables went out to meet him and welcomed him into the city. The Russians declared martial law and issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of the city and its surroundings. Maslovsky noted that they entered an “abandoned” Kermanshah and at once sent two squadrons towards Kerend.

The émigrés, gendarmes, Germans and Turks retreated westwards, first to Kerend, then to Qasr-e Shirin on the border with Iraq. On the way they fortified the Pa Tak pass between Kerend and Sarpol-e Zahab. They were short of food, and in overcrowded Qasr-e Shirin quarrels between the factions grew. Nezam os-Saltaneh and the émigrés survived, but lost Kermanshah for several months.

The Russians and the British

Baratov’s march was followed closely in Mesopotamia. General Percy Lake, commander of the British forces, asked on 9 February that the Russian Kermanshah column cooperate with the attempt to relieve besieged Kut al-Amara. On 25 February Baratov informed him that he was marching on Kermanshah. The British official history notes, however, that this small column was hardly able to relieve the front on the Tigris. In mid-March the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff told Lake that the Russian march on Kermanshah had caused alarm in Baghdad.

Baratov first had to sort out the supply of his troops, hundreds of kilometres from their bases. According to Allen and Muratoff, he did not resume the march towards the Iraqi border until 20 April, with no more than 5,000 men, and reached Qasr-e Shirin at the beginning of May, a few days after the surrender of Kut. In the summer of 1916 the Turkish XIII Corps forced them to retreat, and the Ottoman troops and Nezam os-Saltaneh’s government returned to Kermanshah.