Season 6 2019

In our first new episode, our host Jesse takes a look at the German Revolution of 1918/1919 and how the Spartacists under Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg tried to take power. We also take a look at the new conflicts that emerge right after the supposed "war to end all wars" and explain how the massive armies of the great powers were demobilized.

The biggest conflict, or rather series of conflicts, that had their roots in the First World War are today known as the Russian Civil War. After the October Revolution the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky fought all across the former Russian Empire to consolidate their power.

It's time for another episode of Beyond The Great War where we answer questions from the community. This time we take a look at the Greater Poland Uprising and the situation of Poland in early 1919, Jesse recommends a few of his favourite history books and we also talk about how veterans were treated after the 1918 armistice.

Like many European countries, Hungary experiences rapid political changes in the aftermath of the 1918 armistices. The Kingdom of Hungary used to rule big parts of South Eastern Europe and many peoples within its former boundaries are now gaining independence and expand their territory. The new Hungarian Republic is faced by external and internal pressures and after a coup becomes the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the 2nd Soviet State in Europe.

Jesse Alexander takes a look at the short lived but historically important Bavarian Soviet Republic that existed for 3 weeks in April 1919. He also takes a look at the post armistice economy and reconstruction in the west.

Italy joined World War 1 in 1915 after it had been promised territorial gains in the Treaty of London. Now that the Central Powers had been defeated, the Italian government and the Italians themselves expected that their contribution would be honored at the Paris Peace Conference. But France, Great Britain and the US had other plans and so the Italian government was caught between the new realities at Paris and the nationalists at home.

The so called Allied intervention into the Russian Civil War suffered from no clear operational goals and mandate and when US President Woodrow Wilson pulled out the American soldiers that were fighting in Northern Russia in May 1919, the operation suffered another setback. Public pressure against US foreign intervention was increasing now that Germany had been beaten and many people didn't understand what American soldiers were doing in Russia anyway. At the same time Winston Churchill and his supporters maintained that it was vital to defeat the Bolsheviks in Russia once and for all.

The Treaty of Versailles was the first of the big peace treaties after the armistice of 1918. In just six months the allied powers had – without talking to the defeated powers – negotiated a new world order while trying to make sure Germany would pay reparations to rebuild. The German delegation was only informed about the peace terms a few weeks before signing the Treaty and they were shocked about the terms. In May 1919 they even considered not signing the contract at all.

Estonia and Latvia had declared their independence from Russia in the late 1918 chaos. Over the spring of 1919 both countries' new governments needed to defend that independence not only against the Russian Bolsheviks, there was also a violent internal struggle about the future of these countries. The Baltic Germans didn't want to give up their social status and the even the anti-bolshevik Russians considered the Baltics as part of the Russian Empire.

When the Allied armies marched into German territory in late 1918 under the terms of the armistice, they were surprised to see a relatively untouched land. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the Allied Occupation was made permanent and the troops settled in to stay in a country that did not want them there initially.

Lviv or Lwów are two names for the same city that was known as Lemberg until 1919. The Poles considered it as one of their most important cultural and political centers, the Ukrainians too. And so, in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the question of who would control this city led to conflict: The Polish-Ukrainian War.

The summer of 1919 was a pivotal moment in the Russian Civil War. Backed with Allied support the White movement went on the offensive in the East under Alexander Kolchak and in the South under Anton Denikin. However, the Bolsheviks were not wasting time either. They consolidated their power and got the Red Army into shape to crush the enemy once and for all.

The American intervention in the Russian Civil War, the economic hardships of workers and returning veterans and the strikes all over the US in 1919 created a hysteria that we know as Red Scare today. But how realistic was the idea of a Bolshevist revolution in America really?

The Treaty of Versailles between the Allies and Germany was only one of the peace treaties that followed the defeat of the Central Powers. The new Austrian republic, one of the countries that emerged from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also tried to get a favorable deal with the Allies in Paris in 1919. Like Versailles, the The Treaty of Saint-Germain caused an outcry across the country.

After the Battle of Cesis it seemed the situation in Latvia and Estonia was about to quieten down. But the German soldiers in the region and the ongoing conflict with Bolshevik Russia meant the 2nd half of 1919 saw even more fighting in the Baltics.

The White Russian advance on Moscow comes to a crashing end as the Red Army manages to turn the tide of the Russian Civil War in Fall 1919.

The British-Afghan War of 1919

Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan used the power vacuum after the 1917 revolution in Russia and after the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918 to gain their independence. But the Caucasus region was of vital strategic importance to the new Russian regime, to the British and to the Turks.

In early 1919 Hungary was one of the European territories that saw a communist revolution. Bela Kun and his supporters established the Hungarian Soviet Republic while the country was in great turmoil and fighting against the Romanians, the Czechoslovaks, the Serbs and within Hungary itself.

Like many former soldiers, lance corporal Adolf Hitler was disillusioned with the new German Republic after the Armistice in 1918. Like man of his country men he was also in dire need of a job. The Bavarian Army provided an opportunity and soon young Adolf Hitler found himself in the ranks of an obscure political party in Munich: The German Workers' Party.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist and part of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He had high hopes for a new post-war order but when he realized what Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd-George and Woodrow Wilson were planing, he resigned from the conference. And then wrote a book about it: The Economic Consequences of the Peace became a bestseller and is one of the best known critiques of the Versailles Treaty.