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TL: Great European Civil War (Cold War turns Hot in 1920)

Background and opening moves (summer of 1920)
In the end of 1918, Europe was destroyed by four years of the Great War. Germany, once the first military power of continental Europe, was defeated on the fields of France and Flanders and plagued by revolution at home. The monarchy was terminated in November 1918. In 1918-1919 a communist (“Spartacist”) uprising was crushed by armed repression. An almost independent Bavarian Soviet Republic was also crushed in the Spring 1919. But the communist movement and the KPD remained very strong and active among workers, miners, sailors and frustrated veterans of war. In those same months, other war veterans, mostly officers and Nco and many common citizens of low-middle class, frustrated by the defeat, endangered by the communist uprising and angered by the Versailles peace treaty clauses, became to form extreme right-wing formations, like the Workers Party, inspired by both nationalism and socialism. Germany was a republic, in 1920, governed by a Socialist government. But Berlin can barely control the whole German territory. In 1919, French, Belgian, American and British troops occupied the entire Rhineland, where autonomist forces were gaining consensus among the local population. The German Army, once the most powerful of Europe, was reduced to a self-defence force of 100.000 men, without chemical weapons, tanks, heavy artillery and aviation. The Navy, once the second in Europe (after the Royal Navy), was annihilated: sunk by its own crews in Scapa Flow. By the summer of 1920, Germany was a military vacuum and a political failed state.

France was bled white. It’s army lost its fighting skills in 1917 after three years of tremendous losses. In 1918 it was barely able to continue the fight, just because it was assisted and sometimes entirely replaced by fresh American troops. Once France won the war, its troops presided parts of Rhineland, but the Nation could not sustain another conflict anymore. Social turmoil and some military mutiny endangered the social peace and the Clemanceau government.

The British Empire was fighting four armed nationalists insurrections between 1919 and 1920 in Ireland, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Afghanistan. An Arab rebellion in Palestine marked the beginning of an infinite Jewish-Arab conflict inside the British protectorate. The Amristar Massacre in India ignited irredentism in the most populated British dominion. British Empire was the first and most determinant winner of the war, but its forces were overstretched and engaged in local conflicts everywhere. Public Opinion at home was not ready to support another major conflict. Labour movements were stronger than ever and major clashes between union activists and police broke out in many industrial cities.

Italy, one of the “big four” winner of the war was divided by two low intensity civil wars. Bled white by three years of war (600.000 casualties), unsatisfied by the peace treaties clauses (the “mutilated victory”) which deprived her of Fiume and most of Anatolia, Italy was shaken by two parallel uprisings. A nationalist uprising in occupied Fiume, which became an independent state named Carnaro Regency, under the dictatorial rule of the soldier-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. And a socialist uprising, which led, after months of clashes, to the occupation of all factories of Genova, Torino and Milano in August 1920. The liberal government, led by Giovanni Giolitti, was too weak to restore order and preferred compromises with the enemies of the Kingdom.

The old Austro-Hungarian empire didn’t exist anymore. An independent Hungary fell under a harsh communist dictatorship in 1919, then it was liberated by Rumanian forces and fell under another conservative almost-dictatorship (formally a “protected democracy”) under Admiral Horty. The former communist dictator, Bela Kun, escaped to Austria, then Russia where he was protected by the Bolshevik regime. In Hungary, Gyula Lukacs organized a clandestine armed Communist Party which prepared the resistance against Horty. Austria remained a little republic led by a Socialist government. The provinces of Slovenia and Croatia were now merging a Slovenes, Croats and Serbs Kingdom not yet defined. Czechoslovakia was an independent nation and little replica of the problems of the old Empire: three nations (Czech, Slovaks and Germans of Sudetenland) under an hyper- centralized government.

Turkey, once the leading nation of the enormous Ottoman Empire, was invaded by the Greek. The official government, led by the last sultan Mehemet VI was under Allied protectorate. A new republican and clandestine government was growing in Ankara and was fighting a ruthless war against the Greek occupation of the Western Anatolia. In the summer of 1920, the Treaty of Sevres ordered the partition of the Ottoman Empire among the Entente powers. On the field, Greek troops were advancing deep in Anatolia, fighting against Turkish nationalist resistance.

United States didn’t want to bear the brunt of Europe. A conservative-led Congress didn’t ratify the Versailles Treaty and refused the League of Nations, born by the mind of Woodrow Wilson. In the summer of 1920 the Democratic President was politically doomed. The United States troops were withdrawn by Europe. The American public opinion didn’t want to send them overseas anymore.

Both United States and Europe were plagued by a tremendous pandemic flu which exterminated 20 million people all over the World. One generation was decimated by war and flu. Every national economy was undermined.

In this context there was only one emerging power in Europe: the Soviet Russia. Economically destroyed, socially disintegrated, its people oppressed by indiscriminate terror, Soviet Russia was empowered by political fanaticism and had nothing to lose. Lenin believed in World Revolution, chaos in Europe was a precondition for its realization. Inside Russia, Lenin crushed all the political oppositions and four White (anti-communist) Armies in Siberia, Arctic, South Russia and the Baltic in 1919. In the summer of 1920, the last White Army, led by general Wrangel, was barely surviving in Crimea, but it didn’t pose a strategic threat to Lenin’s regime anymore. There was only one task to accomplish: reoccupy all the lost nations of the former Russian Empire, starting from Poland, the most important of them all. Poland was not only one of the richest and most populated areas of the former Russian Empire, but it was the gateway to Europe. Led by Jozef Pilsudsky, Polish patriot and former commander of the pro-CP Polish Legion, Poland was then an independent republic with a strong and well trained army. It was the main obstacle to Lenin’s projects of revolutionary conquest of Europe.

After the defeat of Kolchak, Miller, Judenic and Denikin White Armies, in March-April 1920 the three quarters of the Soviet “Red” Army were concentrated on the Polish border. Command was assigned to one of the most skilled and loyal Soviet generals: Michail Nikolaevic Tuchachevskij.

Pilsudsky knew that the Soviet were preparing an invasion the next summer and tried to pre-empt them in April, launching an offensive in Ukraine, supported by Ukrainian nationalist forces. The offensive led the Polish-Ukrainian troops to Kiev in few weeks, but a powerful Soviet counter-stroke conducted by the Cavalry Army of Semjon Mihajlovic Budjonnij (Konarmija), repulsed them from Ukraine.

July 4th 1920 Tuchachevkij launched the all out offensive against Poland with overwhelming forces. In just one month he routed two Polish armies and reached Warsaw.

On August 14th 1920, the Third Red Army (general Lazarevic) and the Fifteenth Red Army (general Kork) push through the Wkra river repulsing the Polish Fifth Army (Sikorski), reaching the Vistula. The Sixteenth Red Army (Sollogub) break through the Polish line in Radzymia and attacked Warsaw frontally.

On August 15th 1920, the Third and the Sixteenth Red Army entered Warsaw respectively from the West (undefended) and the East. The Polish capital was occupied after few street fighting. The occupying forces conducted immediately a horrible large scale massacre. All the “enemies of the people” (politicians, foreigners, priests and officers, even simple bourgeois) were killed on the spot, often after tortures and mutilations. Even the Holy See representative, Achille Ratti, was tortured and then hanged. The “Rape of Warsaw”, vastly documented by photos and first hand reports, raised strong indignation all around the World. But no one of the Entente powers wanted to mobilize its troops again to save a distant Eastern European little Nation.

The occupation of Poland was completed in just two weeks. Immediately after the fall of Warsaw, the three winning Red Armies (Third, Fifteenth and Sixteenth) turned South and defeated the Pilsudki Army Group near Lublin. In the Southern theatre of operations, Budjonnij’s forces occupied Lemberg, then Cracow by the end of the month. In the North, the Soviet Cavalry Army Corps (Konkorpus) led by general Gaj, reached the Danzig border by the end of the month.

By September 1st, Poland was entirely occupied by Soviet forces. A new communist government was established in Warsaw. It was formed by Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Dzerzinskij (commander in chief of the Cheka, the political police), Feliks Kon, Edward Prochniak and Jozef Unszlicht. An army of 800.000 commissars, agents and Bolshevik activists “invaded” Poland in order to reform society with ruthless methods.

But Poland was only the beginning. Lev Trockij, commander in chief of the Red Army was already providing troops with leaflets written in German. They were the first instruments to use in order to subvert the German resistance. Tuchachevskij received the order to invade Germany soonest possible. Stalin, the commissar in chief in the Southern front received new directives for the forces based in Cracow and Lemberg: invade Czechoslovakia and then Austria and Hungary, opening the gates for Italy and Southern Europe.

On September 2nd, Gaj’s Konkorpus was the first Soviet unit to cross the German border near Danzig.

To be continued…

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