The planned Allied bombing of the Baku oilfields
At the start of WW2 the Allies, then the British and French, were faced with the problem of cutting off German oil supplies while preserving their own, which mainly came from Persia (Iran) and North America. Germany's main oil supplier was Romania which produced about 6.8 million tons per year. However, with the Russo-German Non-Aggression pact of August 1939 the Germans would gain access to Russia's 35 million ton yearly production, not to mention vast natural resources. In 1940 German oil imports totalled some 2.05 million tons of which some 800,000 were from the Soviet Union, the rest from Romania. Thus in January 1940, the Anglo-French Supreme War Council began looking at ways to hinder or stop the flow of Soviet oil to Germany.
Just a month previous British intelligence had completed and submitted a study on the vulnerability of the Soviet oil industry. They found that some 75% of Russia's oil production was centered in the Caucausus in production facilities located in or near Baku and Batum. There were only two options: disrupt the transport of oil across the Black Sea to the Danube, or attack the oilfields themselves. The Danube option was first chosen as neither Britain nor France wanted to antagonize the Russians and it would have the additional advantage of cutting off Romanian oil as well. However, British efforts to restrict the transport barge traffic by economic and clandestine means were unsuccesful. The next option studied was to attack the oil tankers in the Black Sea which brought the oil to the Danube and were mostly assumed to be German, but the neutrality of Turkey was threatened by this and the Montreaux Convention limited the size and number of ships of non-Black Sea powers that could enter the Turkish Dardanelles.
Another option looked at was fomenting rebellion among the Moslem population of the Caucausus something like at the start of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, but this was discarded due to lack of an extensive covert network there. Thus General Maurice Gamelin Allied CinC in France recommended the initiation of plans to attack the oil facilities with military force. The French believed that an extensive bombing campaign would deal a heavy, if not decisive blow to the Soviets, while the British believed that the mere threat of an attack would deter the Soviets from further cooperation with the Germans. The French vehemently disagreed saying that deterrence had not worked with Hitler and would not work with Stalin (Chamberlain was still PM at this time). Finally by late Feb 1940, even if they felt it unwise to go to war with Russia, the British agreed to the plan.
By early march, the British Chiefs of Staff submitted reports on the potential impact of a war against Russia including a study of Russo-German collaboration, weaknesses in the Soviet industrial base, transportation system (they use a totally different railway gauge than Western Europe), and oil industry. They also examined potential Soviet counteractions in places like Iran and Iraq. The French, who were feeling the German threat more directly and whose colonies (unlike British India) were less directly threatened, wanted to attack immediately.
The first problem was aerial recce photographs. The British spy plane took off from Habbaniya air base in Iraq and was able to photograph part of Baku before being driven off by flak and fighters. A second mission successfully gathered all photographic intel and the air staffs began to plan the mission. The British were to commit four Blenheim IV squadrons and a single squadron of Wellesleys with the Blenheims conducting low level daylight raids and the Wellesleys attacking at night from Mosul airbase in Iraq. The French would attack with five Martin Maryland equipped squadrons with extra fuel tanks for greater range from Djezireh in Syria. On April 17, Weygand announced that operations were ready to commence.
The French High Command wanted to begin the attacks during the last week of June 1940, the British were not so enthusiastic and refused to commit as Chamberlain and later Churchill felt that driving the Soviets into open military alliance with Germany would outweigh any benefits gained from destroying the oil facilities. The Russians had concluded the Winter War in March 1940 and the Allies were fighting a desperate see-saw battle for Norway by April. An uncommitted Russia would surely retaliate against British middle-eastern oil interests, something that Britain could not risk.
Then also by early March there were indications that the Soviets knew of the Allied plans. Soviet troops moved into the Caucasus to protect the oilfields. The Soviet government consulted American officials on how to combat oil fires in the event of aerial bombardment. Molotov even asked the Germans in April whether they could supply the Russians with magnetic naval mines to use against hypothetical British units attack Murmansk or the Black Sea ports. Finally on March 29, Molotov announced in a speech that the 'anti-Soviet implications of the Anglo-French forces under General Weygand in the Near East have forced the Soviet Union to take countermeasures for defense' Baku by then would have over 250 AA guns and several squadrons of fighters. Unlike the high flying recce planes, the Blenheims would have to fly low level within engagement range of AA batteries and fighter defenses and Germany may well have provided Me-109s had the campaign become protracted to protect 'their stake' in the Baku oil fields. While the distrust between Hitler and Stalin would have limited their acceptance of 'expeditionary forces' the potential Soviet threat to British interests in the Near East (and also India) would have strained the already stretched British defenses. Hitler wanted the oilfields intact and would probably have offered troops (which Stalin would have turned down) and modern aircraft and German AA artillery (which Stalin might have accepted in exchange for more Soviet raw materiel including oil).
When the Germans marched into Paris they captured the French records of the operations and published them all on July 4, 1940 headlining it as the "Planned Attack Against Russia" and provided copies of all the documents to the Soviet government. The British responded by saying that it was only an examination into whether 'in certain eventualities, it would be possible to interfere with the output of oil from the Caucasian wells'.
The second eventuality came in 1942 when the Germans were conducting operation Blau and driving down the Transcaucasus. Stalin became aware of the British plans and preparations through his spies in MI-5 and MI-6 which reinforced his distrust of the Western Allies and if the plans were carried out then (the equivalent of the bombardment of the French Fleet at Oran) they may have forced at least a part of the Soviet Union to seek an accommodation with the Germans.
Richmond
o
