Martin Gilbert and the end of WW1

[DMB]

An interesting "what if" from Sir Martin Gilbert here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5127281.ece).

With peace made with Germany on Haig’s terms by mid-October, the British troops already in Russia have a German ally to help them to crush what Churchill calls “the foul baboonery of Bolshevism”.

[Nialler]

An interesting "what if" from Sir Martin Gilbert here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5127281.ece).

With peace made with Germany on Haig’s terms by mid-October, the British troops already in Russia have a German ally to help them to crush what Churchill calls “the foul baboonery of Bolshevism”. I've had this book on order for quite some time and should be able to pick it up on Saturday. I have a pretty complete library of histories of WWI and this will be a good addition.

It strikes me as difficult, though, when such a huge shift in Haig's character is being promulgated. Very little of what I've read before seems to gel with the depiction of Haig that Gilbert seems to be putting forward, yet at the same time Gilbert has a good reputation. I'm hoping that the press excerpts are basically sensationalist treatments of the more notable parts of his book.

[cape_royds]

Gilbert's a respectable historian, but this experiment in revisionism shows that he might now be in his dotage.

First, the French would not accept a peace without weakening the Germans.

Second, the British admiralty would not accept a peace without disarming the German battle fleet. If the Germans obtained easy terms, why would they have surrendered their navy?

The over a million German troops still deployed in the East were considered by their high command to be "semi-bolshevized," and Ludendorff was actually unable to employ a number of the divisions that he had transferred to the West for his 1918 offensives. The morale rot was deep, and only the end of the war and homecoming of the troops stopped Germany from having a red revolution.

Even the half-hearted foreign interventions in Russia had helped to consolidate Bolshevik support, as they were then able to draw upon Russian patrotism. Many Czarist officers joined the Red Army after Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel accepted foreign help.

As for the notion that Russia could somehow repay its war debts if placed under foreign military occupation, that is simply asinine. None of the major participants in the war was able to pay its war debts, least of all a chaotic and war-torn Russia.

He's also very naif to think the British or dominion publics would have much patience with a new war against their former ally, red scare or no red scare.

The whole thesis is even more absurd than Ferguson's.

What is it about contemporary British conservative intellectuals, and their wish-mongering about the Great War? Oh, I know: the belated longing for lost glory.

Too late, chaps.