Trechos de The War Of Lost Opportunities (1923), de Max Hoffmann.
On the evening of the first day of the mobilization I arrived in Posen, the mobilization station of the "Army High Command 8."
This army was under the command of Colonel-Generals von Prittwitz and Gaffron. The Woyrsch Corps had also to assist the extreme left wing of the Austrians in their offensive movement.
- - -
For this task it was positively insufficiently equipped; above all there was a want of heavy artillery; and, what can even be called a crime, was the want of proper medical equipment. The influence that the High Command of the 8th Army was able to have on the Corps was but small. The telephone connexions were bad, and became entirely disconnected as the Corps advanced owing to the want of material. I only succeeded twice, at the beginning, in obtaining a connexion with the Corps - a very agreeable surprise! One of our most gifted and clever officers of the General Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Kundt, who was my best friend, answered to my call. I had supposed he was in South America. Before the War he had gone on leave, with several other officers, to Bolivia, and just before the outbreak of the War he had obtained a furlough to go home and had arrived safely in Germany.
- - -
Our army had orders to defend East and West Prussia against a Russian attack. At the same time it was to take care not to allow itself to be overpowered by superior forces or to be driven into the fortress of Konigsberg. In the event of the advance of greatly superior Russian forces the instructions were to give up West Prussia East of the Vistula, and to take up positions behind that river.
- - -
Unfortunately at the time his [Major-General von Waldersee] physical powers were not equal to his mental, as he had but recently undergone a serious operation and his nerves were still suffering from its effects.
- - -
During the next few days the Russians made small cavalry attacks which were repulsed with ease. The Vilna army advanced in larger detachments with great energy on our Eastern frontier, while the Southern frontier of both East Prussia as well as West Prussia remained comparatively quiet.
The reconnoitering of the Warsaw Army was extremely difficult. The agents - Polish Jews - who during the first days had brought in news, failed us, as the Russian occupation of the frontier districts became denser. The Army had only one detachment of airmen at its disposal, which was obliged to restrict itself to flying over the communications that connected us with the frontier twice a day.
- - -
It was quite natural that from his point of view he should make sure that no Russian should step on the soil of East Prussia; and that no East Prussian village should experience the horrors of war. He was of the opinion that the task of the frontier defences was therefore to act offensively, and wanted by attacking the Russian Frontier Defence Detachments to keep them away from the frontier. He failed to see that by such tactics the 1st Army Corps would be removed from its contact with the rest of the army.
- - -
Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived in the evening of the 23rd. General von Hindenburg, who afterwards became the idol of the German people, was up to that time but little known beyond the district of his old Corps. I had never seen him. Ludendorff, on the contrary, was a well known and often mentioned personage in the circles of the General Staff officers. His efforts to strengthen the army, which were only partially carried out in the great defensive plans, and also his endeavours to persuade the Ministry of War to have greater provisions of ammunition in store, in the event of a mobilization, which met with the same fate, were much discussed. There could be no question that the first success of the War, the important capture of Liege, was entirely owing to him, as was the general opinion of the army.
- - -
The enemy commander, General Samsonov, issued an order to the army to pursue. The order was sent by wireless from the Russian station, not ciphered, and we intercepted it. This was the first of numberless orders that in the beginning the Russians sent, with quite incomprehensible thoughtlessness, unciphered by wireless; afterwards they were in cipher. This thoughtlessness greatly facilitated the direction of the war in the East, and in many cases even made the initiative possible for us. The cipher orders caused us no difficulties either; we had two men on the Staff who proved themselves quite geniuses in deciphering, and in a very short time they found out the key to the new Russian code.
- - -
Samsonov shot himself when he realized the complete defeat of his army.
It is natural to ask, what were Rennenkampf s reasons for not coming to his assistance in spite of all the requests Samsonov had sent him by wireless. The explanation that his inactivity was caused by the very severe losses his army had sustained in the battle of Gumbinen, where some units had lost fifty per cent, or more of their effectives. [...] I would therefore like to mention the reports, which cannot be quite disproved, that Rennenkampf did not go to assist Samsonov from personal enmity against him.
[...] I know that a personal enmity existed between the two men, it dates from the battle of Liauyang, where Samsonov with the Siberian Cossack Division was defending the Yentai coal mines, but notwithstanding the distinguished bravery of his Cossacks he was obliged to evacuate them as Rennenkampf, who was on the left flank of the Russians with his detachment remained inactive notwithstanding repeated orders.
- - -
Already on the fourth day of the battle the report of an airman had come in, who said he had the impression that the principal Russian positions were only feebly occupied, or not occupied at all, and on the following morning the Chief Command received the positive news that Rennenkampf did not mean to resist the attack, but had apparently given the order for a general retreat already on the previous day. Though this information deprived us of the hope of completely defeating Rennenkampf, I would not be speaking the truth, if I asserted that the news of his retreat was not very agreeable to us.
The frontal attack on the admirably planned positions of the Russians would have been very difficult. It appears to me doubtful if we should have been successful. It would only have been necessary for Rennenkampf to defend himself from the enveloping attack on his left wing by the three divisions of the Generals von Francois and von Morgen. Rennenkampf had for this purpose at the very least the Finnish Army Corps and six Divisions of his reserve.
- - -
While our army was fighting the battles of Tannenberg and of the Masurian Lakes the positions on the Western front and of the confederated Austrian army had developed unfavourably.
[...] It was now too late. The condition of the Austrian troops demanded immediate support. It was necessary to fight with them shoulder to shoulder at once.
- - -
The retreat itself, that had been ordered on the 27th, was carried out in perfect order and without any difficulties.
The Russians pursued us energetically along the whole front. They also attacked East Prussia and our frontier defences near Mlava. The position was serious on the whole of the Eastern front.
- - -
We came to the conclusion that if we could succeed in destroying the railways so completely that it would require a long time to reconstruct them we should be able to stop for a time the advance of the enemy, who was pursuing us on Russian soil, to the East of the German frontier.
- - -
The Breslau Corps was to join up to the South of the advancing army.
The Russians were taken entirely by surprise. There was sharp fighting at Wloclawek, Kutno and Dombe, in which our troops remained victorious and drove the enemy back with heavy losses.
[...] General Scheidemann, the Russian Commander at Lodz, sent constant reports by wireless of the desperate position he was in, but continued to defend himself furiously.
- - -
It was only later that the reports crystallized, and we learned that in the beginning of the year 1915 the Russians intended to make an outflanking attack from the North on East Prussia while at the same time strong forces were to attack the German weak positions at Mlawa, and entering from the South, to penetrate into Prussia.
- - -
Lost opportunities are a phenomenon of this War that we shall often have to notice. The right thing is suggested at the right moment, when success can be achieved with but a comparatively small employment of force, but the suggestion is set aside; then enemy movements take place that oblige the General Headquarters to send more reinforcements than had previously been asked for: with only this difference, that the forces now no longer serve to gain a decisive victory but only to retrieve a misfortune that had occurred.
- - -
The Grand Duke had caused incredible loss of human life, without attaining the slightest tactical successes. On the other hand he was a good soldier, who kept strict discipline. He was respected in the Army, and feared in the higher grades of the Service and especially at the front, for the strict measures he had introduced to maintain discipline. Perhaps he would have found ways and means to prevent the Bolshevik propaganda from penetrating into the Army.
The Tzar's second measure, the undertaking the Chief Command himself, can only be called a mistake. The work of a Commander-in-Chief in our days requires the whole attention of a very capable man; a monarch of a great country has not the time to devote to it, as the business of his government require both time and work from him daily. Either the leadership of the Army or the government of the country must suffer if he tries to do both.
- - -
The Bulgarians who had been robbed of the fruits of their victory over the Turks in the second Balkan War by the Serbs, the Greeks and the Rumanians, were burning for revenge and hoped by joining the Central Powers not only to obtain it, but also to get Macedonia and the Dobrudja.
- - -
With regard to the question of the U-boats, no man of sense can be in doubt that in our struggle for the existence of Germany, we not only had every right, but that it was our bounden duty to bring them into action without any consideration for others. It is absurd to talk of inhumanity and that sort of thing, when all know that England had already begun the hunger blockade against German women and children. There was no possibility for us Germans to escape from the consequences of this blockade, while the Americans had no need to take their pleasure trips exactly in zones blockaded by Germany. From the very beginning I was only afraid that we might commence the U-boat war too soon, that is to say, we would not have sufficient submarines to be able to continue this warfare. I often think of a discussion I had on this question with the President of the Union of Landowners, Dr. Rosicke, in Kovno, when he came to visit the Field-Marshal. During this discussion he reproached me with want of patriotism, etc., when I objected to bringing the unrestricted submarine warfare into immediate action.
Later events proved that I was right. We began too soon, that is, with too few U-boats, and the results were very similar to those produced by our gas warfare. We showed the adversary what a dangerous weapon we possessed at a time when the weapon was not strong enough to prevent him from taking the necessary measures to defend himself from it. I do not doubt that it would have been possible for the U-boat warfare to have had a complete success if from the beginning of the War we had applied all our available power to the construction of innumerable submarines.
- - -
The position was not quite so secure with the Arch-Duke Karl's Army Group, and there were hardly any forces at our disposal to repulse our new enemy - Rumania.
- - -
Once again it was proved that the Russian Army had produced no great leader, no man of real straitegic understanding. Instead of attacking us again along the whole front and occupying us in that way, to hinder us from removing troops to send to other fronts, Brussilov's offensive was absolutely stopped.
- - -
The death of the Kaiser Franz Joseph, who closed his eyes on the 21st of November, 1916. He was the last bond that still united the divergent States that formed the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
- - -
The blunt refusal that the Entente gave to these proposals of the Central Powers, caused us to begin the unrestricted U-boat warfare on the 1st of February, 1917. I have already given my opinion on the question of the submarine warfare; I am quite positive first, that Germany had unquestionably every right to carry out an unrestricted U-boat warfare, and secondly, that it was our duty to employ every weapon we possessed to achieve the final victory. It was England who had begun the extension of the War to women, children and non-combatants by the blockade measures she had taken. There can be no doubt we had the right to defend ourselves with similar measures. The outbreak of American indignation against Germany for preventing Americans from coming to England or going in safety anywhere else they desired sounds almost childish. With the same right the Americans might demand that a battle should be broken off, and the artillery fire stopped when a few Americans took it into their heads to go for a walk on that particular battle-field.
- - -
Then America joined the War. And although America had no Army at the time and the Admiralty, in their usual optimistic way of looking at things, declared to everybody that if it was even possible for America to create an Army, she would never be able to transport it to Europe, still there was a large number of earnest people who declared that from the moment America joined the War, all hopes were at an enck that Germany could issue from the struggle victorious.
In March, 1917, at that moment of great difficulty, an event took place affecting the history of the world and which gave Germany once again the possibility of a military victory - this was the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
- - -
It is well known that owing to our inactivity Kerensky was able to carry away the Army with his persuasive eloquence and to induce them to continue the struggle.
[...] It would have been the most comprehensible thing that Russia could have done, to have concluded a separate peace with Germany. If it had done so then it would have been spared the experience of a Bolshevik Government and the blood of many millions of murdered citizens.
- - -
It was about this time that Germany had recourse to a new medium of warfare. This was a species of still stronger poison gas - the so-called Yellow Cross.
- - -
Some men at home who had connexions with the Russian revolutionaries exiled in Switzerland came upon the idea of employing some of them in order to hasten the undermining and poisoning of the moral of the Russian Army.
- - -
We Germans, who were at war with Russia, had unquestionably the right, when the Russian Revolution did not lead to peace, as at first had been expected, to augment the disorders of the Revolution both in the land and in the Army.
In the same way as I send shells into the enemy trenches, as I discharge poison gas at him, I, as an enemy, have the right to employ the expedient of propaganda against his garrisons. [...]
I personally knew nothing of the transport of Lenin through Germany. However, if I had been asked, I would scarcely have made any objections to it, as at that time nobody could foresee the fatal consequences that the appearance of those men would have for Russia and for the whole of Europe.
- - -
Admiral Altvater replied:
"The influence of Bolshevik propaganda on the masses is enormous. I have already often talked with you about it, and complained that at the time I was defending Osel the troops actually melted away before my eyes. It was the same with the whole Army, and I warn you the same thing will happen in your Army."
I only laughed at the unfortunate Admiral. He was murdered some time after that.
- - -
The execution of the terms of the Armistice that had been signed at Brest-Litovsk met with opposition on most parts of the front. It was not that the Russian troops were unwilling to have an Armistice, but because both on the Southern front and in the Caucasus the Bolshevik Delegation was not recognized as possessing the authority to conclude an Armistice.
This army was under the command of Colonel-Generals von Prittwitz and Gaffron. The Woyrsch Corps had also to assist the extreme left wing of the Austrians in their offensive movement.
- - -
For this task it was positively insufficiently equipped; above all there was a want of heavy artillery; and, what can even be called a crime, was the want of proper medical equipment. The influence that the High Command of the 8th Army was able to have on the Corps was but small. The telephone connexions were bad, and became entirely disconnected as the Corps advanced owing to the want of material. I only succeeded twice, at the beginning, in obtaining a connexion with the Corps - a very agreeable surprise! One of our most gifted and clever officers of the General Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Kundt, who was my best friend, answered to my call. I had supposed he was in South America. Before the War he had gone on leave, with several other officers, to Bolivia, and just before the outbreak of the War he had obtained a furlough to go home and had arrived safely in Germany.
- - -
Our army had orders to defend East and West Prussia against a Russian attack. At the same time it was to take care not to allow itself to be overpowered by superior forces or to be driven into the fortress of Konigsberg. In the event of the advance of greatly superior Russian forces the instructions were to give up West Prussia East of the Vistula, and to take up positions behind that river.
- - -
Unfortunately at the time his [Major-General von Waldersee] physical powers were not equal to his mental, as he had but recently undergone a serious operation and his nerves were still suffering from its effects.
- - -
During the next few days the Russians made small cavalry attacks which were repulsed with ease. The Vilna army advanced in larger detachments with great energy on our Eastern frontier, while the Southern frontier of both East Prussia as well as West Prussia remained comparatively quiet.
The reconnoitering of the Warsaw Army was extremely difficult. The agents - Polish Jews - who during the first days had brought in news, failed us, as the Russian occupation of the frontier districts became denser. The Army had only one detachment of airmen at its disposal, which was obliged to restrict itself to flying over the communications that connected us with the frontier twice a day.
- - -
It was quite natural that from his point of view he should make sure that no Russian should step on the soil of East Prussia; and that no East Prussian village should experience the horrors of war. He was of the opinion that the task of the frontier defences was therefore to act offensively, and wanted by attacking the Russian Frontier Defence Detachments to keep them away from the frontier. He failed to see that by such tactics the 1st Army Corps would be removed from its contact with the rest of the army.
- - -
Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived in the evening of the 23rd. General von Hindenburg, who afterwards became the idol of the German people, was up to that time but little known beyond the district of his old Corps. I had never seen him. Ludendorff, on the contrary, was a well known and often mentioned personage in the circles of the General Staff officers. His efforts to strengthen the army, which were only partially carried out in the great defensive plans, and also his endeavours to persuade the Ministry of War to have greater provisions of ammunition in store, in the event of a mobilization, which met with the same fate, were much discussed. There could be no question that the first success of the War, the important capture of Liege, was entirely owing to him, as was the general opinion of the army.
- - -
The enemy commander, General Samsonov, issued an order to the army to pursue. The order was sent by wireless from the Russian station, not ciphered, and we intercepted it. This was the first of numberless orders that in the beginning the Russians sent, with quite incomprehensible thoughtlessness, unciphered by wireless; afterwards they were in cipher. This thoughtlessness greatly facilitated the direction of the war in the East, and in many cases even made the initiative possible for us. The cipher orders caused us no difficulties either; we had two men on the Staff who proved themselves quite geniuses in deciphering, and in a very short time they found out the key to the new Russian code.
- - -
Samsonov shot himself when he realized the complete defeat of his army.
It is natural to ask, what were Rennenkampf s reasons for not coming to his assistance in spite of all the requests Samsonov had sent him by wireless. The explanation that his inactivity was caused by the very severe losses his army had sustained in the battle of Gumbinen, where some units had lost fifty per cent, or more of their effectives. [...] I would therefore like to mention the reports, which cannot be quite disproved, that Rennenkampf did not go to assist Samsonov from personal enmity against him.
[...] I know that a personal enmity existed between the two men, it dates from the battle of Liauyang, where Samsonov with the Siberian Cossack Division was defending the Yentai coal mines, but notwithstanding the distinguished bravery of his Cossacks he was obliged to evacuate them as Rennenkampf, who was on the left flank of the Russians with his detachment remained inactive notwithstanding repeated orders.
- - -
Already on the fourth day of the battle the report of an airman had come in, who said he had the impression that the principal Russian positions were only feebly occupied, or not occupied at all, and on the following morning the Chief Command received the positive news that Rennenkampf did not mean to resist the attack, but had apparently given the order for a general retreat already on the previous day. Though this information deprived us of the hope of completely defeating Rennenkampf, I would not be speaking the truth, if I asserted that the news of his retreat was not very agreeable to us.
The frontal attack on the admirably planned positions of the Russians would have been very difficult. It appears to me doubtful if we should have been successful. It would only have been necessary for Rennenkampf to defend himself from the enveloping attack on his left wing by the three divisions of the Generals von Francois and von Morgen. Rennenkampf had for this purpose at the very least the Finnish Army Corps and six Divisions of his reserve.
- - -
While our army was fighting the battles of Tannenberg and of the Masurian Lakes the positions on the Western front and of the confederated Austrian army had developed unfavourably.
[...] It was now too late. The condition of the Austrian troops demanded immediate support. It was necessary to fight with them shoulder to shoulder at once.
- - -
The retreat itself, that had been ordered on the 27th, was carried out in perfect order and without any difficulties.
The Russians pursued us energetically along the whole front. They also attacked East Prussia and our frontier defences near Mlava. The position was serious on the whole of the Eastern front.
- - -
We came to the conclusion that if we could succeed in destroying the railways so completely that it would require a long time to reconstruct them we should be able to stop for a time the advance of the enemy, who was pursuing us on Russian soil, to the East of the German frontier.
- - -
The Breslau Corps was to join up to the South of the advancing army.
The Russians were taken entirely by surprise. There was sharp fighting at Wloclawek, Kutno and Dombe, in which our troops remained victorious and drove the enemy back with heavy losses.
[...] General Scheidemann, the Russian Commander at Lodz, sent constant reports by wireless of the desperate position he was in, but continued to defend himself furiously.
- - -
It was only later that the reports crystallized, and we learned that in the beginning of the year 1915 the Russians intended to make an outflanking attack from the North on East Prussia while at the same time strong forces were to attack the German weak positions at Mlawa, and entering from the South, to penetrate into Prussia.
- - -
Lost opportunities are a phenomenon of this War that we shall often have to notice. The right thing is suggested at the right moment, when success can be achieved with but a comparatively small employment of force, but the suggestion is set aside; then enemy movements take place that oblige the General Headquarters to send more reinforcements than had previously been asked for: with only this difference, that the forces now no longer serve to gain a decisive victory but only to retrieve a misfortune that had occurred.
- - -
The Grand Duke had caused incredible loss of human life, without attaining the slightest tactical successes. On the other hand he was a good soldier, who kept strict discipline. He was respected in the Army, and feared in the higher grades of the Service and especially at the front, for the strict measures he had introduced to maintain discipline. Perhaps he would have found ways and means to prevent the Bolshevik propaganda from penetrating into the Army.
The Tzar's second measure, the undertaking the Chief Command himself, can only be called a mistake. The work of a Commander-in-Chief in our days requires the whole attention of a very capable man; a monarch of a great country has not the time to devote to it, as the business of his government require both time and work from him daily. Either the leadership of the Army or the government of the country must suffer if he tries to do both.
- - -
The Bulgarians who had been robbed of the fruits of their victory over the Turks in the second Balkan War by the Serbs, the Greeks and the Rumanians, were burning for revenge and hoped by joining the Central Powers not only to obtain it, but also to get Macedonia and the Dobrudja.
- - -
With regard to the question of the U-boats, no man of sense can be in doubt that in our struggle for the existence of Germany, we not only had every right, but that it was our bounden duty to bring them into action without any consideration for others. It is absurd to talk of inhumanity and that sort of thing, when all know that England had already begun the hunger blockade against German women and children. There was no possibility for us Germans to escape from the consequences of this blockade, while the Americans had no need to take their pleasure trips exactly in zones blockaded by Germany. From the very beginning I was only afraid that we might commence the U-boat war too soon, that is to say, we would not have sufficient submarines to be able to continue this warfare. I often think of a discussion I had on this question with the President of the Union of Landowners, Dr. Rosicke, in Kovno, when he came to visit the Field-Marshal. During this discussion he reproached me with want of patriotism, etc., when I objected to bringing the unrestricted submarine warfare into immediate action.
Later events proved that I was right. We began too soon, that is, with too few U-boats, and the results were very similar to those produced by our gas warfare. We showed the adversary what a dangerous weapon we possessed at a time when the weapon was not strong enough to prevent him from taking the necessary measures to defend himself from it. I do not doubt that it would have been possible for the U-boat warfare to have had a complete success if from the beginning of the War we had applied all our available power to the construction of innumerable submarines.
- - -
The position was not quite so secure with the Arch-Duke Karl's Army Group, and there were hardly any forces at our disposal to repulse our new enemy - Rumania.
- - -
Once again it was proved that the Russian Army had produced no great leader, no man of real straitegic understanding. Instead of attacking us again along the whole front and occupying us in that way, to hinder us from removing troops to send to other fronts, Brussilov's offensive was absolutely stopped.
- - -
The death of the Kaiser Franz Joseph, who closed his eyes on the 21st of November, 1916. He was the last bond that still united the divergent States that formed the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
- - -
The blunt refusal that the Entente gave to these proposals of the Central Powers, caused us to begin the unrestricted U-boat warfare on the 1st of February, 1917. I have already given my opinion on the question of the submarine warfare; I am quite positive first, that Germany had unquestionably every right to carry out an unrestricted U-boat warfare, and secondly, that it was our duty to employ every weapon we possessed to achieve the final victory. It was England who had begun the extension of the War to women, children and non-combatants by the blockade measures she had taken. There can be no doubt we had the right to defend ourselves with similar measures. The outbreak of American indignation against Germany for preventing Americans from coming to England or going in safety anywhere else they desired sounds almost childish. With the same right the Americans might demand that a battle should be broken off, and the artillery fire stopped when a few Americans took it into their heads to go for a walk on that particular battle-field.
- - -
Then America joined the War. And although America had no Army at the time and the Admiralty, in their usual optimistic way of looking at things, declared to everybody that if it was even possible for America to create an Army, she would never be able to transport it to Europe, still there was a large number of earnest people who declared that from the moment America joined the War, all hopes were at an enck that Germany could issue from the struggle victorious.
In March, 1917, at that moment of great difficulty, an event took place affecting the history of the world and which gave Germany once again the possibility of a military victory - this was the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
- - -
It is well known that owing to our inactivity Kerensky was able to carry away the Army with his persuasive eloquence and to induce them to continue the struggle.
[...] It would have been the most comprehensible thing that Russia could have done, to have concluded a separate peace with Germany. If it had done so then it would have been spared the experience of a Bolshevik Government and the blood of many millions of murdered citizens.
- - -
It was about this time that Germany had recourse to a new medium of warfare. This was a species of still stronger poison gas - the so-called Yellow Cross.
- - -
Some men at home who had connexions with the Russian revolutionaries exiled in Switzerland came upon the idea of employing some of them in order to hasten the undermining and poisoning of the moral of the Russian Army.
- - -
We Germans, who were at war with Russia, had unquestionably the right, when the Russian Revolution did not lead to peace, as at first had been expected, to augment the disorders of the Revolution both in the land and in the Army.
In the same way as I send shells into the enemy trenches, as I discharge poison gas at him, I, as an enemy, have the right to employ the expedient of propaganda against his garrisons. [...]
I personally knew nothing of the transport of Lenin through Germany. However, if I had been asked, I would scarcely have made any objections to it, as at that time nobody could foresee the fatal consequences that the appearance of those men would have for Russia and for the whole of Europe.
- - -
Admiral Altvater replied:
"The influence of Bolshevik propaganda on the masses is enormous. I have already often talked with you about it, and complained that at the time I was defending Osel the troops actually melted away before my eyes. It was the same with the whole Army, and I warn you the same thing will happen in your Army."
I only laughed at the unfortunate Admiral. He was murdered some time after that.
- - -
The execution of the terms of the Armistice that had been signed at Brest-Litovsk met with opposition on most parts of the front. It was not that the Russian troops were unwilling to have an Armistice, but because both on the Southern front and in the Caucasus the Bolshevik Delegation was not recognized as possessing the authority to conclude an Armistice.
