Here's what I have so far for a reworked and rewritten version of my timeline. I've scrapped all the useless muck which involved absolutely no AH, and instead made the beginning the first initial POD. I also am going for a more realistic narrative here, while aiming to tell a decent story as well.
The first major POD is the successful Soviet seizure of Warsaw during the Soviet-Polish War. I must also add, (this was more so my own creativity at work) Lenin doesn't suffer through a stroke and hence lives a few years longer which is meant to drastically change the USSR.
Much of the timeline will concern Germany's civil war, an earlier Chinese Revolution (one made by urban workers and not by a peasant P.L.A.), an isolationist U.S., an alternate power struggle in the Soviet Union, etc. in short all concepts I was seeking to explore in my earlier attempt at a timeline on this forum.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
I will update occasionally, seeing as to how college is kicking my butt workload wise.
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“The decision by Colonel Kamenev to move the bulk of the Southwestern Army Group northwards towards Brest, instead of continuing the march on Lvov, allowed the main Western Army Group under Tukhachevsky to overwhelm the Polish defenders of Warsaw and to seize the capital. The fall of Warsaw meant the spreading of Soviet power to Poland, with the ensuing Peace of Minsk held in 1921 forging a pro-Soviet puppet regime grouped around the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee and, later, the Polish Communist Workers’ Party. Polish society was turned upside down as land was collectivized and as factories were nationalized by decree. The Polish army was greatly reduced in size, with any extra arms going to a newly-formed Polish Red Guard.”
“The national question assumed undue importance in a vanquished and Sovietized Poland, a nation which was now part of the much larger Soviet state encompassing most of the former Russian Empire. Stalin, as People’s Commissar for Nationalities’ Affairs, used Soviet Ukraine as a model for how best to incorporate Poland into the federal structure as a new socialist republic.”
“Despite the clamor by leading Bolsheviks to send the victorious Red Army into Germany, Lenin and his party shied away from a full-scale invasion; Trotsky knew as well as Lenin that the Red Army wasn’t strong enough to fight, let alone conquer, Germany. For the time being, the Red Army was held back and was used to strengthen Soviet rule in Poland.”
-Taken from Robert Keller’s The Bolsheviks and Civil War: A History of the Russian Civil War
Section One
At the present moment, our German comrades stand at a crossroads. The Russian Communist Party must- Lenin stopped writing, setting the pen back onto his desk. He stood up and placed two hands onto the surface of the desk, sighing. “I’m getting too old for this.” He muttered. Honestly, he was only fifty-two. Still, he felt older by a decade. The years of leading first Russia, then that ungainly union of nations making up the Soviet Union, had been strenuous. Grumbling, he collapsed back down into his desk chair and started once again to write.
As he wrote neatly, slowly, he thought of nothing but Germany. Germany. To think, it had only been a few years since he had arrived in a sealed train at the Finland Station to take lead of Russia’s revolution. The irony was never more prevalent now, now that the German Empire was no more and revolution was knocking at the nation’s door. Empires, he thought, die. Was this not the era of imperialism and monopoly capitalism, the highest and final stage of the convulsing system?
The year 1923 had not been kind to the Germans. The county was in shambles, wracked by rapid inflation and foreign meddling. The Treaty of Versailles was indeed a slave treaty, a treaty forced on a defeated nation by the victors. Yet Germany now stood at a crossroads, as a society ripe for revolution. The former imperialist state could join the socialist brotherhood of nations embodied in the USSR. If only, figured Lenin, the German communists could keep up the nationwide insurrection’s momentum, if only. He sighed once again as he finished his writing, just as he put the final punctuation mark onto the paper.
He placed the writings off to one side before rising back up from his desk and prepared to open the door to his office and exit through it. He walked over to the door, but didn’t open it. He placed a thin hand over his chest. His heart was troubling him again. Sighing, he opened the door and left his office. He had a long day ahead of him, and wouldn’t mind a walk.
The German Civil War started with a communist-led insurrection in Hamburg. The German Communist Party (KPD) issued a circular to regional party committees. The instructions were clear: A nationwide insurrection was on the KPD’s immediate agenda, in lieu of rising discontent towards the bourgeois order that was the Weimar Republic. Party militants in Hamburg energetically went through with an insurrection, seizing police stations and building barricades. For a few brief hours, when it seemed that the government might regain the upper hand and restore order to the streets, a feverous tension gripped the city. When the chaotic street battles ended however, the communists were firmly in control. Taking a cue from the Russian Revolution, they christened Hamburg a ‘labor commune’ and prepared to defend ‘Red Hamburg’ against counterrevolution.
The proclamation of the Hamburg Labor Commune, championed by KPD stalwarts Hugo Urbahns and Hans Kippenberger who had led the insurrection, sent shockwaves throughout Germany. Parties and individuals from across the political spectrum reacted swiftly to the KPD’s violet seizure of power in Hamburg. Action would be taken even as the leaders of the Hamburg Insurrection, flush with their rapid victory over the state’s forces, had begun to form a Red Army. In Hamburg red flags now flew, displayed proudly by dock workers and radicals alike, which only served to shatter the Weimar Republic’s tenuous hold on stability at a time when the economy was in freefall. Tracing the myriad reactions to the Hamburg Rising is key to understanding the prolongation and eventual end of Germany’s bloody civil war.
The first major POD is the successful Soviet seizure of Warsaw during the Soviet-Polish War. I must also add, (this was more so my own creativity at work) Lenin doesn't suffer through a stroke and hence lives a few years longer which is meant to drastically change the USSR.
Much of the timeline will concern Germany's civil war, an earlier Chinese Revolution (one made by urban workers and not by a peasant P.L.A.), an isolationist U.S., an alternate power struggle in the Soviet Union, etc. in short all concepts I was seeking to explore in my earlier attempt at a timeline on this forum.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
I will update occasionally, seeing as to how college is kicking my butt workload wise. ---
“The decision by Colonel Kamenev to move the bulk of the Southwestern Army Group northwards towards Brest, instead of continuing the march on Lvov, allowed the main Western Army Group under Tukhachevsky to overwhelm the Polish defenders of Warsaw and to seize the capital. The fall of Warsaw meant the spreading of Soviet power to Poland, with the ensuing Peace of Minsk held in 1921 forging a pro-Soviet puppet regime grouped around the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee and, later, the Polish Communist Workers’ Party. Polish society was turned upside down as land was collectivized and as factories were nationalized by decree. The Polish army was greatly reduced in size, with any extra arms going to a newly-formed Polish Red Guard.”
“The national question assumed undue importance in a vanquished and Sovietized Poland, a nation which was now part of the much larger Soviet state encompassing most of the former Russian Empire. Stalin, as People’s Commissar for Nationalities’ Affairs, used Soviet Ukraine as a model for how best to incorporate Poland into the federal structure as a new socialist republic.”
“Despite the clamor by leading Bolsheviks to send the victorious Red Army into Germany, Lenin and his party shied away from a full-scale invasion; Trotsky knew as well as Lenin that the Red Army wasn’t strong enough to fight, let alone conquer, Germany. For the time being, the Red Army was held back and was used to strengthen Soviet rule in Poland.”
-Taken from Robert Keller’s The Bolsheviks and Civil War: A History of the Russian Civil War
Section One
At the present moment, our German comrades stand at a crossroads. The Russian Communist Party must- Lenin stopped writing, setting the pen back onto his desk. He stood up and placed two hands onto the surface of the desk, sighing. “I’m getting too old for this.” He muttered. Honestly, he was only fifty-two. Still, he felt older by a decade. The years of leading first Russia, then that ungainly union of nations making up the Soviet Union, had been strenuous. Grumbling, he collapsed back down into his desk chair and started once again to write.
As he wrote neatly, slowly, he thought of nothing but Germany. Germany. To think, it had only been a few years since he had arrived in a sealed train at the Finland Station to take lead of Russia’s revolution. The irony was never more prevalent now, now that the German Empire was no more and revolution was knocking at the nation’s door. Empires, he thought, die. Was this not the era of imperialism and monopoly capitalism, the highest and final stage of the convulsing system?
The year 1923 had not been kind to the Germans. The county was in shambles, wracked by rapid inflation and foreign meddling. The Treaty of Versailles was indeed a slave treaty, a treaty forced on a defeated nation by the victors. Yet Germany now stood at a crossroads, as a society ripe for revolution. The former imperialist state could join the socialist brotherhood of nations embodied in the USSR. If only, figured Lenin, the German communists could keep up the nationwide insurrection’s momentum, if only. He sighed once again as he finished his writing, just as he put the final punctuation mark onto the paper.
He placed the writings off to one side before rising back up from his desk and prepared to open the door to his office and exit through it. He walked over to the door, but didn’t open it. He placed a thin hand over his chest. His heart was troubling him again. Sighing, he opened the door and left his office. He had a long day ahead of him, and wouldn’t mind a walk.
The German Civil War started with a communist-led insurrection in Hamburg. The German Communist Party (KPD) issued a circular to regional party committees. The instructions were clear: A nationwide insurrection was on the KPD’s immediate agenda, in lieu of rising discontent towards the bourgeois order that was the Weimar Republic. Party militants in Hamburg energetically went through with an insurrection, seizing police stations and building barricades. For a few brief hours, when it seemed that the government might regain the upper hand and restore order to the streets, a feverous tension gripped the city. When the chaotic street battles ended however, the communists were firmly in control. Taking a cue from the Russian Revolution, they christened Hamburg a ‘labor commune’ and prepared to defend ‘Red Hamburg’ against counterrevolution.
The proclamation of the Hamburg Labor Commune, championed by KPD stalwarts Hugo Urbahns and Hans Kippenberger who had led the insurrection, sent shockwaves throughout Germany. Parties and individuals from across the political spectrum reacted swiftly to the KPD’s violet seizure of power in Hamburg. Action would be taken even as the leaders of the Hamburg Insurrection, flush with their rapid victory over the state’s forces, had begun to form a Red Army. In Hamburg red flags now flew, displayed proudly by dock workers and radicals alike, which only served to shatter the Weimar Republic’s tenuous hold on stability at a time when the economy was in freefall. Tracing the myriad reactions to the Hamburg Rising is key to understanding the prolongation and eventual end of Germany’s bloody civil war.
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