Cybvep: Normal difficulty, normal aggression. I find the idea of IC penalties very bothersome.
H.Appleby: Your support seems to be somewhat contradictory there...
Kurt_Steiner: Maybe. I'm fast approaching the point where I stopped playing prior to starting on this AAR.
Kaiser_Mobius : The question, of course, is when?
AwesomeSauce123: Well now, that's very fine praise, and much appreciated :happy:
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Chapter I - The Great War - Part IX
In August of 1916, General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the General Staff, was likely beginning to understand the strain that had brought about the break-down of his high-strung predecessor, Moltke the Younger. Germany's military position was incredibly perilous, perhaps more even than the dramatic days of spring the previous year. Though the army had scored rousing victories on the Eastern Front since the fall of the Tsar, and had pushed the Italian armies out of the Tyrol, advanced into Veneto, and even isolated an Entente force in Trieste, a sense of crisis gripped Berlin and the General Staff like a miasma of gloom. The sudden Western offensive had shattered Germany's complacent hold on northern France, while in Russia itself, Soviet armies continued to appear as if out of the ground, threatening to grind the German offensive to a halt. For all its material superiority, the German army simply lacked sufficient manpower to securely guard its flanks from enemy divisions or partisans, who were now seemingly supplied with weapons and support by the British. Moscow, so bloodlessly occupied, was given up and the cavalry divisions sent there had to fight tooth and nail out of a Soviet encirclement in late July. In the Ukraine, the Austrian drive on Kiev had lost steam, unable to simultaneously battle the swarm of 'Green' partisans, and defeat the growing Soviet army, and in the north, the Whites of Pskov were brutally dispersed, leaving an enemy army astride the German supply lines to both Petrograd and Smolensk. Beyond those two points, the Germany army simply could not advance. With all available reinforcements now being shuttled west to bolster the line in Belgium and Lorraine, it seemed Germany had reached the limits of its capacity to fight a two-front war.
Germany continued to enjoy successes on other fronts, but note the absence of troops in Pskov and Smolensk, and the divisions trapped west of Moscow.
Faced with the reality that all the wildest dreams of the German Empire could not be fulfilled in the East, or at least not at present, Berlin began looking for a way to negotiate with the Bolsheviks and bring the fighting to a close. While Berlin was fully aware of the Bolshevik promises made months earlier to bring peace to Russia, it had become perfectly evident that they were either unwilling to do so, or unwilling to do so at the price now demanded by their weak position. Toward that end, the Foreign Ministry devised a proposal they considered harsh enough to satisfy most Germans, while soft enough for the Bolsheviks to accept. The peace terms were the work primarily of General Max Hoffman, Chief of Staff of the
Ostfront. In Hoffman's plan, Poland would be detached from Russia - likely to be converted into a German protectorate - while the Baltic states would be annexed outright, and Finland's independence, now very much already the reality on the ground, be recognized as such by the Soviet government. In this plan, no provisions were made for reparations of any sort, nor were Austria-Hungary or Turkey's territorial ambitions recognized. The priority was to end the fighting and free up Hindenburg's army for service in the West.
The offer to negotiate extended by Germany was heartily accepted by Lenin, who now considered the Whites the greater peril to Soviet power. The meeting was to be held at Smolensk, now the front-line of the conflict. As Foreign Minister, Leon Trotsky led the Soviet delegation, a motley assortment of workers and peasants unprecedented in diplomatic history. With Hindenburg and Ludendorff's blessing and von Jagow too disdainful of the Red revolutionaries to send any but low ranking subordinates, Hoffman effectively led Germany's diplomatic team without oversight by the Foreign Ministry, though Prince Leopold of Bavaria and Count Ottokar von Czernin of Austria-Hungary added sufficiently to the distinction of the German party. The two groups met first on August 13 with the sound of artillery rumbling in the distance and the thought of the Entente offensive very much on the minds of the German delegates, Trotsky arriving by train from Moscow, where the Soviet government had relocated after the German evacuation.
The sight of uneducated, even illiterate Russians seated across the table from princes and generals made for a spectacle, as did the confrontation between the Soviets' revolutionary exuberance juxtaposed against the trained diplomatic decorum of the Germans. But Hoffman showed little interest in the novelty of the situation and pushed rapidly ahead with the negotiations, intent to get the army moving westward as soon as possible. Germany laid out its terms, all while Trotsky stalled for time, dragging matters on by constantly wiring Moscow for specific instructions on how to proceed. Seeing Germany's supposed 'soft' peace, the Bolsheviks blanched. In effect, they were being asked not just to hand over more than two hundred years of Russian imperial expansion, but to hand it to the single most powerful anti-communist force in Europe. Moreover, Lenin was vaguely aware of the successes being achieved by the Entente and hoped time would bring an improvement of fortunes.
After a week of such games, Hoffman presented an ultimatum: accept the peace plan, or prepare to fight. It was mostly bluff; only in the Ukraine were the armies still advancing, and only in the Ukraine could they be expected to continue to do so. But from the opposite side of the table, the situation looked far more bleak; Kiev was on the verge of being captured, and the Whites were advancing north from the Don-Kuban basin. But the Soviets just could not bring themselves to accept. Instead, without time to consult Moscow, Trotsky delivered a response that left his audience speechless. Russia, he pronounced, withdrew from any further negotiations and declared summarily hostilities were at an end, a position he summed up as 'no war — no peace'.
Trotsky's unexpected reaction left Berlin in a state of enormous consternation. Such a flaunting of the ultimatum could be met with only one course, a renewal of the offensive, but that was precisely what the Central Powers were struggling to manage. In an ironic turn, the burden of offensive operations rested upon Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria in the south, with only minimal German assistance to be expected. Kiev was now threatened from three directions, a protruding salient of Soviet control on the west bank of the Dnieper River. For their part, the Bolsheviks reacted with no small amount of anger upon hearing Trotsky's written report. Unwilling to face the anger of the Central Committee, he had stopped in Vyazma, ostensibly to shore up the defenses in the event of a German attack. But the reaction from within the army was even worse; Trotsky's now-famous phrase left far more soldiers remembering the 'no peace' half, and the result was unsurprising. Full-scale revolts were now breaking out, as formerly staunch Bolshevik units threw aside their weapons and disbanded. Morale plummeted, and it looked as though another revolutionary tidal wave, not the external threat of the Germans or Whites, might sweep Lenin from power.
The chaos persisted for nearly three more weeks. More bad news trickled on from the front: the Habsburgs had taken Kiev and the Whites continued to advance northward from Rostov. On September 9, the Germans wired new terms for a peace, which now included the recognition of Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian independence and the extension of the Polish protectorate eastward to Minsk. Lenin, who had always been in favor of peace, quickly gathered the necessary majority vote from the Soviet Central Committee and dispatched a new delegation to Smolensk the sign the terms, Trotsky now conspicuous in his absence from either of the proceedings.
The Treaty of Smolensk, signed September 10, 1916, was one of the most punitive seen yet in history, depriving Russia as it did of enormous swathes of territory long held by them for centuries, and augured a truly radical shift in the political balance of Eastern Europe. In Germany itself, even the most expansive of nationalists could look upon Smolensk as the fulfillment of the country's ambitions. Though largely excluded from its terms, the other Central Powers could look upon the effective removal of Russia's influence as an opening for their own territorial gains. But at the same time, the remaining Entente powers could use Smolensk as a perfect example of the fate of their countries should Germany be left undefeated. But underneath this newfound resolve to fight to the end came the sobering understanding that France and Italy were about to face the full force of the Central Powers, no long distracted by a second front. No sooner had the ink dried on the treaty when Hoffman fired off messages to Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who immediately began pulling units back from the front. While it would take many weeks, if not months to fully reinforce, reorganize, and transport the divisions from east to west, and while several would have to be left behind to guard against partisans and hold the frontier from any excursions by Red or White Russian forces, the General Staff could announce to the Kaiser with satisfaction that as many as 125 divisions would be made available for combat on the Western Front, more than twice the number that had marched through Belgium two years earlier.
Territorial arrangements in Eastern Europe following the Treaty of Smolensk, and the movement of troops to fight in the West.