Overriding the hesitancy of the parliamentary politicians, by November they had poured 72,000 troops into Siberia.46 What halted that escalation, what saved the Bolsheviks from an open capitulation to Ludendorff that would have robbed them of any historic legitimacy, was the suddenness of Germany’s defeat in the West.47 This not only prevented the realization of Operation Capstone, but it also took the wind out of the sails of Allied intervention almost as soon as it began.
