WWI · CHAPTER 11 ·
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and WWI
Chapter 11 of The Great War, 1871–1923: “Brest-Litovsk: The Gamble in the East Pays”
The Bolsheviks tried to leave the war without accepting Germany’s terms, but Germany resumed its advance, and Lenin forced his party to accept the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. Russia lost Poland, the Baltic lands and Ukraine, yet occupying them tied down German troops and yielded far less grain than expected.
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The map above is the world of Europe, March 1918 — Brest-Litovsk — the occupied east.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1918 · Europe in 1918.
Part of IB History: The First World War →
SHORT EXPLANATION
The Bolsheviks had promised peace, but Germany’s price threatened to strip the former Russian Empire of immense territory. At Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky tried to end the fighting without signing those terms. Germany resumed its advance against an army that could scarcely resist, and Lenin persuaded the party leadership to accept the treaty in March 1918. The lost lands contained a large share of Russia’s people, farmland and industry.
The settlement freed German divisions for the west, yet Germany also needed soldiers to hold its new possessions. Ukrainian grain arrived slowly and in much smaller quantities than promised. The treaty showed the Allies what defeat might cost them, while American soldiers continued to arrive in France. Germany had gained resources that might become valuable over years, but had only months to seek a decision in the west.
The full story
The Bolsheviks had taken power promising to end Russia’s war. Peace, however, came with German demands for territory that Trotsky was unwilling to concede. At Brest-Litovsk he offered “no war, no peace”: Russia would stop fighting, but would sign no treaty. This left the outcome in German hands. When Germany launched Operation Faustschlag, its troops advanced against almost no organized resistance. Lenin pressed a fiercely divided Bolshevik leadership to accept the terms, and the treaty was signed on 3 March 1918.
Lenin called it an obscene peace, yet he saw no dependable army with which to defend the territory. If the new government lost power in a continuing war, it could recover nothing; if it survived, the losses might one day be reversed. Russia surrendered Poland, Baltic lands, Ukraine and other territories containing large shares of the former empire’s population, farmland and industry.
For Germany, the settlement opened the prospect of an eastern empire and released divisions for France. German leaders planned to support client governments and requisition resources, but those arrangements had to be enforced. Resistance to occupation and the difficulty of obtaining grain kept troops in the east: roughly a million German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers remained there, even as about forty-eight divisions moved west.
The Allies drew their own lesson from the settlement. Its terms showed what a defeated state might face and made compromise with Germany harder to imagine. Ludendorff, meanwhile, had a temporary opportunity before growing American arrivals altered the western balance. The territory on the map was a substantial gain, but its resources would take time to secure; Germany had one spring to turn the divisions it could use into victory.
FULL EXPLANATION
Lenin’s survival choice
Bukharin wanted revolutionary war, a course that promised to carry the struggle beyond Russia. Lenin first had to ask whether the Bolshevik government could survive such a war. Its army was no longer dependable, and the destruction of the government would leave no revolutionary state from which to pursue that ambition. Trotsky’s alternative, neither war nor peace, sought to avoid both fighting and surrender. Germany’s advance showed that it could work only if Germany chose to stop. Lenin chose the treaty, expecting conflict among capitalist states eventually to overturn it. His regime survived, though the people in the disputed lands faced occupation, civil war and further violence.
Conquest as overhead
Ukraine offered Germany the prospect of food and raw materials, but possession on a map did not put a harvest aboard a train. Client governments needed military support, railways needed guards, and peasants resisted the seizure of crops. German and Austro-Hungarian troops stayed east to perform those tasks. Other divisions did go west and helped create the temporary advantage for the spring offensives. The same conquest thus supplied men for one campaign while tying down others to hold what had been won. A more integrated eastern economy and its grain might yield greater returns over years; American arrivals were changing the western balance month by month. Germany needed the conquest to pay in time for a war that could not wait.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
Lenin’s cold arithmetic. The Central Committee faced three proposals. Bukharin wanted revolutionary war; Trotsky sought neither war nor a signed peace; Lenin urged acceptance of the “obscene peace.” Lenin’s reason was that the revolution lacked an army capable of holding the territory. Ground surrendered now might be recovered, whereas a government destroyed by renewed fighting could recover nothing. The regime survived, and Soviet power returned to much of the lost territory within five years of Germany’s defeat, through further conflict.
Germany’s eastern ideology. The settlement gave substance to ambitions older than the negotiations. German war-aims programs since 1914 had envisaged a German-dominated Mitteleuropa and a border strip. Under Ludendorff’s military leadership, Baltic client kingdoms and an economically dependent Ukraine became part of the projected order. Some historians trace a continuity between these imperial plans and later German projects in the east: the ambition to dominate came before the ideology that made the later project genocidal.
The garrison paradox. The new eastern order required soldiers to guard railways, requisition grain and support client regimes from Finland to Georgia. Around a million German and Austro-Hungarian men remained in the east for such work and were unavailable for western battles, including the Marne in July. Conquest enlarged Germany’s apparent strength while imposing a substantial cost in troops. How many could have been withdrawn, and at what cost to the occupation, remains a further question.
THE TURNING POINT
The treaty signed, 3 March 1918. On 3 March the signature secured Germany’s eastern settlement and sharpened the race in the west. Germany needed troops both to hold its gains and to fight before American arrivals changed the balance. Allied governments could point to the terms as evidence of what Germany demanded from a defeated state; propagandists used them too, and compromise became harder. Chapter 12 follows the attempt to win in time.
What it changed
The last race. About 48 divisions moved west, and Germany prepared the five-hour bombardment for Michael, scheduled for 21 March. Against that temporary reinforcement stood the growing flow of American troops. The outcome depended on what the German army could achieve before those arrivals changed the balance.
Russia’s agony continues. Russia’s exit from the world war was followed by civil war. Reds and Whites fought across the former empire, Allied forces intervened at ports, and the Czechoslovak Legion fought along the Trans-Siberian railway. Estimates for deaths from war, terror and famine through 1922 range from seven to twelve million, exceeding Russia’s losses in the world war.
The precedent everyone cites. Brest-Litovsk became part of the dispute over Versailles. When Germans protested against the 1919 terms, Allies could answer by recalling what Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia; Allied leaders also invoked security in framing their settlement. The earlier treaty supplied a precedent in the argument, although Versailles had causes of its own.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Why did the gains at Brest-Litovsk fail to save Germany?
The eastern victory released divisions for the west and promised food and other resources. But Germany had to hold its new position: roughly a million German and Austro-Hungarian troops remained east, while Ukrainian grain arrived in disappointing quantities. Romanian oil offered another potential resource, although Romania’s settlement was separate from Brest-Litovsk. The treaty also gave the Allies further reason to resist German terms. Timing brought these gains and costs together. The transferred divisions could fight that spring; fuller returns from the east would take longer, and American arrivals were strengthening the Allies. Germany needed a quick victory from its temporary advantage, and its offensives failed to deliver one.
An interesting fact
The first Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk placed representatives of the revolution alongside its diplomats: a worker, a soldier, a sailor, a woman and a peasant. The woman, Anastasia Bitsenko, was a Socialist-Revolutionary recently amnestied from Siberian imprisonment for assassinating a tsarist general. The peasant, Roman Stashkov, had been recruited from the street at the last moment. Wheeler-Bennett recounts a dinner where a German prince asked Stashkov whether he preferred red or white wine. “Whichever is stronger,” he replied. The delegation’s speeches were also addressed beyond the German representatives, to the workers of Europe.
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