When contemplating a possible German empire in eastern Europe after the First World War it is important to make comparisons not with the situation in the region today but rather with eastern Europe's fate for most of the twentieth century. The basic point was that 1918 was only a truce, not a true peace settlement. This was partly because the Allied coalition that had won the war and built the Versailles order promptly disintegrated, thereby removing the power-political foundations on which that settlement rested. Above all, this meant the retreat into isolation of the United States and Britain's refusal to sign a military alliance with France or preserve the conscript army that would have made such an alliance real. These were elementary errors that would have made the statesmen who met in Vienna in 1815 cringe. But even without this foolishness the Versailles settlement was very vulnerable. As already noted, the First World War emerged in eastern Europe and revolved around Germanic competition with Russia to dominate that region. Both the Germans and Russians ended up as losers and the Versailles settlement was made at their expense. But Russia and Germany remained potentially the most powerful countries not just in eastern and central Europe but in the continent as a whole. For that reason the Versailles order was very unlikely to survive, especially since it included the large geopolitical hole left by the disappearance of the Habsburgs.
For all these reasons a second great war in eastern Europe was always a likely outcome of 1918. That war brought terrible suffering for the region's peoples and ended in most of them falling under the rule of Stalin's Russia. Would German victory in 1918 have led to a stable east-central Europe and spared the region a second great war? One cannot know but the chances were probably better than those of the Versailles settlement. Would German rule have proved less awful than that of Stalin? Again, it is impossible to say but one should certainly refrain from making glib comparisons between Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany, and never more so than where policy in eastern Europe was concerned. The Kaiserreich contained thoroughly unpleasant authoritarian, nationalist and racist elements and victory might have encouraged them. But it could hardly have warped them more completely than did the bitterness of defeat. During the First World War the Germans were responsible for some atrocities and many infringements of international law. But no belligerent was entirely innocent in this respect and German misbehaviour did not match Russian treatment of the Jews in the eastern war zone, Austrian repression of the Serbs or - at the ultimate extreme - Ottoman destruction of the Armenians. Not even remotely can German policy in the east in 1914-18 be compared to the insane and genocidal savagery of 1941-5.
How should we relate the broader international context in 1914-18 to Russia's fate and specifically to the outcome of the Russian Revolution? Clearly it was crucial and equally clearly it was highly contingent. As I wrote above, had the Russian monarchy fallen in 1906 then Germany would probably have led an international intervention that may well have helped counter-revolution to triumph in Russia, for a time at least. Instead during the First World War Germany bent all its efforts to furthering the cause of revolution in Russia. Lenin entered Russia thanks to the famous 'sealed train', which Berlin allowed to cross German-occupied Europe. Once he had arrived in Petrograd the
Germans continued to do everything they could to foster the revolution in order to undermine the Russian war effort. Lenin was extremely fortunate that his gamble at Brest-Litovsk paid off. Germany's defeat on the western front forced Berlin to abandon the treaty and allowed Bolshevik Russia to move back into Ukraine and thereby to preserve the foundations of empire, albeit in renewed and socialist form. The half-hearted intervention of the Western Allies and their unwilling armies on the margins of Russia's Civil War was a very pale reflection of what peacetime European intervention spearheaded by the German army would have entailed. In any case the war, Berlin's support and then German disintegration had allowed the Bolsheviks a crucial year in which to organise their rule and consolidate their hold on Russia's geopolitical core where most of its population, its military supplies and its communications hubs were concentrated. This was probably the single most important factor in Bolshevik victory in the Civil War. In peacetime, foreign intervention in support of domestic counterrevolution would probably have denied a revolutionary government this breathing space. Without the First World War it is possible that something like the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary government of 1917 could have come to power but barely conceivable that it could have survived.
A very interesting question concerns relations between a victorious Germany and Russia. Inevitably, in wartime geopolitical interests conquered the ideological distaste of the Wilhelmine elites for Bolshevism. If Germany had won, however, it is a moot point whether it would have continued to tolerate Bolshevism in power in Moscow. The calculation would have been difficult. Germany would have had more than enough on its plate in recovering from the war at home and consolidating its hold on eastern Europe. The last thing it would have needed was renewed war in Russia. Berlin would also have needed to reintegrate itself into the international economy. An intelligent German government would not merely have abandoned all idea of annexations in France and Belgium but even made minor territorial concessions in Alsace to appease the French. With all eastern Europe in its grasp it could well have afforded such gestures, though in the aftermath of war it is very unlikely to have made them. But if the United States had remained neutral in the war then the resumption of trans-Atlantic and global commerce should have been rapid, with enormous consequent benefits to Germany.
In time the French and British would probably have reconciled themselves to German hegemony in the east. In reality, in the twentieth century neither Britain nor France has ever had the power or even (in the British case) the inclination to involve itself decisively in the affairs of the region. The fiasco of Western 'assistance' to the Poles in 1939 and 1944-45 emphasises this point. A consequence of a 'compromise' peace with Germany would probably have been an Anglo-French defensive alliance but Germany would have had no reason to seek to change its western borders once its hegemony in the east was secure. Why run after French coal or iron ore when you have the resources of eastern Ukraine at your disposal?
The only possible challenge to German hegemony in the east could come from Russia. If the Germans succeeded in consolidating their rule in eastern Europe and in particular if a stable pro-German regime established itself in Kiev then it would be a long time, if ever, before any Russian regime could restore their country's power to a level where it could challenge Germany. In 1918 the Germans preferred Bolshevism to the Russian counter-revolution because the latter was pro-allied and was pledged to continuing the war against Germany. After victory Germany would have had the luxury of playing both sides in Russia off against each other. A victorious Germany need have little fear of domestic revolution and could, if necessary, tolerate Bolshevism in power in Moscow. It could also threaten a Bolshevik regime that misbehaved towards Germany with German support for the Russian counter-revolution. The Germans believed that a Bolshevik regime would always be weak. That proved a mistake. But they were correct in believing that it would be far harder for France and Britain to ally with a Bolshevik Russia than with a victorious Russian counter-revolution. So probably for the foreseeable future they would have tolerated