Thread by @Irkutyanin1

After waiting for the better part of the year I got British Intelligence officer David Footman’s info pamphlets on the Russian Civil War and the Baltic.

Unlike most sources published in Britain, Footman does not attribute the Baltic Freikorps as being agents of the German state, which is found in works of much later date.

He says they are much like the young English men who joined the Black and Tans, and gets their POV correct.

Some pages are very worn, but still readable.

The Landeswehr was meant to contain Latvian troops, but they would not join these units to be lead by Germans.

Some of the Freikorps and Balts had strange ideas for fixing the situation, like making Latvia a protectorate of Sweden

In Footman’s view, and one I’m coming around to, British high policy in the Russian Civil War revolves around the Baltic states, because of the Baltic Freikorps’ perception as an extension of wartime Germany. “Russia could be sorted out later, establish the republics first.”

Rumor can often have very real consequences. Du Parquet thought that the Freikorps and the Spartacists would unite to justify German occupation. Von Der Goltz withdrew his forces from Libau, because he thought Germany wouldn’t sign the treaty and the war would be restarted.

Von der Goltz, after the fighting at Wenden, realized that he would not be able to stay in the Baltic states, and so he would attempt to assist the White Russians by pushing through Belarus, a restored Russia could more easily find a place for his troops.

Ex War minister Guchkov, who had done much to drive the Russian Empire into WW1 and delegitimize the monarchy via work in the Duma, went to Lord Curzon to ask that the Germans be sent to Russian territory, this was flatly rejected.

Interesting British Foreign Office delusions of the time, as well as the conference of Bermondt-Avalov. The British military attaché, General Marsh, considered it the best option to support Avalov and said so, but Ulmanis vetoed his passage of his troops through Latvia.

Once more, the lower British diplomatic and military staff on the ground at that time were pro Bermondt-Avalov, repeatedly wiring for permission to supply and assist Avalov, but Lord Curzon would hear none of it.

“Avoid all contact with pro-German Russians”

Bermondt’s campaign could only have gone ahead had there been no objection to it. If he had pushed on to Dvinsk, he would be surrounded and pressed by now hostile Latvians and the Bolsheviks he had meant to fight, he turned north, and was defeated on the Dvina with British aid

The foreign office treated his move as a critical danger to Britain, and the action of an enemy it was at war with.

The Northern Corps was set up explicitly by the German army to advance on Petrograd after Ludendorff was denied doing so by Kühlmann and von Hintze. It was hoped that the Russian monarchist Count Keller would advance on Petrograd and become the military dictator of Russia.

Generals Yudenich and Gurko were also floated as alternated commanders, while real command initially fell to Vandam. The Germans promised millions of marks and an army of 100,000 but this was in September-October of 1918, the German Revolution of November would destroy all plans

Footman has no released British documents on the attitudes of Yudenich’s Army from Early 1919, when he was trying to get Mannerheim to push south. However, documentation that starts from June 1919 suggests that they saw the Northern Corps as “German” and thus hostile.

Because of this, the British not only prioritized the Estonian supply (since they were now fighting the “main Germans” in Latvia) but set about forcing the establishment of a Democratic non reactionary North West Government, and making it say what it wanted.

When the national governments of Estonian and Latvia sent out peace feelers to the Soviets, Britain shifted to the policy of wait and see in the Russian Civil War. They did not give the advance on Petrograd naval support, and diverted the fleet and most new tanks against Avalov