Once the initial shock passed, it was clear to the German High Command that Trotsky’s bluff had to be called. Since no peace treaty had been signed, Germany was still at war with Russia, the armistice had come to an end and the way was now open for the German invasion of Russia. Despite his own growing fears of a revolution in Berlin, Kühlmann was forced by pressure from Ludendorff to announce on 16 February that Germany would resume hostilities against Russia on 18 February. Back in the Smolny, on the 17th, the Central Committee met in panic. Lenin’s demand that the German treaty should be accepted at once was defeated by six votes to five. Trotsky’s policy of waiting for the Germans to launch their attack before signing the peace was adopted instead in the desperate hope that the sight of their troops attacking the defenceless people of Russia might at last inspire the German working classes to rebel.90
Sure enough, on the 18th the German troops advanced. Dvinsk and Lutsk were immediately captured without resistance. The last remaining Russian troops fell apart altogether — they were quite indifferent to the call of a revolutionary war — and by the end of the fifth day Hoffman’s men had advanced 150 miles. It was as much as the whole German army had advanced in the three previous years of fighting. ‘It is the most comical war I have ever known,’ Hoffman wrote in his diary. ‘It is waged almost exclusively in trains and automobiles. We put a handful of infantry men with machine-guns and one gun on to a train and push them off to the next station; they take it, make prisoners of the Bolsheviks, pick up a few more troops, and go on. This proceeding has, at any rate, the charm of novelty.’91
As news came in of the German advance, the Central Committee convened in two emergency sessions on 18 February. Lenin was furious. By refusing to sign the German treaty, his opponents in the Central Committee had merely enabled the enemy to advance. Lenin clearly feared that the Germans were about to capture Petrograd and oust the Bolsheviks from power — and this necessitated sending a telegram accepting the peace at once. When Trotsky and Bukharin proposed to delay this, Lenin was beside himself with rage. But he still lacked enough votes to enforce his policy, which was defeated by seven votes to six at the morning session of the Central Committee. The Bolshevik leadership seemed on the brink of a fatal division as it stared defeat in the face. But during the afternoon, as rumours came in of a German advance into the Ukraine, Trotsky moved round towards Lenin’s view. At the evening session of the Central Committee he proposed to ask the Germans to restate their terms. As Lenin rightly saw it, this was a foolish game to play. It was too late now for diplomatic notes, which the Germans would in any case soon dismiss as a ploy for time; only the firm acceptance of their terms for peace would be enough to halt their advance. After three further hours of heated debate the crucial vote was taken on Lenin’s proposal to send the Germans an immediate offer of peace. It was passed by the slenderest of margins, by seven votes to five, with Trotsky switching to Lenin’s side at the final moment.92 Though we will probably never find out what went on behind the scenes, it seems that Trotsky’s crucial change of mind was largely influenced by the need to avert what could otherwise have turned out to be a fatal division within the party. If Trotsky had joined Bukharin in opposing the peace, Lenin would probably have resigned from the Central Committee, as he had threatened to do, and rallied support from the Bolshevik rank and file. The party would thus have been split and Trotsky, as the leader of its faction against peace, much the weaker for it. Without Lenin, Trotsky’s place at the top of the party was extremely vulnerable — as events would later prove.
