The final blow to the legion was a visit from their revered Gen. Milan Stefanik, defense minister of the new Czech Republic. He told the weary legion officers:
You must hold out here in Siberia until the end, until the victory is won, and this you must do relying only upon your own strength, for I can tell you authoritatively that no help from the Allies will come to this Front. It is useless our discussing the rights and wrongs of the case. The fact of importance is that help will not come. Now you know just how things stand, and also the extent of the task that lies ahead.22
At that point, the Czech Legion withdrew from the Ural fighting to take on their new role as guardian of the Amur section of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The legion was replaced on the Ural front by the increased armies of Admiral Kolchak, who had borrowed Czech leadership for his campaigns. Gaida was now the commanding general of the Kolchak forces, and Dietrichs and Voitsekhovskii, both Russian-born but with Czech ancestry, felt their place was to keep fighting the Bolsheviks.
The legionnaires had been away from their homes for four years, many for five, and now longed only for the orders to head for Vladivostok and ships to take them home. “Home to help in the building of our new State; home to the families who need us; home before all jobs are snapped up by those who stayed behind and did not raise a finger to secure the Independence,” wrote Becvar.23 But it would be almost eighteen months before the last of the legion would part company with the accursed Siberia.
The Czechs and their leaders were critical to the events of 1918, as Allied strategies developed, but their greatest contribution to the Intervention might have been their emotional tug on world opinion. As the United States struggled with the decision to intervene, logic could measure most of the factors involved. But emotion played a part as well. President Wilson’s final moments of indecision were affected by his impression of the plight of the valiant legionnaires, caught in the vastness of Siberia, menaced by the Red Army and trying desperately to come to the aid of the Allies. The United States had thousands of Czechs who had emigrated to America, but still had ties to the old country, and their presence and voice were enough to tip the scales for intervention.
In the spring of 1918, much of the attention focused on the Russian Far East. The Japanese had been involved in discussions about their role in any Siberian venture and had one of their cruisers, the HIJMS Asahi, in Vladivostok where it had been joined by the U.S. cruiser Brooklyn and the British HMS Suffolk. Discussions centered around possible roles for the United States and Japan to take in the Russian situation. On April 4, four Japanese merchants were murdered in Vladivostok, and the Japanese cruiser sent a detail of Asahi marines ashore, ostensibly to protect the rather large number of Japanese citizens in the city. The British, alarmed by the Japanese marines, sent in their own contingent of marines to protect British interests. The sailors and Marines on board the Brooklyn went to general quarters, but stayed on board the vessel, held back by the Asiatic Fleet commander, Adm. Austin M. Knight, who was aboard.24 Events stabilized as the two Allied marine forces went back to their respective ships, and the local Soviet government awaited the next development.
As the Czechs battled their way east and west in Siberia, the Allied heads of government had some vague consensus as to the plan of action for Russia. Britain and Japan had already established themselves in widely separated locations, Japan in Vladivostok and Britain in Murmansk. Even the uncommitted United States had sent warships to those two areas. The British and French were applying increased pressure on President Wilson to use American troops in Russia, but he remained stubbornly opposed. His advisors, Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Secretary of War Newton Baker, only confused the presidential dilemma. Lansing had begun as an opponent of intervention, even though his men on the scene, Ambassador Francis and Maddin Summers, pushed hard for American participation. However, by May, Lansing viewed the two expeditions more favorably, adding to the pressure on Wilson from Britain and France. The War Department and Baker consistently opposed the use of forces that they felt could be better used in France. The French hoped to replace their fallen with Americans and Russians. Both France and Britain believed that sending troops into Russia would excite the Russian people once again to fight the hated Germans, who, through the recent treaty, then controlled the Ukraine and most of the Baltic states. It seems difficult that anyone could believe token forces in the remote stretches of North Russia, and in far-off Vladivostok, could rekindle the flame of a war-weary nation bloodied by years of fighting. One of America’s most prophetic diplomats, Felix Cole, vice consul at Archangel, who opposed intervention, wrote a long message to his superior, Ambassador David Francis, who favored intervention, on June 1, 1918. Cole said, among other things, “Intervention cannot reckon on active support from Russians. All the fight is out of Russia. . . . Every foreign invasion that has gone deep into Russia has been swallowed up.”25 Cole made many other cogent points that were never fully appreciated, probably because they were in disagreement with those of Ambassador Francis.
Under increasing pressure from the Allies, President Wilson weighed his decision. He had no moral objection to sending American troops into civil unrest in other parts of the world. In his years as president, he committed American armed forces in nineteen separate instances, from his September 1913 dispatching of Marines to Mexico to a landing of Marines in Vladivostok in February 1920. Haiti, the Dominican Republic, China, Cuba, Panama, Dalmatia, Turkey, and Guatemala all saw armed U.S. troops on their soil.26 However, President Wilson opposed entry into the world war and was certainly hesitant to commit troops to Russia. Wilson was a very private person, and he seemed reluctant to heed advice from those around him. In this case it was probably wise, since his advisors were as split on the issue of intervention as he seemed to be. His military advisors urged him to stay out of Russia, while his diplomats were generally in favor of armed intervention.
With pressures mounting, on July 6 Wilson called a meeting of the head of the State Department, Robert Lansing; the head of the War Department, Newton Baker; the head of the Navy Department, Joseph Daniels; Chief of Staff of the Army, Peyton March; and Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. William Benson. The meeting resulted in several decisions:
1. Reestablishing an eastern front was impracticable.
2. Regardless of the situation, no Allies would proceed west of Irkutsk.
3. It was necessary to aid Czechs coming from Vladivostok to join their comrades in western Siberia.
4. Since no significant force could be sent from the United States, Americans would supply arms and supplies to the Czechs and land a force in Vladivostok made up of American and Japanese troops, each numbering about seven thousand, enough troops to hold Vladivostok in cooperation with the Czechs.
5. There would be no interference in internal Russian affairs.
The final resolution, however, was the most important; it was, “Await further developments before taking further steps.”27 There was still a debate concerning the Czechs and their use by the Allies. It would appear that U.S. help was not intended to evacuate the beleaguered Czechs, but to push them back to the west, where they could fight the Russian Soviets.
Wilson worried that a refusal to intervene would further aggravate the rift between him and the Allies. The U.S. delay in entering the war, Wilson’s insistence on maintaining American control of American units, and his reluctance to send a representative to the Supreme War Council had jeopardized his relations with Britain and France.28 He would need their support for his plans toward a unified approach to peace.
With the various views and opinions ringing in his ears, on the night of July 16, 1918, President Wilson, alone in his room, began typing. The result of his night’s work reads as follows:
Aide Memoir
The whole heart of the people of the United States is in the winning of the war. The controlling purpose of the Government of the United States is to do everything that is necessary and effective to win it. It wi
shes to cooperate in every practicable way with the allied governments, and to cooperate ungrudgingly; for it has no ends of its own to serve and believes that the war can be won only by common council and intimate concert of action. It has sought to study every proposed policy or action in which its cooperation has been asked in this spirit, and states the following conclusions in the confidence, that if it finds itself obliged to decline participation in any undertaking or course of action, it will be understood that it does so only because it deems itself precluded from participating by imperative considerations either of policy or fact.
In full agreement with the allied governments and upon the unanimous advice of the Supreme War Council, the Government of the United States adopted, upon its entrance into the war, a plan for taking part in the fighting on the western front into which all its resources of men and material were to be put, and put as rapidly as possible, and it has carried out this plan with energy and success, pressing its execution more and more rapidly forward and literally putting into it the entire energy and executive force of the nation. This was its response, its very willing and hearty response, to what was the unhesitating judgment alike of its own military advisers and of the advisers of the allied governments. It is now considering, at the suggestion of the Supreme War Council, the possibility of making very considerable additions even to this immense programme which, if they should prove feasible at all, will tax the industrial processes of the United States and the shipping facilities of the whole group of associated nations to the utmost. It has thus concentrated all its plans and all its resources upon this single absolutely necessary object.
In such circumstances it feels it to be its duty to say that it cannot, so long as the military situation on the western front remains critical, consent to break or slacken the force of its present effort by diverting any part of its military force to other points or objectives. The United States is at a great distance from the field of action on the western front; it is at a much greater distance from any other field of action. The instrumentalities by which it is to handle its armies and its stores have at great cost and with great difficulty been created in France. They do not exist elsewhere. It is practicable for her to do a great deal in France; it is not practicable for her to do anything of importance or on a large scale upon any other field. The American Government, therefore, very respectfully requested its Associates to accept its deliberate judgment that it should not dissipate its force by attempting important operations elsewhere.
It regards the Italian front as closely coordinated with the western front, however, and is willing to divert a portion of its military forces from France to Italy if it is the judgment and wish of the Supreme Command that it should do so. It wishes to defer to the decision of the commander in chief in this matter, as it would wish to deter in all others, particularly because it considers these two fronts so related as to be practically but separate parts of a single line and because it would be necessary that any American troops sent to Italy should be subtracted from the number used in France and be actually transported across French territory from the ports now used by armies of the United States.
It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United States, arrived at after repeated and very searching reconsiderations of the whole situation in Russia, that military intervention there would add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it, injure her rather than help her, and that it would be of no advantage in the prosecution of our main design, to win the war against Germany. It cannot, therefore, take part in such intervention or sanction it in principle. Military intervention would, in its judgment, even supposing it to be efficacious in its immediate avowed object of delivering an attack upon Germany from the east, be merely a method of making use of Russia, not a method of serving her. Her people could not profit by it, if they profitted by it at all, in time to save them from their present distresses, and their substance would be used to maintain foreign armies, not to reconstitute their own. Military action is admissible in Russia, as the Government of the United States sees the circumstances, only to help the Czecho-Slovaks consolidate their forces and get into successful cooperation with their Slavic kinsmen and to steady any efforts at self-government or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. Whether from Vladivostok or from Murmansk and Archangel, the only legitimate object for which American or allied troops can be employed, it submits, is to guard military stores which may be subsequently needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self defense. For helping the Czecho-Slovaks there is immediate necessity and sufficient justification. Recent developments have made it evident that that is in the interest of what the Russian people themselves desire, and the Government of the United States is glad to contribute the small force at its disposal for that purpose. It yields, also, to the judgment of the Supreme Command in the matter of establishing a small force in Murmansk, to guard the military stores at Kola and to make it safe for Russian forces to come together in organized bodies in the north. But it owes it to frank counsel to say that it can go no further than these modest and experimental plans. It is not in a position, and has no expectation of being in a position, to take part in organized intervention in adequate force from either Vladivostok or Murmansk and Archangel. It feels that it ought to add, also, that it will feel at liberty to use the few troops it can spare only for the purposes here stated and shall feel obliged to withdraw these forces, in order to add them to the forces at the western front, if the plans in whose execution it is now intended that they should develop into others inconsistent with the policy to which the Government of the United States feels constrained to restrict itself.
At the same time the Government of the United States wishes to say with the utmost cordiality and good will that none of the conclusions here stated is meant to wear the least color of criticism of what the other governments associated against Germany may think it wise to undertake. It wishes in no way to embarrass their choices of policy. All that is intended here is a perfectly frank and definite statement of the policy which the United States feels obliged to adopt for herself and in the use of her military forces. The Government of the United States does not wish it to be understood that in so restricting its own activities it is seeking, even by implication, to set limits to the action or to define the policies of its Associates.
It hopes to carry out the plans for safeguarding the rear of the Czecho-Slovaks operating from Vladivostok in a way that will place it and keep it in close cooperation with a small military force like its own from Japan, and if necessary from the other Allies, and that will assure it of the cordial accord of all the allied powers; and it proposes to ask all associated in this course of action to unite in assuring the people of Russia in the most public and solemn manner that none of the governments uniting in action either in Siberia or in northern Russia contemplates any interference of any kind with the political sovereignty of Russia, any intervention in her internal affairs, or any impairment of her territorial integrity either now or hereafter, but that each of the associated powers has the single object of affording such aid as shall be acceptable, to the Russian people in their endeavor to regain control of their own affairs, their own territory, and their own destiny.
It is the hope and purpose of the Government of the United States to take advantage of the earliest opportunity to send to Siberia a commission of merchants, agricultural experts, labour advisors, Red Cross Representatives and agents of the Young Men’s Christian Association accustomed to organizing the best methods of spreading useful information and rendering educational help of a modest sort, in order in some systematic manner to relieve the immediate economic necessities of the people there in every way for which opportunity may be open. The execution of this plan will follow and will not be permitted to embarrass the military assistance rendered in the rear of the westward-moving forces of the Czecho-Slovaks.
July 17, 191824
The strange document, which was not signed by the president, became the basis for the two Russian expeditions. It was a rambling, misguided document based on false assumptions and misinformation and was virtually impossible to comply with, particularly the paragraph that announced that a military intervention was probably justified, but it would be carried out without “any interference of any kind with the political sovereignty of Russia, any intervention in her internal affairs.” It began with the reasons for not sending troops to Russia, but ended with the statement that a token force could be sent purely for the purpose of guarding military supplies. Equally puzzling was the reference to the westward movement of the Czechs, which indicated an acceptance of the Czechs’ not leaving Russia, but being prepared to reenter the fighting in the Urals. Without national support or a clear understanding of their purpose, the two American expeditions entered Russia in late summer 1918, and, confused and unhappy, many stayed there until early in 1920, long after their brothers-in-arms on the western front had paraded in victory back in the United States.
The Allied expeditions to Russia were classic demonstrations of an isolated and uninformed military subject to irrational government decisions. While these were Allied efforts, this book deals primarily with the American involvement with the Archangel and Siberian expeditions in their regrettable campaigns. It is a tale of heroism, hardship, cowardice, and comradeship under conditions that rival those of Valley Forge and the Chosin Reservoir. While most of the men returned home to lead normal civilian lives, over four hundred of them never returned, but paid with their lives for the ill-fated Allied campaigns.
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