1972-1973 The Second Baltic War
The Second Baltic War was the first major war in Europe since the 1950s, and the largest of any kind to take place outside the colonial and post colonial context in that period. As such, it attracted significant interest from foreign powers and observers who sought to see modern warfare, albeit on a relatively modest scale, play out in real time.
The opening weeks of the War were catastrophic for the Jewish rebels. The Baltic armies had an advantage in manpower, in drilling, but most of all had access, albeit in limited amounts, to heavy weaponry that was completely denied to the rebels. Through the course of June, the Estonians routed Jewish forces in northern Livonia – sending them fleeing towards the Daugava. Their advance was only halted at the end of the month after reaching the river and the more heavily fortified outskirts of Riga. To the south, the Lithuanian moved more slowly – bombarding the city of Kaunas for a period of several weeks before engaging it at the end of June. After three weeks of urban fighting the city would fall, allowing the Lithuanian army to advance eastward towards Vilnius.
After a brief calm, the Lithuanians descended on Vilnius on July 26. This was the last part of East Lithuania still in Jewish hands, and its defenders were determined to hold it. Having already sustained losses at Kaunas, the rebels were exhausted and would sustain heavy casualties – seeing more than 5,000 soldiers dead, a large part of the total force mobilised two months before. However, out gunned and outnumbered, they could only hold out for so long. On August 10 the East Lithuanians began a withdrawal from the city and retreated in ragged fashion towards the Polish border, while Lithuanian forces pursued them.
The rebel military situation was desperate. The entire East Lithuanian army was now at dire risk of destruction, with a tightening noose around it and cut off from reaching their comrades on the Daugava. Equally, the Livonians were little better off. Although the Estonian advance was halted, their territory was reduced to the city of Riga and a slither of territory along the southern bank of the Daugava reaching out to the Polish frontier. Riga itself was under siege from within and without. To the east, the Estonians were encamped in former Livonian soil while the Latvians were positioned to the west – both peppered the city with artillery fire and bombing from their small airforces. Yet even the city itself was hardly united behind the revolt. Unlike most of the rebel territory, Riga did not have an overwhelmingly Jewish population, but was home to sizeable Protestants minorities – Estonians made up a quarter of the city, Latvians a tenth and Lithuanians a somewhat smaller share. These Balts were concentrated in the city centre and engaged in protest, riot, strikes and even armed resistance to the Jewish rebellion. While Polish volunteers were streaming into the Baltic, replacing military losses and creating whole new units, they lacked the drilling of the professional armies they faced, while the United Republic struggled to arm them even with small arms. After Moses Petriv received news of the surrender of Vilnius, while surveying the imperfect grip his forces held over Riga, he warned “all that can save us now is Yahweh and Kiev.”
Up until August, the Polish government had held firm to an internationalist approach, aligned with the Europeans and Americans, that called for an immediate ceasefire and a return to the status quo. All external parties agreed not to intervene directly, or to provide arms to the conflict. This had frustrated Baltic efforts to acquire further heavy weaponry, and in particular to bolster their very small air forces. Yet nonetheless, even without further imports their materiel advantage was clear. Poland's first deviation from this line would be over the question of the East Lithuanian forces retreating from Vilnius. With nowhere else to go, these troops had asked permission to be given safe passage into Poland rather than face capture by the Lithuanians, surely sealing the rebellion's fate. Many within the government, particularly in the Popular Democrats, wished to grant only conditional access – allowing the troops to cross the border but then demobilising them and offering them refuge until the end of the war, thereby retaining Poland's internationalist neutrality. In this, Emma Spas intervened decisively, not only allowing the troops to cross over but offering them transport back northwards, through Polish territory, to rejoin their comrades fighting along the Daugava. This intervention strengthened the Jewish line in Livonia and forced the Balts to half their offensives for the time being.
This was but a precursor for a more dramatic turn. With the Polish government collapsing in on itself in disagreements over how to approach the conflict, the groundswell of feeling in solidarity with the Baltic Jews across the country was deafening. There were large pro-UBR demonstrations in Kiev and other cities while opinion polls illustrated as much as 80% of the population wanted Poland to do more to aid their compatriots' cause.
Sensing this mood, Emma Spas unilaterally arranged a meeting with the increasingly famous UBR military commander Moses Petriv at Borisov, not just north of Minsk. Broadcasting the meeting to the whole world, Spas conducted an about-face from her previous policy and condemned the aggression and brutal conduct of the Baltic Republics – promising to give the Baltic Jews her unlimited support. The nature of this support, agreed in private during the Borisov Meeting, included a safe passage for volunteers into the Baltic and state support for their recruitment, the provision of arms and ammunition, and most importantly of all the transport of several hundred old WW3-era aircraft that had failed to be decommissioned in the 1950s from storage to the Baltic along with volunteer pilots. This final offer would upturn the balance of power in the skies, giving the Jews a clear advantage in the skies.
The consequences of Spas' brash pro-rebel turn would alter the trajectory of Polish history. Both the Americans and Europeans were incandescent at Poland's abandonment of non-interventionism and the fearful echoes of Judaeo-Slavic revisionist nationalism it conjured. President Sayen, who's party had always had a proclivity for anti-Polish policy and Jew-baiting called Spas “the lady Makarov” and led the charge in uniting with the Europeans in a show of force. The American fleet in Sevastopol conducted a series of provocative exercises in which it deliberately crossed into Polish waters, while similar actions were undertaken in the Baltic by a joint American-Skottish-German taskforce. More damaging were economic sanctions which effectively ended the various free trade agreements Spas' had pursued with her neighbours over the past decade, and borne such fruit for the Polish economy. One of the worst outcomes of these sanctions was the halting of the growing connection between Poland and the oil-producing economies of Central Asia, Siberia and the Caucuses; although the oil would continue to flow, Poland being an important transit route for European fuel, tariffs and new barriers to trade would significantly limit further development. Included in these sanctions were the requirements for all Polish shipping passing through the Bosporus and Danish Straits to undergo inspections – ostensibly to ensure that they did not contain weapons bound for Riga, but in practical terms designed to further hamper Polish trade.
Domestically, the Borisov Meeting was the final straw for the alliance between the Kadets and Popular Democrats, that had held firm for nearly a decade. The sudden abandonment of all the diplomatic and economic gains secured through Poland's careful rapprochement with the West over the past decade was simply too much to take for many of its architects, while the flirtation with the overt nationalism of the likes of Petriv and the forces within Poland who supported the rebellion disgusted others. On August 27 the Popular Democrats would formally leave the government, and be joined by two dozen Kadet defectors who joined them in opposition. Spas and her weakened Kadets held onto a governing majority only by reaching across the aisle to find support from the Jewish Democrats – the two parties agreeing to unite in order to support the Baltic Jews, suspending all domestic political agendas until the general election due next year.
On the front, the Baltic forces had largely exhausted themselves during their highly successful all-out assaults through the summer months. Nonetheless, with aid flooding towards the rebel forces along the Daugava, it was becoming increasingly clear that their hopes of a quick knockout victory would be frustrated. The Baltic Republics were partly inhibited by the reluctance of the individual Republics to coordinate closely together and allow their troops to move beyond their own territory. Most notably, despite their great victories at Kaunas and Vilnius, the Lithuanians decided against pushing their forces northwards to join the Estonians and Latvians in the siege of Riga. This siege would largely be broken by the second half of September, with unrest within the city put down and the Estonians pushed back from the immediate environs of the city to the east.
The threat to Riga was brought to a clear end in the Battle of Jelgava in the final week of September. With the Latvian army camped a short way to the southwest of Riga, the Jewish forces would unleash their first major offensive of the war. Making use of their recently acquired air power, the Jews struck against the Latvians from both the east and north. It was in this battle where the Neo-Radical Black Brigades earned their name as a feared fighting unit. Despite being only lightly armed, the Brigades were used as stormtroopers – showing a willingness to take on great risks and heavy casualties to smash through gaps in the Latvian line, surround formations and crush resistance. During the battle they adopted a policy of executing any Latvian soldiers they captured – which led many unit to rout westward rather than risk capture, contributing to the utter rout of the Latvians towards Courland. By the battle's end almost half of the entire Latvian army had been destroyed and its ability as an offensive force permanently ended. The killing would hardly stop there, with the Black Brigades unleashing terror on Protestant villages in an area with a mixed population, which was only reigned in by their redeployment else whereon the front in mid-October.
The victories of the Black Brigades at Jelgava elevated the stature of their leader, Dmitry Osokov, within the rebel movement – sparking a rivalry with his superior Moses Petriv. A decade younger than Petriv, Osokov fought only in the Third World War, only becoming an officer in 1951and never reaching beyond the frontline ranks. Like Petriv he participated in efforts to hold together the collapsing Russian world after the demise of the Republic – participating in the failed Pomeranian invasion of the Danzig Strip in 1953, that was repulsed by American armour. While most turned away from the old faith, he remained an unrepentant believer in Radicalism, idolising Boris Makarov, and the idea of Russian national rebirth thereafter. Despite his extreme views, he was able to serve in the Polish military from 1954 until his expulsion in 1959 at the behest of the IBDD. Through the 1960s he became increasingly active in far-right Russian nationalism both within Poland and the near abroad, while maintaining connections with sympathetic figures in the military. These connections left him well placed to take over the reigns of the Black Brigades and participate in its organisation and recruitment as the Baltic crisis of 1972 reached its head.
After victory at Jelgava the war entered into an attritional phase. In the north, the Livonian front with the Estonian army settled into a period of trench warfare, with both sides dug in but incapable of breaking past the others strong defences. To the south, the rebels went on the front foot in attempting to push into northern Lithuania, but the front devolved into a back and forth struggle of attack and counterattack. Breakthrough did finally arrive at the very end of November when Vilnius was recaptured by Jewish troops.
Away from the front, Poland's support for the Jewish rebellion led to a high stakes confrontation over free navigation in the Baltic Sea. The Treaty of Isfahan had robbed Poland of almost every outlet to the Baltic Sea. Outside of Pomerania, separated from the rest of the Tsardom by the Danzig Strip, Poland had only three outlets to the Baltic Sea. In the north, a thin strip of territory along the Luga River bisected Estonia between Narva and Ingria, although the ports in this sector had only limited capacity. In the far west, the mighty Vistula River was shared with Krakow and Danzig – the latter of whom had sovereignty over the mouth of the river and policed its navigation. The most important port was at Elbing in South Prussia, which faced into the Vistula Lagoon. The Lagoon was shared with the Republic of Prussia, and was separated from the Baltic Sea by the Vistula Spit –which opened up only a the Straits of Baltiysk, near the prosperous Prussian capital of Twangste and on the other side of the border.
Poland's ability to use the Baltic, important to its wider trade but a lifeline for Pomeraniain particular, had been in question for some time. But it was after the rebel victory at Jelgava that tensions boiled over. In early October, the Prussians – whose contribution to the war to this point had been peripheral at best – closed the Straits of Baltiysk, demanding the end of all Polish support for the rebel cause. Angered at the violation of previous agreements between their nations, the Polish government deployed three destroyers to Prussian waters, seeking to intimidate the Republic into reopening the Strait. This provocation led the Skots and Germans to escalate – sending their naval vessels to mirror the Poles and threaten to sink any who traversed Prussian territorial waters. Fearing war, the Poles backed down. In the Aftermath of this incident, the Estonians mined the waters around the Luga ports, rendering them useless while Danzig closed the Vistula for all Polish shipping. Poland was completely cut off from the Baltic, and Pomerania left in an effective state of siege. The province endured incredible hardships, seeing shortages of food, fuel and all manner of goods; its GDP plunging by almost a quarter by the New Year as its already suffering economy atrophied.
As the ware wore on foreign volunteers were forming an increasingly large portion of the rebel army, not only from Poland but from Jewish populations across the former-Polish world – Crimea, Israel, Krakow, Finland, Siberia and beyond. It is notable that most states, following the pressure of the western powers, forbade their citizens to travel to fight in the Baltic. But there was one important exception in Crimea, where pro-Kiev forces were ensconced in government and facilitated thousands to make the journey to the front – where they formed a large Khazar detachment within the Polish National Volunteer Force while others were drawn to the Black Brigades.
While they had started to war with a clear manpower advantage and much superior arms, the Baltic states could not count on the level of support Poland was giving the rebels. Indeed, while tens of thousands of Russians and Jews swelled the rebel armies, only a few thousand volunteers in total made their way to the region to back the Republics – mostly drawn from nearby states where fear of Poland was high, with particularly large numbers from Finland. In terms of materiel, the United States held firm to its non-interventionist line – while damning the Poles for intervening. However, the Europeans, while nominally aligned with the American position, were more flexible. Germany and Skotland in particular took a significant interest in the conflict and clandestinely supplied the Baltics with significant amounts of arms and financial support to keep their war effort going – although holding back from being seen to become too overtly involved in the war.
After the steady but hard fought recovery of the autumn, the Jewish forces would take a momentous step towards victory with their mid-winter offensive. As the snows and ice of the East European winter had set in, it had been believed that offensive operations would slow – particularly after the costly battle for Vilnius. However, after pausing for the relief of the Hanukkah period at the start of December, the rebels would unleash one of their largest operations of the war one week after the end of the festival. Air power proved decisive in allowing the Jews to overwhelm the Estonian positions and put them into retreat –pursuing them all the way north to the pre-war boundary of the Livonian autonomous region in the space of just three weeks, where the advance was halted. In the internal dynamics of the UBR revolt, the success of this operation – which secured large amounts of territory and liberated thousands Baltic Jewish civilians at a relatively minimal loss of life – the Livonian campaign was an important victory for the more moderate nationalist faction, with the Black Brigades largely deployed far away from the Estonian front on the battlelines with Lithuania.
By 1973, the Tsar was no longer the glamorous and energetic young man who had restored the monarchy to Poland two decades previously. Now in his 50s, he had become less and less involved in Polish politics, particularly since the rise of Emma Spas to the premiership – an old ally who he trusted implicitly. The descent of the Baltic into hell had been a deep personal blow. The Pskov Accords of 1954 had been one of the great achievements of his reign – the then newly restored Tsar having been the guarantor of the peace that had now broken down in such gruesome fashion. Further to this, the Zvenislava dynasty itself had close historic attachments to the Baltic peoples that had now been torn asunder. Famously, the family had originally shared the faith of the Baltic races, being Protestant until the first Zvenislava Tsar, Radoslav I, converted to Judaism in order to secure his throne. Even then, throughout their rule, the Zvenislavas had spent significant time at their estates in South Prussia and maintained an especially friendly relationship with their Baltic subjects up to the time of the Radical Revolution. This was an emotional issue on many levels for the sovereign.
The Livonian campaign over the New Year had appeared to open a pathway to peace. With the notable exception of Kaunas, the rebels now controlled the entire territory of the pre-war autonomous regions and more besides. There was no longer a serious threat of the extinguishing of Jewish civilisation in the Baltic. At the same time, both parties were exhausted from the fighting. Meanwhile, over the border in Poland the breakdown in trade caused by the conflict had sent the nation into a steep recession. For Poland, peace offered a chance to halt the slide in its faltering economy and repair some of the damage done to its diplomatic reputation. Yaroslav VIII therefore offered the opulent surrounds of Radoslav House in his country estate in South Prussia as a venue for peace talks. All parties would agree to meet, agreeing to a ceasefire from mid-January while discussions were held.
The talks in South Prussia were far from universally popular among the ranks of the Jewish rebels. While great losses had been suffered, recent victories made clear that they had the upper hand, while many Jews remained in Balt-occupied lands – in Kaunas of course, but also in ethnically mixed Southern Lithuania and notably at Klaipedia. The pro-war faction of the rebel movement was led by Dmitry Osokov, who pushed incessantly to drive on to a war of conquest across the Baltic lands – winning significant sympathy among fighters, well beyond his own Black Brigades. Osokov's growing influence alarmed Petriv, who was attempting to balance the desire to push on, including to liberate his own former home in Klaipedia, and the interests of his Polish sponsors to reach an agreement. Talks in South Prussia ran on for weeks on end, with both the Balts and Jews struggled to find a common position upon which they could agree. The delays in the negotiations only emboldened the militants within the rebel army. With the risk of the splintering of the UBR's forces, or even a change in leadership that would empower the Radicals, Petriv broken off from the ceasefire and unleashed his forces on the Lithuanian defenders of Kaunas on March 6.
News of the breach of the ceasefire at Kaunas caused despair for the Prime Minister in Kiev and the Tsar alike. Spas lambasted the UBR and its leadership both privately and in public, threatening to sever Kiev's support for the rebellion and warning of the dire consequences of their actions. Moses Petriv, in a speech delivered his troops in Lithuania would summarise the rebel response when he addressed Spas' criticism, stating bluntly “I don't give a damn”. This curt, cocky, self-confident dismissal instantly struck a cord with the public, becoming a popular revanchist nationalist slogan across Poland – plastered in graffiti and chanted at political events, expressing clear hostility to the constraints of the post-Isfahan world order.
..png){kind=avatar}
