Early Treaty of Brest-Litovsk?

During the negotiations for a peace between Germany and the fledgling Russian Soviet Republic, Germany asked for (compared to what they got) very light concessions - the surrender of Lithuania and Poland to the German sphere of influence. This was very light compared to the final treaty (created because of the Soviets' attempted sustained armistice), which forced the Soviets to recognize the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania. While the treaty soon became defunct, the Ukraine was the only territory they managed to retake.

Would the Soviets have been in a better post-war position, had they signed the treaty earlier?
 
No, as Germany was going to take what it wanted to take regardless of any so-called treaty.

Indeed, since Germany went beyond even the massive concessions gained under Brest-Litovsk, there is widespread belief in the historical community that had Germany not been defeated in the west a THIRD series of demands would have been imposed on Russia.:eek:
 

Hnau

Banned
This has come up a few times before:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=124923

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=93140

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=37041

Brest-Litovsk-lite would almost definitely include Courland and Riga. Its possible that it might not be included... but it would take some good diplomacy that I don't think the Soviets had. You'd need someone else doing the talking instead of Trotsky. Maybe if the Germans gave over Riga to the Russians... that's probably the absolutely best that the Soviets could get without some diplomatic genius.

I'll repeat what I've said before concerning this scenario: no German occupation of Ukraine means a stronger Spring Offensive in the order of 20 extra divisions. When Germany falls, the Soviets are that much closer to the Baltics and Poland... maybe close enough to take some or all of them. Lots of changes here.
 
No, as Germany was going to take what it wanted to take regardless of any so-called treaty.

Source? After all, Ukraine was hardly a starting war aim. Germany, as Hnau points out, was working against its own best interests by occupying the place out of a reckless greed made possible by the poor diplomacy of the Soviets.

Indeed, since Germany went beyond even the massive concessions gained under Brest-Litovsk, there is widespread belief in the historical community that had Germany not been defeated in the west a THIRD series of demands would have been imposed on Russia.:eek:

"There is a widespread belief"... sorry, man, but you sound exactly like the Genocide.
 

Hnau

Banned
Indeed, since Germany went beyond even the massive concessions gained under Brest-Litovsk, there is widespread belief in the historical community that had Germany not been defeated in the west a THIRD series of demands would have been imposed on Russia.

Speaking as a person who has read a large number of books on the Russian Revolution, I do remember a passage in one book that reported that Ludendorff planned after the fall of the Western Front to march back to the Eastern Front to throw the Soviets out of Moscow and force more concessions. Grimm didn't come up with this out of nowhere. But... the Germans could still have come to an arrangement where they only took Poland, Lithuania and Courland, as they initially planned... they then plan to come back and take the rest of the Baltics, Finland and Ukraine after the collapse of the Western Front. Its very plausible that they 'planned' that, at least. I would think if Germany could scrape together a victory by 1918, however, the Imperial Army is going to be so exhausted that they'll decide against marching to Moscow... more likely they'll just arm and supply the White forces. But, if the Central Powers are defeated STILL, a more likely scenario, then Russia is further ahead in retaking territory they lost under Brest-Litovsk.
 
Germany had already occupied more of Ukraine than permitted, a belt in eastern Belarus/western Russia for alleged 'communication' purposes AND pushed into the Caucausus including Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and more so unless you can imagine why the Germans wasted manpower and resources to occupy territories they didn't want...and it wasn't poor diplomacy but the fact that the Soviets didn't have a bargaining position in the first place.

Nor was Germany operating against her own interests as it is very doubtful that the second-line units involved, and 20 divisions in 1918 would have mustered slightly over 280K men, could have made a difference on the Western Front, even assuming they wouldn't be sent to some other failing front instead.

Oh, and the Soviets DID accept the first treaty only to see the second imposed on them so obviously negotiations didn't work out too well.



I Blame Communism, perhaps you could explain the suggestion that noting Germany's historical behavior in 1918 is 'like the genocide'?
 

Hnau

Banned
Grimm Reaper said:
pushed into the Caucausus including Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and more so unless you can imagine why the Germans wasted manpower and resources to occupy territories they didn't want...and it wasn't poor diplomacy but the fact that the Soviets didn't have a bargaining position in the first place.

That's just not true. The Germans never pushed into the Caucasus.

Oh, and the Soviets DID accept the first treaty only to see the second imposed on them so obviously negotiations didn't work out too well.

They accepted it just as the Germans decided to increase their demands. That was after months of negotiating where the Bolshies deliberately wanted to stretch out negotiations to provide time for a worker's revolution in Germany and elsewhere.

You better start coming up with some sources, Grimm.
 
Hnau, if I may...

1) The entire Caucausus region was occupied so you're wrong on that.

2) The Bolsheviks did not stretch out negotiations for months and, indeed, they could not. Lenin and his thugs needed desperately an edge, consisting of declaring the war over with the implicit support of Germany for the regime surrendering instead of White factions not ready to quit.

3) The Germans would not allow negotiations to stretch out at all. They needed a settlement fast so they could throw everything they had left before the American forces arriving became an unstoppable flood.


Sources? Look up any map of the front lines and occupation zones in mid-1918 and you'll see where the Germans were, including the Caucausus.


Incidentally Germany parked far more than 20 divisions in the territories acquired, briefly, from Russia as they first assumed that they could not fail to win in the west and then developed this deranged view that having won in the East that the UK/France/US would allow them to keep the spoils instead of treating them like the defeated power they were.
 

Hnau

Banned
Germany sent troops to Georgia, to help them against the Red Army and keep the Ottomans from invading, but they most certainly did not occupy the country or "the Caucasus".

http://books.google.com/books?id=ri...lOSDCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5

This explains quite a bit about the brief affair Georgia had with Germany, and the first time I've seen the Democratic Republic of Georgia described as a protectorate of Germany, but still, there was no German invasion and occupation of Georgia, nor of the rest of the Caucasus.

Provide some sources saying that the Germans invaded the entire Caucasus and occupied it. Because, what REALLY happened was that the Ottoman Empire invaded Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Any map of 1918, huh?

http://www.atlas-of-conflicts.com/areas/armenia-and-karabakh/armenia-1919-20.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ofensiva_turca_de_1918_en_el_Caucaso.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Campaign
http://www.conflicts.rem33.com/images/The%20Caucasus/azerbaijan.htm

Maps of 1918 in the Caucasus are hard to come by, but I have yet to see one where the Germans are in control of the entire Caucasus. Prove it by finding one and showing it to me, because I don't have any atlases of that time and place, and I've Googled for the past half hour.

Incidentally Germany parked far more than 20 divisions in the territories acquired, briefly, from Russia as they first assumed that they could not fail to win in the west and then developed this deranged view that having won in the East that the UK/France/US would allow them to keep the spoils instead of treating them like the defeated power they were.
Sure. But only 20 divisions occupying the Ukraine and the other territory gained after the two-week offensive following the collapse of negotiations at Brest-Litovsk.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ql...2O2DCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

"Several difficulties plagued the new occupation [of Ukraine], starting with its emergence as almost an afterthought to the Brest negotiations, with little or no prior planning and no division of responsibilities between Germany and Austria-Hungary."

It also mentions 300,000 soldiers occupying the Ukraine after the invasion. I've also seen reports of a million soldiers. There's no easy rule to determine the size of a German division, but I've rounded it to 20 divisions.
 
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Hnau

Banned
And I quote from Robert Service's A History of Twentieth Century Russia:

Negotiations were held at Brest-Litovsk, the town nearest the trenches of the Eastern front's northern sector on November, and a truce was soon agreed. The Soviet government expected this to produce an interlude for socialist revolutions to break out in Central Europe... Around New Year 1918 Lenin asked his colleagues whether it was really possible to fight the Germans. Trotski saw the deserted Russian trenches every time he travelled to and from Brest-Litovsk. A Russian army no longer existed to repel attack. In this situation, as Trotski contended, Sovnarkom could not fulfil its commitment to waging a 'revolutionary war'. And yet Trotski also argued against signing a separate peace with the Central Powers, a peace that was intolerable not only to the Bolsheviks but also to all other Russian political parties. His recommendation was that Bolsheviks should drag out the negotiations, using them as an opportunity to issue calls to revolution which would be reported in Berlin as well as in Petrograd.

"Despite his professional inexperience, Trotski proved a match for Richard von Kuhlmann and Otto von Czernin who parleyed on behalf of the Central Powers. His tactic of 'neither war nor peace' was so bizarre in the world history of diplomacy that his interlocutors did not immediately know how to reply. But in January 1918 the Central Powers gave their ultimatum that, unless a separate peace was quickly signed on the Eastern front, Russia would be overrun.

Lenin counselled Sovnarkom that the coalition had no choice but to accept the German terms, and that procrastination would provoke either an immediate invasion or a worsening of the terms of the ultimatum. All the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries rejected his advice. Successive meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee, too, turned it down. As the ill-tempered deliberations proceeded, Trotski's policy of neither war nor peace was temporarily adopted.

Lenin concentrated upon persuading fellow leading Bolsheviks. On 8 January he offered his 'Theses on a Separate and Annexationist Peace' to the party's faction at the Third Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Cossacks' Deputies. Only fifteen out of sixty-three listeners voted for him... He secured Trotski's private consent that he would support Lenin if and when it came to a straight choice between war and peace...

Steadily Lenin gained ground in the Central Committee. Sverdlov, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev backed him strongly, and Bukharin and the Left Communists began to wilt in the heat of Lenin's assault...

As Lenin had warned, the Germans were not fooled by Trotski's delaying tactics. On 18 February they advanced from Riga and took Dvinsk... that evening, at last, a shaken Central Committee adopted Lenin's policy of bowing to the German terms... Germany and Austria-Hungary, however, increased their demands. The Soviet government had previously been asked to relinquish claims of sovereignty over the area presently occupied by the German and Austrian armies. Now Lenin and his colleagues were required to forgo all Ukraine, Belorussia, and the entire south Baltic region to the eastern edge of the Estonian lands...
 
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Hnau, once again your evidence is without merit.

I see maps of the Ottoman Empire, Armenia, Georgia, etc but none of German lines in 1918 following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Now, since you agree Germany sent troops to the region your argument is basically that since they had not yet dispatched sufficient forces for a full occupation, no doubt due to all the other manpower needs, they never would have. I see no evidence to support this claim.

Incidentally your link on the Wikipedia Caucausus Campaign refers specifically to German-Turkish rivalries growing in the region and German forces sent specifically to oppose Turkish acquisition of the region.


I might also note that at no point in negotiations did Finland come up as a concession yet Germans soldiers quickly arrived there with plans to put Finland under a German prince.


According to the reference to Robert Service, if he is correct*, the period of negotiations covered a total of three months from late November's truce to a major offensive in mid-January, followed by another offensive in February. Obviously Germany was not wasting time and Soviet negotiating tactics were not buying any time.

*The asterisk has to do with the fact that Tsarist Russia operated under an archaic calendar system, and any books from this time have to be read with one eye open for the fact that a month referring to Russia may be a different month when referring to other nations. As an example, the October Revolution took place in November for everyone else.
 

Hnau

Banned
Grimm Reaper said:
I see maps of the Ottoman Empire, Armenia, Georgia, etc but none of German lines in 1918 following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Umm, we're arguing about the German occupation of the Caucasus here, Grimm. Get your head in the game.

Grimm Reaper said:
Now, since you agree Germany sent troops to the region your argument is basically that since they had not yet dispatched sufficient forces for a full occupation, no doubt due to all the other manpower needs, they never would have. I see no evidence to support this claim.

When were we arguing what the Germans would-have-done? Hmmm... let's go back upthread and see what you were really talking about.

Grimm: "Germany had already occupied more of Ukraine than permitted, a belt in eastern Belarus/western Russia for alleged 'communication' purposes AND pushed into the Caucausus including Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and more so unless you can imagine why the Germans wasted manpower and resources to occupy territories they didn't want...and it wasn't poor diplomacy but the fact that the Soviets didn't have a bargaining position in the first place."

Talking about OTL...

Grimm: "The entire Caucausus region was occupied so you're wrong on that."

Still talking about OTL.

I was always arguing whether or not the Germans occupied the entirety of the Caucasus region, not whether they would have occupied the whole of it. You are being quite bizarre, bro.

Grimm Reaper said:
Incidentally your link on the Wikipedia Caucausus Campaign refers specifically to German-Turkish rivalries growing in the region and German forces sent specifically to oppose Turkish acquisition of the region.

Blah, blah, blah, you are changing the question of the debate in order to put yourself in a better position. I gave you that link so you could see the map of the "front lines" there, which YOU SAID, any map of mid-1918 would show German occupation of the entirety of the Caucasus.

Grimm: "Sources? Look up any map of the front lines and occupation zones in mid-1918 and you'll see where the Germans were, including the Caucausus."

Grimm Reaper said:
I might also note that at no point in negotiations did Finland come up as a concession yet Germans soldiers quickly arrived there with plans to put Finland under a German prince.

After the civil war began, and after the declaration of independence by the Finnish people.

Grimm Reaper said:
As an example, the October Revolution took place in November for everyone else.

You're so smart, you've got the Gregorian Calendar and Julian Calendar all figured out, great job!

Grimm Reaper said:
the period of negotiations covered a total of three months from late November's truce to a major offensive in mid-January, followed by another offensive in February. Obviously Germany was not wasting time and Soviet negotiating tactics were not buying any time.

Nope. Major offensive in mid-February, not January. And as for the bolded tactics, you once again show that you are confused as to the issue we are arguing about. Of course Germany didn't want to waste time, the Americans were coming and they had to get soldiers to the Western Front. And the Soviet negotiating tactics bought only a month at best, it was an unsuccessful strategy to bet everything on the hopes that a devastating workers' revolution would break out in Russia, but those were the Soviets, they had a crazy ideology. Do you think I am opposing those assertions?

You're wasting my time, Grimm, so please go get some actual sources and proof. And please, its okay if you admit you're wrong, its not like I care. I just want to make sure the version of history I have built up in my head after years of research is accurate and undisputable.
 
Hnau, it takes real dishonesty to avoid all relevant maps of the subject and pretending that proves anything. You might as well have posted maps of the Western Front and pointed out the lack of German forces in the Caucausus or the Caucausus itself on those maps as vindication.

That and repeatedly changing the subject backed by insults reveals that you haven't changed and I wasted my time hoping otherwise. Have a nice life. Try not to get on too many more ignore lists.
 

Hnau

Banned
Dude, I didn't avoid any relevant maps. I just couldn't find any that proved your point, really. Just post a link to one map that has a German occupation of the Caucasus. Why don't you just provide a link to one? Wouldn't that win this debate better than just placing me on ignore?

When did I change the subject? You were the one that changed the subject, Grimm.

I don't want to have any hostility between you and I, Grimm, and I'm sorry, my personality is quite aggressive sometimes. But you have to realize you are acting bizarrely, man. I mean, you make these assertions, I post sources to invalidate them, and then you provide no sources whatsoever to back up your claims, you just say I'm wrong. That's not the right way to convince someone you are right.

That and repeatedly changing the subject backed by insults reveals that you haven't changed and I wasted my time hoping otherwise. Have a nice life. Try not to get on too many more ignore lists.
Well, who knows who really wasted people's time here. I for one think you wasted a lot of my time. I wonder if I'd have been able to get some actual work done instead of trying to educate you if you hadn't brought up these arguments of yours. I think history will show that I am in the right here.
 
I Blame Communism, perhaps you could explain the suggestion that noting Germany's historical behavior in 1918 is 'like the genocide'?

Hnau has been bearing the burden while I've been in Italy, so I merely comment that what I meant was that talking about "widespread beliefs in the historical community" is just what Wikipedia does to sound official with nary a source in sight.

This "third set of demands" is totally unsourced.

You have not produced a single source, and have said some things which were obviously wrong ("Germany occupied Azerbaijain"), then tried to change the topic. You've prattled about maps and not produced any. You've Ignored a chap for getting slightly exasperated with all this behaviour. You can Ignore me, or you can little-i ignore this thread, but be aware that this makes you look a much worse person and historian than an apology and explanation would.
 
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Hnau

Banned
Thanks IBC. Just for the record, Grimm, I'm not angry at you or think less of you, I'm just frustrated that you won't A) agree that I'm right, or B) prove that I'm wrong.
 
Thanks IBC. Just for the record, Grimm, I'm not angry at you or think less of you, I'm just frustrated that you won't A) agree that I'm right, or B) prove that I'm wrong.

Precisely. Perhaps Grimm has been going through a bad patch or something, although I have in the past noticed that he has a determination to vilify the Second Reich and even early Weimar which leads him to say silly things. I recall an incident where he claimed that the Upper Silesia had been "a fair vote" (the line was probably the best possible one, but no vote is fair with all those Freikorps and POW running around) and that all the fuss had been caused by a shadowy, nebulous, monolithic "German leadership" with total control over all information in Germany.

I think perhaps he has strong personal convictions about this issue for one reason or another which lead him to respond faster and more shoddily than he might otherwise, and then become snappy and unhistorianlike rather than an admit that his convictions or his earlier claims might be false. Touching a nerve, really. Rather a shame.
 
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