November 7th, 1917. A practically bloodless coup results in October Revolution in Russia. Like the February Revolution the same year, this one got its name due to the Julian calendar used officially in Russia at that time. According to that calendar, the revolution took place on October 25th, 1917 – November 7th according to Gregorian calendar used at the time (and nowadays) worldwide.
This coup (contrary to a popular misconception, led by Leon Trotsky – Vladimir Lenin was essentially a bystander) in a matter of days transformed the Russian Republic into a totalitarian Bolshevist Soviet Russia.
Which subsequently became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – and an existential threat to Germany, Europe, the Christian Church, Western (i.e., Christian) Civilization, and to the whole mankind.
November 1917. The very next day after seizing power in Russia, the Bolsheviks (the Russian Marxists) begin to implement the “10 points of The Communist Manifesto”. Which in practice means unleashing the “Red Destruction” and “Red Terror” on a colossal scale, destroying the human civilization as we know it and replacing it with something genuinely infernal.
All private property was outlawed and “nationalized” (i.e. confiscated at gunpoint). All political parties, all non-Bolshevist media and organizations were banned. Market economy was outlawed and replaced with “centralized planning” and “military communism”. Which immediately resulted in an all but a total collapse of the Russian economy, endemic shortages of the most basic goods and services and a widespread hunger.
Political opponents of the Bolshevist regime (real, potential and perceived) were arrested sent to prisons and concentration camps (yes, concentration camps were brought to Europe by Russian Communists) and often summarily executed without any semblance of due process.
Churches are looted (in fact, all places that might store something of financial value) and closed down; priests, monks, nuns and devout lay Christians are arrested, sent to prisons (or concentration camps) or executed – often without trial and sometimes on the spot (as “enemies of the people”).
Soviet Russia defaults on all of its external financial obligations – and renounces all its obligations according to international treaties, declaring that it is no longer bound by any of them.
However, the Bolsheviks are unable to establish an “information curtain” (“information blockade”); consequently, news about these “Red horrors” immediately reach all European nations.
Including Germany, of course (which after the peace treaty with Russia is signed in March of 1918 becomes home to tens of thousands of refugees from the Red Terror).
Adolf Hitler (and other Nazis) at some point become aware of what was going on in Soviet Russia. It horrifies them – and leads to but one conclusion: Marxism (and its Bolshevist incarnation) is, indeed an existential threat to Germany, Europe and the whole Western Civilization.
And the war with the Bolshevist Soviet Union (which appears highly likely given the global ambitions of Bolsheviks) will be, indeed, an existential war – the war for the very existence of Germany, Europe and the whole Western civilization as they know it.
It also becomes known – worldwide – that the majority of the Bolshevist leaders of Russia (Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Larin, Nogin, Uritsky, etc.) are Jewish. As were many (if not most) members of the infernal Cheka – Soviet political police.
These indisputable facts (combined with already virulent and violent Judeophobia) ultimately led Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to an entirely wrong conclusion – that Bolshevism was nothing but an important part of a “global Jewish conspiracy” and that a very real existential war with Bolshevism will be an existential racial war with the “Jewish race”.
Two decades later these conclusions will become the trigger of – and the dominant driving force – one of the most horrific mass murder in human history. The Holocaust.
November 1917. The Civil War begins in Russia. Not surprisingly, the “Red Destruction” and “Red Terror” were met with determined, violent and vicious resistance. Which in no time triggered the wholesale and all-out Civil War.
This war lasted for five years – it more or less ended only in 1922. It devastated (actually, all but destroyed) the whole country. Ten million died (killed in action, murdered during the “Red” and “White” terror); two million (mostly the most valuable citizens) left the country. Seven million children became orphans and lived on the streets.
It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20% of the pre-World War level, and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline. For example, cotton production fell to 5%, and iron to 2%, of pre-war levels.
By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to 62% of the pre-war area, and the harvest yield was only about 37% of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920 and cattle from 58 to 37 million. The exchange rate with the US dollar declined from two rubles in 1914 to 1,200 in 1920.
News about this disaster (rather sooner than later) reached Germany – including Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, of course. From this horrible reports they made the only possible conclusions: (1) if the Bolsheviks ever come to power in Germany, they will immediately start the all-out civil war; and (2) this war will in no time devastate – if not completely destroy – the country.
Consequently, it is a solemn duty of every patriot of Germany to prevent Bolsheviks from ever coming to power. Using all means available – as even the most violent and even murderous ones are still far, far better than the “Red alternative”.
March 3rd, 1918. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed in what now is Brest in the independent Belarus (then a city in the Russian Empire). It was a treaty between the new Bolshevik government of now officially Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire).
This treaty ended Russia’s participation in World War I, formally acknowledging a disastrous defeat of the latter – and thus a decisive victory of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. Which, alas, did not help them much on the Western one.
By signing this treaty, the new Russian government (obviously), betrayed its allies in the Great War. However, it really had no choice – its armed forces all but disintegrated (contrary to another popular misconception, this collapse started months before the Bolsheviks came to power and was caused mostly NOT by the Bolsheviks).
In the treaty, Russia ceded hegemony over the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) to Germany; they were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings. Russia also ceded its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire and recognized the independence of Ukraine. More than that, Russia renounced all territorial claims in Finland (which it had already acknowledged), Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine.
The treaty meant that Russia now was essentially fighting on the side of Central Powers, by freeing up a million German soldiers for the Western Front and by “relinquishing much of Russia’s food supply, industrial base, fuel supplies, and communications with Western Europe.
According to historian Spencer Tucker, the Allied Powers felt that “the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was the ultimate betrayal of the Allied cause and sowed the seeds for the Cold War. The German domination in Eastern Europe threatened to become reality, and the Allies now began to think seriously about military intervention in Russia.
The Essential Guide to Nazi Germany 