Fall of Giants

What kept the army together was a core of Bolshevik party members. They were carefully spread through all units to maximize their impact. Some were ordinary soldiers; some held command posts; some, such as Grigori, were political commissars, working alongside the military commanders and reporting back to the Bolshevik Central Committee in Moscow. They maintained morale by reminding soldiers they were fighting for the greatest cause in the history of humankind. When the army was obliged to be ruthless and cruel, requisitioning grain and horses from desperately poor peasant families, the Bolsheviks would explain to the soldiers why it was necessary for the greater good. And they reported rumblings of discontent early, so that such talk could be crushed before it spread.

But would all this be enough?

Grigori and Trotsky were bent over a map. Trotsky pointed to the Transcaucasia region between Russia and Persia. “The Turks are still in control of the Caspian Sea, with some German help,” he said.

“Threatening the oil fields,” Grigori muttered.

“Denikin is strong in the Ukraine.” Thousands of aristocrats, officers, and bourgeoisie fleeing the revolution had ended up in Novocherkassk, where they had formed a counterrevolutionary force under the renegade General Denikin.

“The so-called Volunteer Army,” said Grigori.

“Exactly.” Trotsky’s finger moved to the north of Russia. “The British have a naval squadron at Murmansk. There are three battalions of American infantry at Archangel. They are supplemented by just about every other country: Canada, China, Poland, Italy, Serbia… it might be quicker to list the nations that don’t have troops in the frozen north of our country.”

“And then Siberia.”

Trotsky nodded. “The Japanese and Americans have forces in Vladivostok. The Czechs control most of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The British and Canadians are in Omsk, supporting the so-called All-Russia Provisional Government.”

Grigori had known much of this, but he had not previously looked at the picture as a whole. “Why, we’re surrounded!” he said.

“Exactly. And now that the capitalist-imperialist powers have made peace, they will have millions of troops free.”

Grigori sought for a ray of hope. “On the other hand, in the last six months we have increased the size of the Red Army from three hundred thousand to a million men.”

“I know.” Trotsky was not cheered by this reminder. “But it’s not enough.”

{VIII}

Germany was in the throes of a revolution-and to Walter it looked horribly like the Russian revolution of a year ago.

It started with a mutiny. Naval officers ordered the fleet at Kiel to put to sea and attack the British in a suicide mission, but the sailors knew an armistice was being negotiated and they refused. Walter had pointed out to his father that the officers were going against the wishes of the kaiser, so they were the mutineers, and the sailors were the loyal ones. This argument had made Otto apoplectic with rage.

After the government tried to suppress the sailors, the city of Kiel was taken over by a workers’ and soldiers’ council modeled on the Russian soviets. Two days later Hamburg, Bremen, and Cuxhaven were controlled by soviets. The day before yesterday, the kaiser had abdicated.

Walter was fearful. He wanted democracy, not revolution. But on the day of the abdication, workers in Berlin had marched in their thousands, waving red flags, and the extreme leftist Karl Liebknecht had declared Germany a free socialist republic. Walter did not know how it would end.

The armistice was a dreadfully low moment. He had always believed the war to be a terrible mistake, but there was no satisfaction in being right. The fatherland had been defeated and humiliated, and his fellow countrymen were starving. He sat in the drawing room of his parents’ house in Berlin, leafing through the newspapers, too depressed even to play the piano. The wallpaper was faded and the picture rail dusty. There were loose blocks in the aging parquet floor, but no craftsmen to repair it.

Walter could only hope that the world would learn a lesson. President Wilson’s Fourteen Points provided a gleam of light that might just herald the rising sun. Was it possible that the giants among nations would find a way to resolve their differences peacefully?

He was infuriated by an article in a right-wing paper. “This fool of a journalist says the German army was never defeated,” he said as his father came into the room. “He claims we were betrayed by Jews and socialists at home. We must stamp out that kind of nonsense.”

Otto was angrily defiant. “Why should we?” he said.

“Because we know it’s not true.”

“I think we were betrayed by Jews and socialists.”

“What?” Walter said incredulously. “It wasn’t Jews and socialists who turned us back at the Marne, twice. We lost the war!”

“We were weakened by the lack of supplies.”