Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-27296619-20151216045504/@comment-3428312-20160106010941

There's two PoDs that distinctly stick out in my head.

1.) In June of 1918, the Kaiser Wilhelm was presented with two policy papers from opposing factions on the issue of the ongoing Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The first, from what I shall call the Foreign Affairs bunch, proposed holding off on any decisive action until the situation in the West was resolved because the Reds had so far proved useful. The second, from Hindenburg and company, proposed immediate action to destroy the Reds before they became a greater threat. Now, Kaiser Willy was the type of guy who usually went with the first policy suggestion he read.Guess which one he picked in OTL?

Simply have the order of presentation shuffled, and the Imperial Germans will rapidly crush the Bolsheviks in a matter of weeks. By this point, the Reds could only rely on a few Latvian units, and were so militarily weak that the Czech Legion had been able to secure large areas of control by itself. When the White Counter-Revolutionaries finally get organized, what remains of the Reds will be easy pickings.

2.) In OTL, Trotsky was able to work out a deal with the Ukrainian anarchist under Makhno to attack the Whites behind their lines during their 1919 Offensive. This strained their logistics and forced the diversion of five or six regiments to secure their supply trains. This weakened the Whites enough that the Reds beat them back at Orel, and ultimately set the stage for their victory later on. Had Makhno not allied with Trotsky, the Whites could've easily reached Moscow and put it under siege. Indeed, the situation was so bad that abandoning Petrograd was seriously called for. Yudenich's White Army in the Baltics could then seize that city, and it's port facilities could then be used to bring in much needed supplies for the White Movement. In OTL, Lenin was also nearly assassinated in September of 1919. Butterflies could see that attempt seceed, and then the battered Reds would not only face the increasingly powerful White threat but also internal struggles among the various characters that had assembled under the Bolshevik banner.