9/1/1919 As the Red Army advances, Latvia seeks German volunteers

Civil war rages in Russia. In Siberia the counter-revolutionary forces of Admiral Kolchak have stormed Perm and are threatening to advance westwards. Elsewhere though the tide may be turning in the Bolsheviks‘ favour, as the increasingly powerful Red Army exploits the disorganisation and lack of unity among the Bolsheviks’ enemies. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk obliged the Bolsheviks to abandon vast territories in the west of the former Russian Empire. That treaty has however been rendered null and void by the German armistice with the western Allies. Now the Red Army is expanding into Ukraine and the Baltic States, keen to bring them back into the Russian orbit and introduce them to the delights of socialism. The Bolsheviks have captured Riga, Latvia’s capital, and have also taken Vilna (or Vilnius), which is separately disputed between Poland and Lithuania.

Fearing that the Red Army is about to snuff out their recently…