|
|
Eastern Front
End of the War on the Eastern Front
Short Summary:
COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA (March 1917-March 1918). After the
abdication of Czar Nicholas II on March 15, 1917, the Russian armies
rapidly disintegrated. A last desperate attack was made-the Kerenski
offensive-in July 1917. It met with some initial success, but the Russians
were soon driven back. In September 1917, the Germans attacked the city
of Riga to hasten Russian capitulation; on March 4, 1918, the Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk was signed.
------------------------------------
Hindenburg and Ludendorff calculated that one more successful
German offensive would cause the overthrow of the Kerenski government
and remove Russia from the war. On September 1, the German Eighth Army
assaulted Riga, capturing the city two days later and driving beyond
it. The Kerenski government fell, and on November 6-7 (October 24-25,
Old Style), Lenin seized power in Petrograd. The next day the new Soviet
government adopted a peace decree. This was interpreted by Leon Trotsky,
on November 21, as a request for an armistice. Hostilities on the eastern
front were suspended on December 2, and the next day delegates of Russia
and the Central Powers met at Brest-Litovsk to arrange terms. The armistice
negotiations were succeeded on December 22 by a peace conference.
Trotsky, who became the head of the Soviet delegation in January 1918,
haggled and played for time, hoping that the Bolshevik Revolution would
sweep Germany and keep Russia from having to sign that power's severe
peace terms. Pressed hard by the chief German delegate, Gen. Max Hoffmann,
he tried an audacious maneuver. On February 10, he announced that Russia
refused to sign the German terms and unilaterally declared the state
of war to be ended. This amounted to a declaration of "no war-no
peace." The reaction of the Germans was furious and immediate.
They denounced the armistice, and at dawn on February 18 their troops
poured across the lines, meeting no resistance. They captured Dvinsk
in the north and Lutsk in the south. The next day, German headquarters
received a telegram from Lenin accepting the peace conditions offered
at Brest-Litovsk, but the advance continued to Lake Peipus and Narva
in the north, where it directly threatened Petrograd. In the south,
German troops swept through the Ukraine. Finally, on March 3, a peace
treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk. By its terms, Germany was to occupy
a large expanse of Russian territory. If it had not been superseded
by the subsequent armistice on the western front and by the Treaty of
Versailles, Russia would have lost a third of her population, a third
of her agricultural land, and more than half of her industry.
The war on the eastern front was over, and Russia lay
defeated and wracked by poverty and civil war. Victory came too late
for the Germans, however, for the long struggle had prevented them from
ever concentrating all of their strength in the west.
|
|
