If the Germans Won WW1, What Do You Think Would Happen To Russia?

[Snowstalker]

Why wouldn't they have the Ukraine and Belarus? Iotl Ukrainian independence was very short lived .

Ukraine would have retained the backing of Imperial Germany (who needed it for wheat)

 

[FillyofDelphi]

Ukraine would have retained the backing of Imperial Germany (who needed it for wheat)

Alot depends on just how much the Reds are willing to push on Ukraine and how quickly. The "Breadbasket of Europe" saw a real plumment in output during the War and occupation, and the Eastern regions are exposed and difficult to both defend and consolidate order in against a power that controls the lower Volga and Don basins. Once Polish agriculture gets back on line and Germany regains access to fertilizer imports, I'd wager twager they would find easy Ukraine not worth it an instead back a smaller, easier to defend rump on the Dnieper.

 

[Riain]

Ukraine would have retained the backing of Imperial Germany (who needed it for wheat)

I'm not a treaty lawyer but iiuc while Brest Litovsk was very firm on the Ukraine its update in August 1918 loosened the language around the Ukraine opening up the possibility that the CP wouldn't control it.

 

[Snowstalker]

I'm not a treaty lawyer but iiuc while Brest Litovsk was very firm on the Ukraine its update in August 1918 loosened the language around the Ukraine opening up the possibility that the CP wouldn't control it.

They would try. Perhaps it would end up being split along the Dnieper.

One other thing re: Poland--could the Border Strip (a miniature ethnic cleansing that would become a preview of the much larger plans the Nazis had for Eastern Europe) actually be implemented? SPD and Zentrum would be surely opposed to it in the Reichstag, and Pilsudski (who had been collaborating with the Germans) would never have accepted it either.

 

[David T]

As I wrote here a couple of weeks ago (on a possible German victory in 1918):

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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...

 

[FBKampfer]

Depending on how "neutral" the USA is, the Entente may well collapse on its own in 1918.

In 1916, they were about as close as they could come without staring down total military defeat before US cash started pouring in.

If they mortgage Versailles and the Buckingham Palace, they might be able to keep things rolling until 1918, but I don't think they could sustain another full two years of war without the US in the mix.

 

[BigBlueBox]

They would try. Perhaps it would end up being split along the Dnieper.

One other thing re: Poland--could the Border Strip (a miniature ethnic cleansing that would become a preview of the much larger plans the Nazis had for Eastern Europe) actually be implemented? SPD and Zentrum would be surely opposed to it in the Reichstag, and Pilsudski (who had been collaborating with the Germans) would never have accepted it either.

I doubt Zentrum would have any objections.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

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...

Neither was going in an knocking out Saddam and installing a new regime in Baghdad. Its the long-term effort that would required to keep them there on a scale as large as Russia that would be the difficult part and hard to sell domestically.

 

[Catspoke]

Depending on how "neutral" the USA is, the Entente may well collapse on its own in 1918.

Good chance without American loans Kerensky Russia will be forced to make peace with Germany in summer 1917 (America insisted that Russia stay in the war to receive American aid.)

I could see Kerensky Russia saying to the western allies in May 1917, "were done, make peace with Germany in the next three months or were making peace on our own". The Allies facing an economic inability to launch offensives to win the war, probably would be open to negotiations.

So perhaps a German "win" leads to a stable Kerensky government and less turmoil in the short term anyway for Russia.