Military Events in April

The Southern Front - Tsaritsyn
The Soviets lost control of Tsaritsyn in the winter. In spring, General Michael Frunze was tasked with taking back the city. Just under 400,000 Red soldiers amassed outside the city, and following the most intense artillery barrage conducted by the Soviets yet, they attacked. On the other side of that barrage were Alexander Dutov and Anton Denikin, unimpressed. The Soviet artillery doctrine was in need of an overhaul, they reckoned, as the first damage reports were very favourable to the Whites. Then, the Soviets simply attacked. The Volga to the north east was safe and secure, the Don Republic reported no Soviet invasion. They were all in Tsaritsyn. And the Whites held.

Tsaritsyn was of greater symbolic importance to the Whites compared to the Reds, given that it was, thus far, the symbol of their greatest military triumph. That, the secure flanks and supplies, and the fact that Tsaritsyn was as fortified as possible, negated the entire numerical advantage of the Soviet armies. Mercilessly, the battle lasted throughout all of April.

The Don Cossacks ascertained that there were few Soviets waiting to attack their republic. As a matter of fact, the invasion of the Don Republic was planned after the Battle of Tsaritsyn. The Cossacks scouted out the Soviet side, but it was determined that Soviet defences of the siege itself were too strong for the undergunned cavalry force to attack. Instead, the Don Cossacks swept into Ukraine, attacking Luhansk. This city was defended only by units that had defected to the Black Army, and they were terribly outnumbered. After that, the Cossacks struck out towards both Kharkiv and Voronezh, making significant gains before the end of the month.

At the same time, the Polish 5th Infantry Division had decided to take its own path, or rather track. The armoured train division had no intention to get holed up in Tsaritsyn, and to go east, they would have had to break through Saratov, which would be a battle with questionable outcome. Instead, they took the train north, to Balashov, then Penza. At that point, the 5th had caught the attention of certain rear elements of the 14th Soviet Army, and skirmishes ensued. However, the 14th’s soldiers were too baffled to properly respond, and the 5th “retreated” deeper into Soviet territory. To Kovrov. However, at this point the 12th Army near Nizhny Novgorod had been alerted, and the Soviets were not comfortable with anything that close to Moscow. A significant force of the 12th was detached to attack the 5th at Kovrov.

The 5th arrived only slightly earlier, and went to work raiding the Degtyaryov Plant, but learned little of note before they were fighting the 12th. The 5th Infantry attempted to rig the plant and blow it up, but it was only partially successful, slowing down any ongoing research, but not destroying any knowledge. In the Battle of Kovrov, the Polish were decisively defeated. As they had torn up the tracks behind them, they could only flee towards Moscow or the rest of the 12th. Neither seemed attractive. In the end, the 5th Infantry Division surrendered to the Soviets.

Casualties:

• Black: 4,000 (2,000 POWs) (Former Hetmanate troops)
• Don: 3,000
• Polish: 18,000 (15,000 POWs)
• Soviet: 46,000
• White: 9,000
• White (Denikin): 8,000

Eastern Front
The Japanese betrayed the Whites. That would not soon be forgotten or forgiven. In early April, two Japanese divisions suddenly attacked Kolchak’s headquarters, and although their movements had been threatening before, the Whites were certainly unprepared for the betrayal. Admiral Alexander Kolchak had escape plans, but they were put into action too late, and after some hours of confusion, Japanese officers took custody of the White leader.

Elsewhere in the east, the Japanese halted all trains between Omsk and Astrakhan, a complicated route to be sure, and searched everywhere for the Russian gold reserve. However, Kolchak had earlier judged the railways to be too close to Soviet lines, and rerouted a portion of the way overland. Risky, but it paid off. The Japanese would not learn of where the gold was until it reached Astrakhan.

The Japanese sent word to all White forces that all they wanted was Kolchak, for some reason, and began their retreat. Only the forces in their way complied with the Japanese calls for a ceasefire, mostly because the Japanese were the ones in control of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Denikin rejected any Japanese offers in the harshest terms, and demanded the release of Kolchak. Most of the other Whites echoed his call. However, the Japanese withdrawal continued all the way to Novosibirsk, destroying much of the Trans-Siberian Railway on the way there.

The situation for the Whites only deteriorated when the Soviets attacked. Leaderless, the 2nd Army immediately began a fighting retreat. The 3rd Army coordinated with the 2nd as best as it could, and also withdrew. The Soviet 7th, 12th and 13th began a determined, relentless advance, undoing a staggering amount of White achievements. Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Samara and Orenburg fell, and the month closed with the Soviet 12th in Ufa.

In a less contested area, forces loyal to the Whites, as well as allied Mongolians, wiped away practically all Soviet presence in Central Asia.

Casualties:

• Japanese: 1,000
• Soviets: 6,000
• Whites: 3,000

Lithuania
The Baltic region continues to be a theatre of Soviet-Intermarium contention, but the Soviets had been steadily advancing since February, albeit much slower than Soviet strategists had asked for. Additionally, the Soviet centre of the entire theatre was in serious danger. Because of these factors, the Soviets decided to attack Daugavpils not separately, but as part of an operation to occupy all of Lithuania.

Meanwhile, the Japanese had quietly begun to evacuate the WRVA from their pocket in Latvia, which the Soviets sort of tolerated, by sustaining pressure but advancing slowly. The WRVA, which had to leave behind most of its weapons, would arrive in Danzig mostly useless and demoralised, such was the Soviet rationale.

The 15th Army began amassing troops at about the height of Lithuanian Utena, which was south of Daugavpils. Meanwhile, the 14th planned their offensive between Liepaja and Jelgava. After intercepting the Soviet plans, the Polish Baltic Corps tried to form a defensive line between Utena and Vilnius, which left Daugavpils to the Lithuanians and what remained of the Swedes and Britain alone with the still fighting Latvians. This put the French 1e Corps in an awkward position, but saw most of their efforts focused between Minsk and Vilnius.

The battle began in earnest in the second week of March, which saw the 14th Soviet Army making little gains against the British lines, which were supported by Latvians with nothing to lose. However, the primary defenders were British, and as the Soviets sustained their offensive throughout the month, British casualties skyrocketed, and the morale of the IV Corps took a dive. British units gave up sooner rather than later, preferring the retreat to intense fighting. At the end of the month, the British had been pushed back to the original defensive line prepared by the French command.

The Soviet 15th faced a stronger collection of enemies. Their focus on Utena and Vilnius pitted them against mainly the Baltic Corps, which left the 15th open to flank attacks. However, the French 1er Corps was hesitant to extend itself, because protecting the rear of the Blue Army was considered to be more important. That left the Lithuanians, who tried to stage an attack from the north, but it went nowhere due to the narrowness of the lake-ridden terrain. In the end, the Intermarium had to give up Daugavpils and consolidate north of Vilnius.

Casualties:

• British: 2,000
• French: 700
• Intermarium: 4,000
• Latvian: 3,000
• Soviet: 12,000

Belarus
General Tukhachevsky’s last gambit began in March as all the men he could spare attacked the Blue Army’s salient near Minsk. His men outnumbered the French defenders of the 1er Corps, but this meant that the Blue Army advanced to the edge of the Pripyat Marshes nearly unopposed. Unless Tukhachevsky broke through here, he was surrounded. And then, the Intermarium and French committed their cavalry forces. Numbering around 20,000, they evened the score in favour of the French, but their assault on the flanks of the Soviets was even more decisive. With “a charge and a prayer”, General Juliusz Rómmel had put a stop to Tukhachevsky’s plan.

Now, the hell began for the 1st, 5th and about half of the 2nd Soviet Armies. Cut off without supplies, and with no means to begin a serious offensive, all they could do was stall for a breakthrough, one that could only come from Lithuania. At the end of March, the situation could not have looked more dire for the Soviets.

Casualties:

• French: 3,000
• Intermarium: 11,000
• Soviets: 17,000

Ukraine
The French judged their position in Kiev untenable, and drew up plans to abandon the city. They convinced the Ukrainian Army and government as well, and encouraged the population evacuated too. Not before the French, though, oh no. A few hundred thousand people on the roads would be an adequate hurdle for the Soviets to catch up to the planned Tylihul Line near Romanian Bessarabia. The French destroyed railways and roads behind them where they could, which drew the ire of the Ukrainians, but the army still hated the Bolsheviks far more.

At the same time as the French retreat began, the Black Army crossed the Dnieper, forcing a crossing at Kherson and marching on Krivyi Rih. They beat the Soviets to it by a day, but instead of gunfire, the two sides exchanged vodka and tales of battle. The Black Army made it to Mykolaiv first, but the Soviets ended the month at Voznesensk. One river away from the Tylihul Line, because of all the refugees and the scorched earth policy enacted by the French. In the north, Kiev was captured after the Soviets did battle with a few nationalist units who refused to abandon their capital, and then finally Zhytomyr and Cherkasy fell with little opposition.

However, before that, Intermarium Army Group South did battle with the 6th Soviet Army, and successfully so. General Stalin’s army was overextended and out of supplies, and so had to beat a retreat back to Novohrad-Volinsky. Giving up Lutsk and Rivne meant that their gambit and hardships had proven to be of little value in the end, but at least the supplies came trickling back in at the end of the month, as Kiev had fallen, and a conventional route could be established.

Casualties:

• French: 3,000
• Intermarium: 3,000
• Soviet: 13,000
• Ukrainian: 8,000
• Black: 3,500

Military Events in May

Eastern Front
The Soviets had arrived at Ufa in April. Due to thorough Japanese vandalism, it would be the last stop for the years to come. The Japanese themselves, Kolchak captive, made it all the way to Chita, leaving the Trans-Siberian Railway destroyed in their wake.

Due to Soviet successes in April, the 7th Army was to refrain from advancing and prepare for a failure at Tsaritsyn, taking positions between Saratov and Samara. The Soviet plans for a southern invasion continued to treat Tsaritsyn as the focal point of their offensive, the eastern side of the Volga, now secured in the north, was not considered as an alley of assault.

The Soviet 13th and 12th continued advancing towards Perm, allowing the White Army to prepare defences in the Ural Mountains. Perm was defended by the 3rd White Army, which put up a valiant fight in the city. However, they were outnumbered, and after a week of fighting, those who lived escaped to the Urals via the north.

The rest of the month was spent on small-scale skirmishing in the mountains, as the Soviets prepared for the logistical difficulties ahead of them.

Casualties:

• Soviets: 8,000
• Whites: 6,000

Southern Front
The Soviets decided to continue their assault on Tsaritsyn, despite the losses they had sustained. The 7th Army was positioning itself to defend against Wrangel, who had decided not to attack Saratov in April, but the threat of Don Cossacks remained.

The Don Cossacks faced a Black counterattack. They were spread thin, and could not hold the 2nd Black Division from taking back Slovyansk. However, both the Cossacks and the Blacks had an affinity for asymmetric warfare. Neither side behaved like real field armies, and most encounters were small-scale raids, skirmishes and ambushes. The two-sided hit-and-run warfare was productive for neither side, which limited the number of casualties and military progress by either side. Perhaps this benefitted the Blacks, who were outnumbered, should the Cossacks decide to mass troops against them.

The Cossacks did not do that, however. They capitalised on the continued Soviet offensive and surrounded Voronezh. They defeated the garrisoned forces and claimed the city. To avoid overextending themselves, they stopped at that achievement, but spent their time well, raiding the supply lines of Tsaritsyn.

At Tsaritsyn, the continued Soviet insistence on taking the city did not pay off. It was their men who took the continuation of the siege the hardest, especially when their supplies were jeopardised by the Cossack raids. To avoid disaster, Frunze and Blyukher withdrew from the battle midway through the battle. The 8th and 9th Army were going to set up a defensive line between Saratov, Balashov and Voronezh. No one said it out loud, but the 10th and 11th Armies were essentially sacrificed. They did not last another week.

When Denikin learned of the enemy retreat, he recalled the Cossacks. Let the Reds retake Voronezh, he thought. Give one frontier city away, kill two armies. His men’s morale surged when the news of the 8th and 9th’s retreat spread around, and when the 11th and 12th Soviet Armies routed, they were tailed by Denikin’s army, hot for blood, and mostly surrounded by twenty thousand Cossacks. Certainly, a total disaster at Tsaritsyn had been avoided because of Frunze’s withdrawal, but at what cost? Parts of the 11th and 12th were still pocketed by the end of the month, but those who had not been able to escape were written off by Soviet strategists. Their lives were forfeit.

Casualties:

• Blacks: 1,500
• Don Cossacks: 8,000
• Soviets: 168,900
• White: 18,000

Lithuania
In Lithuania, everything was tied to the situation in Belarus. The Intermarium needed time to destroy the 1st and 5th Soviet Armies, while the Soviets did not want to give them that time, and needed to free their comrades. However, the situation did not favour the Soviets. This area featured the most thorough trenchworks and defensive they had encountered in the Baltics thus far, and the French and British were dead set on delaying the Soviets. Every soldier knew that if they fell, the Blue Army could be cut off, and though Poland Would Not Yet Be Lost, she would be much closer to falsifying the title of her anthem.

The Intermarium and her allies were, however, outnumbered, with the WRVA now out of the picture. Even with the French 1er Corps shifting its focus again, this time towards the Neman River line, the Soviets had significantly more men. Another disadvantage was that aside from the Lithuanians and Poles, roughly half the fighting forces on the Intermarium’s side, lacked conviction and motivation. They had suffered pushbacks and defeats, the Latvians lost their country, and the British and French had already been at war for five years now.

Given the condition of the Neman River line, it was no surprise that it held well, initially. Given the condition of the men, however, it was no surprise either that, when the hoped news arrived from Belarus, they began to give in. Their goal had been achieved, but as was becoming a trend in the Baltics, the Intermarium had to give up their line nonetheless. At the end of the battle, the British and French fared exceptionally poor. They had not suffered any disastrous results, but the general drag of war had taken its toll, and the men had grown depressed, angry and hopeless.

Kaunas became the frontline, Vilnius fell, and so did most of eastern Lithuania. The 15th Army reached Minsk at the end of the month, and the British settled down in East Prussia. Pedersén’s Swedish volunteers call it quits, and take a train to Danzig, then back to Sweden.

Casualties:

• British: 2,000
• French: 1,500
• Intermarium: 4,000
• Latvian: 2,000
• Soviet: 13,000
• Sweden: 300

Belarus
If the Lithuanian front could not provide salvation for Tukhachevsky, no one could. Because of that, the conclusion of the Baranovichi encirclement concluded without many surprises. Tukhachevsky refused to flee, and was captured together with the last fighting Soviet units slightly north of Plinsk. The survivors, roughly 30,000 had escaped into the Marshes. The Blue Army was reunited with the main Intermarium Forces, and suddenly the front line looked a lot more like it was January again, with the Intermarium in Minsk. However, this time, the Soviets did not have the men nor the will to take it and march to Brest. In the north, the 15th Soviet Army was looking menacing, but they had just failed, and the men there knew it.

Casualties:

• French: 2,000
• Intermarium: 11,000
• Soviet: 72,700

Ukraine
While the Soviet situation looked grim elsewhere on the Western Front, and also on the Southern Front, Ukraine had no nasty surprises or encirclements waiting for the Soviets. Supported by their Black allies, the slow but unstoppable advance continued through March. The French Tylihul Line was in fact hardly a line, not compared to the Dnieper line. The victory for the Soviets there had been decisive, at least in Keremchuk, there was little reason to think the Ukrainians would have miraculously gotten better comparatively. The French, much like elsewhere, only more longed for home the longer they stayed.

The 6th Army under General Stalin was now also resupplied, and capable of engaging the Intermarium Army Group South on better terms. The gains they had made last month were now being undone, which could mean either Brest or Lviv would be threatened in June. To support the Intermarium, the 2e Corps and 30e French Division retreated towards Lviv. The officers cunningly left the centre weak and threatened, which in a way forced the units to retreat that way: fleeing to Odessa or Romania seemed even more dangerous than staying to fight.

The 122e Division had more success fighting alongside Ukrainians, who preferred fighting in their own country to becoming exiles in Romania. Most of them were conscripts, not prepared for the uncertainties that came with that, as opposed to just deserting and returning back home. Nevertheless, Odessa held, as did the southernmost road into Romanian Bessarabia. The Soviets were the ones at the front line, because the Blacks had failed to secure their own bridges, and as such, had to let Soviet soldiers and supplies go first. What advances they made were due to small units crossing rivers on small boats, taking practically undefended land.

Casualties:

Casualties:

• French: 1,500
• Intermarium: 3,000
• Soviet: 8,000
• Ukrainian: 6,000
• Black: 1,500

Military Events in June

Eastern Front
In the east, the Soviet forces moved into the Ural Mountains. Preparations had been made throughout May, but the mountains between Ufa and Chelyabinsk were well-guarded and difficult to supply from the west, because the railway was destroyed from Ufa onward. As such, the Soviets had to slowly pour them men through choke point after choke point, taking serious casualties, while the entrenched Whites managed to get away with much less by retreating, instead of defending positions to the last man. That was not necessarily a tactical decision; most Whites were rather demoralised since the Japanese betrayal, and fought well only when they had the advantage.

That was more evident north of Chelyabinsk, where there were fewer Whites but just as many Soviet soldiers as down south. The Urals were not as steep, and the Soviets pushed the Whites out of Yekaterinburg because of it. The Whites retreated towards Ozersk instead of east.

In the south, the Whites counterattacked under Denikin. Because the 7th Army ominously sat entrenched in the North, Wrangel moved conservatively. However, with the destruction of the 10th and 11th, little stood in the way of his occupation of Saratov. The 7th in its place did not commit to stopping Wrangel, because they were spread all the way from Samara to Orenburg, because there was news of Central Asian forces coming for the latter city.

Denikin considered the Blacks to be relatively toothless compared to the Soviets, and he convinced the Don Cossacks to give up Luhansk. Most of the Cossacks were sent to the north, aiding the White counterattack. The Black forces eagerly made use of this, retaking Luhansk and Donetsk.

The White Armies found the 8th and 9th Armies in the Battle of Balashov. However, the Soviet men were demoralised from Tsaritsyn, and the Whites enjoyed the opposite benefit: having defeated the Reds once, they now felt as if they were unstoppable. The White Offensive was wildly successful, and they had taken Voronezh and Tambov by the end of the month.

Casualties:

• Don Cossacks: 4,000
• Soviets: 13,000
• Whites: 6,000

Western Front
On the Western Front, another anti-Soviet counterattack began in Belarus. Because the Intermarium received significant reinforcements, and because the 15th and 2nd Army were spread thin between Vilnius and the Pripyat Marshes, the Intermarium could push successfully. The Lithuanian troops managed to retake their own capital, while the Intermarium’s Poles liberated several Belarusian cities, including Maladzyechna and Babruysk. While it could be seen as good news that the Intermarium accomplished this without much help from the French and British, it also signalled that the major role played by French and British forces in the Russian Civil War was over, at least according to the French and British soldiers themselves.

The above was also evident in Ukraine as the Soviets reached the Romanian border without much French resistance left. The 2e Corps and 30e Division withdrew to Lviv to link up with Army Group South, and though they were the best motivated French forces left in the field, their withdrawal had been especially speedy to avoid as much combat as possible. They still managed to hold on to Lviv, so at least they had that going for them.

The Soviets were the first to Odessa. This was mainly thanks to the French, who used their navy to shell the ever living hell out of all Black units trying to reach the city. When the city was taken, it appeared that the French had also taken the liberty to shell all port facilities, turning Odessa into a much less desirable prize than she had seemed. Combined with the absolute shit show at Sebastopol, that meant that Mykolaiv was now the most important Black Sea port in the hands of the Soviets and the Blacks. Not that they had a navy worth mentioning anyhow.

In summary, the unstoppable Soviet steamroll had only proven true in Ukraine, where the Dnieper Line had failed. Estonia, too, proved hardly a challenge, but already in January did Latvia prove a hurdle for Soviets. However, the biggest challenge to their western drive came in Belarus, when the Blue Army surrounded them. Enough Soviets perished that, paired with the first fruit of the Intermarium mobilisation, resulted in a successful counterattack, which reset the odds of the Russian Civil War.

Casualties:

• Black: 1,000
• British: 1,000
• French: 1,500
• Intermarium: 13,000
• Latvian: 1,000
• Ukrainian: 4,000
• Soviet: 21,000

Map of the Situation on July 1st, 1919