A Time For War: The Spring of '18

Even when humans are busy making a mess of the world, the flowers still bloom in Springtime.

Well, who knows what the future holds? But in any case, they bloomed in the Spring of the year 1918.

A hundred years ago, it almost looked like someone might win the impossible, insane European war. In some sense, it was already "half-won," thanks to the surprising turn of events the previous year. But it remained necessary to deliver the decisive blow, and it needed to be done quickly.

One year earlier, Germany had been hopelessly deadlocked on two fronts. Then, like strange magic, the Russian front evaporated. That bizarre little man, Lenin, whom they had transported through their country with the wild hope that he might cause some trouble, had succeeded beyond all imagination (or nightmare).

Russia was in chaos, and there remained three years of brutal civil war before Lenin and his clique would consolidate power. But in early 1918, while the world was still not sure whether to take the Bolsheviks seriously, Lenin was busy negotiating a peace treaty with the Germans.

It wasn't easy. Lenin had to convince members of his own party that it was worth it to formalize a complete capitulation to the Kaiser's forces. But at this point in time (so it seems), Vlad-the-Bad was (still?) enough of an "orthodox Marxist" to believe that the inevitable forces of history were about to push through the proletarian revolution in the industrial world, beginning very, very soon in Germany.

That didn't actually happen, as it turned out. So much for the inevitable-forces-of-history-blablabla, but by the time that was clear, Lenin was in his over-celebrated tomb and Stalin was working hard to make the ideology more "practical" (as an instrument of raw power, despotism, and mass murder).

But we're getting too far ahead. It's 1918 and Lenin is bold enough to play head of state. So, why not sign a treaty? Who cares? Treaty schmeety, no worries. Give them what they want on paper. The tide of the revolution will sweep everything away.

Well, the Germans wanted a lot. And in the Treaty of Brest-Livosk on March 3, 1918, they got it. But let's just look at a map from March 1918 (versions of this map are basically all over the Internet). Oh my!