WI: Conditions for a more unified White Movement

If the Volunteer Army took Tsaritsyn in the Spring of 1918, they would have faced a major quandary: hold the city until Kolchak's forces link up with them, or rush up the river to seize more territory and badger the Red Army further? Whatever choice they make is going to have major consequences.

Hold Tsaritsyn: It would mean that the Whites will most likely hold onto all land east of the Volga for the rest of the war, but the Reds would dig into Central Russia around Moscow and become very hard to dislodge. In OTL the Whites assumed the peasants would revolt against the Bolsheviks' harsh treatment within a year, but the opposite happened, the Communist government became heavily entrenched by 1919-20. In the long term this would lead to a partition of the old Russian Empire, with the Whites capturing much of the territory. The Red Army will lose even more territory to Poland because its resources are going to be heavily stretched. Pilsudsky will not be taking Petrograd or Moscow however, he never had any intention of taking more than the Ukraine and Belarus, so the Whites can potentially use that to their advantage if they can swallow their disgust at losing so much territory to a nation they consider a prime threat to the unity of their state.

Push forward: The Volunteer Army would start a push towards Moscow thinking they can end the war early. A lot could wrong, and my gut tells me they will get into trouble much as they did in OTL. They would get pushed back towards the Volga after a few months, ending up in a stalemate, but far weaker than the other scenario.

As an aside, you friend is more or less right. You should know Volzhsky is a small town during this period, with a population of less than 10,000. Whoever ends up retreating there is not going to find a lot to help them. Any Red Army forces that get trapped behind the Volga after a major defeat in Tsaritsyn are in a lot of trouble unless they go guerrilla.
 

Zelc

Banned
The White assault against Petrograd in 1919 didn't work out. Wikipedia gives some details:

Quote:
By 19 October Yudenich's troops had reached the outskirts of the city. Some members of the Bolshevik central committee in Moscow were willing to give up Petrograd, but Trotsky refused to accept the loss of the city and personally organized its defenses. He declared, "It is impossible for a little army of 15,000 ex-officers to master a working-class capital of 700,000 inhabitants." He settled on a strategy of urban defense, proclaiming that the city would "defend itself on its own ground" and that the White Army would be lost in a labyrinth of fortified streets and there "meet its grave".
Trotsky armed all available workers, men and women, ordering the transfer of military forces from Moscow. Within a few weeks the Red Army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one. At this point Yudenich, short of supplies, decided to call off the siege of the city and withdrew, repeatedly asking permission to withdraw his army across the border to Estonia. However, units retreating across the border were disarmed and interned by order of the Estonian government, which had entered into peace negotiations with the Soviet Government on 16 September and had been informed by the Soviet authorities of their 6 November decision that, should the White Army be allowed to retreat into Estonia, it would be pursued across the border by the Reds. In fact, the Reds attacked Estonian army positions and fighting continued until a cease-fire went into effect on 3 January 1920. Following the Treaty of Tartu most of Yudenich's soldiers went into exile. Finnish Gen. Mannerheim planned an intervention to help the Whites in Russia capture Petrograd. He did not, however, gain the necessary support for the endeavor. Lenin considered it "completely certain, that the slightest aid from Finland would have determined the fate of Petrograd

I've read about the Freikorps and native people from the region.
The British and French (if I recall correctly) were in the area as well.

Someone suggested that Wrangel should go to that region instead of Yudenich and meet up with Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz.

Taking Petrograd though... I suppose if they had more men and firepower...
 

Zelc

Banned
Prior to December 1918, when the civil wars in the Baltic were waged, there seemed to be hard business with the Poles and Germans. For instance: Germany occupied Tallinn on February 25, 1918 -- the day after Estonia claimed independence from Russia.

Had the Whites had sent Wrangel over there in the late Summer of that year, how would that have affected the Baltic theater? We could have him hit it off with Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz and possibly Anatoly Lieven before the Freikorps comes in. Rodzianko would be there as well as a subordinate.
 

Zelc

Banned
If the Whites moved their guys into, say, Lithuania and started amassing ranks in the summer of 1918...

(Triple post. I really am the only one here.)
 
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