Azerbaijan in World War II

The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic entered World War II with the Soviet Union after the German declaration of war on June 22, 1941. Azerbaijan's oilfields were enticing to the Germans due to the USSR's heavy dependency on Caucasus oil – setting the scene for German campaigns attempting to capture and seize the oilfields in Baku during the Battle of the Caucasus. Azerbaijan’s oil was very decisive for Soviet victory. More than 600,000 people from Azerbaijan were conscripted to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army during World War II from 1941 to 1945. Operation Pike The mechanized German army aimed to secure a large supply of oil. Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, provided an overwhelming share of Soviet oil production. In an agreement of February 1940 following the August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union committed to exchange German machinery, manufactures, and technology for Soviet resources. The Soviet Union thus supplied over 900,000 tons of oil to Germany. This trade arrangement, known to the Allies, fueled Allied propaganda portraying the Soviet Union as a German ally. Operation Pike was a plan developed by the United Kingdom and France to bomb Baku in a surprise long-range raid from airbases in Iraq and Syria in order to hinder this oil delivery to Germany. Despite being at peace with the Soviet Union, the Allies performed reconnaissance flights to prepare. As later shown by the limited effects of strategic bombing during the war, the plan's potential impact was greatly overestimated, while it risked negative diplomatic and other results for the Allies. The fall of France in June 1940 cancelled the plan; Germany captured plan documents from France and revealed them to the Soviet Union, increasing its distrust of the Allies. By the time of the German invasion, Baku and the North Caucasus were the main sources of oil for the whole of the USSR. The Soviet Union also relied heavily on the Caucasus region for its grain, following the fall of Ukraine.