REVOFLUTION
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
-Albert Einstein
The great war.
It is a phrase which still, even 50 years after it ended, impacts such feelings of dread and terror that only a man who has lived through hell can feel. The brutal tracking through the mud and the general nihilistic dread of the pointless of imperialist conflict remains as a bad taste in the mouth of the generation of boys sent into the great machine of the war. The symphony of death brought about by the family dispute was all-encompassing in its grasp- man either died of sickness or by shelling. In the 50 years since, we have seen the true outcome of the terrible conditions that the conflict had thrust upon the young boys. The 20th century has become a tale of revolt and reaction, of revolution and of counter-revolution.
The war started as an unassuming event- merely a simple, quick, and easy obstacle- both sides were convinced that their boys would be home to come and celebrate Christmas with their families at the end of the year. And, at first, that was looking to be what was going to happen. The Germans sped into Belgium, crushing the weak buffer-state and pushing hard up against the French. At first, they crumbled at the Teutonic might, and the Hun looked to be the winner of the conflict after all. Unfortunately, as the French finally managed to stabilise their frontline, and with the goal of putting to an end the Scourge of God’s mad charge into the French lines, the British also intervened, and everyone seemed to realise that the war was not going to be over by Christmas, or even in several Christmases.
The trenches were brutal, and the war was wasteful. Men crowded around in damp, rat-infested burrows, digging through the mud and attempting to find shelter amongst the shellfire raining down upon them. The seeds of discontentment were planted in that hell- the hatred of their upper command, the hatred for the carelessness of the planners of the army, the hatred of the politicians which had brought them into this war. However, this disillusionment did not take hold just quite yet- the men had a war to win, and the revolution against their masters could easily just be a way for the other side to come in and swoop in like hawks, stealing any chance of victory as they march on Berlin or Paris.
As time marched on, things only got worse for the people of the nations involved in the war. The Russians found their army under direct control of the Tsar, who did not bring them to the stunning victories that he had hoped he may achieve but, instead, humiliating defeat. In the west, the vicious standstill still held- a kilometre of land was worth its volume in blood, as Flanders Fields were stained red with the blood of the victims of the war machine. In the seas, the Germans fought a war of stealth against the proud British navy, as their hit-and-run attacks hoped to starve out the Brits as the blockade of the North Sea caused a turnip winter back home. Men lived and died in the squalor of the fortifications in the west and in the east, often merely seeing metres changing hands during their time on the front.
In the east, however, change was stirring.
The Tsar had been known for some time to be an incompetent fool, long before the beginning of the war and Nicholas’ military incompetence, and the people were having enough. The Tsar’s reign had been rocked by the spirit of revolution and general discontent that often marks the reigns of fools from the start, and the military often considered removing him and having him replaced with a more… intelligent Tsar. Unfortunately for him and his family, he was not living in the age where he would have been deposed in favour of one of his siblings or sons. No, he was living in the twilight days of Empire, the end of the ideals of divine right and the serfdom from which the Romanovs had profited off of for so long. Ever since 1905, men like Witte and Stolypin had kept the ship of state afloat, they had kept the gears of Russian industry turning and the heart of the nation beating. Now that Nicholas had left his weak-willed wife to lead the country during possibly the direst position his country had been under his family’s reign, it became more and more likely that his time was coming to a close. It was 1917, and it was time for an empire to die.
At first, it looked like Russia would take a path similar to the liberal democracies, such as America and France, where the king was superseded by the president and the capitalist took the place of a noble. When the Tsar found himself forced to resign, it was firstly the liberals, those who had often decried at every step the more extreme parties who sought to overthrow the Tsar, who would lead the revolution onward. It would be Menshevik and Cadet, Trudovik and Progressist, who would lead the Tsarless Russia into the future, and into the bright new age as they destroyed the Kaiser and brought an age of Franco-Russian dominance into Europe.
This liberal dream was destroyed by one Lavr Kornilov.
The provisional government was never able to fully control the army. The extremes held a monopoly on the military- either they supported the left; the Bolsheviks, the Narodniks, the SRs, or the right, those who sought to return Russia to her holy glory of old. Neither of which bared good news for Alexander Kerensky’s provisional government- it would take the loyalty of the men with the guns to usher in the new age of prosperity in Russia, and fate would soon prove to not have any tricks up its sleeve to protect the fledging republic. While the Kornilov putsch failed, and the Provisional Government continued to exist under Kerensky and a Liberal Democratic process, the gall of Kornilov and his cronies to attempt to commit another overthrow of the government in the same year as the first would soon come to inspire the Bolsheviks to commit a much more successful coup and bring the entire continent down in a very different (and much more red) path.
Russia had long been plagued by a red menace, a festering of the ideals of a dictatorship of the proletariat or the return to the farms with the serfs taking the reins, the hatred of the tsar and the desire to stop the bourgeoise from taking hold in the belated development of Russia- and the brewing social discord would come to a head in 1917. For some time, the Russian left, the Nardoviks, the SRs, and the Bolsheviks, had held the hearts of the Russian people, and had imposed the greatest threat on the Tsar during the years in the aftermath of 1905. With Kornilov’s doomed attempt to install himself at dictator having exposed the Trudovik government as weak and unable to keep its soldiers in line, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks smelt blood. They saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the apparatus of state and establish the will of the people, and they weren’t about to pass it up and let the men and women of Russia suffer at the hands of the capitalists for centuries to come. The reds refused to let the reactionaries take charge, and in October revolted against the Provisional government- and succeeding where Kornilov failed, bringing down the new order and building up their new state upon the bones of the last two failures of states. Finally drawing Russia out of the great war, the people of Russia could finally enjoy peace at last.
In the west, however, the conditions were still hell on earth. The Entente’s situation was dire- with the loss of the Russians, both Germany and the Ottomans had a front over and done with- and the newfound confidence in the army of the Kaiser left the situation in France to grow very dire indeed, now that the western front would have to face the full brunt of the German armed forces. The Germans thought that they were on the verge of a victory, the precipice of dominance of Europe, and they would not let up until they had humiliated France for a second time.
The Germans, however, knew that their time may soon be up. They had defeated the bear, however they had made the fatal mistake of poking the eagle- and the eagle would have far more stamina left in them than any major power still pulling punches in the war. The German high command was well aware that they needed to act fast, that they needed to paralyse the enemy from across the pond to make sure that they would not find themselves staring down the barrel of the Yankee rifle.
Ironically, their desperate bid to hold back the Americans from joining the entente would be the exact catalyst for the onset of the war. Their attempts to from a defensive alliance with Mexico were intercepted by the British, which they then presented to the Americans as evidence that Germany genuinely wanted to threaten American dominance in the western hemisphere. The Americans could not let this happen, and so happily chose to jump onto the bandwagon that was the entente rather than sit idly and twiddle thumbs until the Germans finally came for them.
The Introduction of the United States into the war would also have another unforeseen consequence. While it was well known to both sides that the tide of war would absolutely see major change with the introduction of the fresh, wide eyed American boys, the actual impact that bringing in a new continent to the war would have was by no means predicted by anyone- a reversal of the Columbian exchange.
The trenches, already a diseased and wet hotbed for rats and other rodents, were an opportunity for any strain of any greatly infectious disease to take hold and seize the inner throne of any poor sap forced into the western front. As the Americans slowly flooded into the war with the aim of overrunning the Hun, they brought many things with them- discontent from the locals, an excitement for the war that had since been crushed out of the rest of the contenders, and what would eventually come to be known as the Spanish Flu. This unaccounted-for event only accelerated the disintegration of the Kaiser’s army. Morale was already low, with the entrance of the Americans into the fray absolutely not helping them win the war by any means, and now the flu was causing them to finally begin considering laying down their guns and seeking a truce.
Of course, the great powers of old weren’t the brightest- they had started this war over Serbia of all places- and they weren’t about to have a radical change in personality. Their boneheaded desperation to win the war- to prove the mettle of their men and to prove that they were not cowards who would silently go into the night- wasn’t about to go away even after their pride and been beaten out of them by the opposing side. This belief was most deeply held by the upper echelons of the German military, the wielders of the Prussian might and the true power-holders of Germany, who insisted that they go down flaming. This anger at the entente and their adversaries during the war was most sharply concentrated in the navy- port sick and longing for a glorious end at sea, embarrassed and humiliated by their port-stricken nature throughout the war, decided that they would not just bow down and accept the defeat of their beloved country. The naval officers decided that they would die like Spartans- to die on one’s feet, rather than to live on one’s knees. Ignoring all orders from Berlin for a ceasefire, the German Imperial Navy died a hero’s death as they made a last mad dash to destroy the blockade.
No nation on the planet (other than Russia) were particularly pleased by the new development. Nobody wanted to continue the war, but nobody wanted to excuse the brash Hunnic charge at the Royal Fleet either- the Entente would have to march on Berlin to finally end the war, it seemed. The war was restarted, as the soldiers marched across the Rhine to their destination in the heart of Prussia.
The war rekindled also saw a rekindling of the virus. The petty men of the front, unable to choose their destiny and pushed towards their death by some higher-up who cared only for wealth, continued to fall ill and suffered far worse than they had in the earlier stages in the war. Why should they suffer like this? Why should they be forced to enter the meantgrinder to die at the hands of their foreign man? The Russians had freed themselves from the hell on earth imposed in them by their overlords, why shouldn’t they? Why stay under the yoke of their military command, merely to be torn to shreds in a hopeless and meaningless war?
Then, in the battle of Saarbrucken, all hell let loose.
En masse, both German and Frenchman deserted, declaring war on their old regimes. The soldiers had been pushed to their breaking point, and the war was nearing its fifth Christmas- there was no patience left for the aristocracy or the inept liberal presidency in the trenches, and it was decided that there was no choice but active rebellion to save their skins. Throughout the nations left in the war, chaos reigned in the streets of the cities as the governments failed to actively keep hold of their power. Berlin erupted into flames- the SPD taking power and quickly being discarded, as the discontented veterans from the east deciding they had more faith in radicalism and putting all power in the council’s hands. In France, strike after strike after strike saw their industry grind to a halt as the factories were left empty and the streets packed with angry labourers. The old world was going to make way for the new, no matter how strong reaction was.
And reaction was going to be quite strong. The British may have lost the jewel in the crown that was the Empire, but they hadn’t fallen to the rapidly-expanding revolution which had burnt through the continent at terrifying speed- and they could not allow anyone else to fall, either. Picking up the pieces of the shattered empire which remained loyal to London, they chose instead to oppose the left at all costs. Making sure to avoid letting the Communists gain even an inch without paying a gallon in blood, they destroyed or blocked victory for the revolutionaries in any place the could- right wing dictatorships sprung up across the globe as the once great empires of Spain, China, and Arabia became merely pawns in the great game that was emerging.
By the 70s, the great game was reaching its closure- and it did not look to be peaceful. Neither side was keeping itself together effectively, with overexpansion plaguing the USSR and the USA’s racial tensions reaching a boiling point seeking to tear apart both sides of the equation. The straits were as much mine as water- both sides watching the peripheries of their spheres tensely, careful that they play the game correctly, as one wrong move could bring down the entire deck of cards.
