Whites Vs Reds The Civil War

I believe there is a what if thread somewhere.  Unless you have a scientific hypothesis for exactly how time travel would be accomplished, I am afraid it is not a serious intellectual subject.

Figes  A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY p. 416:

>>As Breslov saw it,  the soldiers were so obsessed with the idea of peace that they would have been prepared to support the Tsar himself, so long as he promised to bring the war to an end.  This alone, Brusilovs claimed, rather than the belief in some abstract 'socialism', explained their attraction to the Bolsheviks.  The mass of soldiers were simply peasants, they wanted land and freedom, and they began to call this "bolshevism' because only that party promised peace.<<

AGRBear

I agree with that.  The average Russian conscript would have sold his soul for peace.  Sometime ago, I read Solzhytzens November 1916.  It gave a very detailed picture of the war weariness of Russians and what they were prepared to do to get out of the war.

I was asked to make a comment on the "time travel" posts, but it looks like Elizabeth and Robert already did so.

However, I love "what if" scenarios, but I know that they do belong in the having fun section.

Can you move them there, Alixz?  My time travel posts, I mean.

Tim - I am going to leave these where they are for now.

We need to get back to the topic of "White vs Red - The Civil War"

However, my thought was that a cell phone and a lap top and an Ipod might be so just so much hunks of useless electronics as the technology to run them would not have yet been invented and there would be nothing - no Internet and no satellites in orbit - to connect to.

As for a copy of a book, that might work, but it would depend on the mind set of the Imperial Family.  They might just see it as a "fake".

I am not going to go on with this kind of posting, but, as much as I love, the "what if", there is a section for it and you can start a new thread about saving the family by time travel there.  If you do, I will then send your posts to that new thread.  There is probably one there already.

However, I have said this before.  I would imagine that if Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand could know that his assassination was the cause of the start of the Great War, he would be rolling in laughter.  He had no illusions as to Emperor Franz Joseph's opinion of him and he knew that he was not important enough to the Emperor for Franz Joseph to even care about his education as the future Emperor, let alone to start a war over his death.

Austria-Hungary was looking for a way to justify a war of expansion and Franz Ferdinand's death unexpectedly gave everyone the opening they were looking for.  One day Franz Ferdinand was the stone in the shoe of Franz Joseph and the next he was the "cause celebre" that started "The War to End all Wars".

So back to the topic.

By the way, my father's cousin did die on D Day.  His name was Donald Cochran and he didn't even make up the beach.  He is buried in a cemetery in France for the soldiers whose families could not afford (and back then here were many) to have him shipped home for burial in Arlington.  He was barely 19 years old.

I don't know what his thoughts were as he and the other soldiers left the landing vehicles and tried to crawl up the beach under the fire of the German guns, but I do know that his death (of course) effected my family very deeply and the fact that he couldn't be brought home hit them very hard.

In World War II, the US did not bring every soldier home as they do now.  In fact the US didn't bring every soldier home from Vietnam either.  We are now used to "no soldier left behind" but that is a fairly new concept in the terms of warfare.

And doubly off topic, I never thought about the Japanese as an army who "wouldn't stop", but that makes sense as their whole outlook on life and death and serving their Emperor was so much different than the outlook of the armies in the West.  I have pondered Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and wondered if Truman was right in his decision to cause so much collateral damage, but in thinking of the Japanese soldier and that "death before dishonor" mindset that they still had in the 1940s, I can now understand more.

Back to White vs Red.  The war weary and hungry Imperial Forces were deserting the front lines even before Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk.  The men wanted only to go home.  Some one has said that the average Russian would have sold his soul for peace.  I believe that they did just that when the accepted Lenin and Co. as their saviors.  But after four years of grueling combat and privation what else would they have done?

By the way, my father's cousin did die on D Day.  His name was Donald Cochran and he didn't even make up the beach.  He is buried in a cemetery in France for the soldiers whose families could not afford (and back then here were many) to have him shipped home for burial in Arlington.  He was barely 19 years old.

Dear Alixz: You and your family should be proud of your cousin. He died for a noble cause and his death was not in vain (it sounds like a terrible platitude but its true nonetheless). By the way the following supposedly attributed to Colin Powell I find worthy of repetition even if its not true and regardless of what one might think of the merits of the Iraq War: "When in England , at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying, 'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders.  The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

The cemetery at Omaha Beach is among the most moving and impressive places once can visit. The "Stone Garden" cannot help but make you think about the meaning of patriotism, honor, personal sacrifice and terrible loss.

Petr,

Thank you.  General Powell's words gave me "goose bumps".  In all of the wars that the USA has fought, except, I think, for the Spanish American War, General Powell's words are true.

I had the spelling of my father's cousin's name wrong it is Donald E Corcoran and he is buried in:

Henri-Chapelle Permanent Cemetery, Belgium.  His death date is listed as June 6, 1944.

I found his records on line while I was investigating my family and its geneology.

Again, thank you.

Every so often the world ignites in global conflict and almost a whole generation of young men and now women are eliminated.  Wars had been fought, of course, for centuries, but The Great War was a shock to those who fought and those who observed.

It has been said many times that by the time Lenin and Co. returned to Russia, the flower of the young men of Russia had been killed and the next group being called up were not at all interested in what was going on in Europe.  They only wanted to protect what was left of their families as they had already lost their sons and live in peace with enough food and freedom to make them happy.

I believe that Britain and France and all of the other countries involved were finding the same problems as Russia had.

The US, with its influx of new men and materials, was only in the war from April of 1917 through November of 1918.  Not nearly as long as the original belligerents and so, even though many young men were lost, it was not as devastating to the country and the economy as the war had become in Russia.  Especially with Russia's lack of preparation and logistical nightmares.

Trying to find anyone who was interested in fighting yet another war on Russian soil especially one to restore the monarchy was almost impossible.  From what I have read, many of the soldiers who fought on the side of the Whites were not even Russians at all, but prisoners of war who were on their way back to their own countries and were actually conscripted as they went.

Those who fought in the civil war were subjected to the same privation as they had seen while fighting before the Treaty of Brest Litovsk.  It was one war replaced with another and neither was very different to the average soldier.

From what I have read, many of the soldiers who fought on the side of the Whites were not even Russians at all, but prisoners of war who were on their way back to their own countries and were actually conscripted as they went.

Like the Czechs.  They hated the idea of fighting and dying for the Hapsburgs, so that is why they joined up with the Whites.  Nicky had promised to help them get independence for their homeland after the war.  Of course, that happened anyway.

There is a book on the Czech Legion 1914-1920 that you can get on Amazon for about $9.00 by David Bullock. Its part of the men at war series.

http://www.amazon.com/Czech-Legion-1914-20-Men-at-Arms/dp/1846032369/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288287671&sr=1-1

As posted elsewhere by me my Uncle Alexis Wrangel wrote an interesting book entitled The End of Chivalry (Hippocrene Books) which among other battles of the Eastern Front describes the Battle of Kaushen in Poland which one battle really did kill off the flower of the aristocracy who were  members of the elite Horse Guards Regiment.