If Germany won WWI, but Russia still fell to Soviet revolution, which would Britain side with?

Deleted member 97083

If the German Empire and the Triple Alliance in general were victorious in World War One, and the Russian Empire still fell to the Bolsheviks and became the Soviet Union, would Britain and France side with the Soviets against the Germans to restore the balance of power? Or would the Entente settle their disagreements with the Kaiser for a temporary alliance against communism?

Particularly, what role would the Ottoman Empire play in this situation? Would they become a base for the Western empires to strike at the Russian Revolution, or would the British and French ally with the Soviets against them?
 
As usual, it depends.

The Triple Alliance winning can mean anything from the OE reclaiming Macedonia and Egypt to the Ottomans falling apart but nominally not losing the war because they got a few Caucasian villages back while losing the Levant and Mesopotamia to rebellion. It can mean Germany controlling Ukraine, Belgium, Poland and the Baltic, or it can mean Germany just not losing any significant territory while France collapses internally and is forced to demilitarize (and pay reparations). Etcetera.

If there's a serious French ally for Britain and a collapsed OE and A-H, I can see them banding together with Germany just long enough to beat back the commies (but beat back only, like the Polish-Soviet war, not crush utterly like Barbarossa was aiming for). If France is all but neutered while A-H and the OE are intact German allies, the Brits will hold their nose and deal with the Soviets (while also desperately looking for ways to beat off the Germans without needing the commies).
 
Well, the central question here is: would Germany and the Soviet Union really be each other's enemies (definitely not at first)? Would the Entente really have the problem - or the luxury - of choosing to ally with one against the other (again, definitely not at first)? As time goes on, a rupture between Berlin and Moscow becomes more likely, but the whole thing is still far from certain.

By mid-1918 the German Empire and the Bolsheviks were joined in something that looked more and more like an alliance, aimed against the other side: the Entente and the Russian Whites (and the whole diverse opposition to Lenin&co).

Interestingly, the German and Bolshevik ambitions in the Caucasus partially coincided - and they both involved screwing over the Ottoman Empire's own hopes and ambitions for the region.

So I can imagine Germany and the USSR on one side, Britain and France on the other one. And the Ottomans might turn towards the Entente, resenting Germany's and USSR's interference in the Caucasus and beyond and hoping to get back some of their southern territories. Of course, that's just one of many possibilities.
 
I have a difficult time with the idea of Germany and the Reds as allies in the aftermath of the end of the War. After the end of the War Germany doesn't really need them anymore, I would think 'strangling the baby in its cradle' would be a natural choice for the German government.

What strikes me as more likely is that the Germans would soon enough turn against the Reds and start supporting (certain) Whites, the British would of course continue to support still other Whites, the Turks would seek to carve out a pan-Turanian empire in the face of opposition from London, Berlin and Moscow. But the Turks shall attempt to cut a deal with at least one of them I would think - I am not expert on their economy at the time, but I would think they'd collapse if they went it alone for too long.

All around it would be even more of a mess than historically. In the short term the British would be anti-Soviet, but if the Red won I think the British would ultimately move in a pro-Soviet direction IF they continued to view Germany as a major enemy.
 
If Germany wins, it will overthrow the Bolsheviks, period. As I noted in an old soc.history.what-if post, "Even *with* the war still raging in the West, she came very close intervening, and the difference between Ludendorff (who wanted to liquidate the Bolsheviks immediately) and the Foreign Office (which wanted to tolerate them for now) concerned only the short run. Nobody in the German government wanted the Bolsheviks to stay in power for long... " https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/ypcUv1YfF9o/zqIPdrfRfgUJ
 
If France collapses and makes a separate peace in Autumn 1918, but Britain and USA hold out, how long would the war continue? Would Germany keep the peace of Brest, or attack Russia?
 
The aristocratic and conservative German Empire would have certainly liked to depose the Bolsheviks, in which case they would have been replaced with some kind of a far-right regime. Still, they were forced to put these plans on indefinite hold in 1918 and enter a de facto alliance.

If Germany wins the War, there will be a window of time where they could overthrow Lenin. But this window of opportunity is not infinite. At some point, the baby will become too big to be easily strangled in its cradle. And they're also hamstrung by a lack of viable collaborators: 95% of the Whites will never ally with Germany. Berlin's only friends in Russia are the Bolsheviks and maybe the least respectable faction of the Black Hundred circles...who make the Bolsheviks look stable, sane and popular.

So Germany finds itself in a situation where an attack on the Reds may mortally wound them, but definitely allows the Whites to swoop in and acquire a great deal of territory - the Whites, who are staunchly pro-Entente and even more anti-German.

In other words, the enemy's horse in the Russian civil war is not going to warm up to Germany at all. Neither is the Russian population in general. Will Berlin really decide to strangle its own horse, just to replace it with a smaller and equally neurotic mule (which has to be personally micromanaged and revolts against its master on a regular basis)? Maybe it really will...doesn't sound very smart, though.
 
And they're also hamstrung by a lack of viable collaborators: 95% of the Whites will never ally with Germany. Berlin's only friends in Russia are the Bolsheviks and maybe the least respectable faction of the Black Hundred circles...who make the Bolsheviks look stable, sane and popular.

I don't think getting "respectable" collaborators will be that hard, once the World War is over. Look at all the Kadets who served in Skoropadsky's cabinet in Ukraine. https://books.google.com/books?id=yLiLYtkfJ_YC&pg=PA309 I can see the arguments the newly found friends of Germany will make: "Yes, we supported the Allies, but the war is over now, and the important thing is to beat those horrible Bolsheviks..." Even before the War was over, while the Kadet Central Committee rejected German overtures, "some prominent Kadets did waver in their loyalty to the Allies. None other than Pavel Miliukov, perhaps the most prominent Kadet leader, seriously explored the possibility of accepting German help to overthrow the Bolsheviks..." https://books.google.com/books?id=8RyNOw0jfdoC&pg=PA68
 
I don't think getting "respectable" collaborators will be that hard, once the World War is over. Look at all the Kadets who served in Skoropadsky's cabinet in Ukraine. https://books.google.com/books?id=yLiLYtkfJ_YC&pg=PA309 I can see the arguments the newly found friends of Germany will make: "Yes, we supported the Allies, but the war is over now, and the important thing is to beat those horrible Bolsheviks..." Even before the War was over, while the Kadet Central Committee rejected German overtures, "some prominent Kadets did waver in their loyalty to the Allies. None other than Pavel Miliukov, perhaps the most prominent Kadet leader, seriously explored the possibility of accepting German help to overthrow the Bolsheviks..." https://books.google.com/books?id=8RyNOw0jfdoC&pg=PA68
I agree. Reality about the strategic situation is going to set in and many people would surely find themselves compelled to be pragmatic and take Miliukov's position. As always, there are windows of opportunity and the window of opportunity to remove the bolsheviks wasn't going to stay open forever. Either way, Germany was probably going to intervene so it would be better to accept that the last cause was lost and work with them than be conquered outright later or live for decades under an ultra radical left wing regime.
 
A German victory means Brest-Litovsk holds so Bolshevik Russia does not have the Baltics or Finland (as in our timeline), nor does it have Belarus, Ukraine, or Transcaucasia. It likely also loses the Don and Kuban to the Cossacks supported by Germany. This is a dramatically weakened Soviet Union. It is the difference between our timeline's Soviet Union and contemporary Russia.

In addition, if the German see value in supporting some kind of anti-Communist Russian Siberia in order to split Russia in two, it can probably threaten Lenin anytime it wants to stop the Red Army from taking over. This assumes that Germany does not simply remove the Bolsheviks in 1919-1920. The Tsar was, after all, the Kaiser's cousin, and the two did seem to have a good personal relationship despite their country's antagonism through each other. He would not have liked him being murdered.
 
I don't think getting "respectable" collaborators will be that hard, once the World War is over. Look at all the Kadets who served in Skoropadsky's cabinet in Ukraine. https://books.google.com/books?id=yLiLYtkfJ_YC&pg=PA309 I can see the arguments the newly found friends of Germany will make: "Yes, we supported the Allies, but the war is over now, and the important thing is to beat those horrible Bolsheviks..." Even before the War was over, while the Kadet Central Committee rejected German overtures, "some prominent Kadets did waver in their loyalty to the Allies. None other than Pavel Miliukov, perhaps the most prominent Kadet leader, seriously explored the possibility of accepting German help to overthrow the Bolsheviks..." https://books.google.com/books?id=8RyNOw0jfdoC&pg=PA68

Miliukov did indeed explore the possibility of an alignment with Germany, but it's important to note how their meeting actually went: Miliukov demanded the reversal of all Russian territorial losses except those in Poland, the Germans refused to consider any major revision of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, everyone went away dissatisfied and negotiations were broken off almost immediately. And Miliukov was still vigorously denounced and marginalized by the Kadet party and the whole White mainstream for his overtures.

(As an aside, neither Miliukov nor the Kadets as a whole were exactly the respectable liberal opposition they had once been. They had swerved sharply to the right and their visions for Russia's future swung between a strong, quasi-constitutional monarchy and a thinly veiled monarchist dictatorship. Miliukov was among those leaning towards the latter.)

For the White mainstream, "beating those horrible Bolsheviks" was only one half of the point. The other, no less important half, was to resurrect a "Russia one and undivided", or at the very least something that in no way resembles the borders of Brest-Litovsk. They were not interested in ruling a mere fiefdom in the patchwork of Mitteleuropa and they consistently rejected that road.

My primary source for the above: Russian Nationalism and Ukraine; The Nationality Policy of the Volunteer Army by Anna Procyk. Can't find readable links right now, unfortunately.

The only faction even slightly inclined to accept cooperation with Germany without fully renouncing the ideas of Brest-Litovsk were former Black Hundred leader Nikolai Markov and his fellows. A small, unstable and thoroughly unpleasant crowd.
 
The Kadets would have to face reality after a German victory. During the War, they could imagine that an Allied victory could still save them, so they either refused to deal with the Germans at all or like Miliukov they could demand that the Germans substantially modify Brest-Litovsk as the price for cooperation. Once the Germans win, this will no longer be an option, and they will have to face the choice between Germany and the Bolsheviks. I think that many of them, at least, would find Germany the lesser evil.
 
The Kadets would have to face reality after a German victory. During the War, they could imagine that an Allied victory could still save them, so they either refused to deal with the Germans at all or like Miliukov they could demand that the Germans substantially modify Brest-Litovsk as the price for cooperation. Once the Germans win, this will no longer be an option, and they will have to face the choice between Germany and the Bolsheviks. I think that many of them, at least, would find Germany the lesser evil.
I wouldn't know if the many, but as soon as a few start cooperating their survival rate probably goes sky-high comapred to other Whites, at least assuming Germany is serious about intervening.

It's of course also possible that Germany is exhausted from the war and finds some half-hearted groups to somewhat support, as the Entente did, while never making a hard push (except Germany might push harder in the Ukraine as it's now independent).
 
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