My brothers keeper, an OC/SI as the twin of Stalin

[Xodarap]

Opsec is really hurting British planning if they've already generalized Mikheils forces as purely Revolutionary Guard did the good admiral make mistakes in the telegraph messages or was the abbreviated nature of telegraph responsible for the misunderstanding

 

[Alenco98]

An excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Czechoslovak revolt in Siberia:

By early 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion — once a coherent, if weary, fighting force — had become scattered across the immensity of Russia. Roughly 40,000 men remained under arms, but divided into four major concentrations:

10,000 within Ukraine around Kiev.

15,000 along the Penza–kazan-Samara region

10,000 in the Novosibirsk region, and

5,000 stationed near Vladivostok.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, and the subsequent signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in December 1917 left the Legion in limbo. Their original mission — to fight Germany and Austria-Hungary for Allied recognition of Czechoslovakia — was now impossible without transit out of Russia.

It was into this void that Mikheil Jugashvili, the Georgian warlord and commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps came into play. Having marched into Ukraine with 5000 of his men. He offered to lead the Ukrainian contingent to Murmansk, all while sending messengers east promising the other Czechoslovaks to stand by as he would get them home as well. His infamous Caravan of Vice — a rolling mixture of alcohol, prostitutes, opium, brutality, and hard marching — deposited some ten thousand Legionnaires and 5 thousand revolutionary guardsmen in Murmansk on may 1st.

Initially Mikheil attempted to negotiate with the British, requesting they begin immediate evacuation of the legion. However, admiral Kemp, not having enough ships and having no authorization from London denied his request, informing Jugashvili that he would have to wait for a reply from London.

Not being one to be denied and with his patience running short, Jugashvili rallied the Revolutionary guardsmen and the Czechoslovaks. They subsequently seized the British fleet, scuttled its ships, and fortified the port that same night.

Jugashvili's mixture of ruthless charisma and opportunism attracted many Legionnaires. He promised them not only survival but wealth, glory, and women — and unlike Allied promises of distant evacuation, his words were backed by immediate plunder and authority.

By mid-May 1918, news of the "Murmansk Incident" had rippled across Russia like shockwaves through shattered glass. To Bolshevik sympathizers, Jugashvili's audacious seizure of the northern port was proof that revolutionary willpower could overcome the hesitancy of Allied imperialists. To the Allies themselves, it was nothing short of mutiny, an act of piracy dressed in the trappings of revolution. For the Czechoslovak Legion, the incident was the breaking point.

From that moment on, the once-unified Legion fractured into two bitterly opposed camps.

The Pro-Mikheil Faction. Bound together by Jugashvili's charisma, were drawn in equal measure by his promise of loot, survival, and revolutionary glory. Unlike the cautious Allied officers, Mikheil spoke in certainties: food today, women tomorrow, and plunder the day after. His words resonated with many Legionnaires of working-class origin and with younger junior officers who had grown tired of vague promises of evacuation to France. Among this camp, genuine communist sympathizers rose quickly in influence, reshaping Jugashvili's cult of personality into a revolutionary crusade. By late May, Mikheil's adherents were openly coordinating with Bolshevik forces under Trotsky in the Volga basin, particularly around the Samara–Kazan axis.

The pro allied pole meanwhile rallied around the idea of legitimacy. For these men — often senior officers, professionals, and those more tightly bound to Masaryk's vision of a Czechoslovak state — survival meant Allied recognition, not revolution. They sought nothing more than to escape Russia, regroup in France, and continue the fight against the Central Powers. In exchange for loyalty, they received supplies, ammunition, and arms from British, French, and Japanese missions in Siberia, with American matériel soon to follow. They aligned themselves closely with White forces, tying their fate to the anti-Bolshevik struggle.

The fragile balance between these camps collapsed on 27 May 1918 in Samara, when Jugashvili's adherents attempted to seize food and ammunition depots guarded by Pro-Allied Czechoslovaks. The clash was short but bloody: rifles cracked through the streets, bayonets were fixed, and in less than an hour fifty-seven men lay dead — the first Czechs to fall not against Germans or Austrians, but against their own countrymen.

The "Samara Bloodletting," as it was later called, set the precedent. From that day forward, every rumor, every whispered order, carried the risk of escalation into fratricide.

The Trans-Siberian Railway became the fault line of the Legion's internal conflict. Word of the Samara clashes spread faster than couriers could ride, magnified by rumor and distortion. In Penza, Legion detachments split over whether Mikheil was a savior or a bandit. In Novosibirsk, commanders argued openly in railway stations, pistols drawn, before men deserted to whichever side promised food and pay.

Entire units began switching allegiance at the drop of a rumor. A commander who one week swore loyalty to the Allies might, after hearing tales of Mikheil's victories in the north, defect the next. Others, more cynical, sold themselves to the highest bidder, looting towns and trading spoils with Bolsheviks or Whites as convenience dictated.

In some cities, the Czechs became petty warlords of railway yards, arsenals, or city blocks — men who had once envisioned themselves as liberators of Prague now ruled over stretches of Siberian mud and timber, their banners no longer a symbol of unity but of faction.

For the Bolsheviks, the split was an unexpected boon. Trotsky, wary yet pragmatic, saw the Czechoslovaks as dangerous but useful allies. With tens of thousands of disaffected Legionnaires adding steel to the Red effort on the Volga front.

For the Allies, the mutiny was a disaster. Instead of a disciplined, unified expeditionary asset, they now faced a divided Legion — one half cooperating with Whites, the other half fortifying Bolshevik strongholds. Japanese officers in Vladivostok fumed that their carefully laid plans to secure Siberia were being upended by "that Georgian bandit," while French officers in Irkutsk despaired that Czechs were killing Czechs before they had even set foot back in Europe.

By June 1918, the Legion's fate was sealed. The question was no longer whether they would fight for Czechoslovakia, but which Czechoslovakia they would fight for; one forged in the crucible of Allied legitimacy and Western recognition, or one born in fire and vice, under the banner of Jugashvili and the Bolshevik revolution.

The next battles — at Kazan, Ufa, and along the frozen stretches of the Siberian railway — would determine not only the survival of the Legion, but whether their homeland would be represented abroad as democratic allies of France and Britain, or as revolutionary comrades of Lenin and Jugashvili.

In Samara, Jugashvili's adherents formally threw in their lot with the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik detachments reinforced them, and together they began a series of lightning raids against White and pro-Allied Czechoslovak positions. Supply depots, rail stations, and even hospitals became targets.

The Whites and their Czechoslovak allies retaliated with their own brand of brutality, executing any Legionnaires suspected of being "red sympathizers." Executions were carried out in public squares to terrify the wavering. But rather than intimidating Mikheil's faction, the bloodletting only radicalized them.

The city became a deadly pendulum of control — swinging one day to the Whites, the next to the Reds. Civilians cowered in cellars, the streets stank of unburied corpses, and the Trans-Siberian line through Samara slowed to a crawl under the weight of barricades and patrols.

By 3 July, the Bolsheviks, supported heavily by Jugashvili aligned Czechoslovaks, seized the upper hand. The last pro-Allied Czech garrisons in the city were surrounded. Jugashvili's men offered them a choice: pledge allegiance or die.

In a grotesque echo of Jugashvili's earlier brutality in Moscow and on the Pukilovo Heights, those who defected were forced to execute their comrades who refused. Entire units dissolved in a haze of tears, drunkenness, and blood. The symbolism was deliberate — Jugashvili's new order demanded not just obedience, but complicity.

Flushed with their victory, the Czechoslovaks advanced south and seized Kazan on July 29th. There, in the chaos of conquest, they captured the Russian gold reserves — the single most valuable prize in Russia. The windfall provoked a bitter quarrel between the Czechoslovaks and Trotsky, who argued the gold belonged solely to the Soviet state.

After tense negotiations, a compromise was struck on August 15. The Czechoslovaks, backed by the sheer fact of physical possession, as well as by the political backing of Joseph Stalin, forced the Bolsheviks to concede. The gold was divided: one-third for the Bolshevik aligned Czechoslovaks in Samara and Jugashvili's northern contingent that was fighting in Finland, and two-thirds for the Bolshevik government. The split was grudging, but decisive. The Bolsheviks gained a financial lifeline that would sustain their revolution, while Czechoslovaks secured the loot that Jugashvili promised them.

Far to the east, in Novosibirsk, the schism played out differently. There, rival Czechoslovak commanders each declared themselves the rightful representatives of the national cause, forming dueling "committees."

Skirmishes on the outskirts escalated into pitched battles. By June, the fighting had drawn in Russian civilians and partisans, swelling into a localized civil war. Artillery duels turned entire neighborhoods into smoldering ruins. Railway cars filled with the dead were sent eastward, silent testimony to the ferocity of the fighting.

In the end, the Whites proved stronger. With substantial Allied support and better supply lines, they gradually ground down the Mikheil-aligned Czechoslovaks. By July's end, the Red-sympathizing Czechs had been surrounded, captured, and executed en masse. Their corpses were displayed publicly, a warning against Bolshevik agitation in Siberia. The pro-Allied faction declared Novosibirsk the "legitimate heart" of the Czechoslovak struggle — though the ruins around them spoke more of fratricide than liberation.

In Vladivostok, the balance was never in question. The Allied faction remained intact and unchallenged. Reinforced by Japanese divisions and with Allied warships in the harbor, Vladivostok became a fortress of pro-Allied order.

Pro-Mikheil agitators, sent eastward to stir dissent, were quickly uncovered and crushed. Those who attempted to rally troops were executed or shipped back west in chains. A rare moment of unity occurred when Japanese and Czechoslovak forces jointly suppressed Mikheil's supporters with ruthless efficiency. Vladivostok thus remained a bastion of Allied legitimacy, a gateway through which supplies, weapons, and political recognition flowed.

By the beginning of September, the map of the Czechoslovak Legion reflected its fracture. Samara–Kazan laid firmly in Jugashvili's hands, aligned with Bolsheviks and enriched by the gold reserves.

Novosibirsk and Vladivostok were purged of Mikheil's adherents, under White and Allied control. With Vladivostok in particular having become a stronghold of the Allied faction, which was heavily bolstered by Japanese power.

The Legion, once imagined as a unified army of national liberation, was now irreparably divided. Two banners flew under the same name: one red, revolutionary, and drenched in vice; the other white, legitimist, and chained to Allied interests.

And in between lay thousands of miles of railway, towns, and villages — the battleground of a civil war within a civil war.

The Legion Civil War remains a footnote in the broader Russian Civil War, yet it had lasting consequences. For the Allies, it shattered faith in the reliability of émigré forces. For the Bolsheviks, it proved both a boon — weakening White control, the securing of the Russian gold reserves — and a danger, as the Czechs were only loyal to loot, not to ideology.

Most poignantly, for the Czechoslovaks themselves, it was a tragedy. Men who had left their homes to fight for independence found themselves killing their own countrymen on distant Russian soil, their sacrifice entangled in the ambitions of foreign empires and the madness of revolutionary war.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from the Wikipedia page on the German Spring offensive:

By the winter of 1917, Russia had been knocked out of the war. The treaty of Brest Litvosk, signed on December 10, 1917 was a major coup for German diplomacy. It knocked Russia out of war and allowed Germany to achieve some of its strategic objectives in the east. More importantly, it freed vast numbers of German and Austro-Hungarian troops for deployment elsewhere. The German High Command (Oberste Heeresleitung, or OHL), under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, immediately began plans to shift divisions west.

The December signing gave the Germans nearly three extra months of freedom of action. In January and February 1918, troop trains rumbled westward, ferrying men, horses, and artillery. By the end of February, nearly half a million soldiers had been transferred, along with the bulk of the cavalry formations once used for sweeping maneuvers across the Russian plains. These divisions would become the cutting edge of the Kaiserschlacht, the "Kaiser's Battle," designed to win the war in the west before the United States could intervene in strength.

The winter of 1917–18 was eerily quiet on the Western Front. The Germans, conserving their strength, limited themselves to probing attacks, trench raids, and artillery harassment. Allied intelligence noted unusual rail activity behind German lines but failed to predict its scale. British commanders suspected an offensive was coming but believed it would be delayed until late spring.

Behind the lines, Ludendorff reorganized the German Army for one last decisive effort. The stormtrooper units—specially trained infiltration troops—were expanded and equipped with light machine guns and grenades on top of their usual arsenal. Cavalry divisions, redeployed from the East, were refitted for exploitation roles. The goal was not to break through with brute force, but to bypass strongpoints, infiltrate weak sectors, and sow confusion deep in enemy rear areas.

Meanwhile, in Britain and France, morale was fragile. The French Army was still recovering from the 1917 mutinies. Though discipline had been restored, confidence was brittle. The British, having borne the brunt of Passchendaele, were stretched thin. Both nations awaited American reinforcements, but as of early 1918, the U.S. presence was modest—fewer than 200,000 combat-ready troops.

On the morning of March 3, 1918, the largest German offensive of the war began. At 4:40 a.m., more than 6,000 guns opened fire along a 50-mile front. A hurricane bombardment—mixing high explosive, poison gas, and smoke—fell on the British Fifth Army and parts of the French front. Communications were shredded, and forward trenches obliterated.

By mid-morning, stormtroopers advanced under the cover of moke. Instead of attacking strongpoints head-on, they filtered between them, cutting off defenders and pushing into rear areas. The British Fifth Army collapsed. Thousands surrendered, thousands more streamed westward in chaotic retreat. Within three days, the Germans had advanced farther than in any offensive since 1914.

The three month lull in combat had allowed Ludendorff and the OHL to draft a coherent battle plan. The result showed itself in those first few weeks. The German army concentrated relentlessly on the Amiens axis. Cavalry divisions pushed forward, probing for weak spots, seizing crossings, and cutting telegraph lines. British and French commanders, stunned by the pace of events, struggled to form coherent defensive lines.

By April 1, less than a month after the offensive began, German troops seized Amiens. The city, a critical rail junction, was the linchpin connecting British and French armies. Its loss severed north-south coordination and created the real possibility that the Allies might be defeated in detail.

The fall of Amiens sent shockwaves through Allied capitals. In London, the Cabinet debated whether Britain could continue the war if France collapsed. Lord Lansdowne and other moderates argued for exploring peace terms. Winston Churchill, then Minister of Munitions, urged defiance, but admitted privately that the situation was "the gravest since 1914."

In Paris, panic gripped the Chamber of Deputies. On April 2, a vote of no confidence was brought against Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. He survived only after delivering a thunderous speech:

"I would rather throw myself and my children in front of a firing squad than to even think about surrender!"

The chamber roared its approval, and Clemenceau's reputation as the "Tiger" of France was secured. Yet behind the rhetoric lay genuine fear: the Germans were closer to Paris than at any point in four years.

By mid-April, the German advance pressed into the Oise valley. On April 15, skirmishes erupted around Chantilly, home to the French General Headquarters (Grand Quartier Général). Though not fully captured, the area became a contested zone. French staff officers fled toward Paris, disrupting command and control.

The symbolic impact was enormous. Chantilly had been the nerve center of the French war effort since 1914. Its loss suggested that even the high command was no longer safe. Rumors swept Paris that the Germans would soon storm the capital. The government quietly prepared evacuation plans to Bordeaux, echoing the desperate days of the Franco-Prussian War.

In London, panic deepened. Some cabinet ministers urged opening peace talks, fearing that continued fighting would leave Britain isolated. Only the intervention of Lloyd George and the quiet support of King George V held the government together.

The crisis forced the issue of American participation. General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), had long insisted on fighting as an independent U.S. army. President Woodrow Wilson supported him, fearing that subordinating American troops to European command would diminish U.S. influence at the peace table.

But Clemenceau, Foch, and Lloyd George argued that without immediate American reinforcements under French command, the war could be lost within weeks. The capture of Amiens and the German threat to Chantilly gave their pleas urgency.

For weeks Wilson resisted, torn between national pride and strategic necessity. Pershing lobbied hard against subordination. Yet the crisis worsened. On May 7, Chantilly fell and the Germans began to advance towards Paris. Wilson's hand was forced. American divisions were placed under Foch's command. The decision transformed the Allied war effort.

The Amiens–Chantilly offensive represented the high-water mark of German arms. But even as the Germans celebrated, cracks appeared. The very success of the advance strained logistics beyond endurance. Supply columns struggled over cratered terrain. Horses starved for lack of fodder. Ammunition dumps lagged miles behind the front.

Most critically, the elite stormtrooper units, used as shock troops in every assault, suffered irreplaceable casualties. By May, the cutting edge of the German Army was blunted. Replacement troops were less well-trained and less motivated. Food shortages at home, exacerbated by the British blockade, sapped morale.

Meanwhile, the Allies regained their footing. French reserves stabilized the front before Paris. British divisions regrouped behind the Somme. And with American manpower now committed, the balance began to shift.

By June 1918, over 600,000 Americans were in France. Though many were still untested, their sheer numbers freed up French veterans for counterattacks. At the Battle of the Aisne in mid-June, German thrusts toward Paris were halted by combined Franco-American forces. For the first time, American divisions played a decisive role, boosting Allied morale.

Through July, Foch prepared a grand counteroffensive. The German spearheads around Amiens were deeply salient, their flanks exposed. On July 14, Bastille Day, French and American troops launched surprise attacks east of Paris. The Germans, exhausted and undersupplied, fell back. Chantilly was recaptured on July 22, and the tide finally began to turn.

By August, the Entente, now enjoying numerical superiority, launched coordinated offensives along the entire front. The Canadians and Australians spearheaded the recapture of Amiens on August 6, in what would later be hailed as the "black day of the German Army." Thousands of German prisoners were taken, and morale collapsed.

The loss of Amiens shattered the last illusions of German victory. Ludendorff, once confident, now admitted privately that the war was lost. Desertions mounted. At home, strikes and protests spread in Berlin and Munich. The blockade had reduced civilian rations to near-starvation levels.

In September, further Allied offensives drove the Germans back toward their 1914 positions. American forces, now over a million strong, proved decisive in weight if not yet in skill.

By late September, German leaders faced the unthinkable. With Austria-Hungary on the brink and Bulgaria seeking peace, Germany stood alone. On September 28, Ludendorff suffered a nervous breakdown, declaring the situation hopeless.

On October 7, 1918, less than seven months after the spring offensive began, Germany requested an armistice. The Kaiser's government, terrified of revolution, sued for peace.