On 16 May 1918, in a brief lull between the German attacks in the West, a British general staff memorandum envisioned a truly apocalyptic scenario. Assuming that Hindenburg and Ludendorff, courtesy of Lenin, were able to press-gang 2 million men from the Russian provinces, the Central Powers would be able to continue the war at least until the end of 1919. Germany, the British staffers speculated, would come to resemble ‘the conditions of the ancient Roman empire, with legionnaires fighting on her frontiers and slaves working at home, both recruited from subject races’. Unlike the Western
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