Thread by @Irkutyanin1

Going to be reading more McMeekin

Probably the best construction of WW1 that I have yet heard.

McMeekin’s take on Russian border insecurity and insecurity as imperial growth as new problems arose with every point along the Caucasian and Central Asian borders.

Gage breaks demonstrative of what the thoughts of strategic planers where about the probable defense of Russian Poland.

While Russian war planning was severely cautious in the West, Stolypin urging 20 years of peace to allow for industrialization, the Russian policy towards the Ottoman Empire still envisioned taking advantage of the chaos and facilitating the final disintegration of the Porte.

Just a neat map really.

The narrowly avoided Great War of 1912, blocked by Kokovtsov and the Tsar despite partial mobilization against Austria over German fears. The chief worry of the Russians was a Crimean or Congress of Berlin situation that blatantly initiating such a war would result in abandonment

Bulgaria’s unilateral push for control of the Thrace peninsula was a move that seemed to spite the real goals of the foreign ministry, which were not the idealistic recapture of Tsargrad by any Slavic group, but rather unhindered access of passage through the straits.

The reasons for this are easy to see, the closing of the straits in 1912 had caused a major dip in imports, exports, and revenues. In Hindsight, the resolution of this problem was one of the greatest achievements of Post War Diplomacy and the Leauge of Nations specifically.

Russian policy regarding the straights became increas offensive oriented as the Ottoman Empire was coming apart. The Black Sea fleet was undergoing as quick of a modernization as possible in war planing. Indeed opportunities had to be sacrificed because of lack of preparedness.

The problem? The Ottoman Navy was receiving three dreadnoughts from nominal ally Britain, and two more from Brazil!

Britain had also sent a naval mission and was training Turkish sailors. If allowed to happen, the Turkish fleet would have been gifted supremacy in Black Sea!

This was the most fractious thing the British had yet done to endanger the Entente before the war had even started, the Russians were at a complete loss at how to even approach this massive problem.

The answer from Churchill here is one of the most amazing things I've ever read.

This grave threat, not only to Russian offensive designs for the straights, but defensive naval capacity vis-a-vis the Ottomans, could not even be brought up to Allies, and thus rendered a grave problem for the Russian state‘s security invisible in a dangerous environment.

A large gap in correspondence exists exactly on the four day summit of the French delegation to Petersburg and the talks between Paleolouge, Poincare, Sazonov, and the tsar. At critical 20-24th July 1914.

The lost story of Russian Ambassador to Serbia, Nikolai Hartwig and his fatal visit to the Austrian delegation.

Also the “anti ultimatum“ ultimatum gives clues to what the summit between Russia and France had decided in case of mobilization, beforehand.

Russia was again, much stronger militarily than the history of memory has allowed. The situation in 1914 was the best that Russia had been in confrontations with the great powers since the 18th century, and the army had leverage to accomplish its own priorities.

War claims as they stood with Sazanov in 1914.

Witte bitterly described it as “the war of Polish liberation.”

But you can see here, that while First and Second Armies were to invade Eastern Prussia, the Warta frontier was not assigned a bulk of men.

Meanwhile 4 armies arranged themselves against Galicia, which unlike East Prussia was partially taken in 1914.

The Masurian Lakes were to be of paramount benefit to the Germans, by forcing the Russian armies to be split by geography and isolated from one another. Prittwitz’s Eighth Army was larger than the Russian armies in isolation of one another.

The scene for Tannenberg was set.

Russian War aims, despite Witte’s sarcasm, in fact included the “restoration“ of Poland, proclaimed by Supreme Commander Grand Duke Nicholas, the Tsar’s cousin upon the southern armies advancing into Eastern Galicia.

All sides seemed content with a revived Poland buffer state.

Krivoshin lets it be known that the free passage through the straits and Turkish exile to Asia were fundamental parts of the European peace even though Turkey was not yet at war.

Nicholas II’s personal vision of the peace conceded perhaps a international Constantinople.

As for the straits, their importance had continued to grow in Russian foreign policy while the Porte became almost an afterthought in London & Paris.

This was in fact, the main reason Russia was in the Balkans following & hastening the decline of the Ottomans in the first place

The Germans had one more naval maneuver, perhaps the most significant in the war.

The arrival of the Goeben and the Breslau nearly plunges the Russians into attacking Turkey preemptively only for Halim Pasha to “purchase” the ships. The German sailors crews then put on fezzes.

With a single “sale” the Russian Black Sea fleet lost naval supremacy to the dreadnaught equipped Turks. The dream of a Russian landing at the straits and southern resupply had to be postponed.

But the debacle had revealed the straits significance to the British admirality.

Wanted to put the lead up to Russian-Ottoman war. The straits were closed to Russia late September 1914 the Ottoman Navy literally purchased their supreme admiral, Wilhelm Souchon, with his ships. On 29 October the ships opened fire on Odessa without declaration of war

The turn around by the British and French on the question of the Dardanelles was the greatest diplomatic victory Russia had won since the Partitions of Poland.

From Casus Belli to the British using the bulk of their fleet and tens of thousands of her troops for Russian war aims.

The New Middle East of the Sykes-Picot-(Sazanov) treaty.

Really crucial insight into the Armenian-Kurdish-Turkish ethnic violence. The Ottoman-Russian front was probably the nadir of the whole war. I’m not sure there was a front worse until the Russian Civil War.

Unlike most fronts in WW1 it was a total racial conflict.

The Armenian Genocide has a historiography that is mired in the contemporary politicization. Did it begin in the 1890’s? 1900s? 1915 only?

Regardless, the Van uprising hapening during the frantic Russian retreat from Poland in 1915 marked a point of no return for them.

More maps of the front and railways.

Baratov’s conquest of Persia with a handful of Cossacks, on the other hand, reads like the adventure novel it was.

Though this operation took place during the second largest British defeat of the war at Ctesiphon, Russian prestige and moral was high here.

By early 1917, the military situation of the Russian Armed forces had never been better. The Black Sea Fleet now had supremacy, the Turkish fleet’s dreadnaughts were destroyed, Admiral Kolchak could now launch the Amphibious Assault, to take place in July.

Russian domestic production of arms and ammunition now surpassed the Germans, Baratov had been with the British when they took Baghdad, he was ready to march to Mosul.

The Ottoman Third Army was destroyed. 2 divisions guarded Constantinople.

And then they fucked everything up.

McMeekin concludes that the Russian Revolution, being utter folly of the liberals, the shame of the Octoberist military imperialists who pressured for abdication, and the overt treason of the Socialists and Bolsheviks, no historiographic school wanted to touch.

Overall 👍 book,

You may take issue with the hostile position McMeekin takes to other scholars and their positions, but this never really bothered the /sg/ poster in me.

I really like how he used the buildup to lay this critique of democratic foreign policies though.