A Late Central Powers Victory with an Earlier, Less Harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

[the Imperium of Canada]

So heavily inspired by the Earlier Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Effects on Western Front? thread from years back.

Let's just handwave it and say that the Bolsheviks just except the initial, less harsh peace proposals and the war in the East more or less ends in late December of 1917.

Assume the early end of formal hostilities with Russia is actually enough to get a breakthrough on the Western Front and force France to capitulate sometime in 1918.

So what does the peace and aftermath of the war likely look like? What are the implications for an utterly exhausted Imperial Germany that "won" the war but who's expansion into Eastern Europe is very minimal compared to what it could have been and who's hegemony over Europe is questionable at best? What up the similarly exhausted Austro-Hungary and Ottoman Empire? What of a Soviet Union that's likely going to face a far shorter and less devastating Civil War?

And of course what of France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and United States?

 

[Nivek]

What of a Soviet Union that's likely going to face a far shorter and less devastating Civil War?

Dunno, if germany is truly exhausted they just left them on their issues, if not, they will help the whites to uphold the treaties

France, t

nothing as defeat is collapse.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Bolshies accept Brest-Litovsk ltie while Germant redeploys forces west and the war lasts longer in the west. Maybe you get a harsher peace for Germany. Maybe you get france/britain going red. Who knows.

 

[Flavius Iulius Maiorianus]

How useful would the territories ceded to the CP actually be for them post war? We know from OTL's WWII that such a buffer wouldn't last too long against a properly mechanized force, and the territory lost doesn't cripple the USSR.

 

[Drizzt]

Dunno, if germany is truly exhausted they just left them on their issues, if not, they will help the whites to uphold the treaties

I've always envisioned a late CP victory Germany mostly akin to OTLs Britain: Looking very powerful on paper, but actually very exhausted with a very war weary population and military. If the gouvernment tried to intervene directly in the Russian Civil War there'd be mutinies and I think they'd know that, so they wont. Especially since one way or the other there'll be UK style parliamentary reforms in a victorious Germany, meaning the Social Democrats will be part of the ruling coalition.
That said Germany would find itself in possession of a lot of surplus weapons it no longer has a use for that it can sell to the Whites "on credit". Basically LendAndLease with the numbers filed off.