What POD is needed to get a White victory in the Russian civil war and as Churchill put it, "strangle the infant Bolshevism in the cradle." Personally I think the allies would be much more likely to be fully committed to supporting the Whites if WW1 had been less bloody. That would mean there would be less war weariness among the Allied nations. Avoiding Gallipoli and the Somme might help in this regard.
How to get a White victory in the Russian Civil War?
- Thread starter Emperor Palpatine
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Napoleonrules
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Gallipoli successful?
Perhaps if Gallipoli was successful knocking the Turks out of the war and opening up sealanes directly to Ukraine??
Perhaps if Gallipoli was successful knocking the Turks out of the war and opening up sealanes directly to Ukraine??
Question: What is meant by "White?"
Would a victory by the Socialist Revolutionaries and their liberal allies in the Omsk Directory (if they hadn't been overthrown by the Kolchak coup) count?
I assume that a successful revolt by the Left SR's in July 1918 https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Ymdstwd4BHc/qKDxTuEzo30J would not count--it is hard to call the Left SR's "White"...
Would a victory by the Socialist Revolutionaries and their liberal allies in the Omsk Directory (if they hadn't been overthrown by the Kolchak coup) count?
I assume that a successful revolt by the Left SR's in July 1918 https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Ymdstwd4BHc/qKDxTuEzo30J would not count--it is hard to call the Left SR's "White"...
IIRC, Mannerheim in Finland, who had just defeated the Finnish leftists in the Finnish Civil War, offered 100,000 troops to the White forces, which likely would have led to victory at least in the Petrograd area. But the condition was that the whites would have to recognize Finnish independence, which they refused to do.
I suppose if Mikhail had accepted the throne of Russia he could have been a force for unity.
What if Kornilov manages to get his men to Petrograd and crush the revolts? Or is this too early?
TBH, while you could theorectically pull a decisive White victory off with a POD up to about, oh, the end of 1916 or so, you will probably need a POD before the outbreak of the war, and possibly maybe before the incident in St. Petersburg in 1905.
Every now and then this possibility was raised--and refuted--in soc.history.what-if. See Jussi Jalonen's post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/5P6vCgPEIr4/THu9SKLpQYYJ which notes that Mannerheim was no longer in charge of the country when an offensive against Pertograd became topical, and concludes that
"The Finnish political interest in joining the Yudenich offensive was close to
zero. Mannerheim's personal chances of mounting a coup and launching
an intervention were nearly nonexistent, and he realized it himself
well enough. And even if the offensive had been launched, its chances
of success would have been slim..."
It's sort of ironic, given the Whites' dedication to a "Russia one and indivisible" that so many people want Pilsudski or Mannerhem to come to the Whites' rescue...
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Huh? How would that help the Whites? Even Russian conservatives had little use for the Romanovs by 1917-18. In fact, not one of the White leaders proclaimed restoration of the monarchy as a political objective. (Their official line was always that the question of whether Russia would be a monarchy or republic would have to be settled in the future by a Constituent Assembly. As Denikin wrote in 1918, "If I raise the republican flag I will lose one half [of the Volunteers] and if I raise the monarchist flag--the other half will leave me." http://books.google.com/books?id=NAZm2EdxKqkC&pg=PA209) It was precisely the fact of the murder of the Imperial Family by the Bolsheviks that made the Romanovs heroes to the Whites. As I have often suggested, if Bolshevik leaders were smart, they would allow--or rather force--Nicholas to flee abroad and then claim that he was masterminding every anti-Bolshevik movement in Russia (including Left SRs and Anarchists) and for that matter all oppositionist movements within the Bolshevik party...
A living Nicholas would be more an embarrassment than an asset for the Whites.
After reading Jalonen's thoughful comment, I'd argue still that it might be possible to tweak the Finnish Civil War and the conditions surrounding it so that Mannerheim could be in a position to launch his assault on Petrograd. It would not be easy, mind you, but given a very specific set of circumstances it just might work. Of course he would also need explicit British support for the scheme as well, as that was what he set as its precondition for taking place IOTL.
It is another thing entirely how the operation would pan out - most likely it would be a failure, one way or the other. Everything would have to work like a dream so that Mannerheim would continue to have the support, domestic and international, for keeping up the attack after the first few days/weeks when its inherent problems would become obvious - namely that the Finnish military as of 1919 was, as mostly little more than barely trained militia, a pretty blunt instrument. It could defeat the Reds on Finnish soil, bolstered by a wave of nationalist fervor and righteous wrath against the "murdererous rebel scum", but it will be another thing entirely how it would fair on foreign soil. Morale would be a problem when it becomes obvious the locals don't actually see the Finns as liberators, and of course there would be many who would rather have the men involved home in the necessary agricultural work in a nation that suffered from something of a food shortage as it was...
Then again, even a failed, brief Finnish offensive would have an effect on the Russian Civil War at that point, as a diversion and a scare at least, and would have knock-on effects and butterflies down the line for both Russia and Finland.