Word: baku
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Russians, and probably a part of Sir Henry's British Tenth Army, hold northern. Persia, the oilfields of Baku and a line across Russian Georgia, south of the Caucasus range where the Germans are trying to cross. They hold, too, the middle shores of the Caspian, a pathway the Germans may try to follow southward from Astrakhan. And they have an internal front in Persia to master as well. The wild Kurdish tribesmen of the hills and the milder people of the lowland towns love neither the British nor the Russians; many still harbor Nazi spies, take Nazi money...
...region, only 100 miles from the Caspian. Thus far they had followed a railway paralleling the Greater Caucasus range, which towers east to west between the Caspian and Black Seas. Marshal Fedor von Bock was apparently taking the classic invasion route, by way of the Caspian coastal plain to Baku. There were only three other routes, all difficult. One was the narrow Black Sea coast, where the mountains almost tumble into the sea. The second was the Georgian Military Road, twisting up through narrow defiles and a pass 7,823 feet high before it falls southward to Tiflis. The third...
...Star's admonition indicated that the Red Army Command was well aware of its big chance. If the German tide broke against the mountains, Russia would have salvaged something from this year's fighting. Baku, would yield some 13,000,000 barrels of oil monthly. There would be no direct shipping route to the main Red Army, but there would still be a waterway up the Caspian to the Ural River, another across the Caspian to the Krasnovodsk terminus of the Turk-Sib railway, which loops northward through Central Asia to Samara and the Middle Volga...
With Stalingrad gone, said Karpovich, Baku oil could be sent across the Caspian to ports in the Ural region and shipped from there overland by rail. Such a method, of course, would tax Russian rail facilities to the utmost...
Most disastrous and improbable turn of the war would be the capture or destruction of the Baku fields themselves, for their wells supply the Russian war machine with 80 per cent of its fuel. Fortunately, Karpovich pointed out, Baku is distant from the present German lines and occupies an easily defended position...