THE PHOENIX
A STORY OF REVOLUTION



“[F]rom the grey, scattered ashes, on trembling wings unspeakably beautiful and solitary, rose a bird with jeweled feathers. It uttered a mournful cry. No bird which ever lived could have mourned so agonizingly.

It hovered above the ashes of the completely ruined earth. It hovered hither and thither, not knowing where to settle. It hovered above the grave of the sea and above the corpse of the earth. Never, since the sinning angel fell from heaven to hell, had the air heard such a cry of despair.

Then, from the solemn mighty dance of the stars, one freed itself and neared the dead earth. Its light was gentler than moonlight and more imperious than the fight of the sun. Among the music of the spheres it was the most heavenly note. It enveloped the mourning bird in its dear light; it was as strong as a deity, crying: «To me… to me! »

Then the jeweled bird left the grave of the sea and earth and gave its sinking wings up to the powerful voice which bore it. Moving in a cradle of light, it swept upwards and sang, becoming a note of the spheres, vanishing into Eternity…”


- Thea von Harbou, Metropolis
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Before continuing to the proper timeline, I would like to warn that this would be my first TL. I have lurked through here for a while now, having recently created an account, and now I finally found myself writing a timeline I would actually enjoy to share here.

Also, I would point out that I am a very amateur history fan, whose proficiency, when compared to the well-read members here, will be surely lacking, I fear. Adding to that, English is not my first language either, so if you see a mistake do warn me, so I can fix it for better enjoyment to others.

Nevertheless, I find that those problems would be no excuse for a poorly-performed work, and so I encourage you to comment and criticize honestly what I have written - I am interested in what I have learned doing research and no doubt your insight could help me expand my knowledge.

This timeline starts with two main PODs (the latter could be said to be a result of the butterfly effect, but in all honesty I thought of that one first); after that, butterflies kick in and the story spirals out, with the worldwide effects being felt soon after the changes.

Hope to hear some feedback soon, I will proceed to write the first part of the timeline soon enough.
 
Prologue - The ashes of the world
PROLOGUE
THE ASHES OF THE WORLD



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Rosa Luxemburg speaks in front of Communist supporters in Berlin during the First Sparticist Uprising​


The Great War had left Europe in a dreadful state; the trenches had managed to kill millions of European youth since it had begun in 1914 until the truce had been called on 1918. The war had exhausted Europe and reduced it to misery; Flanders had been wrecked, Germany was now bound by the harsh terms of the peace, imposed by the Western Powers at the threat of a renewed war that could destroy the nation for good.

Since the war had ended, Germany had gone through a period of intense political fervour. The disgrace of the old imperial political system due to the shameful defeat in the Great War had given adherence to what had been fringe parties in the pre-war. In October 1918, the Constitution of the Empire had been altered to give more powers to the elected parliament; in November 1918, the Empire itself had fallen. The Kaiser abdicated and the Republic was declared.

Many were inspired by the Russian Revolution, in which the Czarist System had been crushed by two successive revolutions, of February and October 1917, that ended up with the country falling into Civil War, as the Bolshevik Communists led by Vladimir Lenin rose against their Menshevik former allies who had formed the Russian Republic. For the first time since theorized by Karl Marx in 1848, it seemed that a nation based on Communist ideology would emerge. And that had inspired the until then small socialist parties around the world that their own Revolution was to come, to rise up against the bourgeoisie capitalistic system.

With the Republic declared, the Sparticist League, a group of Marxist revolutionaries who had organized itself during the Great War to organize the German Marxists that wished to see the wave of world revolution that Marx and Engels had prophesized sweep through Germany and combine them into an effective force that could rally its supporters towards end results, decided that it was time to action. The tide was rising and in the east the Soviet star shined over them, giving hope to the German Revolution.

Through the New Year, as 1918 became 1919, the Sparticist League waited while in congress; at January 1st, the Communist Party of Germany was founded by the union of the League with several independent socialists. Its leaders were the Sparticist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, two prominent socialists and political activists of the German left, whose reputation was well-known among socialist parties throughout the world.

They were waiting for a moment similar to that in November 1918, when the Republic had been installed. That moment did come when, in 4 January, the German government dismissed the Berlin Chief of Police, a Social Democrat allied with the Sparticist League who had refused to act against the demonstrating workers in the Christmas Crisis, causing great outrage. The Independent Social Democrat Party and the Sparticist League called for demonstrations to held the following day, at the request of the Chief, Emil Eichhorn.

They never expected the demonstration turned as big as it had – the masses rallied to their call, with many among the ranks of the Socialist Party deciding to join too. On that fateful Sunday, hundreds of thousands came together pouring in to the centre of Berlin, the wave that the communards had envisioned, the wave that would sweep across Germany.


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Barricades made by the protesters during the First Sparticist Uprising​


It seemed the Revolution had begun in Berlin; they occupied the train stations of Berlin, controlling who entered and exited the city through the rail and the headquarters of the newspapers that had since September been attacking the Sparticist League and that through the previous days had called for not only the intervention by the militant Freikorps, right-wing paramilitary groups made to fight such revolutionary actions, but also the execution of the Sparticist members and those who had supported them or shared affiliations with them.

The leaders of the uprising met in assembly in the occupied Berlin police station to discuss the path to take from there on; they elected among themselves an “Interim Revolutionary Committee” of 53 members. The revolution was on its tracks, and now it was time for action and decision-making by their part. They were in clear advantage, having a change to win over the city.

However, their capacity of making use of the power gained by the uprising was crippled by the lack of a consensus on what direction the uprising should follow from there on. Liebknecht rallied for a complete overthrow of the Republican government; the majority of the Communist leaders however went with Rosa Luxemburg in their stance that full-blown revolution would be a grave mistake on their part.

It was decided by the combined effort of the Communist Party and the Independent Social Democrats that a general strike was to be called for 7 January. 500,000 workers surged into downtown Berlin in that strike; infiltrated within the horde of workers, there were a number of participants whose goal there was nothing less than the overthrow of the liberal government of Germany and the installation of a hard-core communist state launched by communist revolution.

As the workers allied to the uprising, they went on to occupy key government buildings in the city and seize weapons, arming themselves. The Revolutionary Committee decided to call on the President Ebert for peace talks to end the uprising and bring forward a return of lawful order to the city and the country. Those talks were dismissed, however, at the discovery that the government had hired the Freikorps for the sole purpose of suppressing the workers. The Sparticist League called on its members to prepare to engage on armed combat, as the conflict between government and communard forces seemed unavoidable.

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Sparticist militia during the fights with the government in January 1919​


It was the same day that negotiations broke and the attacks by the Freikorps began. Being former soldiers from the Great War, the Freikorps still possessed much of the weaponry they had used against the French and Russians in the war, giving them a solid advantage against the workers in their outdated equipment. Their campaign in the street of Berlin was swift and brutal, quickly recapturing the occupied buildings, passing over the blocked streets while many of the insurgents surrendered at their sight. In comparison with the 156 civilians killed in the fight, only 17 Freikorps were killed during the fights.

In 15 January, disaster struck the already badly-battered uprising, with Freikorps soldiers discovering the apartment in Berlin in which the Sparticist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had been hiding; they apprehend them and were preparing to take them to their commanding officers when militias from the Sparticist League attacked them, attempting to salvage their leaders. They were only partially successful; albeit Rosa Luxemburg did manage to escape, Liebknecht did not and remained under Freikorps imprisonment.

He was brought to the Eden Hotel in Berlin and interrogated for several hours, being subject to violent torture methods by the officers; they desperately wanted to find the location of the remnants of the Sparticist League and the Communist Party, wanting to eradicate those forces from Germany once and for all. He would later be shot in the back and have his body thrown into a river, with the Freikorps commander Waldemar Pabst releasing the news of his execution, while also stating that Rosa Luxemburg had been executed.

Rosa Luxemburg’s life was kept a secret from the public for a while. The Uprising had failed. It seemed that this was not the revolution they had dreamt of. The dream had been crushed by the Freikorps and by the government. They still had Rosa Luxemburg, however, to fall back on; she was the clear leader of the German Marxists, and the news of her survival would soon spread, first among foreign communist parties and then to the people and the government of Germany, that the Sparticist League was still standing, if badly shaken.

It would take a while for Rosa Luxemburg to recover from the tragic loss of her comrade and fellow communist leader; the need to hide in the shadows was immediately recognized, of course, while the Communists campaigned on the martyrdom of Liebknecht’s death as their rallying point against the oppressive forces of the government and the far-right militias.

For many in the league, there was only one thing that still gave them hope – the rising red star of Soviet Russia, whose light was promised to shine upon the world for all nations of Earth to see and experiment.

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I hope I handled the images well; I have heard of problems about the images in the forum, and I have had problems seeing some images as well. I hope that is not the case.
I invite anyone who wants to comment what I have done so far, give an appreciation on the style of writing, the historical information and the choice of images.
 
Please continue. I wonder what Rosa would do in the future.

I think some German communist songs of that time period could add some atmosphere. The following song has the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg as its main topic.
(Sharing links to German communist songs doesn't mean that I identify as a communist, they are just good for the right atmosphere of revolutionary timelines)
 
Oh god, Rosa's going full bolshie isn't she?

Well, she certainly is going to have interactions with several Bolshevik leaders, we'll see how those play out for her ;)

Please continue. I wonder what Rosa would do in the future.

I think some German communist songs of that time period could add some atmosphere. The following song has the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg as its main topic.
(Sharing links to German communist songs doesn't mean that I identify as a communist, they are just good for the right atmosphere of revolutionary timelines)

Well, for now we will leave Rosa to her sorrow, and will be finding ourselves in the second major PODS. Any guesses to what that might be?

I appreciate the music; unfortunately I don't speak a word of German... If you were interested, however, I could use a German-speaking member with a taste for music to help me out with something...

And if sharing communist music makes you communist, I guess soon enough I will have McCarthy chasing after me... :p
 
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Well, she certainly is going to have interactions with several Bolshevik leaders, we'll see how those play out for her ;)



Well, for now we will leave Rosa to her sorrow, and will be finding ourselves in the second major PODS. Any guesses to what that might be?

I appreciate the music; unfortunately I don't speak a word of German... If you were interested, however, I could use a German-speaking member with a taste for music to help me out with something...

And if sharing communist music makes you communist, I guess soon enough I will have McCarthy chasing after me... :p

The content of the song is mostly about that we should go to the battle/fight and that " we are born to fight"; we should cooperate as freedom fighters with the murdered Luxemburg and Liebknecht for the revolution.
I can't say that I like or have knowledge about every kind of music, but you could ask me for help/translation/revolutionary or reactionary music of that time period in Germany.
 
Chapter I - Onto the nest of the eagle
CHAPTER I
ONTO THE NEST OF THE EAGLE

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Trotsky speaks before the Red Army in 1918​

The Russian Civil War

Since the Revolutions of 1917, the Russian Empire and then the Russian White Government had fallen under the revolutionary furore that, after years of brewing discontentment among the Russian people, had finally brought on the revolution.

Russia had fallen unto a civil war with multiple factions, with the Bolshevik Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the White Movement and their fellow emergent separatist republics in Poland, Finland, the Baltic countries and the Caucasus countries, and then the various other factions that had allied with neither or whose alliance had fallen out, like the Green and Black Armies, the various separatist emirates in Central Asia and the Khaganate of Mongolia, which had risen since the fall of Qing China. Throughout Russia factions and warlords dominated.

International intervention was also a factor; the world powers had no interest in seeing a revolutionary communist Russia emerging and for that supported the White Movement in attempting to stop the Bolshevik Revolution. The British and Japanese sent troops to occupy areas for the Whites, to take down the Communists and attempt to establish a viable Russia that could serve their interests.

The White Army had managed its best against the Communists at September 1919; both Moscow and Petrograd, the Bolshevik core territory, were threatened by their approaching armies, and the Soviet leadership divided, with their leader, Vladimir Lenin, coming to believe that Petrograd had to be abandoned to its fate to avoid the fall of Moscow.

It was there that emerged Leon Trotsky, the great commander of the Red Army, who had managed to take the host of unfit warriors and turn them into an impressive standing force at any pattern, an army to be reckoned it and admired. He had single-handedly transformed the Reds into a military power by his own will and talent. And now he argued that Petrograd must stand. He lobbied for his forces to move to save the city and was surprisingly joined by many Politburo members in going against the strategy Lenin had put forward.

He took advantage of the fact the Whites were somewhat overextended and struck a great victory against them in Leningrad; the Red Army marched triumphantly, forcing their rivals to retreat at all directions; their sweep of victories against the Whites in the east would continue throughout the rest of 1920, forcing them unto southern Ukraine and Crimea and, finally, to evacuate unto the Black Sea, defeated. In Central Asia, by the end of 1919 the Bolsheviks could claim victory. In the Far East, although White authorities still ruled, their armies had disintegrated, slaughtered by the war and desertion. It was only a matter of time before Siberia fell as well.

There was, however, one greater concern to the Red Army; a greater threat to their very own existence, for an ancient enemy of the Rus had awakened from the slumber under the fires of the Great War and the Civil War. The conflicts with the Whites in the West had brought on war between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia


The Polish-Soviet War

The war between Poland and the Red Army began as both parties began their offensives into Belarusian territory, attempting to capture as many posts as possible and the Polish army attempting to halt the Soviet westward advance that had gained momentum in the war against the Whites. They would be successful, and the Polish string of victories would result in a push eastwards, capturing Vilnius and Minsk, reaching the Daugava River, and securing the occupied regions under their control.

Polish advances would continue through the rest of 1919, as the Soviets were dealing with the White Army, unto the first months of 1920. The Polish were no friends of the Whites, though, knowing that them being what remained of the ideology of the Russian Empire, their position on Polish independence would be to at least allow autonomy, similar to the pre-war statute. Poland had no interest in fighting their battles for them; they were no friends nor allies.

Poland aligned itself with the exiled Ukrainian nationalists, whom the Red Army had expelled from their country lands to which they wanted to return; they signed the Treaty of Warsaw, in which the frontiers between Poland and an independent Ukraine to be set up were drawn, and military support was promised. It was the construction of a Polish puppet state in the Ukraine instead of an aggressive and expansionist Russia that was envisioned in those talks. With that, 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers joined the Polish army in their campaign eastward.

With that strength, the Polish Army advanced in their Kiev Offensive, conquering the city and large tracts of Ukrainian territory, attempting to rally the people to their side, stating they would occupy the land until a legal and stable Ukrainian government set in. It was hoped that they were able to find the friendship of the Ukrainians and hold, as the Red Army was approaching.


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Polish troops march in Kiev​


The success didn’t last long, though. When the Red Army reached the positions of the Polish; when the armies began confront, they were unable to put an end to the Soviet advances; after having a few victories, by the end of May 1920 the Soviets were preparing the next push west against Poland. By June, the Polish armies were already in full retreat from the Red Army pushing along the front; Kiev was abandoned to the Bolsheviks.

By that time, the Red Army was already supreme in Russia; what remained of the White Army were scattered pieces and factional generals who were fleeing from the Red advance; many had submitted to Soviet authority, and become faithful members of the Red Army; they made it a question of patriotism against foreign invaders, Lenin advocating that propaganda. The emergent Polish republic was compared to the Polish Commonwealth that had invaded Russia in the XVII century, as oppressors of the free Russian people.

The Red Army moved at an amazing pace, covering around 32 kilometres each day, an outstanding marching rate; the Polish fortresses were falling one by one, as their plans for a counter-offensive continued to fail. The army Leon Trotsky had assembled and that Mikhail Tukhachevsky led as commander was an unstoppable force, or so it seemed. Soon enough, orders were given to capture Lwow, the greatest city in south-eastern Poland and an important industrial centre for the nation.

In Lwow, the Polish contingent fought with honour. It fought with heavy fire, but eventually fell to the greater numbers that the Red Army had poured in; the capture of Lwow had been deemed necessary for the war to continue. By 11th August, the city was occupied, the red flag being hoisted in its public buildings and the Red Army marching on its streets. The occupying forces were managed by a prominent Politburo leader named Josef Stalin, as danger was felt from partisans from Polish anti-communist groups.


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Old Bolshevik leaders, Josef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin, whose contribution to the Revolution is undeniable​


The way was open for the gates of Warsaw; many feared, however, that the Red Army could be overextending and be soon dealt with a greater blow than it could handle, and that it would be fatal to the Revolution as a whole
 
The Man of Steel & The Miracle at the Vistula
The Man of Steel

The night was cold and it rained.

In that damned city, it seemed to be always raining; at least, he never remembered having been in a city where it rained so much. It was likely that it rained at the very least every other day. At least it seemed the weather was more moderate in Lwow than it had ever been in Tsaritsyn, where the Politburo (and by that it was meant Lenin) had dispatched him, by the shores of the Volga River. He had never fully forgiven Lenin for that; that city was a war-torn ruin, and he was really at his element in the politics of Moscow. War was means to an end.

Lwow was different from the Volga; it was a foreign land, no matter what the propaganda said; he too was a foreigner in Russia, having been born in Georgia, by all means a Russian colony. The Polish people seemed to resent the Red Army, to look at them as conquerors. If it was up to him, since they were seen as conquerors they should simply act like that. Yet the orders had been clear in that he should make the pretence of liberation.

He wondered if they truly thought of themselves as liberators; he wondered if his colleagues at the Politburo honestly saw the best for all, the publicized revolution, or if they, like him, were attempting to fulfil their own goals, and to climb up to power as he had been for years. He remembered having faith in the revolution for its own sake, but he was young and stupid. Since then, his heart once soft had become rigid to the needs of others, towards humanity. He liked it, living for himself. Perhaps the capitalists had it right, if not for their staunch Christianism.

From the rain, he heard steps approaching. They were too close; the rain obfuscated his senses; he could not avoid them now even if he wanted. He didn’t even know who it was that was approaching, he only began to saw a figure emerging from the darkness.

- Commissar Josef Stalin? – the voice questioned. It was in perfect Russian.

- Yes. – It was wisest not to risk it; there was a curfew put in place. He had given orders for his soldiers to shoot anyone who didn’t obey to it. That, of course, not counting himself.

He heard the hammer clicking at the cocking of the gun his pursuer held. He sighed. Of course this would happen eventually. He had known since the beginning that the city was crawling with Polish insurgents. He had called for a thorough search and apprehension of the known popular leaders and dangerous individuals, but they had called him “paranoid and delusional”. He held his arms high; his best shot now was to cooperate and use the skills he had learned in Moscow to survive two revolutions – deceit, evaluate and manipulate others.

They put a bag over his head. It was they as it wasn’t the one who had called him who did it, that man was still pointing a gun in front of him. He was then taken inside a building, sat down in a room in a basement and tied to the chair before the sack was taken out of his head. His assailants didn’t wear masks. That was not a good sign. It meant they weren’t planning on letting him live.

He did recognize one of them. He had read through the report made of him by his agents, when he had made sure to have anyone suspect of being active in resistance groups or who might be knowledgeable on such organizations, so he could later interrogate or get rid of them at need. He was young, 20 years old, had fought in the Great War and against the Ukrainians. It seemed he had some nationalistic and right-wing tendencies as well.


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Stanislaw Piasecki, 20-year-old Polish war veteran who was involved in the kidnap of Josef Stalin​



They began by asking them a series of questions; they wanted to know plans, positions, and strategies of the Red Army in Poland; no doubt that meant they had connections, ways to contact agents of the Polish Army. Such information would be useful if he wasn’t himself a captive of those militants. He refused to answer each one of them, of course. It had to be given the impression of a commander of the revolution, who would not betray it for fear.

After questioning peacefully failed, and questioning under the threat of torture failed as well, the Polish resorted to various methods of torture; they pierced his body, branded him with hot irons, hammered and nailed pieces of metal into his flesh, with the miracle of electricity made him quiver and feel his body boil like meat in a cooking pot. Nothing too original; in his years of massacring and torturing the enemies of himself and of the revolution, he had thought of all those methods, tried them all, evaluated them, made some new ones, which he wasn’t going to share with his enemies though.

It seemed that this Stalin truly was of steel. He still did not answer anything, being absolutely silent about the secrets he held of the Red Army and the Revolution; it would be a decrease in prestige to fall to enemy torture and prestige was power and power was needed.

Through the questioning and torturing, he was persistent in continuing to plague his hosts with questions and proposals of his own – trying to find the weakest link, trying to find who would be the first who accept an offer to betray his friends. Perhaps it was money, Man likes money. They did not respond. Freedom? There must have been at least one who thought of their cause as a hopeless one, an amnesty promise could be enough. It did not work. In the end, he resigned himself; among extremists, only their mad dream was acceptable, and he couldn’t give them Poland. That was lost by now.

In the end, he still looked at the eyes of his kidnapper as he pressed the trigger of the gun pointed directly to his forehead. The last sound he heard was the shot resonating through his ears before everything turned dark and consciousness swept away.

The next morning, the sun shined; it was warm, as if the world was celebrating the end of a great evil; a rainbow marked the sky, the old signal that the goodness of God was in alliance with the acts of Man. As the people of Lwow left for their jobs, they quickly returned home, in fear. It was only when the Red Army left their barracks they understood why the quietness.

Josef Stalin had died on the 15th August 1920; on the morning of the 16th, his body was found by the people of Lwow and the Red Army occupation force he led hanged on a light post in front of the Dominican Church the Red Army had occupied and defiled.

Alexander Yegorov was quickly installed as the new commander for the occupation forces in Lwow. His immediate actions were the swift investigation of those who had killed his predecessor, linking them to a group named the All-Polish Black Movement; its prominent members, along with several others known Polish nationalists in the city, were arrested and executed, to end the resistance. He would later abandon the city to a delegate, going with the bulk of his troops north, answering to orders from his commanders to send troops to the battle that was brewing in Warsaw


The Miracle at the Vistula

For Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was leading the Red Army as it approached Warsaw, his plans to capture the city were certain to succeed; his strategy was near infallibility and with his armies had already been organized and set in the positions he had planned for with weeks of advance. Taking Warsaw seemed imminent to him.

What he had failed to take into account, since he actually wasn’t aware of the fact, was that the Polish military had decrypted the messages sent by radio by the Red Army, were aware of his plans, had studied them for weaknesses and were now preparing a trap to walk him in his approach against Warsaw. If he continued with the plan, the Red Army would still walk in to a massacre by the Polish.

Tukhachevsky had left the link between his north-western and south-western vulnerable, with only a small force assigned to it. The infamous 1st Cavalry Army, whom the Polish greatly feared, was expected to be tied in Lwow, as the death of the commander Josef Stalin would require their presence to eliminate the threat of upheaval, and delay them long enough to allow for the Polish trap to succeed.

The Red Army managed to reach and occupy a village only 13 kilometres from Warsaw, but the Polish plan was still on; they advanced at full strength against the weak link between north and south on the offensive. Only then did the Red commanders see the flaw in their plans. As the Polish counteroffensive crushed the Soviets, doom seemed close.

Then it all changed. From the south came the 1st Cavalry Army and the remaining forces from Lwow, led by Alexander Yegorov; their unexpected arrival hindered the Polish efforts. The counteroffensive fell back, the Polish Army fleeing in a disorganised fashion against the Red Army, whose exhaustion was beat back by the morale boost of imminent victory. The Red Army charged ahead, ever so more confident of their own ability to win the battle on 20 August.

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The Soviet 1st Cavalry Army, whose contribution to the Battle of Warsaw is undeniable, marching with the Red Flag​


Named ‘The Miracle at the Vistula’ by the Soviets, the surprising advance of the 1st Cavalry Army on time to participate in the battle, and ‘The Disaster at the Vistula’ by the Polish nationalists, for the utmost failure in prevent the fall of Warsaw, the capture of the city would result in the collapse of all Polish fronts.

In Warsaw, the Red Army marched in triumph, with its leaders being acclaimed as victors and heralds to the people. The names of Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Alexander Yegorov are acclaimed as heroes to the proletariat, heroes to the soldiers. Red banners flew all over the city, and their names were engraved into various Polish monuments.

Throughout August and early September, what remained of the Polish government struggled as well as it could to re-establish a front against the Soviet offensive that continued to march, now virtually unopposed, through the nation. What remained of the Polish government was the Council of the Defence of the Nation; if there was a Polish leadership it was around the Marshall of Poland, Josef Pilsudski. He was, however, a shadow of his former self. With his reputation ruined, considered by all foreign and domestic voices a failure as a military leader and a failure as a political leader. The Polish situation seemed dire.

It didn’t last long, however. On the 13th September, the Council of the Defence of the Nation announced the death of Marshall Pilsudski; the official version was the Marshall had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The new leadership of the Council, headed by Prime-Minister Wincenty Witos, approached the Soviet authorities to negotiate terms.

In the end, the negotiations were quick; there wasn’t much that the Polish had that the Soviets felt a need to the negotiate with; the leaders of Poland were able to secure their leave for Britain via sea, and for some in the Polish Armed Forces, in exchange of cooperating with the complete surrender of the Polish Republic to the Red Army. This was the event known as the Fall of Poland, as red flags flew all over the country, Lwow and Warsaw the main centres of Soviet occupation.

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The Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee in 1920. This would be the basis of the government of the Polish Socialist Soviet Republic​


A pro-Soviet government, appointed and chosen by the Politburo in Moscow, was placed in Warsaw, to rule over the Polish and rebuild the nation; a Polish Red Army started recruiting, to replace the Red Army in occupation duties. The Polish people were rapidly adhering to the Soviet occupation and rule, having been under Russian rule for a few centuries already; propaganda associated the brief independence as a show to designate a period of anarchy and ownership of Poland by interests in the Western Allies.

In Warsaw, Leon Trotsky administrated the Red Army occupying the country; while placing troops in the important Polish locations, such as Warsaw, Krakow and Lwow, he focused a great number of units from the Red Army on the border with Germany; camps from the Red Army were placed in Posen, in Silesia and in the vicinities of the Free City of Danzig.

Each passing day, it was imminent to both the Soviets and the Western Allies that, eventually, the revolution must continue forwards, beyond the border between the Poles and Germany. It seemed that once more the German Republicans would have to fight Reds
 
Not sure what Lenin decide on a full-scale war with Germany. Red Army resources are not infinite.
By the way - if Rose will win in Germany, then you will have some more possibilities. Alexandra Kollontai was. the leader of the so-called "Workers 'Opposition" - its supporters demanded demanded the transfer of factories under workers' control. Unfortunately, Lenin criticized her position at the March Plenum of the Central Committee. But Rosa Luxemburg adhered to such views.
 
Chapter II - Spartacus reborn
Sorry for the long, long hiatus. Life caught up to me, but now I have more free time and once again I feel like sharing one of my TLs. I thought of whether to continue this one and share the rest of what I have already written and even write more or to begin a new one; in the end I decided to continues this, should any of the old readers want to continue reading it. I hope you like this installment, and I wait for comments.




CHAPTER II

SPARTACUS REBORN

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Communist leader talks before a crowd of supporters in Berlin, 1920
The Silesian Uprisings

In the Treaty of Versailles, signed in Paris at mid-1919, it had been concluded that the only reasonable way to deal with the Silesian Question would be a plebiscite to determine which side did its people want to belong to – if they saw themselves as members of the German nation or if they rather preferred associating themselves with Poland; in the meantime, an Allied Plebiscite Commission would maintain order in the region; their numbers were, however, too limited for that, being little more than a token force.

While the referendum remained to be done, tensions rose in the region between the Germans and Polish that inhabited it; propaganda battles were conducted between those who lobbied joining Germany and those in support of joining Poland; in the end, the propaganda war was put aside and a full-blown conflict was on the horizon. The German veterans joined in the Freikorps and the Polish government built a secret intelligentsia organization to organize the activists who were pro-Poland.

The fall of Warsaw that meant the fall of the Polish nation also meant the fall of the Polish military organisations; in the eyes of the Freikorps, this meant the Polish were now left unprotected, vulnerable, perfect to attack; when the news came, it was almost immediate as members of the Freikorps and pro-German demonstrators went out into the streets, looting Polish shops, attacking Poles, and raiding their communities. The Polish counter-offensive would begin after those insults.

The Polish uprising began before the end of August; the Polish rallied their strengths and rose against the German attacks; in the following two weeks, they would take over several key buildings in cities throughout Silesia, spreading the uprising through the country. Aggression on German communities was widespread, in retaliation with the attacks made on Polish people by the Germans. Street warfare had begun.

The Entente forces stood powerless, failing in all efforts to restore order. As Poland fell and the Red Army approached the borders of Silesia, tensions rose. It was evident that the Soviet Union wanted to take advantage of the uprising for their own goals; many questioned whom they would support, in the German side a quest to disband the Freikorps or put worker leaders in front of them began, believing the Soviets wouldn’t help the far-right Freikorps in their struggles. The Freikorps, however, disdained Soviet support as well; treasuring the memories of Brest-Litovsk, the great victory of the Great War, they refused to partake with Russians, especially Red Russians. In fact, they begun sweeping through known worker leaders to eliminate pro-Soviet communist leaders who they thought would betray the German people. The fratricidal warfare between the Germans would lead to the rise of yet another force, a forgotten force, thought to be defeated. At the night of 28th September 1920, a group of armed German workers, calling themselves the Breslau Soviet, convened in secrecy, conspiring to raise the red flag, and stand together against the Freikorps


The Second Sparticist Revolt

The workers of the Breslau Soviet attacked the headquarters of the Freikorps 29 September 1920. Armed as well as they could, and in as great numbers as they could possibly muster, the Silesian workers fought against the Freikorps forces who had been repressing their own leaders in a Red Scare.

Although better equipped, the Freikorps in Breslau lacked the immense manpower Silesia had of workers in its mines and industry centres; they would surrender to the Breslau Soviet by the end of the day. The workers looted the headquarters, taking as much as they could find; stolen items from Polish shops, weapons, and ammunition and even uniforms from the German military. Equipped with newer, better, Great War equipment, the workers would then advance against the public buildings; the Entente forces fled the city, not wanting to fall victims to the workers’ horde, and the police was quickly overturned; many joined the workers and the remaining fell easily.

The Breslau Soviet would storm several public buildings of Breslau, and in a few days the entire city was under their control; red flags flew over the buildings and man wearing ill-fitting stolen uniforms would march carrying stolen weapons and the red flag through the avenues. Breslau had fallen to the workers.

Their morale boosted by the Breslau Soviet victory, throughout Germany workers’ uprisings began. In Berlin, the same workers who had fought in the First Sparticist Revolt rebuilt the barricades and called for the overthrow of the republican government. In Hamburg, the shipyard workers seized the ships, even looting a French warship, stealing their weapons, fighting the police and occupying the town hall with force; the red flag flew over the great tower.

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The workers in Berlin rise once more in the Second Sparticist Uprising, strengthened in morale
by the Red Army successes​

Throughout northern Germany the worker uprisings became a common event; in some towns they were very successful, in others, they were quickly repressed. In most northern German cities, however, the uprising descended into bitter, fratricidal street warfare, as the government forces fought against the workers on equal terms.

In Bavaria, there were also some workers’ risings, especially in the larger cities such as Munich; those were, however, small compared to the great red legions in the north, and were easily put down by the conservative regime.

With the country returning to struggling, and with the communist red flag once more flying over the revolutionaries throughout Germany, Rosa Luxemburg appeared once more as a leader and organizer of the workers’ movements. Kept at a secret location for fear of governmental persecution, Communist leaders started to spread pamphlets signed by her urging the workers to stand strong together against the tide of imperialism and bourgeoisie oppression. She was readily acclaimed as the leader of the revolution, with rallies shouting her name in pride and of her colleagues from the First Sparticist Revolution in respect.

Following the example of Breslau and of the First Sparticist Uprising, the workers of the various cities organized to elect among themselves spokesman and committee leaders to organize the movements internally and externally in cooperation with fellow workers. The Berlin Soviet, the Hamburg Soviet and the Konigsberg Soviet were among the most successful ones, with several prominent communist leaders in command.

It would only take a few days until the Republican government understood that the situation was precarious and that, alone, they didn’t stand a chance on defeating the uprising. Although the political situation in Germany had been changing into disliking the Treaty of Versailles and the Entente, it was those same forces that had to be called upon if the Weimar Republic was to prevail. President Ebert of Germany brought before the Allied Powers a report that Red Army officials had been smuggling weapons across the German-Polish border to the workers in revolt against the German state.

He pledged military support from the Entente, and he pledged for the permission for Germany to remilitarize; he called on the Allied Powers to comply, fearing that, should Germany continue dispossessed of weapons and of allies, the country would soon fall into the hands of the Red Army, a prospect he knew the Entente disliked as much as himself.

President Ebert failed miserably; France, to whom the war had been particularly cruel and whose popular hatred of anything German and the rabid Germanophobia of its people after decades of enmity, stood firmly in refusing at any terms to allow for Germany to rearm, in replacement sending troops to the Rhineland, to quell the uprising in the Ruhr and fight to preserve German republicanism. The United Kingdom was friendlier towards Germany, and failing to have France agree to allow rearmament, they were to make shipment of weapons and provisions for a military campaign; they were hampered, however, by a grand workers’ unions strike, in solidarity towards the German workers, stating they would keep the higher classes of supporting the “German bourgeois dictatorship”. The Entente support to Germany would be minimal compared to what was needed.

A week after the Entente refused to allow Germany to rearm to face the Soviet menace, the Red Army crossed the border with Germany, pouring into Silesia; the invasion had begun
 
I enjoy this but I have a few doubts that I need to ask about.

In time sequence--while I do believe the defeat of the Polish army and hence dominance of the Red Army were in the cards OTL. it seems to me keeping order there would be a bigger headache for the Bolsheviks than you make it out to be. You mention that after all Poland had been under Tsarist rule for a long time, suggesting the Poles would shrug and once again submit to Russian power. But obnoxious as Tsarist rule was to the Poles (and bear in mind, much of Poland as it was in 1920 was taken back from Austro-Hungarian rule, not Russian, and still other parts were taken from Germany, so Russian rule is definitely a novelty there) the Bolsheviks are something else again.

That cuts two ways, I suppose. On one hand, authentic Polish Bolsheviks were to be found, indeed the Soviet police were under the command of one of their leaders. Insofar as leadership in Poland could be delegated to them, Poland at least enjoys something akin to autonomy--it is presumably to be incorporated as a Soviet Socialist Republic, but the Polish SSR; presumably the Party bureaucracy will be largely Polish and the peculiar cultural status of the Polish people will have some weight in the USSR as a whole, for we are as yet decades away from Stalin's Russification policies, and of course if historical parallelism compels that to happen at all, it won't be at Stalin's hands since he is dead already.

Unfortunately, on the other edge of the sword, the Bolshevik faction in Russian Poland was I gather far weaker and less popular than the Bolshies in Russia proper, and of course the Bolshevik party has no grassroots presence whatsoever in the parts of Poland not taken from the old Russian empire; in former Austrian and German Empire parts, the Bolsheviks are complete aliens, except insofar as they recently picked up new recruits there in the course of Trotsky and Tukachevsky's operations. Even in the formerly Russian ruled parts--where after all all Tsarist authority had been driven out years before by the advancing German forces--the Bolsheviks were eclipsed by other factions, notably the nationalist splinter of the Social Democrats, and more right-wing nationalist movements. All of these had in common a much better working relationship with the Roman Catholic hierarchy that enjoyed the respect and obedience of the majority of the people, whereas of course the Bolsheviks, especially in conformity with their Russian "big brothers" within Lenin's Party, were militant atheists. (I might speculate Pilsudski, as a Socialist, did not have a rosy rapport with the Church, but I daresay he was willing to compromise radical socialist items of doctrine and culture very accommodatingly with the Church for the sake of nationalist traction, and might even have veered in a pro-Church direction out of personal conviction, for all I know. And just perhaps, the handful of Polish Bolsheviks from before the war, especially if we include other Russian Social Democratic party types who might have gone over to Lenin's banner after the October Revolution or perhaps a bit before, in exile in Russia, had included people who sought some sort of accommodation with the Church--but anyone who did would have to convince Lenin and other Bolsheviks they repented of it and now understood the Party line that the Church was an agency of bourgeois (and perhaps worse, feudal) rule, definitely counterrevolutionary.

So they might appear in a few aspects to be less hostile and alien than the old Tsarist rule--but in other dimensions, clearly they posed a much stronger challenge to typical Polish identities than the Romanovs ever had--the Russians might disrespect the Roman rite and crudely, from time to time, seek to Russify them, but the Bolsheviks proposed to make atheistic New Soviet People out of them instead. This might have some appeal to some, especially with fellow Poles leading the way locally--but to most Poles, it would be very frightening and agitating.

Thus, I expect the ranks of authentically Polish Bolsheviks, never too numerous and by now decimated by a series of misfortunes before the "Miracle of the Vistula," will be quickly overwhelmed; to stand, the rickety SSR must have an infusion of Red Army, recruited in other SSRs, mostly Russia, to keep the nation from rising up and throwing off Soviet allegiance. Those soldiers, reinforcing and backing the work of large numbers of political police with a terrifying reputation earned by recent acts of terror, are pinned down in Poland, and cannot be deployed farther west nor pulled back to be placed on any other front, and here probably more than any one other place--more than in Ukraine, more than in the Caucasian republics--the occupying Red Army will witness and participate in ongoing, endemic struggles against the sullen and sometimes violent mass of the Polish people.

Now perhaps given time, this situation would slowly improve; over time, the Poles might slowly come around to the virtues of Soviet rule, or anyway, come to accept its inevitability. Probably never to the point that they could be trusted with real democracy, but then again what any Western state would call democracy is never going to be allowed to happen anywhere in the Soviet ruled zones anyway. Perhaps over time, the problem of keeping the Polish masses compliant enough will fade down to levels where Polish Party members and the locally recruited Polish division of the Red Army can handle it with little intervention or supervision from Moscow.

It is a matter of numbers I suppose. Do you have figures for the number of Polish Bolsheviks at various phases, up to 1920?

Moving on--I believe as I said up front that the Red Army can indeed break the Polish one and seize military control--and that counts the fact that at least one Entente power, the French, having sent advisory allies to assist. Their numbers were limited, but the fact is France is already involved, on another level from their recent backing of various White factions; French military honor is already in question. Meanwhile I presume the "Entente" troops you mention cutting and running in Breslau were also French, or mostly so. I would think the legions sent to Poland had been hand-picked for loyalty and in particular for a lack of sympathy for the Bolshevik cause; it is less clear that generic occupation troops in Germany would be so "purified." So it might even be that some of the occupation troops, on hand presumably to oversee the plebiscite in Silesia and presumably enforce separation from Germany should the vote have gone that way, will desert and join the Spartacists or even invading Red Army forces, but I would think few to none of the legion dispatched to Poland would do so. (Charles DeGaulle was among their officers, I forget if he was in command or merely high in rank among those who were). So the French legions in Poland, presumably having broken and run in retreat, would be available to reinforce the French occupation forces in eastern Germany, unless we presume they would have been massacred. Possibly they would be badly mauled if they tried to take a desperate stand. The fate of this expeditionary force should be carefully considered and accounted for; if the leadership decides to live to fight another day, they will be in the mix in Silesia I would think.

Finally, and especially in light of this French involvement in Poland, I do question whether the French government would be quite as pigheaded as you portray them. It is not totally implausible that even the prospect of a massive Red Army horde bearing down on Germany and putting Bolshevik troops bayonet to bayonet against French ones, first on German soil and very possibly then attacking their own border, might be obscured by the sheer hatred of the Germans, I guess. But it is strange that in the cold light of the fall of Poland, no mere distant disaster but involving debacle for French troops already under Red Army fire, the French would be quite this obstructionist. If they would not want to arm Germans, or even let someone else arm them, they would instead mobilize their own army to pour into Germany and stiffly resist the Red onslaught I would think.

Of course if they did that, they might face the danger of Red mutiny spreading farther west still, as French troops might go Red in their turn. I think if there were a prospect of really large numbers, enough to persuade entire units, going over to the rebel side, then OTL the Communists, or anyway very radical socialist parties, would have been stronger than they were in the 1920s OTL France. So there won't be that many that would actively fight for the Revolution, I guess, but considerably more might refuse to fight such a war in Germany.
 
I enjoy this but I have a few doubts that I need to ask about.

A very intense questioning, I like it. I am glad I managed to spark the interest of people who are clearly more knowledgeable of the subject matter than I am!

I expect that the future of this enlarged and Stalin-less Soviet Union will see less of a policy of cultural amalgamation. The Polish cultural identity will certainly weigh on the future Soviet Man, and they will be an important player in the Soviet Union. I can perfectly imagine the Polish SSR being run by a largely culturally Polish bureaucracy, and I can even envision the leaders of the Polish SSR influencing several aspects of the Soviet Union in the future in a way it wasn't possible in OTL Soviet Union. I haven't thought much about what exactly those influences may be, but if you have a suggestion, I would be happy to consider it.

I can see the Catholic Church in Poland being a greater threat to Soviet power than the Russian Orthodox Church ever was; after all, the Catholic Church had a great influence in the fall of Communism in Poland in OTL, if I am not mistaken. I can see it influencing the future of the country, and I believe my TL will be able to explore those ideas later on; I may incorporate that element into the future. Regarding the number of Polish Bolsheviks, I don't have any data at hand, but you raise a very valid point. I believe, however, that, despite the long history of feudalism and Catholicism in the elites of Poland that there may always be a generation of upstarts that would take advantage of the new situation and, regardless of their true political beliefs, would join the Party in hopes of gaining political power. I think those, plus the Polish leaders already selected by Lenin in Russia (in the photo), and a number of officials selected from the Red Army, that the Polish SSR may be sustainable without an overwhelming domination by Russians in the government.


I do believe the Entente forces would be mostly French, and I am aware that Charles DeGaulle is among the officers dispatched there. I don't know just how effective would those forces be in fighting off a mix of popular uprising and the Red Army; I don't exactly recall the numbers involved there, but I think I had the impression they were little more than a token force to show Entente power in the conflict. If that was the case, I don't see the Red Army having great difficulties in defeating them, but in any case it would depend on the strategy applied by their commanders; perhaps I shall investigate how those same commanders responded on similar situations through their lives (I would say the Battle of France would provide a decent comparison). Regarding the obstructionism of the French regarding the defending of Germany, perhaps I exaggerated the stubbornness, but I was amazed at how many problems during those times were due to the stubbornness of nations or individuals towards others. I would think that, immediately after the Great War, the French would be especially sensitive about allowing Germany to gain strength.

You are correct about the danger of Red mutiny; that will be one of the things that will weaken the efforts of the Entente; studying OTL, I was amazed at the efforts done by the Western European Left to help the Soviet Union by weakening the war effort of their own countries against the Russian Revolution. With the Soviet advance still going strong, I would think the radical socialists of the West could still further those efforts to support the Soviet Union. How this will play out will be seen as well.

I hope I was able to answer to at least some of your doubts
 
The Red Tide, An encounter at Stettin & Seven Weeks to the Rhine
The Red Tide

The Red Army’s invasion through Poland was welcomed by the Breslau Soviet with celebrations and military parades. The Breslau Militia and the Red Army paraded together in Breslau, wavering the red flag and acclaiming Trotsky and Luxemburg alike.

The occupation of Silesia was done swiftly; neither the Polish revolutionaries nor the Freikorps had the capacity of resisting for long the crushing blow of the Red Army and both government and Entente presence in the area was negligible. A few days after the invasion, the area was firmly secured by the Red Army, and placed under the custody of the Breslau Soviet, that voted in changing their name into the Free State of Silesia.


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Red Army soldiers in Breslau, 1920​

East Prussia was among the prime targets for the Red Army; separated from Germany and with a large border with Poland by land, the region was high destabilized, with the capital and main city of Konigsberg being the setting of street warfare, although by that point most of the city was under firm control by the Konigsberg Soviet of the Sparticist Army. The countryside offered little more than token resistance, with the people happy to support whoever brought an end to those conflicts and prosperity to Germany; they tired of senseless fighting and horrible misery. The Red Army could march into Konigsberg easily, and put the region under occupation and under the authority of the Konigsberg Soviet.

The Red Army would also advance through Pomerania, conquering the frontier region through the Baltic Sea. It would be there that Leon Trotsky would meet with Rosa Luxemburg, and have with her the famous Stettin Meeting, which the both of them would record in their memories and correspondence, giving a fascinating entail on the perceptions they had of one another, with issues discussed setting the way on the rule of their republics and the beginning of relations between the German and Soviet states.

After meeting with Rosa Luxemburg, the Red Army would march with Luxemburg and Trotsky at its head, together with the Sparticist Armies of East Prussia and Silesia, in the direction of Berlin, leading the workers into the core of the German nation

An encounter at Stettin


“Today I have met a woman to whom I have had the deepmost respect for many years; Rosa Luxemburg.

Her influence in the thought of the German worker is remarkable. Lenin might think less of her and her Left Communism, but I think this is another thing he might have wrong; although I agree that it must be given a military treatment to the worker during the stages of revolution for order to be maintained, and that we must strive to go and make the world revolution happen, and not simply allow it to fall to the hands of the democratic system.

Democracy in the West is, after all, broken and a façade for the dominance of the bourgeois over the proletariat; she agrees with this, but also believes that the rising of the workers will suffice and that it is indeed the only way for the revolution towards communism to occur as it should.

The Red Army seemed to impress her; it might as well have done. We have been able to take down the opponents of the revolution, the Freikorps who destroyed her first uprising back in 1919 and killed Liebknecht. I see that German nationalists and the far-right might become as great of a problem for the future Germany as the White Army has been for Russia. I hope to see them destroyed before the war ends.

Regarding what to do after the revolution, I have found Rosa Luxemburg to be, as I predicted, very moderate. She made a vigorous case to have the Red Army instructed not to hurt political opponents. A convicted democrat, she disagrees with Lenin’s policy towards political opposition, and has suggested for the political reopening of the Soviet machine for after the war. I don’t know what to think of this.

One thing Rosa kept bringing up was the future of Poland; I understand it, being Polish by birth, that she would have concerns for the future of the nation.”

- excerpt from Leon Trotsky’s diary for 16 October 1920


“I have found Leon Trotsky is quite different from what I had thought him to be; I had thought of him as a minion of Lenin and his rigid ideology and megalomaniac desire to rule the world, with all that talk of world revolution. He is actually quite critical of Lenin in many aspects, almost to the rudeness and lack of respect for his, let’s admit it, mentor.

He continues tied to his militaristic views of world revolution, but is a firm believer in a socialist fraternal group of nations. He is capable, however, of understanding the need to allow the national working classes to do social reform on their own. He seems sceptical in the proposition that the revolution can happen through democratic means alone, but it is a start.

I must admit that the Red Army might be needed now; the Freikorps continue to be a threat to the revolution, relentless in massacring workers, and the Red Army is the only force capable of stopping them. And against the Entente capitalistic imperialist forces we have no hope. We need them, regrettably.

I have, however, explicitly forbid him of hurting our fellow German politicians; I know that they would not hesitate to have me killed like they had Karl, but we are better than that. We are better than Lenin, our revolution will follow the will of the people. He seems conflicted, standing with what Lenin taught and his own experiences. Apparently, Commissar Josef Stalin, who was killed in Lwow, was monstrously cruel with the peasants of Russia, and Trotsky had hated him for that.

The man was a brute as he talked about his exploits in Poland, criticizing the Polish people, even after I quietly reminded him of my own Polish origins. It seems Lenin just wants to annex Poland into his new Russian Empire, and I fear he might come for Germany next.”

- excerpt from letter of Rosa Luxemburg to Clara Zetkin, October 1920

Seven Weeks to the Rhine

The Battle of Berlin was somewhat anti-climactic for the Red Army; being veterans from the Great War, or at the very least having spent many years of their lives hearing the tales of the potency of the Great German Empire, whose capital, whose fortress was Berlin, the city from where the powerful German Army who had defeated the Tsar in the Great War hailed from, they were expecting a somewhat tougher fight before being able to conquer it.

But the Germany they found was not the Germany of the Kaisers, it was not the Germany Bismarck built in Paris, 1870. It was the Germany the Entente had built in Paris, 1919. It was a shadow of its former self, of the Empire that had shaken Europe. Forced to disband its military forces, whom had gone to become mercenaries and extremists, suffering a wave of constant revolution and uprising against the government, its economy shaken by the war and the morale of the people in an all-time low, it was no surprise Berlin could fall so easily.

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Red Army soldiers raise the Red Flag over the Reichstag in Berlin after capturing the city
(sorry, I simply had to)​

In fact, most of the city had already fallen to the Sparticist Army when the Red Army arrived; the Freikorps, upon learning of the approach by the Red Army, had forfeit their services to the German government and had fled west, away from the Red Menace. And even members of the government were attempting to flee. The President Ebert himself was not in the city, still in Paris attempting to persuade the Entente to allow for rearmament.

The Red Army didn’t lose much time after the taking of Berlin; after Trotsky made sure Soviet and revolutionary interests were taken care of, and that Berlin was stably under Sparticist hands who could manage the occupation of the city, he sets out on his strategic plans to have Red Army forces sent northwest to capture the Hamburg region, whose port workers had been friends of the revolution, and whose shipyards and industries could be useful for the revolution. Other Red Army forces would be sent south to Saxony, to take over the region.

Trotsky hoped that, soon enough, the workers of the Ruhr would manage to take over control and join the revolution on their own account, opening a western front against the government forces and the Freikorps, whose influence he still feared. A Ruhr upheaval could also mean the Entente would be unable to face the Red Army on open battle so soon.

The offensive to the north-west met great success; without encountering great resistance, besides some government forces who had been ordered not to retreat, in a hopeless question to retain order over a chaotic nation. With the city of Hamburg already under the control of the revolutionaries, the Red Army’s entrance was welcomed. In Hamburg, the battle was quick and soon after the Soviets were marching through its gates. The Red Army was by the Elbe but two weeks after they had set out from the border in Silesia.

The forces did a more thorough work than even the most ambitious commanders could expect; the fall of Hamburg having been peaceful, the Red Army regiments marched north against the city of Kiel; there, after the shipyard workers had attempt to rise against the government, the bourgeois in the city had loaned the municipal government funds to employ a Freikorps regiment to defend the city, suppress the workers and fight invaders. The Battle of Kiel was perhaps the bloodiest conflict in the beginning of the war; the first true test of German strength against the Bolshevik advance. The Battle of Kiel between the Freikorps and the Red Army went on for a few days, but in the end the city fell; Red Army troops occupied it and were relentless with the upper-class bourgeoisie who had conspired against them; many were executed and their property looted, they corpses left to rot, hanged in the streets.

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The Freikorps of Kiel, whose defence of the city proved the first real challenge faced by the
Red Army in the German campaign​

Meanwhile, supported by the Entente forces, the remnants of the republican German government assembled themselves into a Provisional Government in Frankfurt; this would be a last stand of the free German people, with the support of the free people of Britain and France, against the Soviet invasion of Europe, stated Allied propaganda. President Ebert served, against his own wishes, as President of the Provisional Government; he was relocated forcibly from Paris to Frankfurt, having failed to persuade the French to allow for German rearmament. He was, by then, a broken man, whose public appearances were few and short.

The League of Nations would remain neutral during the Soviet invasion of Germany, although there were protests of it being an unlawful invasion and urging for the League to intervene and mediate, as it had been assigned to do. It would remain still, however, until Soviet troops in Poland swiftly invaded and occupied the Free City of Danzig, installing a Soviet government to rule it. Being the sovereignty of the city-state a term of the Treaty of Versailles, and an obligation for the League to keep, it had no choice but to protest and go on to condemn the Soviet invasion of Poland and Germany.

The Entente forces had laid the strategy of standing in Frankfurt as the Red Army advanced; together with the German national army and the Freikorps, it was decided that the city would be what Warsaw could not be – the bouncing point for the movement against the Soviet Union; they would force the Red Army to retreat to the cold steppes of Russia.

It was an admirable standing force; led by generals of both sides from the Great War, with former enemies now turned brothers-in-arms by the sheer existence of a greater threat. The Last Stand in Frankfurt seemed to be the only hope for Western civilisation against the brutish forces of the Soviet Russians.

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Frankfurt, the Last Stand of the West, before the Battle of Frankfurt, December 1920​

The battle was epic; both armies stood with honour and stood fierce. It was believed by both sides that defeat was not an option, and all means were used to accomplish the sole end of victory. Leon Trotsky commanded the Red Army against the might of the Entente and Germany as well as he could; he would not lose the battle, but it was less problematic losing men; the Red Army took severe losses throughout the battle. The fields surrounding Frankfurt were running red with Bolshevik blood. The Soviet troops were described as fanatical and almost suicidal in how they charged, relentless and savage.

That day, such savagery and such sacrifice won; the Entente forces were made to retreat to the Rhineland; the British Expeditionary Forces, crippled by the amount of losses, called London, urgently needing back-up, and the fears of a Red Invasion were widespread; even in Britain the ministers called this the end of the world, and the government began printing signs for conscription for a new Great War.

Bremen offered no resistance; they had seen what the Red Army could do. In a matter of few days, the Red Army was by the shores of the Rhine, on 7th December 1920, exactly seven weeks after the capture of Berlin



As always, I hope you liked it and I would like to hear comments.
 
Soviet wank?

I wouldn't call it a Soviet wank, but it is true the Soviet Union will fare much better than OTL, not only militarily but socially speaking. Without Stalin and with Rosa Luxemburg's influence still very present, there will be a trend of less authoritarian government than the one the Soviet Union was characterized by throughout its existence. I hope I can make it plausible enough.

maybe? I just don't see them standing up to the combined power of western Europe

We have to remember that this is western Europe 1920. The people are tired of war and support for socialism is strong among the lower classes. Do not expect for the Soviet Union to steam roll all over Europe just yet, however; they are already overstretched, and even Trotsky would most likely prefer establishing peace by now. What do you think?
 
We have to remember that this is western Europe 1920. The people are tired of war and support for socialism is strong among the lower classes. Do not expect for the Soviet Union to steam roll all over Europe just yet, however; they are already overstretched, and even Trotsky would most likely prefer establishing peace by now. What do you think?

Personally, I think Western Europe would be rearming like crazy with the Russians on the Rhine? On the French Border, this should be setting off alarm bells everywhere the fall of Germany, Poland Eastern Europe o just feel Britain and France should be gearing up for a counter attack to throw the Russians back across the Oder river. Again though I haven't done much research into the inter-war period so eh. its Your story not mine
 
I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would be able to make it to the Rhine in the inter-war period. I just don't see the logistics working in their favour, especially after a gruelling civil war, war with Poland and the invasion of Germany. And defeating battle hardened entente armies, while possible, seems unlikely. I get that there was a groundswell of socialism in the post-war west, but remember that the world was still very anti-communist.
 
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