Allies Against Two Evils: Georgian POWs in Wwii's Bergmann Units and the Quest to Liberate the Caucasus from Russian Imperialism

An eye-witness account of the Russian/European conflict at the heart of WWII, relevant today as war rages again along similar battle lines in Ukraine, Crimea and the Caucasus.

In a corner of 20th-century history almost unknown to the English-speaking public, anti-Stalinist Georgians and anti-Hitlerite Germans worked as an arm of the German Resistance, disavowing Hitler's inhuman "East Policy" mandates and seeking to liberate Caucasian nations from Stalin. Allies Against Two Evils: Georgian P.O.W.s in WWII's Bergmann Units and the Quest to Liberate the Caucasus from Russian Imperialism by exiled Georgian M.D. Givi Gabliani vividly recalls this time, the hopes of the Georgians who fought in World War II, their solidarity, their tribulations, their devotion to the Jewish people, and why they made the alliances they did.

Gabliani's memoir, written in English and published several years ago in Georgia, contrasts the vision of an ascendant Russian Empire and a decaying West with historical European-Georgian cooperation and the centuries-long quest of the Georgian people for self-determination.

The preface by Georgian-German scholar and former head of the Georgian National Library, Alexander Kartozia examines the legacy of Givi Gabliani and the Gabliani family from the highland province of Svaneti, keepers of 12th century artifacts from Georgia's Golden Age and leaders of the 1920s resistance insurgency against Soviet invasion.

Gabliani envisions a future Europe supporting a trans-Caucasian alliance with mixed races and religions living together equally in tolerance and prosperous harmony, as they had for millennia in Georgia. As a spokesman for the POWs, he coordinates with the Georgian exile government in occupied Paris and Berlin, finding a secret effort afoot in occupied France to save Georgian and other Eastern European Jews. Today, Gabliani's war memoir centers our attention on an active fault line. Across the great conflicts of the twentieth century that undergird and still define the region between Russia, with its imperialist ambitions, and the Black Sea, Georgia and the Georgian people appear as some of the most likely partners for international efforts toward peace.

Dr. Givi Gabliani (1915-2001) was a general surgeon who practiced medicine for over 35 years in Quincy, Illinois. Gabliani came to the United States in 1950 and remained here in exile due to the fact his father Ignata Gabliani, governor of the Svaneti mountain region, was a resistance leader and political prisoner killed in Stalin's purges in the 1930s. Gabliani wrote his memoir in the optimism of the early 1990s as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and it looks forward to a future world without a Russian oppressor in the Caucasus.

Alexander Kartozia, former Minister of Education of Georgia and director of the National Parliamentary Library, is a widely published scholar awarded with research prizes from Germany and Georgia. He received the "Order of Merit" from the Federal Republic of Germany in 2022. His research includes German-Georgian cultural exchange and Georgian culture, literature, and language.

Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld, also known as Johann von Herwarth, was a German diplomat in Moscow who provided the Allies with information prior to and during the Second World War. He revealed the secret pre-war pact made between Hitler and Stalin on how to divide Central Europe and continued to advise Western powers not to give in to Hitler's territorial demands. In 1955, Herwarth became the first post-war ambassador from Germany to London.