Eastern front : won from the start ?

With respect, Kenny, the variation is so large between the previously published figures and yours that one is entitled to ask who is right. Could you please flesh out your information a bit instead of just putting out a raw figure?

Cheers!

 

Again, still seems odd to defend the German military on the basis that 'they only lost when their massive tactical misscalculation began to be felt.'

I would beg to differ, you just said that Soviet soldiers were better equipped for winter fighting. Later in the war, with the issue of padded suits, gloves, head gear and the like, maybe they were. However in 1941 most soldiers had the bare essentials of winter kit, wool uniform and shinel. The troops brought in from Siberia were (according to at least one veteran) no better equipped than their comrades. Consider also where the Germans floundered, not in the face of the counterattack but on the approach to Moscow. The Mozhaisk defense line built by an army of civilians (who had to dig and build with minimal resources in difficult conditions) held the Germans up for almost 14 days despite the Soviet troops being heavily outnumbered. By November Soviet troops were outnumbered almost 2 to 1 outside Moscow, poorely fed, for the most part poorely equipped but occupying defensive positions prepared again by civilians. By this stage the Germans seem to have hurled themselves at defenses, according to Zukhov: "The enemy, ignoring the casualties, was making frontal assaults, willing to get to Moscow by any means necessary."

Now my point is simple, the average German soldier had no winter kit, fair enough. What does this amount to? Well, woolen uniform, greatcoat etc but nothing more substantial. The point is that at this stage the RKKA were hardly better equipped, most troops had yet to recieve thick, padded gear. To my mind the battle was won by soviet defensive preparations and the German inability to overcome them, not by this myth that whilst the Germans were slogging it out in their summer kit (which incidentally, due to the method of distribution in the RKKA, was generally more substantial than the soviet equivilant) the Soviet troops were all snug in perfectly designed and universally issued winter clothing. Similarly, Soviet trucks were no better prepared for winter than their German counterparts (a politorka or model A ford is just as likely to have trouble as a Krupp).

 

The figures refer to wartime production only. The Soviets did not make much railroad equipment but they had over 28000 Locomotives and 670000 rail cars
from pre-war production.
The majority of the US stock did not get sent untill mid 1944.
2000 locos and 11000 railcars are not such a high proportion of the total.

 

M Kenny,

I think he meant the source, just like I do. Changing the figures upside down it´s pretty much easier to accept if you have a source to refer to.

 

Remind me where the source is in this post:

I am not changing anything upside down. I am merely showing the real figures. Those sources that say 80%+ of Soviet railway equipment was supplied by lease-lend are using skewed and partial totals to make it look far more important than it was in reality.
It is the the 80%+ totals that are a 'bold-faced lie'.

 

Sources were :

http://members.tripod.com/~Sturmvogel/SovLendLease.html

http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-09.html

http://www.feldgrau.com/econo.html

http://www.jmu.edu/madison/teach/burson/ww2.htm

http://www.redarmyonline.org/FI_Arti...Dan_Welch.html

And the whole discussion:

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=9798&highlight=lend+lease+figures

-----------------------

As far as I´m concerned I´m ok if the Soviets never needed any Lend Lease. However I would like to see the figures and how many were not destroyed and lost during the first phase of Barbarossa as well because the Red Army lost almost all their 20,000 tanks during the autumn-winter 1941 , and yes , they were obsolete, and nobody takes the 20,000 seriously because they were obsolete. So how far back can we accept the Soviet trains etc. useful for the war years to come?

 

I would be interested in the reasoning used to claim a locomotive built before 1941 wouild not be 'useful' in the years 1941-45. It is absurd . The figures were a suprise to you and so you have to find another way to discredit them.

Here is an article (written in 1935) about the 20,000 locomotives in service 6 years before the German invasion.

http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r097.html#2

Extract:
20,000 Locomotives
To-day there are still many oil-burning locomotives at work in the south of Russia, certain of the modern standard types having been modified to take this type of fuel. At the same time, it is also possible that they will be superseded, perhaps within the next few years, by Diesel locomotives running directly on crude oil. There are already at least twenty Diesel locomotives at work on the southern lines, and experiments with Diesel traction have been carried out over a number of years. Recent figures show that the Soviet Union contains about 20,000 locomotives of various types. Naturally, complete standardization is still a good way off, for the locomotive stock left by the old Empire was amazing in its variety. Within the past ten years, however, definite steps have been taken in the matter of locomotive standardization, and some very fine types have been evolved

The rolling stock figure was extracted from a Library of Congress Country Study.

This section:
"The Red Army's Belorussian offensive, which was launched on June 23, 1944, required, during its buildup phase, 440,000 freight cars, or 65 percent of Soviet rolling stock. In early 1945, the Red Army pursued German forces into neighboring countries, requiring the railroads to cope with different track widths, which went from 1,520-millimeter-gauge track to 1,435-millimeter-gauge track in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and eventually in Germany itself.
Despite the effort made to haul men and matériel to the front and to provide at least some service to the civilian sector, as well as to restore operations in war-damaged areas, the Soviet Union managed to build 6,700 kilometers of new lines during the war years. The new lines tapped areas rich in the mineral resources that were required for the war effort or shortened the distances between important economic regions. Of the 52,400 kilometers of Soviet main track roadway damaged during the war, 48,800 kilometers were restored by May 1945. About 166,000 freight cars were destroyed, and the number of locomotives decreased by about 1,000, although almost 2,000 were furnished by the United States as part of an agreement authorized by its Lend-Lease Law (see Glossary)."
Data as of May 1989

Once you know the number of Locos and railcars the Soviets had then the Lend-Lease totals fall far short of the oft quoted 80%.
If I remember correctly total locomotive losses for 1941-45 were 16000


An interesting post here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=752713&highlight=#752713


"The source for US lend-lease is "Roads to Russia", and for Commonwealth lend lease, there's "Comrades in Arms". Please note that all the dates are when the stuff was shipped, i.e. left the US. Sailing time to the Soviet Far East was about a month, and about 3.5 months to Persia (counting delays to form convoys). Then you have to wait for the ship to be given a berth, then a couple of weeks to unload it, then transport from the port (I think that a lot of resources which were shipped to the Soviet Far East, which includes most of the lend lease food, were used locally to save transport).
With that in mind, below are figures for tonnage sent from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR ("North Russia" means the Murmansk convoys), in long tons. They include about half a million tons lost in transit, mostly in 1942, and 550,000t of petroleum products sent by the British from the Abadan refineries and made good by US lend-lease to Britain separately. I think that they are available online somewhere, but as I already have them I'm too lazy to search them

1941: 360,778t, of which 13,502t Persian Gulf, 193,229t Soviet Far East, 153,977t North Russia.
1942: 2,453,097t of which 705,259t Persian Gulf, 734,020 Soviet Far East, 949,711 North Russia, 64,107 Soviet Artic.
1943: 4,794,545t of which 1,606,979 Persian Gulf, 2,388,577 Soviet Far East, 681,043 North Russia, 117,946 Soviet Artic.
1944: 6,217,622t of which 1,788,864 Persian Gulf, 2,848,181 Soviet Far East, 1,452,775 North Russia, 127,802 Soviet Artic.
1945 3,673,819t (last shipments 20 Sept) of which: 44,513 Persian Gulf, 2,079,320 Soviet Far East, 726,725 North Russia, 680,723 Black Sea, 142,538 Soviet Artic.

So the amount of lend-lease that is described as "flowing" in 1941 is 2% of the total. This is certainly a "flow" of sorts, but more a trickle than a flood. We should keep that in mind when assessing how much lend-lease helped the Soviet Union survive.

Some notes on the British contribution: in the Persian Gulf, 165,655 tons delivered by the British during their operation of the Iranian State Railways in 1942, and 480,731 tons delivered by the United Kingdom Commercial Cooperation and other British agencies throughout the entire period. The remaining 4,502,990 tons were delivered chiefly by the US Army but include unknown British tonnages in 1942 figures for assembles trucks and aircraft, as well as the British share of rail deliveries during the period of joint operation which reduce the US share to 4,417,243t.

Other Commonwealth supplies were 5,218 tanks and 5,591 carriers, 250,000 trucks, 32,000 tons of aluminium, 40,000 tons of copper, 28,000 tons of tin and 114,000 tons of rubber. Also 8,210,000 pounds sterling worth of food (how much food that represents depends on how light and how expensive you consider British food to be, and how much of it you might consider edible although the Soviets wouldn't be too choosy).

In total, the Soviets received some 17 million tons of lend-lease, of which over 15 million were US.

2. On the "lend-lease supplied vital rolling stock", this begs the question "vital for what ?".

On the face of it, the figures look impressive: 1,911 steam and 70 diesel electric locomotives, 11,155 rail cars. However none of this was shipped before the second half of 1943, no locomotives were sent before 1944, and only 20% of these amounts (in tonnage) was shipped - i.e. you then have to add sailing time, debarkation time, transit time to the front, etc - before 1 July 1944.
Additionally, a lot of the US locomotives were too heavy for Soviet tracks so could only be of limited use except where the railway was rebuilt. All in all, the lend-lease rolling stock allowed a faster Soviet advance, but it certainly didn't influence the survival of the Soviet Union. One more influencial lend-lease contribution which I didn't find mentioned on this board was the equipping by the US of large portions of Soviet tracks with an automatic signalling system. This boosted the efficiency of the existing rail network by allowing higher average speeds. But I don't know by how much.

The two questions about lend-lease:

The first question, i.e. "would the Soviet Union have collapsed without lend-lease ?", is very difficult to answer for a number of reasons. Personally I believe that it could well have, not in 1941 but during the winter of 1942/43 when the Soviet economy was over-mobilized and the difference between success and failure was very slim, but of course I'm not sure and a good case can be made for the opposite view.

The second question, i.e. "How important was lend-lease to the rest of the war ?" was examined by Mark Harrison in his "Accounting for War". He assumed that the Soviets would keep civilian consumption at the historical levels, the result being that for 1942-45, in terms of defense outlays, the Soviets would be short of 2.1% of GNP but they would still have 1.6 % (vs. 6.5% with the Lend Lease) left in gross investments and 2.7% (vs. 4.2 % with the Lend Lease) in civilian surplus.
In other words, historically between 1943-45 the Soviets devoted the same (and by the end of the war larger) amounts of resources to rebuilding their country than they received from lend-lease, so Harrison assumes that they would simply make their population suffer a while longer and delay the rebuilding of the country until after the war.
I have my problems with that theory, particularly the fact that rebuilding infrastructure in the liberated areas served a military purpose (supply lines) and not just a "civilian surplus + gross investment" one. However, it should be noted that the Soviets in 1942 weren't sure exactly how far they could safely go in pressuring their own population, and that the Soviet population received smaller levels of civilian surplus in 1943-44 than in 1942.
So I think it can definitely be considered a fact that the historical Soviet war effort could be increased in an emergency, particularly in 1943-45. Which is one of the reasons why I don't buy the "Germans maintain a stalemate on the Eastern Front in 1943-45" scenario, but that's another story. "

 

As of 01 January 1943, 22.000 miles (35.000km) of the Soviet rail network were under German control and the majority of that had already been converted to standard gauge by the Germans. Although the Germans were able to "capture" large quantities of Soviet rolling stock and railway construction materials, the captured items were for the most part substandard in quality or antiquated.

http://www.feldgrau.com/dreichsbahn.html

Another factor affecting military rail operations are of course the number of available locomotives and wagons. With respect to the railway wagons, the following figures represent the number of German and captured wagons available for use:

On 01 January 1942: 84.000 wagons.
On 01 June 1942: 142.000 wagons.
On 01 December 1942: 203.000 wagons.

And not all bad things:

One consequence of this was that in the east, only 20% of all of Germany's "winterized" locomotives were operationally available in late 1941. In total, between 70-80% of all German locomotives deployed on the eastern front became inoperable. Conversely, Soviet (and ex-Imperial Russian) locomotives seemed to be in their natural element during the winter months. The situation improved quite a bit when the Germans borrowed a page from Soviet construction techniques - they removed all of the precision parts and basically ran stripped down locomotives until the severe weather receded.

 

Found this, some interesting info

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82145

THE MOST VALUABLE ASSET OF THE REICH by Alfred C. Mierzejewski

With the expansion of German territory the quantities of locomotives and rail cars increased substantially.

Here are the figures:

Steam Locomotives acquired/total:

1939=660/25889
1940=982/28586
1941=1391/30011
1942=2127/32243
1943=4533/36329
1944=3063/37810

Freight cars acquired/total:

1939=13087/660546
1940=24544/779641
1941=42924/824185
1942=43032/885906
1943=51969/973045
1944=34725/987864

Passenger cars acquired/total:

1939=544/68462
1940=713/70443
1941=104/70257
1942=124/72448
1943=327/71018
1944=256/70400

 

Whilst I haven't yet read the whole thread, I wish to state that I agree with Za: the Germans were lousy strategists. And that's not exclusive of WWII. If you read Von Clausewitz, you can understand why the Germans fought the way they did.

Prussian military theory, of which Von Clausewitz was the main theorist, recquired wars to be fought with a maximun of force and violence in the minumum possible time. And that's exactly what happened in the wars Prussia and Germany won: the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, the invasion of Poland, the Balkans and Western Europe. All such wars have in common that their duration was of less than a year (in the case of WWII campaigns, less than 6 weeks) and that geography was not a major impediment.

WWI, with its multiple fronts, Great Britain with its implacable Channel, North Africa with the not so peaceful Mediterranean, and the Soviet Union with its hostile vastness, however, all challenged Germany for something she was not prepared for: attrition war. Not only the German war machine was never concieved to fight long, attrition wars: all the money was bet on a master plan, which had to take place with most strenght in short time. Also, German leaders (specially during the caothic Nazi period) never had the combined strategic-economic-military vision to defeat the enemy.

There are quite some good examples in WWI, where military leaders, after conceiving great strategies, soon dropped it after juicy tactical opportunities appeared.

1914: the famous 'Schlieffen' plan was fatally modified at the tactical level, and yet Von Moltke still carried it away. The first thing he did was to strenghten East Prussia at the expense of the Schwerpunkt of the right flank. Once hostilities began, Von Moltke allowed the German I Army, under Alexander von Kluck (a personal rival of Moltke, full with animadversion for him, and who often disobeyed the High Command's orders) to turn left, trying to encircle the BEF (which had just appeared, right in front of Von Kluck without German intelligence ever noticing) in an inflexible Prussian Kesselschlacht, thus turning the Schwerpunkt to the west of Paris, exposing the right flank. Moltke not only did not sack the insubordinate Von Kluck and allowed the wheel to turn west, but actually withdrew two divisions from the right flank to send East, where they arrived too late.

1916: Erich von Falkenhayn wanted to bleed the French Army to death. He correctly thought France would never give up Verdun. The sole objective of the battle of Verdun was to kill as many French as possible. Only that Falkenhayn forgot to tell field commanders, and then, over the next month, allowed them to persuit absurd tactical objectives within the Verdun battlefield at an enormous casualty rate. In the end, Falkenhayn did bleed the French Army almost to death, but he bled the German Army as well.

1918: Ludendorff's offensive was meant to take Paris and beat the French before the US' military presence overwhelmed Germany. He threw a well-concieved and extremely violent offensive against the Allied Fronta nd broke the stalemate. However, after tactical opportunities appeared (such as the British V Army crumbling), he threw smaller offensives which diverged from the original goal... He did not take Paris, he did not break the Allied armies and he finally managed to fatally cripple its own Army, which, at last, after almost 4 years, in the beginning of 1914, was once again the largest and most powerful...

In 1941, when the High Command designed several overly-optimistic stretegic plans, with little intelligence of the USSR's strenght, Hitler never decided for a single plan. Also, German war production was in fact decreasing. Factories were still producing fountain pens. Tank production facilities were being turned into U-boat parts factories. Germany was going to invade a country dozens of times larger than France with almost the same amount of men, tanks, planes and guns she used in summer 1940. 80% of the men still relied on horse-carried supplies, and so did the artillery.

Most of Hitler's Army wasn't very different from Napoléon's... seriously, did he never read Tólstoi's wonderful War and Peace?

 

The interesting thing is that the Germans studied Napoleon's campaing in Russia extensively, so that they too would not fall victim to the same mistakes.

 

and who told you that man ? the idea was typical Prussian, no questions asked nor answered move to Moscow take the city before the terrible winter set in .............. Oooooooooooooops Führer made a mistake !

 

They should have studied themselves and Russia in addition to Napoleon's campaign. They came up with a great plan, but did not realize they don't have an army that is able to execute that great plan. They should have made a plan for the German army, not the imaginary army that didn't exist.

 

Well, I couldn't disagree with you more, Friedrich. The Germans were lousy strategists? Utter nonsense. You yourself just listed a whole series of campaigns that they won handily. That these were quick wars is a testament to German skill, not an indication of their lousy strategic ability. Every army worth anything will aim to defeat its enemy in the shortest amount of time with the least cost to itself.

And surely you don't mean to blame the Prussians for the fact that they didn't encounter any major geographical obstacles in their wars before the 20th century, can you? Central Europe has few geographical barriers and that just so happens to be where Prussia and Germany are located. The Prussians and Germans managed to put up impressive defences of their territory when attacked, despite this lack of geographical barriers that provide the extra defence inherent in such barriers, even when attacked by superior numbers.

None of the nations in WWI had planned on or were ready for a war of attrition. If you didn't know that then you know nothing about WWI. All of the nations thought it would be a short war and were prepared only for such. No nation plans on fighting a war of attrition, not even the biggest nations that could expect to win such a war. A war of attrition simply takes much too large a toll on the victor. Rather, all nations plan on winning any war they enter in the shortest time possible.

So you have done nothing to show that the Germans were terrible strategists. There is only really one area where you could possibly demonstrate this (and one situation does not show that the Germans were traditionally afflicted by this failing); Russia 1941. In order to show that Germany's military leaders you need to show that they had no reason to expect anything other than a war of attrition on the eastern front, that they could not have under any circumstances expected the Soviet leadership to collapse or the Red Army crumble when Barbarossa struck. And you would have to show that Germany's hopeless plight in attacking Russia would be so obvious that its military leaders should have deposed Hitler instead of following him in attacking Russia. Because, remember, that Hitler made the decision to attack Russia, not the military leadership.

Yep, Germans made a number of big mistakes in WWI. However, they also had a number of great victories, which you completely failed to note. Hindenburg and Ludendorff defeated two larger Russian forces at Tannenberg. The Germans defeated the much larger Russian forces and occupied much of the Balkans. It was with German help that the Ottomans defeated the Allied landings at Gallipoli.

What you need to realize is that Germany's two major losses, in WWI and WWII, came against much superior forces. The Allies and Russians, in both WWI and WWII, could only defeat the Germans through a war of attrition, which they were bound to win eventually simply by virtue of their greater manpower, and enormous resources in America that the Germans couldn't touch at all (while Germany's industries were open to being bombed and starved of resources by blockade). Given this, the Germans have to be given a lot of credit.

I don't disagree that a lot of mistakes were made with Barbarossa. Hitler expected the Soviet Union do collapse in on itself and that he would obtain a quick victory as he had the previous two years. He was wrong and Germany paid for his mistake. But this doesn't make terrible strategists out of all Germans for hundreds of years. Hitler had good reason for thinking that the USSR would collapse in on itself. He had the example of Russia in WWI, for example.

And your quip about Germany still relying on horse-carried supplies, of exactly what relevance is this? You are trying to argue that the Germans were lousy strategists. Germany simply hadn't the money or the oil to completely mechanize its army and if it waited until it had a completely mechanized army the Allies by then would have cut off its oil supplies and it would have lost the war ultimately anyway. Germany had a lot of horses but not a lot of oil so the start of their campaigns necessarily involved them relying on horsepower to a large degree. So did many other nations at the time.

If you want to blame the Germans for not having traditionally occupied lands with lots of oil or being stuck in the middle of Europe, without a lot of geographical barriers, so be it. None of it, however, implies that the Germans were lousy strategists.

 

They planned on defeating an army whose leadership was in disarray and whose people didn't support it. Hitler thought that the Soviet state would collapse when it was hit by Barbarossa. If it had, he wouldn't have needed a larger army. Hitler's problem was that he believed too much in his plan and didn't plan for the possibility that he wouldn't get a quick victory.

 

You guys all keep referring to Napoleon but keep forgetting that the analogy closest in time wasn't Napoleon's attack on Russia but Germany's victory over Russia in WWI. The Germans knew about Napoleon's fate but they also knew that Russians were traditionally not strongly behind their leaders. They had recently gone through a revolution and while currently lead by a dictator, he had recently purged his officer corps. Furthermore, the most recent example of the Russian military in action was against Finland, which was won by the Soviets only through their overwhelming superiority in numbers. The Winter War was a major embarassment for the USSR and Hitler used that as a gauge of Russian effectiveness in battle.

Now, knowing that Germany had these data to also inform them, are you still willing to say that Hitler was mad and insane to have not seen from Napoleon's fate that he had no chance of defeating Russia?

 

Simply by listening to his Generals Hitler would not have attacked the USSR. Starting with names like von Rundstedt and Guderian...

 

Once again Marienburg, I have to point out the fact that it was not the Germans which defeated Russia in WW1 but the Bolsheviks!!

Before the revolution, General Alexis Polivanov, launched an offensive which lasted 10 weeks and was an advance of more then 400 kilometers, inflicting heavy casualties from Belarus to the Romanian border. This was the largest advance by any country which was fighting against the Central Powers up to this time. In the end not much was accomplished as the political turmoil in Russia grew and the war was no longer a priority.

To claim that Germany beat the Russians in WW1 is extememly misleading. For this reason a comparison of Germany's victory over Russia in WW1 ( IMO ) would be incorrect as other then heavy casualties, no stratigical objective which Russia could not counter, was ever accomplished.

 

Sloniskp, I realize your nationality compels you to defend Russia but the facts simply don't support your position. As you yourself admit, even Polivanov's offensive was not ultimately successful, even in the short term. Germany recovered its losses and pushed yet further into Russia. To claim that Germany beat Russia in WWI is not misleading; it's a fact. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is the fact of this, Russia would never have made such incredible concessions if they didn't realize that they had lost the war.

Now, it is true that Russia didn't sign the peace treaty ending the war until the Bolsheviks had launched their revolution. However, it is not as if the Russians had been winning the war until the moment the Bolsheviks stabbed the Russian generals in the back and lost it all in a manner reminiscent of the Nazis' claims about the Jews losing the war for them. As each year passed of the war Russia was left with less territory and major objectives were taken by the Germans during the slow advance. Or perhaps you would have us believe that the loss of Warsaw and the rest of Russian Poland was of no consequence politically to Russia. Russia had a good bit of success against the Austro-Hungarians but the Germans made up for these losses and pushed back the Russians and managed to recoup all the lost territory the Russians gained temporarily in their offensives.

But let's just get to the heart of the argument. You claim that Germany actually won only after the Bolshevik revolution. This is precisely my point; Hitler expected a similar revolution to break out in Russia when he attacked in 1941. The impressive might of Russia collapsed in 1917 and 1918 when its political and social system simply disintegrated and fell into civil war against itself. Hitler didn't believe that the Russians were united behind Stalin and figured the entire "rotten edifice" would crumble when he launched Barbarossa. What I'm claiming is that his belief in Russia's social and political instability wasn't that obviously misplaced in 1941 and that those who say it was by pointing out Napoleon's disastrous 1812 invasion are ignoring the much more recent example of Germany's victory in 1918.

 

I may be wrong ( if so I apologise ) but the way you are constantly defending Germans leads me to a conlussion that you if are not German yourself , have some German roots. Also if we talk nationality here there is really no point of us going any farther.

Let us talk history. Germany was militarily exhausted fighting alone ( again ) against the whole of Europe. In 1918, German troops were unable to advance any further. On the other hand Russia just survived the revolution. As you correctly noted, the country was divided ( red, whites ) facing wide spread civil war. Lenin, had a dilemma; either to continue the war with the Germans and loose all chances of revolutionary success or sign the peace treaty and achieve success in his coup. He chose the second option and he succeeded. Yes Russia lost Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, parts of Baltic and Byelorussia; but Lenin's goal...... and this is very, very important to understand, was NOT to win the war againts Germany but to win against the Whites. By the way there are many theories ( none documented ) stating that there was a verbal agreement between Lenin and the German Govt. saying that if Lenin succeeded with the revolution he would end the war with Germany freeing up much needed German troops for the Western front which it DESPERATELY needed. It is even pointed out that when arriving into Russia, Lenin did so in a German boxcar in a German train. For this the Whites considered Lenin a German spy.

What you fail to mention, is that it was in the interests of both countries for a peace treaty to be signed as Germany was completely drained and the combat readiness and ability of the German military in these years is described in many books including All quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque who actually had first hand experience on the matter fighting for the German side in the Great War.

Lenin knew perfectly well what he was doing and out smarted everyone as there was no larger help for Lenin's revolution then Germany! For this reason when Germany was isolated from the rest of Europe following the Versailles Treaty, Russia was the only country which held friendly relations with Germany and secretly supplied it with everything which Europe did not and these relations lasted all the way up to 1941 when Hitler broke the treaty.

More on the lines on an opinion which most ( who are familiar with German-Russo history ) would disagree with.