Army capable of conducting a 'revolutionary war'. When the decision was made, on 24 February 1918, no-one wanted to sign the surrender, and Sokolnikov was instructed to lead the delegation, after he had tried in vain to nominate Zinoviev instead. He signed the final treaty, angrily and under protest, on 3 March, forecasting that German's expansionism would be short-lived. The German and Austrian diplomats complained that his outburst spoiled the final day of negotiations. Sokolnikov later wrote that "the division of labour in capitalist society was brilliantly expressed in this contrast of unceremonial plunder at the front and mannerly gentlemanliness at the green table". On 10 May, Sokolnikov told a meeting of the Central Committee that the Germans could not be trusted to honour the treaty, and that it had been a mistake to sign it. It required a fierce rebuttal from Lenin to avert the threat of resuming the war. Despite his intervention, in June 1918, Sokolnikov led a delegation to Berlin to negotiate a trade treaty with Germany, but the talks were aborted after the assassination of the German ambassador in Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach in July. Role in the Civil War After his return from Brest, late in 1917, Sokolnikov supervised the seizure of Russian banks, and the creation of new centralised banking system. In March 1918, he was appointed an editor of Pravda, but he spent almost the entire Russian Civil War on the front line, firstly as Political commissar with the Second Army, which was responsible for putting down anti-Bolshevik rebellions on the western side of the Ural mountains, around Vyatka and Izhevsk. Two months later, after the rebellion had been crushed, he was transferred to the Southern Front, as commissar for the Ninth Army and later the Thirteenth Army, for the campaign against the Don Cossacks who had been rebelled against Bolshevik rule, and the White Army of General Denikin. Later, alongside Rosalia Zemlyachka, he became commissar of the Eighth army, using this position to order mass shootings during the Russian Civil War. He was also, for a time, military commander of the Eighth Army, despite a protest from Stalin's ally Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who wrote to Lenin demanding:"Where did the idea come from that Sokolnikov could command an army? ... Is it to protect Sokolnikov's pride that he has been allowed to play with a whole army?" In August 1920, Sokolnikov was posted to