If Germany wins WW1, what happens to Russia and the Tsar?

Lets say the Central Powers bring the Entente to terms in early-1918. Obviously Germany would prefer the Bolsheviks not to establish control over Russia. Wilhelm has an extremely close relationship with "Nicky" though by this point attempting to reestablish him as Czar would be a fools errand. Therefore is it likely that they would try to rescue Nicholas and bring him somewhere safe? Germany would obviously be tired after years of fighting which always made me doubtful that serious military aid to the White Army was a real possibility. How far would Germany/the Kaiser be willing to go in this case?
 
Its probable that the Kaiser would send his armies to support the Tsarists and crush the Bolsheviks (with the help of other European powers). Germany would not want a radical left-wing regime so close to home.
 
Its probable that the Kaiser would send his armies to support the Tsarists and crush the Bolsheviks (with the help of other European powers). Germany would not want a radical left-wing regime so close to home.

If it's a 1918 "collapsing over the finish line" victory as described by the OP,that's a giant gamble as you risk getting bogged down in an extended war and occupation in an area where the conscripts who really want to and were told they would get to go home are going to get swamped with exposure to Red propaganda. They may not want the Society to win, but is it worth risking everything they gained to a mutiny or red uprising under their feet?
 
I seriously doubt the Germans would want to prop up an unstable regime with the lives of their soldiers. Even if the Germans "win" the ruling class will still have the prospect of dealing with a surge to the SPD at the next election (possibly the Chancellorship), whom I feel will have little sympathy with Nicholas and his cohorts. In any event, they would probably seek to strengthen their puppet Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, and the UBD as a bulwark against communism.
The Soviet Union could fund socialist rebels in Germany and destabilize their power. They'd rather have their former enemy near them rather than a communist state of equal power.
 
Germany would want the Russian Civil War to remain as long and bloody as possible. That's why they sent Lenin there in the first place. Any assistance they would provide the Whites would only go so far as to prevent them from losing. In the long run, Germany would probably ruin itself intervening in Russia while being stretched to its limits in Europe as well. The US and UK would probably intervene at some point to prevent Communist takeovers from occurring in Europe. In short, it would be 1918 but delayed a little bit.
 
My best scenario for this would be the much debated "East First" with Germany and A-H weighted East and Germany defending in the West. Stir in a neutral USA but belligerent UK and you get at least OTL bow out by Russia, freeing Germany to return West to take on France by 1917. In that I think you get a rather drawn out war versus Russia, it is immense, more pressure to seek an armistice and although I doubt Nicholas will or can strike a deal, the "PG" here is more genuinely peace seeking and less open to revolution. With A-H carrying more weight, really wanked with Italy holding neutral, you get Poland carved to them, the Baltics carved to Germany and I would argue not much further, maybe Ukraine if you want to hobble Russia. Because I am not convinced this war is any easier or the West will be a push-over, Germany is going to be "reasonable" and make peace to the East, likely exhaust out in the West over 1917, maybe drag out through 1918 before the war ends in stalemate by winter. So you get a Russian Republic, the Bolsheviks cannot strike fire but dominate the political far left and gravity the Republic leftward. Elsewhere I argue this Russia feels rather Weimar-esque. Fraught with political instability, economic privation and prickly dislike for the peace. I do not believe Nicholas is forced into exile but he might get assassinated. This Russia is open to either a left revolution or a right coup. Assuming Germany does shift to an SPD-Zentrum-left Liberal coalition dominated Reichstag, Germany will be evolving faster towards limited power for the Kaiser, curbing the Junkers and open to a more cooperative diplomacy, potentially aligning Germany with Russia longer-term, tilting Russia towards Europe and pushing it back towards hegemonic status, as a capitalist nation with huge resources it will feed the Central Powers industrial machine to great profit but also actually be equipped to industrialize and compete as more than an oil and gas pool. Today you might well have a bizarre ascending China versus risen Russia, Germany and Japan as the other poles and the USA and British as oddly neutral great powers on the sidelines of a high friction Asia. In its own way this Russia may be the only functioning "Super Power", but in this multi-polar world it is more first-among-equals. The world now centers on the Eurasian landmass.
 
A likely option for a victorious Germany: supporting neither the Bolsheviks nor the pro-Allied majority of the Whites but setting up a puppet government of their own like Skoropadski's in Ukraine. Krasnov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Krasnov would be an obvious figurehead...

(In OTL, even when the Kaiser rejected the idea of military intervention against the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1918, he significantly added the words "without foreclosing future opportunities." https://books.google.com/books?id=5mSkxsos488C&pg=PA184 A German victory in the West might provide such an opportunity, given that the Germans were well aware that the Bolsheviks still wanted a revolution in Germany.)

The Bolsheviks might be the lesser evil compared with strongly anti-German moderate socialists and Kadets (some Kadets, like Milyukov, were willing to reconsider their hostility to Germany, but they wanted a serious revision of Brest-Litovsk). But was that really the only choice open to the Germans if they won in the West? I know it's been objected that the German people would be in no mood for a new war, but the Red Army was in its infancy, and replacing the Bolsheviks with a puppet government would not take a huge military effort...
 
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Germany would want the Russian Civil War to remain as long and bloody as possible. That's why they sent Lenin there in the first place. Any assistance they would provide the Whites would only go so far as to prevent them from losing. In the long run, Germany would probably ruin itself intervening in Russia while being stretched to its limits in Europe as well. The US and UK would probably intervene at some point to prevent Communist takeovers from occurring in Europe. In short, it would be 1918 but delayed a little bit.

Constant chaos in Russia is in nobody's interest. Not even Germany's as the civil war would bleed into the German satellites/puppet states in Eastern Europe and destabilize them, which would in turn have negative consequences for the wider "Mitteleuropa". Even a tenuous and unsatisfactory peace in Russia since, say, 1919-20 would be preferable to unending war from also Berlin's perspective.

The best side to lead Russia after the civil war, from the German perspective, would be one strong enough to maintain a sort of monopoly of violence in Russia but weak enough not to have real strength to threaten anyone outside Russia. A squbbling White military junta might do. Especially if it is somehow dependent on Germany to stay in power. How to get there is of course a different matter.
 
Would this really be such a large deployment of the German army that it would have domestic consequences? The Red Army of 1919 is not the one of 1945, they lost against Poland after all. They are badly led, badly motivated, badly equipped and badly supplied. Can they be expected to pose a serious threat to a proper WW1 veteran army corp? I dont think so, the German actions in the Baltics OTL was rather successful in expelling the Soviet forces, they'd need 10 times the numbers to fight a serous and determined German intervention and quantities of guns and ammo they dont have and cant get from anywhere. The Germans just need St. Petersburg and Moscow, the political, population and production centers and the rest can be delegated to the loyalist Romanov forces or whoever they chose to lead Russia.

And they're not going to be doing this alone if the Soviets follow the OTL strategy of being at war with everyone at once.
 
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