The Splintered Empires by Prit Buttar

Author:Prit Buttar
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2017-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

RUSSIA’S LOWEST EBB: BREST-LITOVSK

The Russians were not the only ones keen to secure a peace. Germany had gambled everything on the submarine campaign to bring Britain to its knees, and by the end of 1917 it was clear that this had failed. Nor would it be possible for the submarine arm to delay the arrival of hundreds of thousands of fresh American troops in 1918; if Germany was to achieve victory before the advent of the armies of the United States, an offensive would have to be launched in the west in the first months of the coming year, as Ludendorff later recalled:

The idea of attacking in France in 1918 had occurred already in November [1917] to many commanders in the west, with me amongst the first. I therefore waited with the greatest anticipation the day when the Russians asked us for a ceasefire. Local ceasefires were arranged at various locations on the front in November. The formations that negotiated with us were ever larger, and individual Russian armies had already contacted us with proposals for ending field operations … it was a confused picture, half of war and half of peace.298

There was widespread industrial unrest across the Central Powers, and food shortages remained critical. Another bad winter might trigger in Germany and Austria-Hungary the sort of unrest that had unseated the tsar; but peace in the east might provide access to the agricultural riches of the Ukraine, as well as releasing sufficient troops to allow for an offensive in the west. Much would depend upon the conference in Brest-Litovsk.

When they conceded the city to the Germans in 1915, the retreating Russians set fire to much of Brest-Litovsk and the devastation had barely changed in the intervening years. Large parts of the city consisted of blackened ruins, with the German headquarters in the old citadel. Although Prince Leopold held the post of Ober Ost, the negotiating team for the Central Powers was led by Hoffmann, his chief of staff, accompanied by Oberstleutnant Hermann Pokorny from the k.u.k. Army, Adjutant General Tsekki Pasha from Turkey, and Colonel Peter Gantchev of the Bulgarian general staff. The contrast between the precise, immaculately dressed officers of the Central Powers and the Russian revolutionaries in their various costumes could not have been greater.

The conference began on 3 December with Joffe and Hoffmann discussing whether the conference was intended to address the entire war or only the Eastern Front; it was agreed that in the absence of representatives of the other Entente Powers, any agreement would apply only to the war in the east, though the Bolsheviks hoped that the agreement would then extend to encompass all nations. The meeting adjourned for the day, and the delegates gathered for dinner together – Hoffmann had offered separate dining arrangements for his Russian guests, but they had expressed a desire to eat alongside the German staff in their dining room:

We had the opportunity of getting to know what sort of men some of them were. I had,

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