1924: The Year of Struggle (Part 1)

1924: The Year of Struggle (Part 1) ​

_…But let us not intentionally obscure a clear state of affairs: the extraordinary pastness of our story results from its having taken place before a certain turning point, on the far side of a rift that has irrevocably sundered our lives and consciousness. It takes place, or, to avoid any present tense whatever, it took place back then, long ago, in the old days of the world before the Great War, with whose beginning so many things began whose beginnings, it seems, have still not yet ceased. We who have made it to the other side must look back at that old world as something entirely different, as a dreamworld whose illusions now appear to us in a wholly different and far crueler light…

- _Thomas Mann

_At long last, at long last, the guns have gone quiet, the world’s people may rejoice at their deliverance from violence, and yet, and yet, as we today settle down, as we set upon the task of reconstruction, who can say what the future will bring? It lies somewhere over the horizon, far out of sight, and it shakes like the graven earth pounded by shells, wracked by the mournful dead. This terrible mix of hope and foreboding will render us all restless for at least another decade.

-_ W.H. Auden

One cannot tell in these times if one is fully awake. The previous day, when I woke up, I was still haunted by the apparitions and shades of the departed, which visited me during sleep; upon reading the newspaper, however, my head started to pound and I began wondering whether it was, in fact, the visions of sleep which bore the true stamp of reality. Growing dizzy and confused, I made my way back into bed, where I promptly fell into another restive and tormented slumber.

-Gerhart Hauptmann

Excerpt from alternatehistory.com thread: “WI: No Stockholm Armistice?”

bigeric said:

So, as we all know, the Stockholm Armistice brought an end to the First Revolutionary Era and paved the way for the semi-successful Stockholm Conference in September, which finally led to a full normalization of relations between the two power blocs. I’ve recently been reading David Mccullough’s “Elihu Root: The Iron Presidency”, and…wow! It seems like without Hoover winning the Republican nom, we may have seen a second world war break out in 1924. What would this have looked like? What would be the fate of France?

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Thalmannian said:

I had the misfortune of being assigned that book for a course in “Popular American Historiography”. I didn’t think it was possible to write a hagiography of Root in the present day…

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Bigeric said:

Did you even read it? It seemed pretty balanced to me?

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Thalmannian said:

No, the first couple paragraphs selling Root as the tough, hard figure the American state needed to get through the FRE was enough for me. I don’t know, I prefer texts that don’t whitewash ethnocidal war criminals.

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ladfromthenorth said:

back to the topic at hand…

I don’t think that Britain would have been too happy about continuing the French campaign? From what I recall, they had already drawn down their army to around 800,000 men, and they couldn’t really afford to do otherwise. Haldane was genuinely committed to ending the conflict.

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GroverClevelandthe2nd said:

Britain was providing bases crucial for most American logistics, even if the American army was doing the brunt of the fighting. I’m not sure they really had the leverage at that point to kick the Americans out, but they could cause major problems. I don’t think the conflict lasts for longer than another two months. If it does, I think it just continues along its current pattern. Maybe the American advantage in quantity of airplanes and landships eventually gives them a small edge. I actually think that any significant American escalation would be counterproductive, since it would provide Luxemburg & Gramsci with more material for propaganda at the home front and prompt a greater mobilization of the Central European armies.

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Bigeric said:

So nobody thinks that it would escalate into another full-out war? This is kinda curious to me. At the time, everyone was freaking out about the possibility of this happening, to the point that British diplomats were effusively apologizing to their German counterparts for the accidental bombing of Saarbrucken.

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ladfromthenorth said:

To be fair, I think this is why it wouldn’t happen, even if Root opted to continue the campaign. Nobody (okay, maybe besides the lunatic Root) really wanted war. And they just really had to wait for Hoover to take office. It’s hard to say what Lowden would have done if he won the nomination, but I think that with the arrival of additional Soviet troops, taking the rest of France would have been too costly to sell at home.

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Excerpt from Immanuel Wallerstein,The Modern World-System V: Capitalism’s Forty Years’ Crisis and the Rise of the Socialist Alternative(Rome: University of Italy Publishing Confederation, 1978)

If 1914 inaugurated the 40-year crisis of the capitalist world-order, 1924 concluded its first phase. The lineaments of the new global system, which had already emerged in the last months of 1919 but still appeared in flux, finally solidified and were frozen in place. For some time, the politicians and businessmen at the heart of the capitalist world, ensconced in London, Washington, and New York, had imagined that it would still be possible to rollback the revolutionary wave and restore “order” to Europe. But in 1924, even as they won victories on the battlefield, they exhausted their political capital. Continuing risked another outbreak of social unrest. They were forced to make peace with their socialist adversaries.

For their own part, the socialists had to give up dreams of imminent “world-revolution”. The revolt on the peripheries had been extinguished, at least for the time being. Anglo-American power, protected by vast oceans and powerful navies, had entrenched itself across East and South Asia. Even the effort to reach the Eastern Atlantic and thereby outflank the English Channel failed. Continuing to wage an increasingly attritional war in France would only exhaust the resources required to rebuild Europe. Even ultra-left maximalists started to speak of the need for peace and negotiation. The merits of the socialist system would prove themselves in time, and the new world would surpass the old.

Peace did not come immediately. It was preceded by another round of extraordinary violence. France would be the setting of the twilight struggle of the First Revolutionary Era. This was predictable enough. The loss of the Balkans stung hard, but it was not a strategically vital region for the Anglo-American bloc. France, on the other hand, was viewed as a vital bulwark of “Atlantic”, capitalist civilization. A red victory here would render Britain extraordinarily vulnerable to German submarines and reduce the white foothold on continental Europe to Iberia, Greece, and Constantinople. Even amongst the politicians of the more pacific Haldane ministry, this was felt to be unacceptable. But it was America which led the way.

Over the first two months of 1924, some 300,000 American troops landed in the ports of France, supplementing the 80,000-man American expeditionary force already present. They helped oversee the (largely) bloodless coup of the right-wing catholic General Del Castelnau, who replaced Clemenceau as Prime Minister in February. The French Worker and Soldier’s Republic had already undergone a far more violent power struggle in 1923, when a contingent of some 20,000 red soldiers seized control of Paris and demanded a “soldier-friendly” government. After the city’s soldier’s councils endorsed the call, Oscar-Frossard resigned. Marcel Cachin, a civilian who had nonetheless shown himself a consistent champion of the army, became the new prime minister. He was forced to appoint a number of former soldiers to his administration, most notably Henri Barbe and Pierre Celor. A sizable contingent of politicians from the previous government were nonetheless allowed to remain on, largely to ensure good relations with their benefactors to the east.

The new administration refused to believe the ample reports of an American build-up. Against the advice of long-time socialist ministers, the government rejected German and Soviet requests to station around 100,000 additional troops in the Paris area, worrying that they would be used to bolster a growing worker’s opposition in the Loire Valley. The main body of the foreign troops were thus forced to remain in the distant and strategically secure Alsace-Lorraine.

The brunt of the American assault was directed out of white-controlled Limoges, toward Poitiers, Tours, and Nantes. Another force of around 150,000 American soldiers and marines would land in Northern France, principally in Pas de Calais, though secondary landings were also planned in Normandy. By this point, the northern districts had been largely stripped of their garrisons as the Red Army (along, to be fair, as its white counterpart) steadily shrunk. The first landings occurred nearly unopposed in early March; the French Red Army had discounted the possibility of an amphibious invasion, believing that any offensives would be spearheaded by soldiers of the rival government, which lacked amphibious warfare capacities. As part of the operation, several German cruisers and submarines were attacked while in port. The majority were sunk outright, but several were damaged and captured by American soldiers. In response, German submarines sunk several American merchant vessels en route to British ports. The escalation appeared to end there, despite pointed American silence at the German request to return several captured cruisers and offer compensation for the sunk ships.

Yet the “quasi-war” would only continue to heat up, risking additional direct encounters between the main powers. Once the scale of the American landings became clear, panic spread throughout the French chain of command. By early April, Americans had secured most of the ports in Normandy and Pais-de-Calais with remarkably little bloodshed. Insufficient forces were in the area to defend Rouen, which fell after a short but bloody siege on April 28th. A joint French-German force finally checked the advance of American landships at Evreux, but the offensive out of Limoges, backed by overwhelming American air and artillery superiority, took Poitiers, La Rochelle, and in early May, the key city of Tours in the Loire Valley. German troops were at last allowed to stream into Paris to reinforce the city.

All the while, domestic political turmoil had begun to make military planners think twice about any long-term deployment. In a stunning blow to Luxemburg’s government, the All-German Congress was called into session and demanded new elections; the pacific-minded Revolutionary Social-Democrats won over 35% of the seats in the councils, more than doubling their previous vote share. The People’s Assembly passed a resolution, largely unenforceable, demanding that Luxemburg make efforts to bring about a negotiated peace. In Italy, anarchists threatened to bring down regional coalition governments if their socialist partners did not vow to keep the fledgling Italian militia army out of the conflict. Gramsci’s left-catholic coalition partners also endorsed Italian neutrality and led several peace marches in Rome, Naples, and Umbria. Yakov Sverdlov scolded his Italian compatriots for not “controlling and disciplining anti-proletarian, anti-internationalist elements”. IntRevMar’s Council of Revolutionary States called an emergency session and struggled to formulate a response.

Meanwhile, the capitalist powers faced their own crisis of domestic confidence. Though the build-up in France was presented as a special military operation, its full scale could not be indefinitely obscured. News steadily leaked of the scope of the American commitment, especially once German and Soviet troops entered the field and losses began to mount. Fears proliferated of a “Second Great War”; the fragile recovery of the American markets was imperiled as the New York stock exchange once again teetered, forcing the government to close it for the first time since 1920. Several Senators, principally progressive Democrats but also some isolationist Republicans, took to the floor to demand a thorough accounting of the American commitment. The rise of Haldane in Britain did a great deal to grant legitimacy to these skeptical voices.

At the Republican convention of June 1924, Root kept to his promise to serve as a one-term President. He aimed to cement his legacy by ensuring that his hand-picked successor Frank Lowden won the nomination. Lowden was from the more conservative end of the party; as governor of Illinois, had spoken out in support of Root’s crackdown on domestic dissidents. He was rewarded with the position of Attorney General in 1922, and then Secretary of State a year later. At the convention, however, Lowden faced an unexpectedly firm resistance from both remaining progressive republicans and business elements skeptical of a prolonged commitment in Europe. Lowden made a massive blunder by forthrightly endorsing Root’s foreign policy commitments and refusing to distinguish himself from the man; to undecided delegates, this made him appear weak, a mere lackey of the President.

Thereafter, figures of varying popularity made a play for the nomination, including Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, Charles Evans Hughes, and even Robert La Folette. These men were all either tied too firmly to the old progressive wing or too green and inexperienced in foreign affairs to gain the trust of the delegates. Eventually, it was the dark horse humanitarian, Herbert Hoover, who won the nomination. Hoover had earned widespread acclaim for his work coordinating relief in Spain, and afterwards had been appointed Secretary of Commerce in the Root administration after a shakeup in 1922. Despite this, he maintained a distance from some of Root’s more draconian policies. Hoover campaigned on “finishing the business in France”, “concluding a general peace”, and “returning to normalcy”. Domestically, he stood for a rather vague “pro-business, pro-worker progressivism.” After hearing of the convention’s decision, Root reportedly wrote to a trusted confidante in the state department that “Hoover is a fine man and will make a fine president, though I fear he still possesses too much of the old progressive idealism.” He nonetheless made a sustained effort to bring Hoover on-board; he was included in most security and foreign policy briefings, and would be present at all the major negotiations throughout 1924.

Back in France, events of world-historical importance were unfolding. Not even the addition of several elite Red Army divisions was sufficient to break a renewed American offensive north of Paris. On May 28th, the city was surrounded by an army composed overwhelmingly of American soldiers. A joint Soviet-German attempt to break through the American lines temporarily succeeded before the siege was once again closed through liberal use of air and landship power. The world was now witness to the most heightened version of quasi-war: hundreds of thousands of German, American, British, and Soviet soldiers clashed over the fate of France while each state stubbornly refused to recognize that they were at war with one another. Despite the continuation of the American grain embargo, other consumer goods continued to trickle into Central and Eastern Europe.

The City of Light fell to advancing white forces in June. News spread of mass executions in working-class Parisian neighborhoods; it appeared that the tragedy of the Paris Commune was placing itself out once again, five decades later. They were assisted by Mussolini’s “fascists”, an Italian white emigre paramilitary that served as one of white France’s last effective and enthusiastic military detachments. The Americans turned out to be too busy with the drive east toward the city of Reims to put a stop to the unfolding bloodshed.

Meanwhile, a state of indefinite national emergency was declared in Germany and Italy. The latter now entered the war, and chambers of labor throughout Northern Italy found themselves without effective governance as the anarchists left coalition governments in protest against conscription measures. Not unsurprisingly, this impeded Italy’s actual ability to call up the local militia, though a significant self-mobilization nonetheless occurred. In June, hundreds of thousands of additional troops from the east arrived in France as Sverdlov committed fully to the war. The American offensive toward Reims met the battle-hardened soldiers of the Soviet Red Army, many of whom had been in service for a full ten years. The American firepower advantage was gradually weakened by joint German-Soviet counterbattery fire. The exhausted American Army finally gave up the offensive on the 14th.

Further south, the Germans were committed to avenging their Parisian comrades. An army of 80,000 German and French troops moved out of the Rhone Valley, beginning a 2nd offensive toward Marseille. The American and British soldiers in the area had been stripped down for the northern offensives. Mobile German forces sped through the hastily constructed defenses. Though the Italian militias were largely still unmobilized, there was sufficient paranoia of an Italian intervention that the French government was forced to disperse its troops, making the advance forward much easier. A suicidal uprising in Marseille, in which many of the city’s remaining socialist workers were killed, prevented rear echelon forces from further entrenching themselves. On the 29th of June, the city fell, a crucial symbolic victory for the French Worker’s and Soldier’s Republic, which had lost its long-time capital.

The Reconstruction of Eastern Europe and Central-European Confederalization

Even as France became the last and largest battleground of the First Revolutionary Era, less monumental but equally important events unfolded across the rest of Europe. The attention of Germany and the Soviet Union was frequently diverted to the Balkans, where they had the difficult task of reconstructing nations occupied by their armies. The conflicts which emerged over the fate of East-Central Europe exposed ideological and power-political rifts between the two main socialist powers.

Hungary and Serbia presented the fewest difficulties. The former had been a key ally during the Balkan War, and won broad territorial concessions in return for exchanging national-personal autonomy to its Slavic minorities. Serbian Chetniks were a significant force throughout the war, and both agrarian and national-bourgeoisie parties showed a willingness to work with IntRevMar. Though the dream of a united south slav state was vetoed by the Russians, Germans, and Italians, who feared another round of ethnic bloodletting, Bosnia was ceded to the new Serbian state and the Croatian settlers in the area transferred back to a diminished Croat rump state. Unlike other new revolutionary states, Serbia incorporated some of the dual-power arrangements of Germany; a minimum quantity of seats would be guaranteed to the proletarian parties to ensure their leading role in the new polity.

Romania, Poland, Czechia, and Croatia posed significantly more serious issues. Only the Jews of Poland and the urban workers of Czechia and Warsaw had much sympathy for the socialist project. Sverdlov initially favored a joint committee, overseen by the Council of Revolutionary States, to determine the shape of the Romanian, Polish, Czech, and Croatian governments. Though Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Worker’s front were willing to entertain such an idea, their revolutionary social-democratic were far more skeptical, especially once it became clear that the joint committee would be dominated by the Russians. An agreement was reached in February for Romania and Czechia to be placed, respectively, in the Russian and German spheres, but this still left Croatia and Poland, where significant numbers of troops from each country were still stationed.

Poland quickly became a lightning rod for political disagreements both within Germany and between Germany and Russia. Luxemburg and the revolutionary worker’s front insisted on the full annexation of Poland as a constituent autonomous republic of Germany. The crimes of the polish national-bourgeousie won this position a good deal of sympathy in Russia, especially among the left-communists. Bukharin favored a plan to partition the country outright between Germany and Russia. But Sverdlov, as well as the revolutionary social-democrats in Germany, feared that this would only inflame Polish nationalist sentiment. The commissariat of nationalities issued a formal report recommending that Poland be granted formal independence after a period of “socialist tutelage”. Luxemburg herself reluctantly conceded to this after the Revolutionary Social-Democrats’ improved performance in council elections. However, the Germans and Russians proved unable to settle upon a provisional leadership of Poland. Karl Radek, the former general secretary of IntRevMar, was favored by the Germans, but Sverdlov, Bukharin, and Trotsky all considered him to be too ideologically heterodox and anyways lacking in the qualities needed for leadership. The question of the Jews also divided the two camps. While the Germans hoped to repatriate the sizable Jewish refugee community in Silesia and Posen, the Russians feared that returning them to their native country would exacerbate existing tensions.

In May, a major scandal rocked IntRevMar when the Council of Revolutionary States issued a report detailing the transfer of additional German and Russian troops into Poland, ostensibly for garrison duty but in reality to lay claim to their respective spheres of influence in the area. The independent-minded German and Russian delegates to IntRevMar denounced the “chauvinist conflict” over Poland which had drained necessary resources from the French theater. Both governments took a significant hit to their prestige. Gramsci offered to mediate, but the chastised and embarrassed Russian and German administrations rapidly reached their own agreement formalizing the zones of influence, allowing them to withdraw most of the soldiers from the area. Germany won control over much of Lesser Poland and Polish Galicia, and the Soviets over the area previously known as “Congress Poland”.

While the Russians rapidly went about constructing a semi-independent client state, the German government puzzled over what to do with the odd patchwork of borderlands it controlled. Some reversed course and favored handing them over to the new Polish government, but Germany’s allies in the Bund resolutely opposed this. Instead, they proposed the creation of a new multinational “state of Jews, Poles, and Ruthenes”. It was unclear, however, if the demographic basis for such a state was present. The ethnocide had affected first and foremost the traditional Jewish populations of Galicia. Around 15% of the population in the territories was Jewish; however, if the remaining Jews in Congress Poland and the Jewish refugees in Germany could be enticed to migrate to the new state, this would increase to around 40%. If Russia could be persuaded to cede some additional lands in Galicia, the Ruthenian population may increase from 5 to 15%.

This proposal met a great deal of skepticism in the German government, not least from the Revolutionary Worker’s Front, who considered this to be a “proto-zionist” proposal. Yet it slowly gained support over the middle of 1924. The Poles in the region hardly showed enthusiasm for an independent Galician state, and the idea of a multinational one gained some additional adherents among the Jewish refugee community in Silesia; ethnocide had done a great deal to create a quasi-national consciousness among the region’s Jewish population.

The fate of the Galician territories cannot be divorced from the defeat of traditional zionism, which suffered a decisive blow in 1924. This was made all the more shocking by the repeated dalliances of Churchill’s conservative government with the Zionist project. On several occasions, it appeared to be on the verge of issuing a declaration in support of a Jewish state in Palestine, but balked at the outrage it might provoke in an already restive levant: Britain hardly had the spare troops to put down an Arab Revolt. Nonetheless, a resurgence of Zionist sentiment gripped Britain after news of the ethnocide reached its shores. The incoming liberal government promised the creation of a formal commission to investigate “Jewish national ambitions in the Levant”. In April, it released the so-called “Montagu report”, named after its chairperson, the British-Jewish Indian Viceroy Edwin Montagu. It poured cold water on the prospect of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The achievement of a Jewish state, it stated, “could not be achieved without the displacement of the local population, a task that will strain the finances of the British state and inspire universal enmity toward Britain amongst the Moslem peoples.” Britain would not act to “subsidize the importation of Jews into Palestine”, though it would “commit to making reparations for the victims of the Polish ethnocide through programs of immigration and resettlement into England.” Predictable denunciations from the World Zionist Congress followed, particularly after Montagu himself insisted that the entire Zionist project was motivated by thinly veiled antisemitism.

A sizable number of previously skeptical German politicians now came around to the creation of a quasi-zionist state in Galicia. A good number of them - even secular, non-practicing Jews - were motivated by their own anti-semitic canards. Hugo Haase believed that by meeting Jewish national ambitions, the power of “Jewish Finance” would begin to be mobilized on behalf of the socialists. For her part, Luxemburg stoutly resisted the creation of a trinational state to the very end, but was outvoted by the right-wing of her own party led by Paul Levi, as well as the revolutionary social-democrats.

The “Free Socialist Republic of Poles, Jews, and Ruthenes” almost uniformly failed to fulfill Zionist ambitions. By the end of the year, the Jewish population was still a little under a third of the total, and the Poles still an absolute majority of the new state. There would be no “population transfer” of the Poles, nor any separate electorates, which were treated by the Revolutionary Worker’s Front as “national-chauvinist” proposals. Jewish rights were written into the constitution, but in practice, besides a unilateral right to immigrate into Galicia, the Jewish population had no special national rights beyond those it was already afforded by other socialist states. Much of the former Jewish intelligentsia and elite of Poland elected to remain in Germany, Britain, and America, though a significant quantity of working-class refugees trickled back into the new Galician state. Karl Radek, the leader of the new state, resolutely denied that it was intended to fulfill any Zionist aspirations. When asked about the “Jewish” character of the republic, he spoke instead of the liberation of Galician workers - when the interlocutor brought up the name of the state he governed, he icilly replied that it referred simply to the “ethnic character of its main inhabitants, and nothing more.” For their part, the Jewish Bund resolutely distinguished between the “national-personal” autonomy Jews had won in Galicia and the “Chauvinism” of traditional Zionism.

The left-wing of the RAF suffered another defeat on the matter of Czechia, which they favored incorporating wholesale into Germany as an autonomous republic. The centrist people’s assembly rejected this plan, favoring instead a proposal for Czech Independence with annexation of German-majority border areas. In the end, a compromise solution was reached: a more limited plan of annexations added significant territories to RAF strongholds in Silesia and Saxony, while Czechia itself became an independent associated republic under the rule of the Czech Social-Democratic Party.

Croatia was the one area in which Soviet-German cooperation succeeded in constructing a new state. In part, this is attributable to the mediating influence of the Italians, who acted to conciliate their rival visions. A hybrid council-republic along both Dutch and Serbian lines was created, with a strong executive and mandatory representation for both the peasantry and urban proletariat. The fragile new state was obligated to pay significant reparations to Serbia and Hungary, though in the end these were met primarily through German loans.

Romania, meanwhile, fell entirely into the Soviet sphere. After tentative attempts to construct a semi-independent Romanian republic along Polish lines, it was decided to entirely incorporate the state into the Soviet Union to ease the task of administration. The leadership of the Romanian left had been decapitated after the failed uprising in 1919, and it would take time to build a new cadre of loyal socialists. The new ideology initially proved quite unpopular and was associated with “foreign rule”, but the benefits of agricultural mechanization and the high price of grain in the socialist bloc eventually pacified the countryside.

The other major development of 1924 was the rapid progress made toward European Federalism. The Vienna Memorandum in February announced the intention of the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy to move toward the creation of a “common economic zone”, though given the widely varying economic landscape in each country and the desire to promote domestic industry, this remained more a slogan than a reality. Nobody knew how to integrate the centrally planned economies of the Netherlands and Germany with regionalist Italian market socialism. It was not economic but military cooperation that paved the way for greater European Federalism. The Netherlands had long shown an interest in becoming an associated republic of Germany and thereby securing a formal guarantee of military protection. Its long coastline was uniquely vulnerable to a British naval assault, and around half of its naval forces had deserted to join the white government in the east indies. In January 1924, they requested associated republic status, which was rapidly granted by the German People’s Assembly.

Italy, too, possessed a long and vulnerable coastline, and, moreover, its naval forces had been badly ravaged by British assaults during the first month of the First Revolutionary Era. A sizable contingent of the Austrian Navy had mutinied during the beginning of the First Revolutionary Era and brought their ships into sympathetic Italian ports. This included four battleships (one dreadnought), an armored cruiser, two protected cruisers, and seven destroyers, as well as a number of smaller torpedo craft, staffed by around 4,000 sailors. This sizable force swore loyalty to the German socialist Republic, but it was locked into the Mediterranean, unable to traverse the British-controlled straits of Gibraltar. For some time, the Italians attempted to convince their German compatriots to either hand over the ships or allow them to be purchased, but the Germans, who had suffered even more crippling losses during the first months of the First Revolutionary Era, insisted that they be returned.

An uptick in the incidence of American requisitions of Italian and German merchant vessels forced a rethinking of naval policy in 1923. The Bordigists favored applying to become an associated republic of Germany, but nationally-minded syndicalists and socialists saw “subordination to the Germans” as a step too far. Even the anarchists initially balked at subjugating Italian foreign policy to the “militaristic” Germans. Even as concerns were aired over Italian military weakness and isolation, little progress was made.

Several developments in 1924 changed these political dynamics. Firstly, the accession of the Czechs and Dutch to the German Revolutionary Defense Council meant that there was less risk of German domination. Secondly, renewed American attacks on Italian merchant shipping and naval assets prompted a search for a rapid means of bolstering the navy. Finally, the German minister of confederal affairs, Karl Kautsky, devised a plan for Italy to join the Revolutionary Defense Council on a “provisional” basis. A unified chain of command would be imposed over the Italian, German, and Dutch Navies. The sizable German-Austrian Naval squadron currently at port in Trieste would join a “Mediterranean Task Force” under de facto Italian command. Italy would make a promise to eventually integrate its militia-army into the structure, but there would be no set date on it doing so.

Against the opposition of both left-luxemburgists who believed the arrangement to be too lenient to Italy and right-wing social democrats who worried about the diminishment of German national sovereignty, the measure passed Parliament and the executive committee. The catholic socialists in Italy were also brought on board after some haranguing and a promise to pursue future political integration, a favorite project of many internationally-minded catholics. It was welcomed most enthusiastically by the Dutch and German members of the Council of Revolutionary defense: a unified, Central-European red navy had at last been born, perhaps the worst nightmare of the British Empire.

The Stockholm Armistice

Altogether, it took a little over two weeks of attritional warfare after the fall of Marseille for the two blocs to realize that there was not much point in continuing the battle over France. Perhaps some symbolic victories could still be achieved, but as a matter of fact, France had lost much of its physical infrastructure and wealth in the past decade of war, not to mention the immense blow to its human resources. Together, Haldane and Hoover pressed Root to negotiate, and IntRevMar’s Council of Revolutionary States narrowly voted for a resolution calling for peace. Both French governments begged their benefactors to enter into talks. On July 15th, 1:00, almost ten years after the Great War commenced, an armistice was signed in Stockholm, Sweden.

Terms of the The Stockholm Armistice ​

1. Cessation of all German, American, British, and Soviet operations on the former territories of the Republic of France, to occur not less than twenty-four hours following the signing of the armistice.
2. The cessation of hostilities between the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic and the Republic of France for at least five years.
3. The opening of the borders between Republican France and the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic for the span of at least fourteen days to allow for the movement of refugees and displaced peoples, beginning within 24 hours of the signing of the armistice.
4. A gradual drawdown in Soviet, American, British, German, and all other allied forces from the territories of the French Republic and the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic. The forming of a commission with representatives of all parties to ensure an equal and orderly withdrawal of troops.
5. The borders of the Republic of France and the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic shall run along the present lines of fighting.
6. The Republic of France shall offer a one-time amnesty of those convicted of political crimes for which the penalty is under 10-years imprisonment, on the condition that the convicted individuals migrate to the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic. A commitment on the part of the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic to do the same.
7. The states of the Third International jointly vow to not initiate hostilities against British, American, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Norwegian territories and naval vessels. The above-mentioned states similarly forswear the initiation of further hostilities, which include the use of blockade and aerial bombardment.
8. A conference shall be held within at least one month of the signing of the armistice between the representatives of the Atlantic Union and the International Union of Revolutionary Marxists. This conference will aim to lay the groundwork for a lasting peace between states, settle the matter of commerce, and resolve existing territorial disputes, such as Iceland and Thrace.