Between Giants (3 page)

The First World War brought further conflict to the region. Initially, Russian armies advanced into East Prussia, but were decisively defeated at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in 1914. In the following months, most of Latvia and Lithuania were occupied by German forces, but Estonia remained under Russian control. The collapse of Imperial Russia and Lenin’s seizure of power in 1917 led to further anarchy as the remnants of the Russian Army withdrew. Faced with a potentially protracted civil war, the Bolsheviks opened peace negotiations with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey in December 1917, in the city of Brest-Litovsk, in an attempt to secure peace with the Central Powers, so that the Red Army could concentrate its efforts against the White Russians.

It was, according to those present, a most remarkable set of negotiations. Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were represented by aristocratic diplomats and senior army officers from patrician families, while the Bolshevik delegation was made up of dedicated revolutionaries. Prince Leopold of Bavaria found himself seated at dinner next to Anastasia Bizenko, who was described by the German Foreign Minister, Richard von Kühlmann, as looking like an elderly housekeeper. During the dinner, Bizenko told Leopold how she had shot General Sakharov, a city governor who she earnestly described as ‘an evil man’. At the beginning of the conference, the head of the Bolshevik delegation was Adolf Joffe, a longstanding supporter of Trotsky who had been in exile in Siberia until earlier that year. The leader of the Austro-Hungarian delegation, Graf Ottokar Czemin von und zu Chudenitz, was astonished to hear Joffe’s view that a universal application of self-governance to all nations, along the lines of the Bolshevik Revolution, would be followed by the people of those nations learning to love one another and to live in peace. It was the intention and ambition of the Bolsheviks, Joffe told his dinner-table neighbour, to export the revolution first to the rest of Europe, and then to the rest of the world. The war had not gone well for the Austro-Hungarian Empire; its initial invasion of Serbia had been a complete disaster, and a mixture of incompetent High Command, confusion brought about by the multitude of ethnicities and languages in the Empire, and intractable supply problems had prevented the Austro-Hungarian Army from contributing significantly to the German effort. Indeed, by 1916, the German military had frequently likened their alliance with the Habsburg Empire as like being shackled to a corpse. Now, with widespread unrest throughout the Empire and open mutiny in its demoralised armies, Chudenitz reacted with horror to Joffe’s comments:

I pointed out to him that we should not ourselves undertake any imitation of the Russian methods, and did not wish for any interference with our own internal affairs; this we must strictly forbid. If he persisted in endeavouring to carry out this Utopian plan of grafting his ideas on ourselves, he had better go back home by the next train, for there could be no question of making peace. Mr Joffe looked at me in astonishment with his soft eyes, was silent for a while, and then, in a kindly, almost imploring tone that I shall never forget, he said: ‘Still, I hope we may yet be able to raise the revolution in your country too.’
⁴

Negotiations foundered in February 1918, when Leon Trotsky, who was now head of the Bolshevik delegation, decided that further progress was impossible, as the Germans were insisting on territorial concessions, while the Bolshevik position was to concede no territory, nor agree to any financial reparations to the Central Powers. There was a resumption of hostilities, which proved disastrous to the Russian position, with German troops pushing into Estonia, and when negotiations resumed a month later, the Bolsheviks were forced to accept far worse terms than those originally offered. Russia renounced any claim to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, the Ukraine and Poland. In the words of the treaty, Germany and Austria-Hungary would determine the future fates of these territories in agreement with their populations. The reality of the situation was that the Germans would seek to establish client states, based upon whatever minority support they could gain.

Just as it seemed that German dreams of an empire in Eastern Europe that would allow it to rival the British Empire were about to be realised, the abdication of the Kaiser and the collapse of the German Empire in late 1918 changed the situation entirely. As the German army began to withdraw from the Baltic States, the Soviet leadership saw an opportunity to regain territory that had been conceded in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. From their perspective, the treaty had been imposed upon them when they were at their weakest, and as the successors to the Czar they regarded themselves entitled to the same territories that Czarist Russia had controlled. There also appeared to be some prospect of exporting the Bolshevik Revolution into the heart of Europe, and the establishment of new Soviet Socialist Republics in the Baltic States, Poland, and even Germany would see the dream outlined by Joffe during the Brest-Litovsk talks beginning to come true. Therefore, intent on reclaiming territory that many Russians regarded as rightly theirs, and seeking an opportunity to spread Bolshevism to the west, Soviet forces began to move against the Baltic region. Although this has been described as the Soviet Westward Offensive, and according to one source was given the codename
Target Vistula
, it seems that there was no central planned offensive.
⁵
Rather, a series of uncoordinated movements occurred in the same region, with little if any overall coordination. In addition to geopolitical considerations, the animosity of the Soviet leadership towards the Baltic States certainly played a part in the development of events. Lenin told his staff, ‘Cross the frontier somewhere, even if only to the depth of a kilometre, and hang 100–1,000 of their civil servants and rich people.’
⁶

If the war that followed had been limited to the invading Bolshevik forces and the fledgling nationalist armies of the three states, it would have been over in early 1919, with an almost complete victory for the Red Army. But there were many parties involved in the struggle, each with its own agenda. At the heart of these conflicting agendas lay the fundamental conundrum posed by the three states: was it feasible for them to exist as independent nations, or would they be forced to sacrifice some degree of independence to secure the support of one of their powerful neighbours?

The Bolshevik vision of the future of these states has already been mentioned. The Germans developed their ideas of the shape of Eastern Europe as the First World War progressed. The concept of
Mitteleuropa
as a German empire was first proposed in detail by Friedrich Naumann in 1915, in his book of the same name.
⁷
He suggested that a new constellation of states could be created from the western parts of the Russian Empire; these states would gradually become more German as a result of settlement, and by providing an area for German economic exploitation
Mitteleuropa
would serve as a counterbalance to the British Empire’s colonies. Moreover Austria-Hungary and Turkey, both allies of Germany, would become increasingly dependent economically upon Germany and its vassal states, and would eventually become little more than vassal states themselves.

Several different levels of autonomy were proposed for the new states. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would be semi-autonomous, with almost complete control of government functions by Germany. They would be early targets for German colonisation, and consequently it was not expected they would remain even semi-autonomous for a prolonged period.
⁸
It is important to bear in mind how the German concept of colonies differed from that of the British or French. Whilst Britain ensured that there was almost no autonomy in the non-white parts of the British Empire, there was no real intention to settle these areas with sufficient numbers of white British citizens to create a British majority. The Germans, in contrast, intended to ‘Germanise’ their colonies in full, and regarded all non-Germans, regardless of their skin colour, as inferior to Germans. In the German protectorate of South West Africa – modern-day Namibia – the forcible seizure of land from local people for German settlers, in an attempt to create an ‘African Germany’, led to an uprising by the Herero people.
⁹
The German response was a genocidal war, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Herero.
¹⁰
This attitude to colonies persisted long after the fall of the Kaiser, and strongly influenced the behaviour of Nazi Germany towards occupied parts of Eastern Europe. Indeed, many of the key figures of the Nazi era had links with the Herero War; Hermann Goering’s father was one of the German officers involved in the genocides.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk effectively gave Germany permission to create
Mitteleuropa
, and even though the treaty was renounced by Lenin shortly afterwards, on the grounds that it had been forced upon the Soviet Union, the Germans did not abandon their dream of an East European empire. The fall of the Kaiser was a huge setback, but, despite this, German policy in the Baltic States appears to have been one of trying to establish dominance of the area through client states, thus creating a pro-German status quo that would survive any final peace settlement with the Western Powers. Large numbers of German troops assembled as volunteer formations, known as the
Freikorps
, and played an important part in the independence wars in the Baltic States. Whilst their assistance in driving back the Bolshevik forces was invaluable, they had no intention of helping to create truly independent states; rather, they often worked to further the German vision of puppet regimes, either under direct German control, or dominated by the Baltic German aristocracy. It should be stressed that this was particularly the case in Latvia; Baltic Germans in Estonia were largely strong supporters of Estonian nationalism, and helped raise some of the first military units that fought for Estonian independence.

The Polish vision of the future of those parts of Europe caught between Germany and Russia was not entirely dissimilar to the German vision. The Poles wished for a constellation of independent states collectively known as
Międzymorze
(‘Between the seas’, referring to the belt of land running from the Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea). These states would – of course – be dominated by Poland, which would be the largest member of the confederation. In addition, the Polish vision saw no possibility of an independent Lithuania. Instead, the old commonwealth between the two nations would be recreated, with Lithuania reduced to a semi-autonomous part of Poland. Whilst the Lithuanian nationalists welcomed the involvement of Poland in the war against the Bolshevik forces, they were less enthusiastic about what they perceived as Polish interference in Lithuania itself, including an attempted coup and the seizure of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

There was a further armed faction in the area, with a completely different vision of how matters should be arranged. The White Russians, still embroiled in their civil war against the Bolsheviks, were committed to a restoration of the Russian Empire, in which they were prepared to grant the Baltic States a limited degree of autonomy. The Germans sought to cooperate with the White Russians in the hope of creating a restored Russian Empire that would then support Germany against the British and French; the British and French, by contrast, were anxious to support the White Russians against the Bolsheviks, but tried to reconcile this with supporting the Baltic States in their bid for independence.

Whilst the end of the First World War brought peace to the west, turmoil continued in the east, with fighting among groups of different nationalities and loyalties on the territory of all three Baltic States, in the three Baltic wars of independence, though the interactions among these three wars make it almost impossible to look at any of them in isolation. As the nationalist movements of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia struggled to raise their own forces, they received aid of varying reliability from other countries. Estonia’s strong links with Finland resulted in several hundred Finns volunteering to fight for Estonian independence. A British light cruiser squadron delivered munitions and weapons, and also prevented the Soviet fleet based in Petrograd from making any significant foray into the Baltic. The Red Army units that invaded the three states were badly led, poorly trained and supplied in only the most haphazard of ways. Once the initial momentum of the Bolshevik invasion ceased, the Estonian nationalist government – with substantial support from Finland, the British cruisers and White Russian forces – swiftly regained control of its territory. Latvia was almost completely overrun by the Red Army, but the Baltic Germans and the
Freikorps
under the command of Rüdiger von der Goltz managed to retain control of a small bridgehead around the port of Liepāja, and in conjunction with other German forces in northern Latvia, Goltz’s units and the small Latvian nationalist army retook Riga. Thereafter, as Goltz tried to establish a pro-German government in place of the nationalist administration, there was confused fighting between the Germans and the Latvians, with Estonian forces aiding the latter, ultimately resulting in the expulsion of the
Freikorps
from Latvia.

In Lithuania, the relationship with both Germany and Poland played a major part in the course of the country’s war of independence, and also helped shape its fate in the years that followed. During the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the Germans had made an offer to Lithuania: Germany would recognise Lithuania’s independence in return for permanent federation with Germany, with matters such as defence, foreign affairs, and currency being controlled by Berlin. The Vilnius Conference, a body of Lithuanian nationalists, considered this offer, and responded that it would accept it, provided that Lithuania could retain autonomy over both its internal affairs and foreign policy. This latter point was incompatible with the German requirement for alignment on military issues, and Germany rejected the proposal. Nevertheless, on 11 December 1917, the Vilnius Council voted to accept the German offer subject to the conditions it had already stipulated, and accordingly made what amounted to a limited announcement of independence. This proved to be a controversial move, and was criticised by Lithuanians both at home and in exile, who felt that the concessions to Germany were too great. It also attracted the ire of the Entente Powers, who were still at war with Germany. In January 1918, the Vilnius Council attempted to modify its announcement, adding an additional stipulation that Lithuania should be granted a national assembly of regional constituents. The Germans, who had already made clear their opposition to the council’s previous conditions, rejected this latest requirement. The council now found itself facing hostility from all quarters, and many of its members threatened to resign. On 16 February, it agreed to issue a new announcement of Lithuanian independence, but this time without any reference to a permanent alliance with Germany. The German occupying forces prevented any publication of this announcement within Lithuania, though it was widely reported in the German press, and news inevitably spread back into Lithuania itself.