23. Die Ost- und Südostfront des Reiches und seiner Verbündeten im Weltkrieg (1914-1918), in: Harms-Eberhardt, Neuer Deutscher Geschichts- und Kulturatlas. Leipzig, 1943. COLL.S/T K.272
On this atlas map of the German Empire and its allies during World War I, the continuous red line indicates their maximum advance on the Eastern Front. This gain is consolidated at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 where the new Soviet government had to agree to terms worse than those they had previously rejected. The Soviets have now to cede the Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics and Finland. But this ‘victorious peace’, is reversed in June 1919 by the ‘shameful peace’ of Versailles. German military and nationalist circles explained this defeat with the ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth according to which unpatriotic revolutionaries overthrew the Kaiser and betrayed the Army. Later, Nazis blame 'Jewish communists' even for the loss of the Ukrainian breadbasket.